'We have no problems.'
Ah, he's already lied to me, thought Vimes. We're being diplomatic.
Vimes trailed after the dwarf through more caves. Or tunnels... it was hard to tell, because in the darkness Vimes could only rely on a sense of the space around him. Occasionally they passed the lighted entrance to another cave or tunnel. Several guards, with candles on their helmets, stood at each one.
The well-honed copper's radar was beeping at him continuously. Something bad was going on. He could smell the tension, the sense of quiet panic. The air was thick with it. Occasionally other dwarfs scuttled past, distracted, on some mission. Something very bad. People didn't know what to do next, so they were trying to do everything. And, in the middle of this, important officers had to stop what they were doing because some idiot from some distant city had to hand over a piece of paper.
Eventually a door opened in the darkness. It led into a large, roughly oblong cave that, with its book-lined walls and paper-strewn tables, had the look of an office about it.
'Do be seated, commander.'
A match burst into life. One candle was lit, all lost and alone in the dark.
'We try to make guests feel welcome,' said Dee, scuttling behind his desk. He pulled off his pointed hat and, to Vimes's amazement, put on a pair of thick smoked glasses.
'You had papers?' he said. Vimes handed them over.
'It says here "His Grace",' the dwarf said, after reading them for a while.
'Yes, that's me.'
'And there's a sir.'
'That's me, too.'
'And an excellency.'
' 'fraid so.' Vimes narrowed his eyes. 'I was blackboard monitor for a while, too.'
There was the sound of angry voices from behind a door at the far end of the room.
'What does a blackboard monitor do?' said Dee, raising his voice.
'What? Er, I had to clean the blackboard after lessons.'
The dwarf nodded. The voices grew louder, more intense. Dwarfish was such a good language to be annoyed in.
'Erasing the teachings when they were learned!' said Dee, shouting to be heard.
'Er, yes!'
'A task given only to the trustworthy!'
'Could be, yes!'
Dee folded up the letter and handed it back, glancing briefly at Cheery.
'Well, these seem to be in order,' he said. 'Would you care for a drink before you go?'
'Sorry? I thought I had to present myself to your king.' The swearing from the other side of the door was threatening to burn through the woodwork.
'Oh, that won't be necessary' said Dee. 'At the moment he should. not be bothered with—'
'—trivial matters?' said Vimes. 'I thought it was how the thing ought to be done. I thought dwarfs always did the thing that ought to be done.'
'At the moment it... would not be advisable,' said Dee, raising his voice again over the noise. 'I'm sure you understand.'
'Let's assume I'm very stupid,' said Vimes.
'I assure you, your excellency, that what I see the King sees, and what I hear the King hears.'
'That's certainly true at the moment, isn't it?'
Dee drummed his fingers on his desk. 'Your excellency, I have spent only long enough in your... city to gain a general insight into your ways, but I might feel you are making fun of me.'
'May I speak freely?'
'From what I have heard of you, your monitorship, you usually do.'
'Have you found the Scone of Stone yet?'
The expression on Dee's face told Vimes that he had scored. And that, almost certainly, the next thing the dwarf said would be another lie.
'What a strange and untruthful thing to say! There is no possibility that the Scone could have been stolen! This has been firmly declared! This is not a lie we wish to hear repeated!'
'You told me I—' Vimes tried. By the sound of it, there was a fight going on behind the door now.
'The Scone will be seen by all at the coronation! This is not a matter for Ankh-Morpork or anyone else! I protest at this intrusion into our private affairs!'
'I merely—'
'Nor do we have to show the Scone to any prying troublemaker! It is a sacred trust and well guarded!'
Vimes kept quiet. Dee was better than Done It Duncan.
'Every person leaving the Scone Cave is carefully watched! The Scone cannot be removed! It is perfectly safe!' Dee was shouting now.
'Ah, I understand,' said Vimes quietly.
'Good!'
'So... you haven't found it yet, then.'
