Night Watch tds-27

by Terry Pratchett

“Well, er, Sheriff Macklewheet, er, certainly gave you a most glowing reference,” said the captain, shuffling the papers. “Very glowing. Things have been a little difficult since we lost Sergeant Wi—”

  “And I'll be paid my first month in advance, please. I need clothes and a decent meal and somewhere to sleep.”

  Tilden cleared his throat. “Many of the unmarried men stay in the barracks in Cheapside—”

  “Not me,” said Vimes. “I'll be lodging with Doctor Lawn in Twinkle Street.” Well, Rosie Palm did suggest he had a spare room…

  “The pox, hnah, doctor?” said Snouty.

  “Yeah, I'm particular about the company I keep,” said Vimes. “It's also just around the corner.”

  He took his hands off the desk, stood back and whipped off a salute of almost parodic efficiency, the sort that Tilden had always loved.

  “I'll report for duty at three o'clock tomo—this afternoon, sir,” he said. “Thank you, sir.”

  Tilden sat mesmerized.

  “It was twenty-five dollars, sir, I believe,” said Vimes, still maintaining the salute.

  He watched the captain get up and go to the old green safe in the corner. The man was careful not to let Vimes see him turn the dial, but Vimes was pretty certain he didn't need to. The safe had still been there when he made captain, and by then everyone knew the combination was 4-4-7-8 and that no one seemed to know how to change it. The only things worth keeping in it had been the tea and sugar and anything you particularly wanted Nobby to read.

  Tilden came back with a small leather bag and slowly counted out the money, and was so cowed that he didn't ask Vimes to sign anything.

  Vimes took it, saluted again, and held out his other hand.

  “Badge, sir,” he said.

  “Ah? Oh, yes, of course…”

  The captain, entirely unnerved, fumbled in the top drawer of the desk and pulled out a dull copper shield. If he'd been that observant, he'd have noticed how hungrily Vimes's eyes watched it.

  The new sergeant-at-arms picked up his badge with care and saluted yet again. “Oath, sir,” he said.

  “Oh, er, that thing? Er, I believe I've got it written down somewh—”

  Vimes took a deep breath. This probably wasn't a good idea, but he was flying now.

  “I comma square bracket recruit's name square bracket comma do solemnly swear by square bracket recruit's deity of choice square bracket to uphold the Laws and Ordinances of the city of Ankh-Morpork comma serve the public truft comma and defend the fubjects of His ftroke Her bracket delete whichever is inappropriate bracket Majefty bracket name of reigning monarch bracket without fear comma favour comma or thought of perfonal fafety semi-colon to purfue evildoers and protect the innocent comma laying down my life if necefsary in the caufe of said duty comma so help me bracket aforefaid deity bracket full stop Gods Save the King stroke Queen bracket delete whichever is inappropriate bracket full stop.”

  “My word, well done,” said Tilden. “You have come well prepared, sergeant.”

  “And now it's the King's Shilling, sir,” said Vimes insistently, soaring on wings of audacity.

  “What?”

  “I have to take the King's Shilling, sir.”

  “Er…do we have a—”

  “It's, hnah, in the bottom drawer, sir,” said Snouty helpfully. “On the bit of string.”

  “Oh yes,” said Tilden, beaming. “It's a long time since we used that, what?”

  “Is it?” said Vimes.

  After some rummaging, Tilden produced the coin. It was a genuine old shilling, probably worth half a dollar now just for its silver and thus, coppers being coppers, it had always been dropped into the new copper's hand and then tugged away before it was pinched.

  Vimes had taken the oath once. He wondered if taking it twice cancelled it out. But it needed to be done and you had at least touch the Shilling. He felt the weight in his palm and took a small shameful pleasure in closing his fingers on it before the captain had time to drag it back. Then, point made, he released the grip.

  With a final salute he turned, and tapped Snouty on the shoulder. “With the captain's permission, I'd like a chat with you outside, please.”

  And Vimes strode out.

  Snouty looked at Tilden, who was still sitting as though hypnotized, the Shilling dangling from his fist. The captain managed to say, “Good man, that. Ver' good…got backbone…”

  “Hnah, I'll just go an' see what he wants, sir,” said Snouty, and scuttled out.

