“Oook.”

The Librarian prodded the desk with a long, many-jointed finger.

“What?”

“Oook. “

“Sorry?”

The Librarian rolled his eyes. It was strange, he felt, that so-called intelligent dogs, horses and dolphins never had any difficulty indicating to humans the vital news of the moment, e.g., that the three children were lost in the cave, or the train was about to take the line leading to the bridge that had been washed away or similar, while he, only a handful of chromosomes away from wearing a vest, found it difficult to persuade the average human to come in out of the rain. You just couldn’t talk to some people.

“Oook!” he said, and beckoned.

“I can’t leave the office,” said Carrot. “I’ve had Orders.”

The Librarian’s upper lip rolled back like a blind.

“Is that a smile?” said Carrot. The Librarian shook his head.

“Someone hasn’t committed a crime, have they?” said Carrot.

“Oook.”

“A bad crime?”

“Oook!”

“Like murder?”

“Eeek.”

“Worse than murder?”

“Eeek!” The Librarian knuckled over to the door and bounced up and down urgently.

Carrot gulped. Orders were orders, yes, but this was something else. The people in this city were capable of anything.

He buckled on his breastplate, screwed his sparkling helmet on to his head, and strode towards the door.

Then he remembered his responsibilities. He went back to the desk, found a scrap of paper, and painstakingly wrote: Out Fighting Crime, Pleass Call Again Later. Thankyou.

And then he went out on to the streets, untarnished and unafraid.

. . .

The Supreme Grand Master raised his arms. “Brethren,” he said, “let us begin . . .” It was so easy. All you had to do was channel that great septic reservoir of jealousy and cringing resentment that the Brothers had in such abundance, harness their dreadful mundane unpleasantness which had a force greater in its way than roaring evil, and then open your own mind . . .

. . . into the place where the dragons went.

. . .

Vimes found himself grabbed by the arm and pulled inside. The heavy door shut behind him with a definite click.

“It’s Lord Mountjoy Gayscale Talonthrust III of Ankh,” said the apparition, which was dressed in huge and fearsomely-padded armour. “You know, I really don’t think he can cut the mustard.”

“He can’t?” said Vimes, backing away.

“It really needs two of you.”

“It does, doesn’t it,” whispered Vimes, his shoulder blades trying to carve their way out through the fence.

“Could you oblige?” boomed the thing.

“What?”

“Oh, don’t be squeamish, man. You just have to help him up into the air. It’s me who has the tricky part. I know it’s cruel, but if he can’t manage it tonight then he’s for the choppy-chop. Survival of the fittest and all that, don’t you know.”

Captain Vimes managed to get a grip on himself. He was clearly in the presence of some sex-crazed would-be murderess, insofar as any gender could be determined under the strange lumpy garments. If it wasn’t female, then references to “it’s me who has the tricky part” gave rise to mental images that would haunt him for some time to come. He knew the rich did things differently, but this was going too far.

“Madam,” he said coldly, “I am an officer of the Watch and I must warn you that the course of action you are suggesting breaks the laws of the city-“ and also of several of the more strait-laced gods, he added silently-“and I must advise you that his Lordship should be released unharmed immediately-“

The figure stared at him in astonishment.

“Why?” it said. “It’s my bloody dragon.”

. . .

“Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?” said Sergeant Colon unsteadily.

“I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt Colon,” said Nobby.

They were taking inconspicuosity seriously. That ruled out most of the taverns on the Morpork side of the river, where they were very well known. Now they were in a rather elegant one in downtown Ankh, where they were being as unobtrusive as they knew how. The other drinkers thought they were some kind of cabaret.

“I was thinking,” said Sgt Colon.

“What?”

“If we bought a bottle or two, we could go home and then we’d be really inconspicuous.”

Nobby gave this some thought.

“But he said we’ve got to keep our ears open,” he said. “We’re supposed to, what he said, detect anything.”

“We can do that at my house,” said Sgt Colon. “We could listen all night, really hard.”

“Tha’s a good point,” said Nobby. In fact, it sounded better and better the more he thought about it.

“But first,” he announced, “I got to pay a visit.”

“Me too,” said the sergeant. “This detecting business gets to you after a while, doesn’t it.”

They stumbled out into the alley behind the tavern. There was a full moon up, but a few rags of scruffy cloud were drifting across it. The pair inconspicuously bumped into one another in the darkness.

“Is that you, Detector Sergeant Colon?” said Nobby.

“Tha’s right! Now, can you detect the door to the privy, Detector Corporal Nobbs? We’re looking for a short, dark door of mean appearance, ahahaha.”

There were a couple of clanks and a muffled swearword from Nobby as he staggered across the alley, followed by a yowl when one of Ankh-Morpork’s enormous population of feral cats fled between his legs.

“Who loves you, pussycat?” said Nobby under his breath.

“Needs must, then,” said Sgt Colon, and faced a handy corner.

His private musings were interrupted by a grunt from the corporal.

“You there, Sgt?”

“Detector Sergeant to you, Nobby,” said Sgt Colon pleasantly.

Nobby’s tone was urgent and suddenly very sober. “Don’t piss about, Sergeant, I just saw a dragon fly over!”

“I’ve seen a horsefly,” said Sgt Colon, hiccuping gently. “And I’ve seen a housefly. I’ve even seen a greenfly. But I ain’t never seen a dragon fly.”

“Of course you have, you pillock,” said Nobby urgently. “Look, I’m not messing about! He had wings on him like, like, like great big wings!”

Sergeant Colon turned majestically. The corporal’s face had gone so white that it showed up in the darkness.

“Honest, Sergeant!”

Sgt Colon turned his eyes to the damp sky and the rain-washed moon.

“All right,” he said, “show me.”

There was a slithering noise behind him, and a couple of roof tiles smashed on to the street.

He turned. And there, on the roof, was the dragon.

“There’s a dragon on the roof!” he warbled. “Nobby, it’s a dragon on the roof! What shall I do, Nobby? There’s a dragon on the roof! It’s looking right at me, Nobby!”

“For a start, you could do your trousers up,” said Nobby, from behind the nearest wall.

. . .

Even shorn of her layers of protective clothing, Lady Sybil Ramkin was still toweringly big. Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armour-bra’d, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while singing in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion. When she spoke, every word was like a hearty slap on the back and clanged with the aristocratic self-assurance of the totally well-bred. The vowel sounds alone would have cut teak.

Vimes’s ragged forebears were used to voices like that, usually from heavily-armoured people on the back of a war charger telling them why it would be a jolly good idea, don’tcherknow, to charge the enemy and hit them for six. His legs wanted to stand to attention.

Prehistoric men would have worshipped her, and in fact had amazingly managed to carve lifelike statues of her thousands of years ago. She had a mass of chestnut hair; a wig, Vimes learned later. No-one who had much to do with dragons kept their own hair for long.

She also had a dragon on her shoulder. It had been introduced as Talonthrust Vincent Wonderkind of Quirm, referred to as Vinny, and seemed to be making a large contribution to the unusual chemical smell that pervaded the house. This smell permeated everything. Even the generous slice of cake she offered him tasted of it.

“The, er, shoulder . . . it looks . . . very nice,” he said, desperate to make conversation.

“Rubbish,” said her ladyship. “I’m just training him up because shoulder-sitters fetch twice the price.”

Vimes murmured that he had occasionally seen society ladies with small, colourful dragons on their shoulders, and thought it looked very, er, nice.

“Oh, it sounds nice,” she said. “I’ll grant you. Then they realise it means sootburns, frizzled hair and crap all down their back. Those talons dig in, too. And then they think the thing’s getting too big and smelly and next thing you know it’s either down to the Mor-pork Sunshine Sanctuary for Lost Dragons or the old heave-ho into the river with a rope round your neck, poor little buggers.” She sat down, arranging a skirt that could have made sails for a small fleet. “Now then. Captain Vimes, was it?”

Vimes was at a loss. Ramkins long-dead stared down at him from ornate frames high on the shadowy walls. Between, around and under the portraits were the weapons they’d presumably used, and had used well and often by the look of them. Suits of armour stood in dented ranks along the walls. Quite a number, he couldn’t help noticing, had large holes in them. The ceiling was a faded riot of moth-eaten banners. You did not need forensic examination to understand that Lady Ramkin’s ancestors had never shirked a fight.

It was amazing that she was capable of doing something so unwarlike as having a cup of tea.

“My forebears,” she said, following his hypnotised gaze. “You know, not one Ramkin in the last thousand years has died in his bed.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Source of family pride, that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Quite a few of them have died in other people’s, of course.”

Captain Vimes’s teacup rattled in its saucer. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Captain is such a dashing title, I’ve always thought.” She gave him a bright, brittle smile. “I mean, colonels and so on are always so stuffy, majors are pompous, but one always feels somehow that there is something delightfully dangerous about a captain. What was it you had to show me?”

Vimes gripped his parcel like a chastity belt.