Dee opened his mouth, shut it again, and then slumped back in his seat. 'I think, your grace, that you had better—'
The door at the other end of the room rolled back. Another dwarf, cone-shaped in his robes, stamped out, stopped, glared around him, went back through the door again, shouted some afterthoughts to whoever was beyond, and then made to head out of the room. He was brought up short when he almost walked into Vimes.
The dwarf tilted its head to look up at him. There was no real face there, just the suggestion of the glint of angry eyes between the leather flaps.
'Arnak-Morporak?'
'Yes.'
Vimes didn't understand the words that followed, but the nasty tone was unmistakable. The important thing was to keep smiling. That was the diplomatic way.
'Why, thank you,' he said. 'And may I say it—'
There was a grunt from the dwarf. He'd seen Cheery.
'Ha'ak!' he shouted.
Vimes heard a gasp. There were other dwarfs clustered around the doorway. Then he glanced down at Cheery. Her eyes were shut. She was trembling.
'Who is this dwarf?' he said to Dee.
'This is Albrecht Albrechtson,' said the Ideas Taster.
'The runner-up?'
'Yes,' said Dee hoarsely.
'Then can you tell the creature that if he uses that word again in the presence of myself or any of my staff there will be, as we diplomats say, repercussions. Wrap that up in diplomacy and give it to him, will you?'
The corners of Vimes's ears picked up a suggestion that not every dwarf listening was ignorant of the language. A couple of dwarfs were already heading purposefully towards them.
Dee babbled a stream of hysterical dwarfish, just as the other dwarfs caught up with the gaping Albrecht and led him quietly but firmly away, but not before one of them had whispered something to the Ideas Taster.
'The, er, the King wishes to see you,' he mumbled.
Vimes looked towards the doorway. More dwarfs were hurrying through it now. Some of them were dressed in what Vimes thought of as 'normal' dwarf clothing, others in the heavy black leathers of the deep-down clans. All of them glared at him as they went past.
Then there was just empty floor, all the way to the door.
'Do you come too?' he said.
'Not unless he asks for me,' said Dee. 'I wish you luck, your monitorship.'
Beyond the door was a room of bookshelves, stretching up, stretching away. Here and there a candle merely changed the density of the darkness. There were lots of them, though, punctuating the distance. Vimes wondered how big this room must be.
'In here is a record of every marriage, every birth, every death, every movement of a dwarf from one mine to another, the succession of the king of each mine, every dwarf's progress through k'zakra, mining claims, the history of famous axes... and other matters of note,' said a voice behind him. 'And perhaps most importantly, every decision made under dwarf law for fifteen hundred years is written down in this room, look you.'
Vimes turned. A dwarf, short even by dwarf standards, was standing behind him. He seemed to be expecting a reply.
'Er, every decision?'
'Oh, yes.'
'Er, were they all good?' said Vimes.
'The important thing is that they were all made,' said the King. 'Thank you, young... dwarf, you may straighten up.'
Cheery was bowing.
'Sorry, should I be doing that?' s
aid Vimes. 'You're... not the King, are you?'
'Not yet.'
'I, I'm, I'm sorry, I was expecting someone more, er...'
'Do go on.'
'... someone more... kingly.'
The Low King sighed.
'I meant... I mean, you look just like an ordinary dwarf,' said Vimes weakly.
This time the King smiled. He was slightly shorter than average for dwarfs, and dressed in the usual almost-uniform of leather and home-forged chain-mail. He looked old, but dwarfs started looking old around the age of five years and were still looking old three hundred years later, and he had that musical cadence to his speech that Vimes associated with Llamedos. If he'd asked Vimes to pass the ketchup in Gimlet's Whole Food Delicatessen, Vimes wouldn't have given him a second look.
'This diplomacy business,' said the King, 'Are you getting the hang of it, do you think?'
'It doesn't come easy, I must admit... er, your majesty.'
'I believe you have been, until now, a watchman in Ankh-Morpork?'
'Er, yes.'
'And you had a famous ancestor, I believe, who was a regicide?'
Here it comes, thought Vimes. 'Yers, Stoneface Vimes,' he said, as levelly as possible. 'I've always thought that was a bit unfair, though. It was only one king. It wasn't as if it was a hobby.'