  He had reached the end of the corridor when a hand came out of the shadows and pulled him close.

  “You're a useful man to know, Snouty,” hissed Vimes. “I can tell.”

  “Yessir,” said Snouty, held half on tiptoe.

  “You've got your ear to the ground, eh?”

  “Yessir!”

  “There's someone in every nick who knows all that's going on and can lay his hands on just about anything, Snouty, and I think you are that man.”

  “Hnah, yessir!”

  “Then listen here,” said Vimes. “Size eight boots, size seven-and-a-quarter helmet, a good leather cape. The boots should be a good make but second-hand. Got that?”

  “Second-hand?”

  “Yes. Soles pretty nearly worn through.”

  “Soles pretty nearly worn through, hnah, check,” said Snouty.

  “Breastplate not to have any rust on it but a few dents will be okay. A good sword, Snouty, and believe me I know a good sword when I hold one. As for all the rest of the stuff, well, I know a man like you can get hold of the very best and have it delivered to Dr Lawn's place in Twinkle Street by ten this morning. And there'll be something in it for you, Snouty.”

  “What'll that be, sir?” said Snouty, who was finding the grip uncomfortable.

  “My undying friendship, Snouty,” said Vimes. “Which is going to be an extremely rare coin in these parts, let me tell you.”

  “Right you are, sarge,” said Snouty. “And will you be wanting a bell, sir?”

  “A bell?”

  “For ringing and shouting, hnah, ‘all's well!’ with, sarge.”

  Vimes considered this. A bell. Well, every copper still got a bell, it was down there in the regulations, but Vimes had banned its use on anything but ceremonial occasions.

  “No bell for me, Snouty,” said Vimes. “Do you think things are well?”

  Snouty swallowed. “Could go either way, sarge,” he managed.

  “Good man. See you this afternoon.”

  There was a glow of dawn in the sky when Vimes strode out, but the city was still a pattern of shadows.

  In his pocket was the reassuring heaviness of the badge. And in his mind the huge, huge freedom of the oath. Ruler after ruler had failed to notice what a devious oath it was…

  He walked as steadily as he could down to Twinkle Street. A couple of watchmen tried to waylay him, but he showed them the badge and more importantly he had the voice now, it had come back to him. It was night and he was walking the streets and he owned the damn streets and somehow that came out in the way he spoke. They'd hurried off. He wasn't sure they'd believed him, but at least they'd pretended to; the voice had told them he could be the kind of trouble they weren't paid enough to deal with.

  At one point he had to step aside as a very thin horse dragged a huge and familiar four-wheeled wagon over the cobbles. Frightened faces looked out at him from between the wide metal strips that covered most of it, and then it disappeared into the gloom. Curfew was claiming its nightly harvest.

  These were not good times. Everyone knew Lord Winder was insane. And then some kid who was equally mad had tried to knock him off and would have done, too, if the man hadn't moved at the wrong moment. His lordship had taken the arrow in the arm, and they said—they being the nameless people of the kind that everyone met in the pub—that the wound had poisoned him and made him worse. He suspected everyone and everything, he saw dark assassins in every corner. The rumour was that he woke up sweating ev
ery night because they even got into his dreams.

  And he saw plots and spies everywhere throughout his waking hours, and had men root them out, and the thing about rooting out plots and spies everywhere is that, even if there are no real plots to begin with, there are plots and spies galore very soon.

  At least the Night Watch didn't have to do much of the actual rooting. They just arrested the pieces. It was the special office in Cable Street that was the long hand of his lordship's paranoia.

  The Particulars, they were officially, but as far as Vimes could remember they'd revelled in their nickname of the “Unmentionables”. They were the ones that listened in every shadow and watched at every window. That was how it seemed, anyway. They certainly were the ones who knocked on doors in the middle of the night.

  Vimes stopped, in the dark. The cheap clothes were soaked through, the boots were flooded, rain was trickling off his chin and he was a long, long way from home. Yet, in a treacherous kind of way, this was home. He'd spent most of his days working nights. Walking through the wet streets of a sleeping city was his life.