“I wondered,” he faltered, “how big swamp . . . er . . .”He stopped. Something dreadful was happening to his lower regions.

Lady Ramkin followed his gaze. “Oh, take no notice of bun,” she said cheerfully. “Hit him with a cushion if he’s a bother.”

A small elderly dragon had crawled out from under his chair and placed its jowly muzzle in Vimes’s lap. It stared up at him soulfully with big brown eyes and gently dribbled something quite corrosive, by the feel of it, over his knees. And it stank like the ring around an acid bath.

“That’s Dewdrop Mabelline Talonthrust the First,” said her ladyship. “Champion and sire of champions. No fire left now, poor soppy old thing. He likes his belly rubbed.”

Vimes made surreptitiously vicious jerking motions to dislodge the old dragon. It blinked mournfully at him with rheumy eyes and rolled back the corner of its mouth, exposing a picket fence of soot-blackened teeth.

“Just push him off if he’s a nuisance,” said Lady Ramkin cheerfully. “Now then, what was it you were asking?”

“I was wondering how big swamp dragons grow?” said Vimes, trying to shift position. There was a faint growling noise.

“You came all the way up here to ask me that? Well . . . I seem to recall Gayheart Talonthrust of Ankh stood fourteen thumbs high, toe to matiock,” mused Lady Ramkin.

“Er . . .”

“About three foot six inches,” she added kindly.

“No bigger than that?” said Vimes hopefully. In his lap the old dragon began to snore gently.

“Golly, no. He was a bit of a freak, actually. Mostly they don’t get much bigger than eight thumbs.”

Captain Vimes’s lips moved in hurried calculation. “Two feet?” he ventured.

“Well done. That’s the cobbs, of course. The hens are a bit smaller.”

Captain Vimes wasn’t going to give in. “A cobb would be a male dragon?” he said.

“Only after the age of two years,” said Lady Ramkin triumphantly. “Up to the age of eight months he’s a pewmet, then he’s a cock until fourteen months, and then he’s a snood-“

Captain Vimes sat entranced, eating the horrible cake, britches gradually dissolving, as the stream of information flooded over him; how the males fought with flame but in the laying season only the hens* breathed fire, from the combustion of complex intestinal gases, to incubate the eggs which needed such a fierce temperature, while the males gathered firewood; a group of swamp dragons was a slump or an embarrassment; a female was capable of laying up to three clutches of four eggs every year, most of which were trodden on by absent-minded males; and that dragons

“Only until their third clutch, of course. After that they’re dams.

of both sexes were vaguely uninterested in one another, and indeed everything except firewood, except for about once every two months when they became as single-minded as a buzzsaw.

He was helpless to prevent himself being taken out to the kennels at the back, outfitted from neck to ankle in leather armour faced with steel plates, and ushered into the long low building where the whistling had come from.

The temperature was terrible, but not as bad as the cocktail of smells. He staggered aimlessly from one metal-lined pen to another, while pear-shaped, squeaking little horrors with red eyes were introduced as “Moonpenny Duchess Marchpaine, who’s gravid at the moment” and “Moonmist Talonthrust II, who was Best of Breed at Pseudopolis last year”. Jets of pale green flame played across his knees.

Many of the stalls had rosettes and certificates pinned over them.

“And this one, I’m afraid, is Goodboy Bindle Featherstone of Quirm,” said Lady Ramkin relentlessly.

Vimes stared groggily over the charred barrier at the small creature curled up in the middle of the floor. It bore about the same resemblance to the rest of them as Nobby did to the average human being. Something in its ancestry had given it a pair of eyebrows that were about the same size as its stubby wings, which could never have supported it in the air. Its head was the wrong shape, like an anteater. It had nostrils like jet intakes. If it ever managed to get airborne the things would have the drag of twin parachutes.

It was also turning on Captain Vimes the most silently intelligent look he’d ever had from any animal, including Corporal Nobbs.

“It happens,” said Lady Ramkin sadly. “It’s all down to genes, you know.”

“It is?” said Vimes. Somehow, the creature seemed to be concentrating all the power its siblings wasted in flame and noise into a stare like a thermic lance. He couldn’t help remembering how much he’d wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they’d been starving-anything with meat on it would have done.

He heard the dragon lady say, “One tries to breed for a good flame, depth of scale, correct colour and so on. One just has to put up with the occasional total whittle.”

The little dragon turned on Vimes a gaze that would be guaranteed to win it the award for Dragon the Judges would Most Like to Take Home and Use as A Portable Gas Lighter.

Total whittle, Vimes thought. He wasn’t sure of the precise meaning of the word, but he could hazard a shrewd guess. It sounded like whatever it was you had left when you had extracted everything of any value whatsoever. Like the Watch, he thought. Total whittles, every one of them. And just like him. It was the saga of his life.

“That’s Nature for you,” said her ladyship. “Of course I wouldn’t dream of breeding from him, but he wouldn’t be able to anyway.”

“Why not?” said Vimes.

“Because dragons have to mate in the air and he’ll never be able to fly with those wings, I’m afraid. I’ll be sorry to lose the bloodline, naturally. His sire was Brenda Rodley’s Treebite Brightscale. Do you know Brenda?”

“Er, no,” said Vimes. Lady Ramkin was one of those people who assumed that everyone else knew everyone one knew.

“Charming gel. Anyway, his brothers and sisters are shaping up very well.”

Poor little bastard, thought Vimes. That’s Nature for you in a nutshell. Always dealing off the bottom of the pack.

No wonder they call her a mother . . .

“You said you had something to show me,” Lady Ramkin prompted.

Vimes wordlessly handed her the parcel. She slipped off her heavy mittens and unwrapped it.

“Plaster cast of a footprint,” she said, baldly. “Well?”

“Does it remind you of anything?” said Vimes.

“Could be a wading bird.”

“Oh.” Vimes was crestfallen.

Lady Ramkin laughed. “Or a really big dragon. Got it out of a museum, did you?”

“No. I got it off the street this morning.”

“Ha? Someone’s been playing tricks on you, old chap.”

“Er. There was, er, circumstantial evidence.”

He told her. She stared at him.

“Draco nobilis,” she said hoarsely.

“Pardon?” said Vimes.

“Draco nobilis. The Noble dragon. As opposed to these fellows-“ she waved a hand in the direction of the massed ranks of whistling lizards-“Draco vul-garis, the lot of them. But the big ones are all gone, you know. This really is a nonsense. No two ways about it. All gone. Beautiful things, they were. Weighed tons. Biggest things ever to fly. No-one knows how they did it.”

And then they realised.

It was suddenly very quiet.

All along the rows of kennels, the dragons were silent, bright-eyed and watchful. They were staring at the roof.

. . .

Carrot looked around him. Shelves stretched away in every direction. On those shelves, books. He made a calculated guess.

“This is the Library, isn’t it?” he said.

The Librarian maintained his gentle but firm grip on the boy’s hand and led him along the maze of aisles.

“Is there a body?” said Carrot. There’d have to be. Worse than murder! A body in a library. It could lead to anything.

The ape eventually padded to a halt in front of a shelf no different than, it seemed, a hundred others. Some of the books were chained up. There was a gap. The Librarian pointed to it.

“Oook.”

“Well, what about it? A hole where a book should be.”

“Oook.”

“A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch,” Carrot drew himself up proudly, “because someone’s taken a book? You think that’s worse than murder?”

The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like “What’s so bad about genocide?”

“This is practically a criminal offence, wasting Watch time,” said Carrot. “Why don’t you just tell the head wizards, or whoever they are?”

“Oook.” The Librarian indicated with some surprisingly economical gestures that most wizards would not find their own bottoms with both hands.

“Well, I don’t see what we can do about it,” said Carrot. “What’s the book called?”

The Librarian scratched his head. This one was going to be tricky. He faced Carrot, put his leather-glove hands together, then folded them open.

“I know it’s a book. What’s its name?”

The Librarian sighed, and held up a hand.

“Four words?” said Carrot. “First word.” The ape pinched two wrinkled fingers together. “Small word? A. The. Fo-“

“Oook!”

“The? The. Second word . . . third word? Small word. The? A? To? Of? Fro-Of? Of. The something Of something. Second word. What? Oh. First syllable. Fingers? Touching your fingers. Thumbs.”

The orangutan growled and tugged theatrically at one large hairy ear.

“Oh, sounds like. Fingers? Hand? Adding up. Sums. Cut off. Smaller word . . . Sum. Sum! Second syllable. Small. Very small syllable. A. In. Un. On. On! Sum. On. Sum On. Summon! Summon-er? Summoning? Summoning. Summoning. The Summoning of Something. This is fun, isn’t it! Fourth word. Whole word-“

He peered intently as the Librarian gyrated mysteriously.