'But you don't like kings,' said the dwarf.
'I don't meet many, sir,' said Vimes, hoping that this would pass for a diplomatic answer. It seemed to satisfy the King.
'I went to Ankh-Morpork once, when I was a young dwarf,' he said, walking towards a long table piled high with scrolls.
'Er, really?'
'Lawn ornament, they called me. And... what was it... ah, yes... shortarse. Some children threw stones at me.'
'I'm sorry.'
'I expect you'll tell me that sort of thing doesn't happen any more.'
'It doesn't happen as much. But you always get idiots who don't move with the times.'
The King 'gave Vimes a piercing glance. 'Indeed. The times... But now they're always Ankh-Morpork's times, see?'
'I'm sorry?'
'When people say "We must move with the times," they really mean "You must do it my way." And there are some who would say that Ankh-Morpork is... a kind of vampire. It bites, and what it bites it turns into copies of itself. It sucks, too. It seems all our best go to Ankh-Morpork, where they live in squalor. You leave us dry.'
Vimes was at a loss. It was clear that the little figure now sitting at the long table was a lot brighter than he was, although right now he felt as dim as a penny candle in any case. It was also clear that the King hadn't slept for quite some time. He decided to go for honesty.
'Can't really answer that, sir,' he said, adopting a variant on his talking-to-Vetinari approach. 'But...'
'Yes?'
'I'd wonder... you know, if I was a king... I'd wonder why people were happier living in squalor in Ankh-Morpork than staying back home... sir.'
'Ah. You're telling me how I should think, now?'
'No, sir. Just how I think. There's dwarf bars all over Ankh-Morpork, and they've got mining tools wired to the wall, and there's dwarfs in 'em every night quaffing beer and singing sad songs about how they wish they were back in the mountains digging for gold. But if you said to them, fine, the gate's open, off you go and send us a postcard, they'd say, "Oh, well, yeah I'd love to, but we've just got the new workshop finished... Maybe next year we'll go to Uberwald." '
'They come back to the mountains to die,' said the King.
'They live in Ankh-Morpork.'
'Why is this, do you think?'
'I couldn't say. Because no one tells them how to, I suppose.'
'And now you want our gold and iron,' said the King. 'Is there nothing we can keep?'
'Don't know about that either, sir. I wasn't trained for this job.'
The King muttered something under his breath. Then, much louder, he said, 'I can offer you no favours, your excellency. These are difficult times, see.'
'But my real job is finding things out,' said Vimes, 'If there is anything that I could do to—'
The King thrust the papers at Vimes. 'Your letters of accreditation, your excellency. Their contents have been noted!'
And that shuts me up, Vimes thought.
'I would ask you one thing, though,' the King went on.
'Yes, sir?'
'Really thirty men and a dog?'
'No. There were only seven men. I killed one of them because I had to.'
'How did the others die?'
'Er, victims of circumstance, sir.'
'Well, then... your secret is safe with me. Good morning, Miss Littlebottom.'
Cheery looked stunned.
The King gave her a brief smile. 'Ah, the rights of the individual, a famous Ankh-Morpork invention, or so they say. Thank you, Dee, his excellency was just leaving. You may send in the Copperhead delegation.'
As Vimes was ushered out he saw another party of dwarfs assembled in the anteroom. One or two of them nodded at him as they were herded in.
Dee turned back to Vimes. 'I hope you didn't tire his majesty.'
'Someone else has already been doing that, by the look of it.'
'These are sleepless times,' said the Ideas Taster.
'Scone turned up yet?' said Vimes innocently.
'Your excellency, if you persist in this attitude a complaint will go to your Lord Vetinari!'
'He does so look forward to them. Was it this way out?'
It was the last word said until Vimes and his guards were back in the coach and the doors to daylight were opening ahead of them.
Out of the corner of his eye Vimes saw that Cheery was shaking.
'Certainly hits you, doesn't it, the cold air after the warmth underground...' he ventured.