  The nature of the night changed, but the nature of the beast remained the same.

  He reached into the ragged pocket and touched the badge again.

  In the darkness where lamps were few and far between, Vimes knocked on a door. A light was burning in one of the lower windows, so Lawn was presumably still awake.

  After a while a very small panel slid back and he heard a voice say, “Oh…it's you.” There was a pause, followed by the sound of bolts being released.

  The doctor opened the door. In one hand he held a very long syringe. Vimes found his gaze inexorably drawn to it. A bead of something purple dripped off the end and splashed on to the floor.

  “What would you have done, injected me to death?” he said.

  “This?” Lawn looked at the instrument as if unaware that he'd been holding it. “Oh…just sorting out a little problem for someone. Patients turn up at all hours.”

  “I'll bet they do. Er…Rosie said you had a spare room,” said Vimes. “I can pay,” he added quickly. “I've got a job. Five dollars a month? I won't be needing it for long.”

  “Upstairs on the left,” said Lawn, nodding. “We can talk about it in the morning.”

  “I'm not a criminal madman,” said Vimes. He wondered why he said it, and then wondered who he was trying to reassure.

  “Never mind, you'll soon fit in,” said Lawn. There was a whimper from the door leading to the surgery.

  “The bed's not aired but I doubt that you'll care,” he said. “And now, if you'll excuse me…”

  It wasn't aired, and Vimes didn't care. He didn't even remember getting into it.

  He woke up once, in panic, and heard the sound of the big black wagon rattling down the street. And then it just, quite seamlessly, became part of the nightmare.

  At ten o'clock in the morning Vimes found a cold cup of tea by his bed and a pile of clothes and armour on the floor outside the door. He drank the tea while he inspected the pile.

  He'd read Snouty right. The man survived because he was a weathercock and kept an eye on which way the wind was blowing, and right now the wind was blowing due Vimes. He'd even included fresh socks and drawers, which hadn't been in the specification. It was a thoughtful touch. They probably hadn't been paid for, of course. They had been “obtained”. This was the old Night Watch.

  But, glory be, the breathy little crawler had scrounged something else, too. The three stripes for a sergeant had a little gold crown above them. Vimes instinctively disliked crowns, but this was one he was prepared to treasure.

  He went downstairs, doing up his belt, and bumped into Lawn coming out of his surgery, wiping his hands on a cloth. The doctor smiled absently, then focused on the uniform. The smile did not so much fade as drain.

  “Shocked?” said Vimes.

  “Surprised,” said the doctor. “Rosie won't be, I expect. I don't do anything illegal, you know.”

  “Then you've got nothing to fear,” said Vimes.

  “Really? That proves you're not from round here,” said Lawn. “Want some breakfast? There's kidneys.” This time it was Vimes's smile that drained. “Lamb,” the doctor added.

  In the tiny kitchen he prised the lid off a tall stone jar and pulled out a can. Vapour poured off it.

  “Ice,” he said. “Get it from over the road. Keeps food fresh.”

  Vimes's brow wrinkled. “Over the road? You mean the mortuary?”

  “Don't worry, it's not been used,” said Lawn, putting a pan on the stove. “Mr Garnish drops off a lump a few times a week, in payment for being cured of a rather similar medical condition.”

  “But mostly you work for the ladies of, shall we say, negotiable affection?” said Vimes. Lawn gave him a sharp look to see if he was joking, but Vimes's expression hadn't changed.

  “Not just them,” he said. “There are others.”

  “People who come in by the back door,” said Vimes, looking around the little room. “People who for one reason or another don't want to go to the…better known doctors?”

  “Or can't afford them,” said Lawn. “People who turn up with no identity. And you had a point…John?”

  “No, no, just asking,” said Vimes, cursing himself for walking right into it. “I just wondered where you trained.”

  “Why?”

  “The kind of people who come in by the back door are the kind of people who want results, I imagine.”