“Big thing. Huge big thing. Flapping. Great big flapping leaping thing. Teeth. Huffing. Blowing. Great big huge blowing flapping thing.” Sweat broke out on Carrot’s forehead as he tried obediently to understand. “Sucking fingers. Sucking fingers thing. Burnt. Hot. Great big hot blowing flapping thing . . .”

The Librarian rolled his eyes. Homo sapiens? You could keep it.

. . .

The great dragon danced and spun and trod the air over the city. Its colour was moonlight, gleaming off its scales. Sometimes it would twist and glide with deceptive speed over the rooftops for the sheer joy of existing.

And it was all wrong, Vimes thought. Part of him was marvelling at the sheer beauty of the sight, but an insistent, weaselly little group of brain cells from the wrong side of the synapses was scrawling its graffiti on the walls of wonderment.

It’s a bloody great lizard, they jeered. Must weigh tons. Nothing that big can fly, not even on beautiful wings. And what is a flying lizard doing with great big scales on its back?

Five hundred feet above him a lance of blue-white flame roared into the sky.

It can’t do something like that! It’d burn its own lips off!

Beside him Lady Ramkin stood with her mouth open. Behind her, the little caged dragons yammered and howled.

The great beast turned in the air and swooped over the rooftops. The flame darted out again. Below it, yellow flames sprang up. It was done so quietly and stylishly that it took Vimes several seconds to realise that several buildings had in fact been set on fire.

“Golly!” said Lady Ramkin. “Look! It’s using the thermals! That’s what the fire is for!” She turned to Vimes, her eyes hopelessly aglow. “Do you realise we’re very probably seeing something that no-one has seen for centuries?”

“Yes, it’s a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!” shouted Vimes.

She wasn’t listening to him. “There must be a breeding colony somewhere,” she said. “After all this time! Where do you think it lives?”

Vimes didn’t know. But he swore to himself that he would find out, and ask it some very serious questions.

“One egg,” breathed the breeder. “Just let me get my hands on one egg . . .”

Vimes stared at her in genuine astonishment. It dawned on him that he was very probably a flawed character.

Below them, another building exploded into flame.

“How far exactly,” he said, speaking very slowly and carefully, as to a child, “did these things fly?”

“They’re very territorial animals,” murmured her ladyship. “According to legend, they-“

Vimes realised he was in for another dose of dragon lore. “Just give me the facts, m’lady,” he said impatiently.

“Not very far, really,” she said, slightly taken aback.

“Thank you very much, ma’am, you’ve been very helpful,” muttered Vimes, and broke into a run.

Somewhere in the city. There was nothing outside for miles except low fields and swamp. It had to be living somewhere in the city.

His sandals flapped on the cobbles as he hurtled down the streets. Somewhere in the city! Which was totally ridiculous, of course. Totally ridiculous and impossible.

He didn’t deserve this. Of all the cities in all the world it could have flown into, he thought, it’s flown into mine . . .

. . .

By the time he reached the river the dragon had vanished. But a pall of smoke was hanging over the streets and several human bucket chains had been formed to pass lumps of the river to the stricken buildings.[13] The job was considerably hampered by the droves of people streaming out of the streets, carrying their possessions. Most of the city was wood and thatch, and they weren’t taking any chances.

In fact the danger was surprisingly small. Mysteriously small, when you came to think about it.

Vimes had surreptitiously taken to carrying a notebook these days, and he had noted the damage as if the mere act of writing it down somehow made the world a more understandable place.

Itym: Ae Coache House (belonging to an inoffensive businessman, who’d seen his new carriage go up in flames).

Itym: Ae smalle vegettable shape (with pin-point accuracy).

Vimes wondered about that. He’d bought some apples in there once, and there didn’t appear to be anything about it that a dragon could possibly take offence at.

Still, very considerate of the dragon, he thought as he made his way to the Watch House. When you think of all the timber yards, hayricks, thatched roofs and oil stores it could have hit by chance, it’s managed to really frighten everyone without actually harming the city.

Rays of early morning sunlight were piercing the drifts of smoke as he pushed open the door. This was home. Not the bare little room over the candlemaker’s shop in Wixon’s Alley, where he slept, but this nasty brown room that smelt of unswept chimneys, Sgt Colon’s pipe, Nobby’s mysterious personal problem and, latterly, Carrot’s armour polish. It was almost like home.

No-one else was there. He wasn’t entirely surprised. He clumped up to his office and leaned back in his chair, whose cushion would have been thrown out of its basket in disgust by an incontinent dog, pulled his helmet over his eyes, and tried to think.

No good rushing about. The dragon had vanished in all the smoke and confusion, as suddenly as it had come. Time for rushing about soon enough. The important thing was working out where to rush to . . .

He’d been right. Wading bird! But where did you start looking for a bloody great dragon in a city of a million people?

He was aware that his right hand, entirely unbidden, had pulled open the bottom drawer, and three of his fingers, acting on sealed orders from his hindbrain, had lifted out a bottle. It was one of those bottles that emptied themselves. Reason told him that sometimes he must occasionally start one, break the seal, see amber liquid glistening all the way up to the neck. It was just that he couldn’t remember the sensation. It was as if the bottles arrived two-thirds empty . . .

He stared at the label. It seemed to be Jimkin Bear-hugger’s Old Selected Dragon’s Blood Whiskey. Cheap and powerful, you could light fires with it, you could clean spoons. You didn’t have to drink much of it to be drunk, which was just as well.

It was Nobby who shook him awake with the news that there was a dragon in the city, and also that Sgt Colon had had a nasty turn. Vinies sat and blinked owlishly while the words washed around him. Apparently having a fire-breathing lizard focusing interestedly on one’s nether regions from a distance of a few feet can upset the strongest constitution. An experience like that could leave a lasting mark on a person.

Vimes was still digesting this when Carrot turned up with the Librarian swinging along behind him.

“Did you see it? Did you see it?” he said.

“We all saw it,” said Vimes.

“I know all about it!” said Carrot triumphantly. “Someone’s brought it here with magic. Someone’s stolen a book out of the Library and guess what it’s called?”

“Can’t even begin to,” said Vimes weakly.

“It’s called The Summoning of Dragons!”

“Oook,” confirmed the Librarian.

“Oh? What’s it about?” said Vimes. The Librarian rolled his eyes.

“It’s about how to summon dragons. By magic!”

“Oook.”

“And that’s illegal, that is!” said Carrot happily. “Releasing Feral Creatures upon the Streets, contrary to the Wild Animals (Public-“

Vimes groaned. That meant wizards. You got nothing but trouble with wizards.

“I suppose,” he said, “there wouldn’t be another copy of this book around, would there?”

“Oook.” The Librarian shook his head.

“And you wouldn’t happen to know what’s in it?” Vimes sighed.

“What? Oh. Four words,” he said wearily. “First word. Sounds like. Bend. Bough? Sow, cow, how . . . How. Second word. Small word. The, a, to . . . To. Yes, understood, but I meant in any kind of detail? No. I see.”

“What’re we going to do now, sir?” said Carrot anxiously.

“It’s out there,” intoned Nobby. “Gone to ground, like, during the hours of daylight. Coiled up in its secret lair, on top of a great hoard of gold, dreamin’ ancient reptilian dreams fromma dawna time, waitin’ for the secret curtains of the night, when once more it will sally forth-“ He hesitated and added sullenly, “What’re you all looking at me like that for?”

“Very poetic,” said Carrot.

“Well, everyone knows the real old dragons used to go to sleep on a hoard of gold,” said Nobby. “Well known folk myth.”

Vimes looked blankly into the immediate future. Vile though Nobby was, he was also a good indication of what was going through the mind of the average citizen. You could use him as a sort of laboratory rat to forecast what was going to happen next.

“I expect you’d be really interested in finding out where that hoard is, wouldn’t you?” said Vimes experimentally.

Nobby looked even more shifty than usual. “Well, Cap’n, I was thinking of having a bit of a look around. You know. When I’m off duty, of course,” he added virtuously.

“Oh, dear,” said Captain Vimes.

He lifted up the empty bottle and, with great care, put it back in the drawer.

. . .

The Elucidated Brethren were nervous. A kind of fear crackled from brother to brother. It was the fear of someone who, having cheerfully experimented with pouring the powder and wadding the ball, has found that pulling the trigger had led to a godawful bang and pretty soon someone is bound to come and see who’s making all the noise.

The Supreme Grand Master knew that he had them, though. Sheep and lamb, sheep and lamb. Since they couldn’t do anything much worse than they had already done they might as well press on and damn the world, and pretend they’d wanted it like this all along. Oh, the joy of it . . .

Only Brother Plasterer was actually happy.

“Let that be a lesson to all oppressive vegetable sellers,” he kept saying.

“Yes, er,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “Only, the thing is, there’s no chance of us sort of accidentally summoning the dragon here, is there?”

“I-that is, we-have it under perfect control,” said the Supreme Grand Master smoothly. “The power is ours. I can assure you.”

The Brothers cheered up a little bit.