Cheery grinned in relief. 'Yes, it does,' she said.
'Seemed quite a decent sort,' said Vimes. 'What was that he muttered when I said I hadn't been trained?'
'He said, "Who has?", sir.'
'It sounded like it. All that arguing... it's not a case of sitting on the throne and saying, "Do this, do that," then.'
'Dwarfs are very argumentative, sir. Of course, many wouldn't agree. But none of the big dwarf clans are happy about this. You know how it is the Copperheads didn't want Albrecht, and the Schmaltzbergers wouldn't support anyone called Glodson, the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs were split both ways, and Rhys comes from a little coalmining clan near Llamedos that isn't important enough to be on anyone's side...'
'You mean he didn't get to be king because everyone liked him but because no one disliked him enough?'
'That's right, sir.'
Vimes glanced at the crumpled letters that the King had thrust into his hand. By daylight he could see the faint scribble on one corner. There were just two words.
MIDNIGHT, SEE?
Humming to himself, he tore the piece of paper off and rolled it into a ball.
'And now for the damn vampire,' he said.
'Don't worry, sir,' said Cheery. 'What's the worst she can do? Bite your head off?'
'Thank you for that, corporal. Tell me... those robes some of the dwarfs were wearing. I know they wear them on the surface so they're not polluted by the nasty sunlight, but why wear. them down there?'
'It's traditional, sir. Er, they were worn by the... well, it's what you'd call the knockermen, sir.'
'What did they do?'
'Well, you know about firedamp? It's a gas you get in mines sometimes. It explodes.'
Vimes saw the images in his mind as Cheery explained...
The miners would clear the area, if they were lucky. And the knockerman would go in wearing layer after layer of chain-mail and leather, carrying his sack of wicker globes stuffed with rags and oil. And his long pole. And his slingshot.
Down in the mines, all alone, he'd hear the knockers. Agi Hammerthief and all the other things that made noises, deep under the earth.
There could be no light, because lig
ht would mean sudden, roaring death. The knockerman would feel his way through the utter dark, far below the surface.
There was a type of cricket that lived in the mines. It chirruped loudly in the presence of firedamp. The knockerman would have one in a box, tied to his hat.
When it sang, a knockerman who was either very confident or extremely suicidal would step back, light the torch on the end of his pole and thrust it ahead of him. The more careful knockerman would step back rather more, and slingshot a ball of burning rags into the unseen death. Either way, he'd trust in his thick leather clothes to protect him from the worst of the blast.
Initially the dangerous trade did not run in families, because who'd marry a knockerman? They were dead dwarfs walking. But sometimes a young dwarf would ask to become one; his family would be proud, wave him goodbye, and then speak of him as if he was dead, because that made it easier.
Sometimes, though, knockermen came back. And the ones that survived went on to survive again, because surviving is a matter of practice. And sometimes they would talk a little of what they heard, all alone in the deep mines... the tap-tapping of dead dwarfs trying to get back into the world, the distant laughter of Agi Hammerthief, the heartbeat of the turtle that carried the world.
Knockermen became kings.
Vimes, listening with his mouth open, wondered why the hell it was that dwarfs believed that they had no religion and no priests. Being a dwarf was a religion. People went into the dark for the good of the clan, and heard things, and were changed, and came back to tell...
And then, fifty years ago, a dwarf tinkering in Ankh-Morpork had found that if you put a simple fine mesh over your lantern flame it'd burn blue in the presence of the gas but wouldn't explode. It was a discovery of immense value to the good of dwarfkind and, as so often happens with such discoveries, almost immediately led to a war.
'And afterwards there were two kinds of dwarf,' said Cheery sadly. 'There's the Copperheads, who all use the lamp and the patent gas exploder, and the Schmaltzbergers, who stick to the old ways. Of course we're all dwarfs,' she said, 'but relations are rather... strained.'
'I bet they are.'
'Oh, no, all dwarfs recognize the need for the Low King, it's just that...'
'... they don't quite see why knockermen are still so powerful?'
The Fifth Elephant d-24 Page 17