  “Hah. Well, I trained in Klatch. They have some novel ideas about medicine over there. They think it's a good idea to get patients better, for one thing,” he turned over the kidneys with a fork. “Frankly, sergeant, I'm pretty much like you. We do what needs doing, we work in, er, unpopular areas and I suspect we both draw the line somewhere. I'm no butcher. Rosie says you aren't. But you do the job that's in front of you, or people die.”

  “I'll remember that,” said Vimes.

  “And when all's said and done,” said Lawn, “there are worse things to do in the world than take the pulse of women.”

  After breakfast Sergeant-at-Arms John Keel stepped out into the first day of the rest of his life.

  He stood still for a moment, shut his eyes, and swivelled both feet like a man trying to stub out two cigarettes at once. A slow, broad smile spread across his face. Snouty had found just the right kind of boots. Willikins and Sybil between them conspired to prevent him wearing old, well-worn boots these da—those days, and stole them away in the night to have the soles repaired. It was good to feel the streets with dry feet again. And after a lifetime of walking them, he did feel the streets. There were the cobblestones: catheads, trollheads, loaves, short and long setts, rounders, Morpork Sixes, and the eighty-seven types of paving brick, and the fourteen types of stone slab, and the twelve types of stone never intended for street slabs which had got used anyway, and had their own patterns of wear, and the rubbles and the gravels, and the repairs, and the thirteen different types of cellar cover and twenty types of drain lid—

  He bounced a little, like a man testing the hardness of something. “Elm Street,” he said. He bounced again. “Junction with Twinkle. Yeah.”

  He was back.

  It wasn't many steps to Treacle Mine Road, and as he turned towards the Watch House a flash of colour caught his eye.

  And there it was, overhanging a garden wall. Lilac was common in the city. It was vigorous and hard to kill and had to be. The flower buds were noticeably swelling.

  He stood and stared, as a man might stare at an old battlefield.

  …they rise hands up, hands up, hands up…

  How did it go, now? Think of things happening one after the other. Don't assume that you know what's going to happen, because it might not. Be yourself.

  And, because he was himself, he made a few little purchases in little shops in dark alleys, and went to work.

  The Treacle Mine Road Night Watch House was generally deserted around midday, but Vimes knew t
hat Snouty, at least, would be there. He was a Persistent Floater, just like Nobby and Colon and Carrot and, when you got down to it, Vimes as well. Being on duty was their default state of being. They hung around the Watch House even when off duty, because that's where their lives took place. Being a copper wasn't something you left hanging by the door when you went home.

  But I promise I'll learn how, thought Vimes. When I get back, it'll all be different.

  He went around the back and let himself in by the stable entrance. It wasn't even locked. Black mark right there, lads.

  The iron bulk of the hurry-up wagon stood empty on the cobbles.

  Behind it was what they called, now, the stables. In fact, the stables were only the bottom floor of what would have been part of Ankh-Morpork's industrial heritage, if anyone had ever thought of it like that. In practice they thought of it as junk that was too heavy to cart away. It was part of the winding gear from a treacle mine, long since abandoned. One of the original lifting buckets was still up there, glued to the floor by its last load of the heavy, sticky, unrefined treacle which, once set, was tougher than cement and more waterproof than tar. Vimes remembered, as a kid, begging chippings of pig treacle off the miners; one lump of that, oozing the sweetness of prehistoric sugar cane, could keep a boy's mouth happily shut for a week.6

  Inside the treacle-roofed stable level, chewing a bit of bad hay, was the horse. Vimes knew it was a horse because it checked out as one: four hooves, tail, head with mane, seedy brown coat. Considered from another angle, it was half a ton of bones held together with horsehair.

  He patted it gingerly; as one of nature's pedestrians, he'd never been at home around horses. He unhooked a greasy clipboard from a nail near by and flicked through its pages. Then he had another look around the yard. Tilden never did that. He looked at the pigsty in the corner where Knock kept his pig, and then at the chicken run, and the pigeon loft, and the badly made rabbit hutches, and he did a few calculations.

  The old Watch House! It was all there, just like the day he first arrived. It had been two houses once, and one of them had been the treacle mine office. Everywhere in the city had been something else once. And so the place was a maze of blocked-in doorways and ancient windows and poky rooms.