“And now,” the Supreme Grand Master continued, “there is the matter of the king.”

The Brothers looked solemn, except for Brother Plasterer.

“Have we found him, then?” he said. “That’s a stroke of luck.”

“You never listen, do you?” snapped Brother Watchtower. “It was all explained last week, we don’t go around finding anyone, we make a king.”

“I thought he was supposed to turn up. ‘Cos of destiny.”

Brother Watchtower sniggered. “We sort of help Destiny along a bit.”

The Supreme Grand Master smiled in the depths of his robe. It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don’t need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they’re progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they’ll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing.

“Bloody hell, that’s clever,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “How do we do that, then?”

“Look, the Supreme Grand Master said what we do, we find some handsome lad who’s good at taking orders, he kills the dragon, and Bob’s your uncle. Simple. Much more intelligent than waitin’ for a so-called real king.”

“But-“ Brother Plasterer seemed deep in the toils of cerebration, “if we control the dragon, and we do control the dragon, right? Then we don’t need anyone killing it, we just stop summoning it, and everyone’ll be happy, right?”

“Ho yes,” said Brother Watchtower nastily, “I can just see it, can you? We just trot out, say ‘Hallo, we won’t set fire to your houses any more, aren’t we nice’, do we? The whole point about the thing with the king is that he’ll be a, a sort of-“

“Undeniably potent and romantic symbol of absolute authority,” said the Supreme Grand Master smoothly.

“That’s it,” said Brother Watchtower. “A potent authority.”

“Oh, I see,” said Brother Plasterer. “Right. Okay. That’s what the king’ll be.”

“That’s it,” said Brother Watchtower.

“No-one going to argue with a potent authority, are they?”

“Too right,” said Brother Watchtower.

“Stroke of luck, then, finding the true king right now,” said Brother Plasterer. “Million to one chance, really.”

“We haven’t found the right king. We don’t need the right king,” said the Supreme Grand Master wearily. “For the last time! I’ve just found us a likely lad who looks good in a crown and can take orders and knows how to flourish a sword. Now just listen . . .”

Flourishing, of course, was important. It didn’t have much to do with wielding. Wielding a sword, the Supreme Grand Master considered, was simply the messy business of dynastic surgery. It was just a matter of thrust and cut. Whereas a king had to flourish one. It had to catch the light in just the right way, leaving watchers in no doubt that here was Destiny’s chosen. He’d taken a long time preparing the sword and shield. It had been very expensive. The shield shone like a dollar in a sweep’s earhole but the sword, the sword was magnificent . . .

It was long and shiny. It looked like something some genius of metalwork-one of those little Zen guys who works only by the light of dawn and can beat a club sandwich of folded steels into something with the cutting edge of a scalpel and the stopping-power of a sex-crazed rhinoceros on bad acid-had made and then retired in tears because he’d never, ever, do anything so good again. There were so many jewels on the hilt it had to be sheathed in velvet, you had to look at it through smoked glass. Just laying a hand on it practically conferred kingship.

As for the lad . . . he was a distant cousin, keen and vain, and stupid in a passably aristocratic way. Currently he was under guard in a distant farmhouse, with an adequate supply of drink and several young ladies, although what the boy seemed most interested in was mirrors. Probably hero material, the Supreme Grand Master thought glumly.

“I suppose,” said Brother Watchtower, “that he isn’t the real air to the throne?”

“What do you mean?” said the Supreme Grand Master.

“Well, you know how it is. Fate plays funny tricks. Haha. It’d be a laugh, wouldn’t it,” said Brother Watchtower, “if this lad turned out to be the real king. After all this trouble-“

“There is no real king any more!” snapped the Supreme Grand Master. “What do you expect? Some people wandering in the wilderness for hundreds and hundreds of years, patiently handing down a sword and a birthmark? Some sort of magic?” He spat the word. He’d make use of magic, means to an end, end justifies means and so forth, but to go around believing it, believing it had some sort of moral force, like logic, made him wince. “Good grief, man, be logical! Be rational. Even if any of the old royal family survived, the blood line’d be so watered down by now that there must be thousands of people who lay claim to the throne. Even-“ he tried to think of the least likely claimant-“even someone like Brother Dunny-kin.” He stared at the assembled Brethren. “Don’t see him here tonight, by the way.”

“Funny thing, that,” said Brother Watchtower thoughtfully. “Didn’t you hear?”

“What?”

“He got bitten by a crocodile on his way home last night. Poor little bugger.”

“What?”

“Million to one chance. It’d escaped from a menagerie, or something, and was lying low in his back yard. He went to feel under his doormat for his doorkey and it had him by the funes.”[14] Brother Watchtower fumbled under his robe and produced a grubby brown envelope. “We’re having a whip-round to buy him some grapes and that, I don’t know whether you’d like to, er . . .”

“Put me down for three dollars,” said the Supreme Grand Master.

Brother Watchtower nodded. “Funny thing,” he said, “I already have.”

Just a few more nights, thought the Supreme Grand Master. By tomorrow the people’ll be so desperate, they’d crown even a one-legged troll if he got rid of the dragon. And we’ll have a king, and he’ll have an advisor, a trusted man, of course, and this stupid rabble can go back to the gutter. No more dressing up, no more ritual.

No more summoning the dragon.

I can give it up, he thought. I can give it up any time I like.

. . .

The streets outside the Patrician’s palace were thronged. There was a manic air of carnival. Vimes ran a practised eye over the assortment before him. It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis; half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the remainder were here to rob, importune or sell hot-dogs to the rest. There were a few new faces, though. There were a number of grim men with big swords slung over their shoulders and whips slung on their belts, striding through the crowds.

“News spreads quick, don’t it,” observed a familiar voice by his ear. “Morning, Captain.”

Vimes looked into the grinning, cadaverous face of Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, purveyor of absolutely anything that could be sold hurriedly from an open suitcase in a busy street and was guaranteed to have fallen off the back of an oxcart.

“Morning, Throat,” said Vimes absently. “What’re you selling?”

“Genuine article, Captain.” Throat leaned closer. He was the sort of person who could make “Good morning” sound like a once-in-a-lifetime, never-to-be-repeated offer. His eyes swivelled back and forth in their sockets, like two rodents trying to find a way out. “Can’t afford to be without it,” he hissed. “Anti-dragon cream. Personal guarantee: if you’re incinerated you get your money back, no quibble.”

“What you’re saying,” said Vimes slowly, “if I understand the wording correctly, is that if I am baked alive by the dragon you’ll return the money?”

“Upon personal application,” said Cut-me-own-Throat. He unscrewed the lid from a jar of vivid green ointment and thrust it under Vimes’s nose. “Made from over fifty different rare spices and herbs to a recipe known only to a bunch of ancient monks what live on some mountain somewhere. One dollar a jar, and I’m cutting my own throat. It’s a public service, really,” he added piously.

“You’ve got to hand it to those ancient monks, brewing it up so quickly,” said Vimes.

“Clever buggers,” agreed Cut-me-own-Throat. “It must be all that meditation and yak yogurt.”

“So what’s happening, Throat?” said Vimes. “Who’re all the guys with the big swords?”

“Dragon hunters, Cap’n. The Patrician announced a reward of fifty thousand dollars to anyone who brings him the dragon’s head. Not attached to the dragon, either; he’s no fool, that man.”

“What?”

“That’s what he said. It’s all written on posters.”

“Fifty thousand dollars!”

“Not chicken feed, eh?”

“More like dragon fodder,” said Vimes. It’d bring trouble, you mark his words. “I’m amazed you’re not grabbing a sword and joining in.”

“I’m more in what you might call the service sector, Cap’n.” Throat looked both ways conspiratorially, and then passed Vimes a slip of parchment.

It said:

Anti-dragon mirror shields A$ 500

Portable lair detectors A$250

Dragon-piercing arrows A$100 per each

Shovels A$5 Picks A$5 Sacks A$l

Vimes handed it back. “Why the sacks?” he said.

“On account of the hoard,” said Throat.

“Oh, yes,” said Vimes gloomily. “Of course.”

“Tell you what,” said Throat, “tell you what. For our boys in brown, ten percent off.”

“And you’re cutting your own throat, Throat?”

“Fifteen percent for officers!” urged Throat, as Vimes walked away. The cause of the slight panic in his voice was soon apparent. He had plenty of competition.

The people of Ankh-Morpork were not by nature heroic but were, by nature, salesmen. In the space of a few feet Vimes could have bought any number of magical weapons Genuine certyfycate of orthenticity with everyone, a cloak of invisibility-a good touch, he thought, and he was really impressed by the way the stallowner was using a mirror with no glass in it- and, by way of lighter relief, dragon biscuits, balloons and windmills on sticks. Copper bracelets guaranteed to bring relief from dragons were a nice thought.

There seemed to be as many sacks and shovels about as there were swords.

Gold, that was it. The hoard. Hah!

Fifty thousand dollars! An officer of the Watch earned thirty dollars a month and had to pay to have his own dents beaten out.

What he couldn’t do with fifty thousand dollars . . .

Vimes thought about this for a while and then thought of the things he could do with fifty thousand dollars. There were so many more of them, for a start.

He almost walked into a group of men clustered around a poster nailed to the wall. It declared, indeed, that the head of the dragon that had terrorised the city would be worth A$50,000 to the brave hero that delivered it to the palace.

One of the cluster, who from his size, weaponry and that way he was slowly tracing the lettering with his finger Vimes decided was a leading hero, was doing the reading for the others.

“-to ter-her pal-ack-ee,” he concluded.

“Fifty thousand,” said one of them reflectively, rubbing his chin.

“Cheap job,” said the intellectual. “Well below the rate. Should be half the kingdom and his daughter’s hand in marriage.”

“Yes, but he ain’t a king. He’s a Patrician.”

“Well, half his Patrimony or whatever. What’s his daughter like?”

The assembled hunters didn’t know.

“He’s not married,” Vimes volunteered. “And he hasn’t got a daughter.”

They turned and looked him up and down. He could see the disdain in their eyes. They probably got through dozens like him every day. “Not got a daughter?” said one of them. “Wants people to kill dragons and he hasn’t got a daughter?”

Vimes felt, in an odd way, that he ought to support the lord of the city. “He’s got a little dog that he’s very fond of,” he said helpfully.

“Bleeding disgusting, not even having a daughter,” said one of the hunters. “And what’s fifty thousand dollars these days? You spend that much in nets.”

“S’right,” said another. “People think it’s a fortune, but they don’t reckon on, well, it’s not pensionable, there’s all the medical expenses, you’ve got to buy and maintain your own gear-“

“-wear and tear on virgins-“ nodded a small fat hunter.

“Yeah, and then there’s . . . what?”

“My speciality is unicorns,” the hunter explained, with an embarrassed smile.

“Oh, right.” The first speaker looked like someone who’d always been dying to ask the question. “I thought they were very rare these days.”

“You’re right there. You don’t see many unicorns, either,” said the unicorn hunter. Vimes got the impression that, in his whole life, this was his only joke.

“Yeah, well. Times are hard,” said the first speaker sharply.

“Monsters are getting more uppity, too,” said another. “I heard where this guy, he killed this monster in this lake, no problem, stuck its arm up over the door-“

“Pour encourjay lays ortras,” said one of the listeners.

“Right, and you know what? Its mum come and complained. Its actual mum come right down to the hall next day and complained. Actually complained. That’s the respect you get.”

“The females are always the worst,” said another hunter gloomily. “I knew this cross-eyed gorgon once, oh, she was a terror. Kept turning her own nose to stone.”

“It’s our arses on the line every time,” said the intellectual. “I mean, I wish I had a dollar for every horse I’ve had eaten out from underneath me.”

“Right. Fifty thousand dollars? He can stuff it.”

“Yeah.”

“Right. Cheapskate.”

“Let’s go and have a drink.”

“Right.”

They nodded in righteous agreement and strode off towards the Mended Drum, except for the intellectual, who sidled uneasily back to Vimes.

“What sort of dog?” he said.

“What?” said Vimes.

“I said, what sort of dog?”

“A small wire-haired terrier, I think,” said Vimes.

The hunter thought about this for some time.

“Nah,” he said eventually, and hurried off after the others.

“He’s got an aunt in Pseudopolis, I believe,” Vimes called after him.

There was no response. The captain of the Watch shrugged, and carried on through the throng to the Patrician’s palace . . .

. . .

. . . where the Patrician was having a difficult lunch-time.

“Gentlemen!” he snapped. “I really don’t see what else there is to do!”

The assembled civic leaders muttered amongst themselves.

“At times like this it’s traditional that a hero comes forth,” said the President of the Guild of Assassins. “A dragon slayer. Where is he, that’s what I want to know? Why aren’t our schools turning out young people with the kind of skills society needs?”

“Fifty thousand dollars doesn’t sound much,” said the Chairman of the Guild of Thieves.

“It may not be much to you, my dear sir, but it is all the city can afford,” said the Patrician firmly.

“If it doesn’t afford any more than that I don’t think there’ll be a city for long,” said the thief.

“And what about trade?” said the representative of the Guild of Merchants. “People aren’t going to sail here with a cargo of rare comestibles just to have it incinerated, are they?”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” The Patrician raised his hands in a conciliatory fashion. “It seems to me,” he went on, taking advantage of the brief pause, “that what we have here is a strictly magical phenomenon. I would like to hear from our learned friend on this point. Hmm?”

Someone nudged the Archchancellor of Unseen University, who had nodded off.

“Eh? What?” said the wizard, startled into wakefulness.

“We were wondering,” said the Patrician loudly, “what you were intending to do about this dragon of yours?”

The Archchancellor was old, but a lifetime of survival in the world of competitive wizardry and the byzantine politics of Unseen University meant that he could whip up a defensive argument in a split second. You didn’t remain Archchancellor for long if you let that sort of ingenuous remark whizz past your ear.

“My dragon?” he said.

“It’s well known that the great dragons are extinct,” said the Patrician brusquely. “And, besides, their natural habitat was definitely rural. So it seems to me that this one must be mag-“

“With respect, Lord Vetinari,” said the Archchancellor, “it has often been claimed that dragons are extinct, but the current evidence, if I may make so bold, tends to cast a certain doubt on the theory. As to habitat, what we are seeing here is simply a change of behaviour pattern, occasioned by the spread of urban areas into the countryside which has led many hitherto rural creatures to adopt, nay in many cases to positively embrace, a more municipal mode of existence, and many of them thrive on the new opportunities thereby opened to them. For example, foxes are always knocking over my dustbins.”

He beamed. He’d managed to get all the way through it without actually needing to engage his brain.

“Are you saying,” said the assassin slowly, “that what we’ve got here is the first civic dragon?”

“That’s evolution for you,” said the wizard, happily. “It should do well, too,” he added. “Plenty of nesting sites, and a more than adequate food supply.”

Silence greeted this statement, until the merchant said. “What exactly is it that they do eat?”

The thief shrugged. “I seem to recall stories about virgins chained to huge rocks,” he volunteered.

“It’ll starve round here, then,” said the assassin. “We ‘re on loam.”

“They used to go around ravening,” said the thief. “Dunno if that’s any help . . .”

“Anyway,” said the leader of the merchants, “it seems to be your problem again, my lord.”

Five minutes later the Patrician was striding the length of the Oblong Office, fuming.

“They were laughing at me,” said the Patrician. “I could tell!”

“Did you suggest a working party?” said Wonse.

“Of course I did! It didn’t do the trick this time. You know, I really am inclined to increase the reward money.”

“I don’t think that would work, my lord. Any proficient monster slayer knows the rate for the job.”

“Ha! Half the kingdom,” muttered the Patrician.

“And your daughter’s hand in marriage,” said Wonse.

“I suppose an aunt isn’t acceptable?” the Patrician said hopefully.

“Tradition demands a daughter, my lord.”

The Patrician nodded gloomily.

“Perhaps we can buy it off,” he said aloud. “Are dragons intelligent?”

“I believe the word traditionally is ‘cunning’, my lord,” said Wonse. “I understand they have a liking for gold.”

“Really? What do they spend it on?”

“They sleep on it, my lord.”

“What, do you mean in a mattress?”

“No, my lord. On it. “

The Patrician turned this fact over in his mind. “Don’t they find it rather knobbly?” he said.

“So I would imagine, sir. I don’t suppose anyone has ever asked.”

“Hmm. Can they talk?”

“They’re apparently good at it, my lord.”

“Ah. Interesting.”

The Patrician was thinking: if it can talk, it can negotiate. If it can negotiate, then I have it by the short-by the small scales, or whatever it is they have.

“And they are said to be silver tongued,” said Wonse. The Patrician leaned back in his chair.

“Only silver?” he said.

There was the sound of muted voices in the passageway outside and Vimes was ushered in.

“Ah, Captain,” said the Patrician, “what progress?”

“I’m sorry, my lord?” said Vimes, as the rain dripped off his cape.

“Towards apprehending this dragon,” said the Patrician firmly.

“The wading bird?” said Vimes.

“You know very well what I mean,” said Vetinari sharply.

“Investigations are in hand,” said Vimes automatically.

The Patrician snorted. “All you have to do is find its lair,” he said. “Once you have the lair, you have the dragon. That’s obvious. Half the city seems to be looking for it.”

“If there is a lair,” said Vimes.

Wonse looked up sharply.

“Why do you say that?”

“We are considering a number of possibilities,” said Vimes woodenly.

“If it has no lair, where does it spend its days?” said the Patrician.

“Inquiries are being pursued,” said Vimes.

“Then pursue them with alacrity. And find the lair,” said the Patrician sourly.

“Yes, sir. Permission to leave, sir?”

“Very well. But I shall expect progress by tonight, do you understand?”

Now why did I wonder if it has a lair? Vimes thought, as he stepped out into the daylight and the crowded square. Because it didn’t look real, that’s why. If it isn’t real, it doesn’t need to do anything we expect. How can it walk out of an alley it didn’t go into?

Once you’ve ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right.

There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time . . .

. . .

By day the Library buzzed with activity. Vimes moved through it diffidently. Strictly speaking, he could go anywhere in the city, but the University had always held that it fell under thaumaturgical law and he felt it wouldn’t be wise to make the kind of enemies where you were lucky to end up the same temperature, let alone the same shape.

He found the Librarian hunched over his desk. The ape gave him an expectant look.

“Haven’t found it yet. Sorry,” said Vimes. “Enquiries are continuing. But there is a little help you can give me.”

“Oook?”

“Well, this is a magical library, right? I mean, these books are sort of intelligent, isn’t that so? So I’ve been thinking: I bet if I got in here at night, they’d soon kick up a fuss. Because they don’t know me. But if they did know me, they’d probably not mind. So whoever took the book would have to be a wizard, wouldn’t they? Or someone who works for the University, at any rate.”

The Librarian glanced from side to side, then grasped Vimes’s hand and led him into the seclusion of a couple of bookshelves. Only then did he nod his head.

“Someone they know?”

A shrug, and then another nod.

“That’s why you told us, is it?”

“Oook.”

“And not the University Council?”

“Oook.”

“Any idea who it is?”

The Librarian shrugged, a decidedly expressive gesture for a body which was basically a sack between a pair of shoulderblades.

“Well, it’s something. Let me know if any other strange things happen, won’t you?” Vimes looked up at the banks of shelves. “Stranger than usual, I mean.”

“Oook.”

“Thank you. It’s a pleasure to meet a citizen who regards it as their duty to assist the Watch.”

The Librarian gave him a banana.

Vimes felt curiously elated as he stepped out into the city’s throbbing streets again. He was definitely detecting things. They were little bits of things, like a jigsaw. No one of them made any real sense, but they all hinted at a bigger picture. All he needed to do was find a corner, or a bit of an edge . . .

He was pretty certain it wasn’t a wizard, whatever the Librarian might think. Not a proper, paid-up wizard. This sort of thing wasn’t their style.

And there was, of course, this business about the lair. The most sensible course would be to wait and see if the dragon turned up tonight, and try and see where. That meant a high place. Was there some way of detecting dragons themselves? He’d had a look at Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler’s dragon detectors, which consisted solely of a piece of wood on a metal stick. When the stick was burned through, you’d found your dragon. Like a lot of Cut-me-own-Throat’s devices, it was completely efficient in its own special way while at the same time being totally useless.

There had to be a better way of finding the thing than waiting until your fingers were burned off.

. . .

The setting sun spread out on the horizon like a lightly-poached egg.

The rooftops of Ankh-Morpork sprouted a fine array of gargoyles even in normal times, but now they were alive with as ghastly an array of faces as ever were seen outside a woodcut about the evils of gin-drinking among the non-woodcut-buying classes. Many of the faces were attached to bodies holding a fearsome array of homely weapons that had been handed down from generation to generation for centuries, often with some force.

From his perch on the roof of the Watch House Vimes could see the wizards lining the rooftops of the University, and the gangs of opportunist hoard-researchers waiting in the streets, shovels at the ready. If the dragon really did have a bed somewhere in the city, then it would be sleeping on the floor tomorrow.

From somewhere below came the cry of Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, or one of his colleagues, selling hot sausages. Vimes felt a sudden surge of civic pride. There had to be something right about a citizenry which, when faced with catastrophe, thought about selling sausages to the participants.

The city waited. A few stars came out.

Colon, Nobby and Carrot were also on the roof. Colon was sulking because Vimes had forbidden him to use his bow and arrow.

These weren’t encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a longbow’s arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred yards away rather than the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed.

“That’s right,” said Carrot, “the Projectile Weapons (Civic Safety) Act, 1634.”

“Don’t you keep on quoting all that sort of stuff,” snapped Colon. “We don’t have any of them laws any more! That’s all old stuff! It’s all more wossname now. Pragmatic.”

“Law or no law,” said Vimes, “I say put it away.”

“But Captain, I was a dab hand at this!” protested Colon. “Anyway,” he added peevishly, “a lot of other people have got them.”

That was true enough. Neighbouring rooftops bristled like hedgehogs. If the wretched thing turned up, it was going to think it was flying through solid wood with slots in it. You could almost feel sorry for it.

“I said put it away,” said Vimes. “I’m not having my guards shooting citizens. So put it away.”

“That’s very true,” said Carrot. “We’re here to protect and to serve, aren’t we, Captain.”

Vimes gave him a sidelong look. “Er,” he said. “Yeah. Yes. That’s right.”

On the roof of her house on the hill, Lady Ramkin adjusted a rather inadequate folding chair on the roof, arranged the telescope, coffee flask and sandwiches on the parapet in front of her, and settled down to wait. She had a notebook on her knee.

Half an hour went by. Hails of arrows greeted a passing cloud, several unfortunate bats, and the rising moon.

“Bugger this for a game of soldiers,” said Nobby, eventually. “It’s been scared off.”

Sgt Colon lowered his pike. “Looks like it,” he conceded.

“And it’s getting chilly up here,” said Carrot. He politely nudged Captain Vimes, who was slumped against the chimney, staring moodily into space.

“Maybe we ought to be getting down, sir?” he said. “Lots of people are.”

“Hmm?” said Vimes, without moving his head.

“Could be coming on to rain, too,” said Carrot.

Vimes said nothing. For some minutes he had been watching the Tower of Art, which was the centre of Unseen University and reputedly the oldest building hi the city. It was certainly the tallest. Time, weather and indifferent repairs had given it a gnarled appearance, like a tree that has seen too many thunderstorms.

He was trying to remember its shape. As in the case with many things that are totally familiar, he hadn’t really looked at it for years. Now he was trying to convince himself that the forest of little turrets and crenellations at its top looked just the same tonight as they had done yesterday.

It was giving him some difficulty.

Without taking his eyes off it, he grabbed Sgt Colon’s shoulder and gently pointed him in the right direction.

He said, “Can you see anything odd about the top of the tower?”

Colon stared up for a while, and then laughed nervously. “Well, it looks like there’s a dragon sitting on it, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. That’s what I thought.”

“Only, only, only when you sort of look properly, you can see it’s just made up out of shadows and clumps of ivy and that. I mean, if you half-close one eye, it looks like two old women and a wheelbarrow.”

Vimes tried this. “Nope,” he said. “It still looks like a dragon. A huge one. Sort of hunched up, and looking down. Look, you can see its wings folded up.”

“Beg pardon, sir. That’s just a broken turret giving the effect.”

They watched it for a while.

Then Vimes said, “Tell me, Sergeant-I ask in a spirit of pure inquiry-what do you think’s causing the effect of a pair of huge wings unfurling?”

Colon swallowed.

“I think that’s caused by a pair of huge wings, sir,” he said.

“Spot on, Sergeant.”

The dragon dropped. It wasn’t a swoop. It simply kicked away from the top of the tower and half-fell, half-flew straight downwards, disappearing from view behind the University buildings.

Vimes caught himself listening for the thump.

And then the dragon was in view again, moving like an arrow, moving like a shooting star, moving like something that has somehow turned a thirty-two feet per second plummet into an unstoppable upward swoop. It glided over the rooftops at little more than head height, all the more horrible because of the sound. It was as though the air was slowly and carefully being torn in half.

The Watch threw themselves flat. Vimes caught a glimpse of huge, vaguely horse-like features before it slid past.

“Sodding arseholes,” said Nobby, from somewhere in the guttering.

Vimes redoubled his grip on the chimney and pulled himself upright. “You are in uniform, Corporal Nobbs,” he said, his voice hardly shaking at all.

“Sorry, Captain. Sodding arseholes, sir. “

“Where’s Sergeant Colon?”

“Down here, sir. Holding on to this drainpipe, sir.”

“Oh, for goodness sake. Help him up, Carrot.”

“Gosh,” said Carrot, “look at it go!”

You could tell the position of the dragon by the rattle of arrows across the city, and by the screams and gurgles of all those hit by the misses and ricochets.

“He hasn’t even flapped his wings yet!” shouted Carrot, trying to stand on the chimney pot. “Look at him go!”

It shouldn’t be that big, Vimes told himself, watching the huge shape wheel over the river. It’s as long as a street!

There was a puff of flame above the docks, and for a moment the creature passed in front of the moon. Then it flapped its wings, once, with a sound like the damp hides of a pedigree herd being slapped across a cliff.

It turned in a tight circle, pounded the air a few times to build up speed, and came back.

When it passed over the Watch House it coughed a column of spitting white fire. Tiles under it didn’t just melt, they erupted in red-hot droplets. The chimney stack exploded and rained bricks across the street.

Vast wings hammered at the air as the creature hovered over the burning building, fire spearing down on what rapidly became a glowing heap. Then, when all that was left was a spreading puddle of melted rock with interesting streaks and bubbles in it, the dragon raised itself with a contemptuous flick of its wings and soared away and upwards, over the city.

. . .

Lady Ramkin lowered her telescope and shook her head slowly.

“That’s not right,” she whispered. “That’s not right at all. Shouldn’t be able to do anything like that. “

She raised the lens again and squinted, trying to see what was on fire. Down below, in their long kennels, the little dragons howled.

. . .

Traditionally, upon waking from blissfully uneventful insensibility, you ask: “Where am I?” It’s probably part of the racial consciousness or something.

Vimes said it.

Tradition allows a choice of second lines. A key point in the selection process is an audit to see that the body has all the bits it remembers having yesterday.

Vimes checked.

Then comes the tantalising bit. Now that the snowball of consciousness is starting to roll, is it going to find that it’s waking up inside a body lying in a gutter with something multiple, the noun doesn’t matter after an adjective like “multiple”, nothing good ever follows “multiple”, or is it going to be a case of crisp sheets, a soothing hand, and a businesslike figure in white pulling open the curtains on a bright new day? Is it all over, with nothing worse to look forward to now than weak tea, nourishing gruel, short, strengthening walks in the garden and possibly a brief platonic love affair with a ministering angel, or was this all just a moment’s blackout and some looming bastard is now about to get down to real business with the thick end of a pickaxe helve? Are there, the consciousness wants to know, going to be grapes?

At this point some outside stimulus is helpful. “It’s going to be all right” is favourite, whereas “Did anyone get his number?” is definitely a bad sign; either, however, is better than “You two hold his hands behind his back”.

In fact someone said, “You were nearly a goner there, Captain.”

The pain sensations, which had taken advantage of Vimes’s unconscious state to bunk oflF for a metaphorical quick cigarette, rushed back.

Vimes said, “Arrgh.” Then he opened his eyes.

There was a ceiling. This ruled out one particular range of unpleasant options and was very welcome. His blurred vision also revealed Corporal Nobbs, which was less so. Corporal Nobbs proved nothing; you could be dead and see something like Corporal Nobbs.

Ankh-Morpork did not have many hospitals. All the Guilds maintained their own sanitariums, and there were a few public ones run by the odder religious organisations, like the Balancing Monks, but by and large medical assistance was nonexistent and people had to die inefficiently, without the aid of doctors. It was generally thought that the existence of cures encouraged slackness and was in any case probably against Nature’s way.

“Have I already said ‘Where am I?’ “ said Vimes faintly.

“Yes.”

“Did I get an answer?”

“Dunno where this place is, Captain. It belongs to some posh bint. She said to bring you up here.”

Even though Vimes’s mind appeared to be full of pink treacle he nevertheless grabbed two clues and wrestled them together. The combination of ‘rich’ and ‘up here’ meant something. So did the strange chemical smell in the room, which even overpowered Nobby’s more everyday odours.

“We’re not talking about Lady Ramkin, are we?” he said cautiously.

“You could be right. Great big biddy. Mad for dragons.” Nobby’s rodent face broke into the most horribly knowing grin Vimes had ever seen. “You’re in her bed,” he said.

Vimes peered around him, feeling the first overtures of a vague panic. Because now that he could halfway focus, he could see a certain lack of bachelor sockness about the place. There was a faint hint of talcum powder.

“Bit of a boodwah,” said Nobby, with the air of a connoisseur.

“Hang on, hang on a minute,” said Vimes. “There was this dragon. It was right over us . . .”

The memory rose up and hit him like a zombie with a grudge.

“You all right, Captain?”

-the talons, outspread, wide as a man’s reach; the boom and thump of the wings, bigger than sails; the stink of chemicals, the gods alone knew what sort. . .

It had been so close he could see the tiny scales on its legs and the red gleam in its eyes. They were more than just reptile eyes. They were eyes you could drown in.

And the breath, so hot that it wasn’t like fire at all, but something almost solid, not burning things but smashing them apart . . .

On the other hand, he was here and alive. His left side felt as though it had been hit with an iron bar, but he was quite definitely alive.

“What happened?” he said.

“It was young Carrot,” said Nobby. “He grabbed you and the sergeant and jumped off the roof just before it got us.”

“My side hurts. It must have got me,” said Vimes.

“No, I reckon that was where you hit the privy roof,” said Nobby. “And then you rolled off and hit the water butt.”

“What about Colon? Is he hurt?”

“Not hurt. Not exactly hurt. He landed more sort of softly. Him being so heavy, he went through the roof. Talk about a short sharp shower of-“

“And then what happened?”

“Well, we sort of made you comfy, and then everyone went blundering about and shouting for the sergeant. Until they found out where he was, o’course, then they just stood where they were and shouted. And then this woman come running up yelling,” said Nobby.

“This is Lady Ramkin you’re referring to?” said Vimes coldly. His ribs were aching really magnificently now.

“Yeah. Big fat party,” said Nobby, unmoved. “Cor, she can’t half boss people about! ‘Oh, the poor dear man, you must bring him up to my house this instant.’ So we did. Best place, too. Everyone’s running around down in the city like chickens with their heads cut off.”

“How much damage did it do?”

“Well, after you were out of it the wizards hit it with fireballs. It didn’t like that at all. Just seemed to make it stronger and angrier. Took out the University’s entire Widdershins wing.”

“And-?”

“That’s about it, really. It flamed a few more things, and then it must of flown away in all the smoke.”

“No-one saw where it went?”

“If they did, they ain’t saying.” Nobby sat back and leered. “Disgusting, really, her livin’ in a room like this. She’s got pots of money, sarge says, she’s got no call livin’ in ordinary rooms. What’s the good of not wanting to be poor if the rich are allowed to go round livin’ in ordinary rooms? Should be marble.” He sniffed. “Anyway, she said I was to fetch her when you woke up. She’s feeding her dragons now. Old little buggers, aren’t they. It’s amazing she’s allowed to keep ‘em.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know. Tarred with the same brush, and that.”

When Nobby had shambled out Vimes took another look around the room. It did, indeed, lack the gold leaf and marble that Nobby felt was compulsory for people of a high station in life. All the furniture was old, and the pictures on the wall, though doubtless valuable, looked the sort of pictures that are hung on bedroom walls because people can’t think of anywhere else to put them. There were also a few amateurish watercolours of dragons. All in all, it had the look about it of a room that is only ever occupied by one person, and has been absent-mindedly moulded around them over the years, like a suit of clothes with a ceiling.

It was clearly the room of a woman, but one who had cheerfully and without any silly moping been getting on with her life while all that soppy romance stuff had been happening to other people somewhere else, and been jolly grateful that she had her health.

Such clothing as was visible had been chosen for sensible hardwearing qualities, possibly by a previous generation by the look of it, rather than its use as light artillery in the war between the sexes. There were bottles and jars neatly arranged on the dressing table, but a certain severity of line suggested that their labels would say things like “Rub on nightly” rather than “Just a dab behind the ears”. You could imagine that the occupant of this room had slept in it all her life and had been called “my little girl” by her father until she was forty.

There was a big sensible blue dressing gown hanging behind the door. Vimes knew, without even looking, that it would have a rabbit on the pocket.

In short, it was the room of a woman who never expected that a man would ever see the inside of it.

The bedside table was piled high with papers. Feeling guilty, but doing it anyway, Vimes squinted at them.

Dragons was the theme. There were letters from the Cavern Club Exhibitions Committee and the Friendly Flamethrowers League. There were pamphlets and appeals from the Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons- “Poor little VINNY’s fires were nearly Damped after Five years’ Cruel Use as a Paint-Stripper, but now-“ And there were requests for donations, and talks, and things that added up to a heart big enough for the whole world, or at least that part of it that had wings and breathed fire.

If you let your mind dwell on rooms like this, you could end up being oddly sad and full of a strange, diffuse compassion which would lead you to believe that it might be a good idea to wipe out the whole human race and start again with amoebas.

Beside the drift of paperwork was a book. Vimes twisted painfully and looked at the spine. It said: Diseases of the Dragon, by Sybil Deidre Olgivanna Ramkin.

He turned the stiff pages in horrified fascination. They opened into another world, a world of quite stupefying problems. Slab Throat. The Black Tups. Dry Lung. Storge. Staggers, Heaves, Weeps, Stones. It was amazing, he decided after reading a few pages, that a swamp dragon ever survived to see a second sunrise. Even walking across a room must be reckoned a biological triumph.

The painstakingly-drawn illustrations he looked away from hurriedly. You could only take so much innards.

There was a knock at the door.

“I say? Are you decent?” Lady Ramkin boomed cheerfully.

“Er-“

“I’ve brought you something jolly nourishing.”

Somehow Vimes imagined it would be soup. Instead it was a plate stacked high with bacon, fried potatoes and eggs. He could hear his arteries panic just by looking at it.

“I’ve made a bread pudding, too,” said Lady Ramkin, slightly sheepishly. “I don’t normally cook much, just for myself. You know how it is, catering for one.”

Vimes thought about the meals at his lodgings. Somehow the meat was always grey, with mysterious tubes in it.

“Er,” he began, not used to addressing ladies from a recumbent position in their own beds. “Corporal Nobbs tells me-“

“And what a colourful little man Nobby is!” said Lady Ramkin.

Vimes wasn’t certain he could cope with this.

“Colourful?” he said weakly.

“A real character. We’ve been getting along famously.”

“You have?”

“Oh, yes. What a great fund of anecdotes he has.”

“Oh, yes. He’s got that all right.” It always amazed Vimes how Nobby got along with practically everyone. It must, he’d decided, have something to do with the common denominator. In the entire world of mathematics there could be no denominator as common as Nobby.

“Er,” he said, and then found he couldn’t leave this strange new byway, “you don’t find his language a bit, er, ripe?”

“Salty,” corrected Lady Ramkin cheerfully. “You should have heard my father when he was annoyed. Anyway, we found we’ve got a lot in common. It’s an amazing coincidence, but my grandfather once had his grandfather whipped for malicious lingering.”

That must make them practically family, Vimes thought. Another stab of pain from his stricken side made him wince.

“You’ve got some very bad bruising and probably a cracked rib or two,” she said. “If you roll over I’ll put some more of this on.” Lady Ramkin flourished a jar of yellow ointment.

Panic crossed Vimes’s face. Instinctively, he raised the sheets up around his neck.

“Don’t play silly buggers, man,” she said. “I shan’t see anything I haven’t seen before. One backside is pretty much like another. It’s just that the ones I see generally have tails on. Now roll over and up with the nightshirt. It belonged to my grandfather, you know.”

There was no resisting that tone of voice. Vimes thought about demanding that Nobby be brought in as a chaperon, and then decided that would be even worse.

The cream burned like ice.

“What is it?”

“All kinds of stuff. It’ll reduce the bruising and promote the growth of healthy scale.”

“What?”

“Sorry. Probably not scale. Don’t look so worried.

I’m almost positive about that. Okay, all done.” She gave him a slap on the rump.

“Madam, I am Captain of the Night Watch,” said Vimes, knowing it was a bloody daft thing to say even as he said it.

“Half naked in a lady’s bed, too,” said Lady Ramkin, unmoved. “Now sit up and eat your tea. We’ve got to get you good and strong.”

Vimes’s eyes filled with panic.

“Why?” he said.

Lady Ramkin reached into the pocket of her grubby jacket.

“I made some notes last night,” she said. “About the dragon.”

“Oh, the dragon.” Vimes relaxed a bit. Right now the dragon seemed a much safer prospect.

“And I did a bit of working out, too. I’ll tell you this: it’s a very odd beast. It shouldn’t be able to get airborne.”

“You’re right there.”

“If it’s built like swamp dragons, it should weigh about twenty tons. Twenty tons! It’s impossible. It’s all down to weight and wingspan ratios, you see.”

“I saw it drop off the tower like a swallow.”

“I know. It should have torn its wings off and left a bloody great hole in the ground,” said Lady Ramkin firmly. “You can’t muck about with aerodynamics. You can’t just scale up from small to big and leave it at that, you see. It’s all a matter of muscle power and lifting surfaces.”

“I knew there was something wrong,” said Vimes, brightening up. “And the flame, too. Nothing goes around with that kind of heat inside it. How do swamp dragons manage it?”

“Oh, that’s just chemicals,” said Lady Ramkin dismissively. “They just distill something flammable from whatever they’ve eaten and ignite the flame just as it comes out of the ducts. They never actually have fire inside them, unless they get a case of blowback.” “What happens then?”

“You’re scraping dragon off the scenery,” said Lady Ramkin cheerfully. “I’m afraid they’re not very well-designed creatures, dragons.” Vimes listened.

They would never have survived at all except that their home swamps were isolated and short of predators. Not that a dragon made good eating, anyway-once you’d taken away the leathery skin and the enormous flight muscles, what was left must have been like biting into a badly-run chemical factory. No wonder dragons were always ill. They relied on permanent stomach trouble for supplies of fuel. Most of their brain power was taken up with controlling the complexities of then- digestion, which could distill flame-producing fuels from the most unlikely ingredients. They could even rearrange their internal plumbing overnight to deal with difficult processes. They lived on a chemical knife-edge the whole time. One misplaced hiccup and they were geography.

And when it came to choosing nesting sites, the females had all the common sense and mothering instinct of a brick.

Vimes wondered why people had been so worried about dragons in the olden days. If there was one in a cave near you, all you had to do was wait until it self-ignited, blew itself up, or died of acute indigestion.

“You’ve really studied them, haven’t you,” he said.

“Someone ought to.”

“But what about the big ones?”

“Golly, yes. They’re a great mystery, you know,” she said, her expression becoming extremely serious.

“Yes, you said.”

“There are legends, you know. It seems as though one species of dragon started to get bigger and bigger and then . . . just vanished.”

“Died out, you mean?”

“No . . . they turned up, sometimes. From somewhere. Full of vim and vigour. And then, one day, they stopped coming at all.” She gave Vimes a triumphant look. “I think they found somewhere where they could really be. “

“Really be what?”

“Dragons. Where they could really fulfil their potential. Some other dimension or something. Where the gravity isn’t so strong, or something.”

“I thought when I saw it,” said Vimes, “I thought, you can’t have something that flies and has scales like that.”

They looked at each other.

“We’ve got to find it in its lair,” said Lady Ramkin.

“No bloody flying newt sets fire to my city,” said Vimes.

“Just think of the contribution to dragon lore,” said Lady Ramkin.

“Listen, if anyone ever sets fire to this city, it’s going to be me. “

“It’s an amazing opportunity. There’s so many questions . . .”

“You’re right there.” A phrase of Carrot’s crossed Vimes’s mind. “It can help us with our enquiries,” he suggested.

“But in the morning,” said Lady Ramkin firmly.

Vimes’s look of bitter determination faded.

“I shall sleep downstairs, in the kitchen,” said Lady Ramkin cheerfully. “I usually have a camp bed made up down there when it’s egg-laying time. Some of the females always need assistance. Don’t you worry about me.”

“You’re being very helpful,” Vimes muttered.

“I’ve sent Nobby down to the city to help the others set up your headquarters,” said Lady Ramkin.

Vimes had completely forgotten die Watch House. “It must have been badly damaged,” he ventured.

“Totally destroyed,” said Lady Ramkin. “Just a patch of melted rock. So I’m letting you have a place in Pseudopolis Yard.”

“Sorry?”

“Oh, my father had property all over the city,” she said. “Quite useless to me, really. So I told my agent to give Sergeant Colon the keys to the old house in Pseudopolis Yard. It’ll do it good to be aired.”

“But that area-I mean, there’s real cobbles on the streets-the rent alone, I mean, Lord Vetinari won’t-“

“Don’t you worry about it,” she said, giving him a friendly pat. “Now, you really ought to get some sleep.”

Vimes lay in bed, his mind racing. Pseudopolis Yard was on the Ankh side of the river, in quite a high-rent district. The sight of Nobby or Sergeant Colon walking down the street in daylight would probably have the same effect on the area as the opening of a plague hospital.

He dozed, gliding in and out of a sleep where giant dragons pursued him waving jars of ointment . . .

And awoke to the sound of a mob.

. . .

Lady Ramkin drawing herself up haughtily was not a sight to forget, although you could try. It was like watching continental drift in reverse as various subcontinents and islands pulled themselves together to form one massive, angry protowoman.

The broken door of the dragon house swung on its hinges. The inmates, already as highly strung as a harp on amphetamines, were going mad. Little gouts of flame burst against the metal plates as they stampeded back and forth in their pens. “Hwhat,” she said, “is the meaning of this?” If a Ramkin had ever been given to introspection she’d have admitted that it wasn’t a very original line.

But it was handy. It did the job. The reason that cliches become cliches is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.

The mob filled the broken doorway. Some of it was waving various sharp implements with the up-and-down motion proper to rioters.

“Worl,” said the leader, “it’s the dragon, innit?”

There was a chorus of muttered agreement.

“Hwhat about it?” said Lady Ramkin.

“Worl. It’s been burning the city. They don’t fly far. You got dragons here. Could be one of them, couldn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“S’right.”

“QED. “[15]

“So what we’re going to do is, we’re going to put ‘em down.”

“S’right.”

“Yeah.”

“Pro bono publico. “

Lady Ramkin’s bosom rose and fell like an empire. She reached out and grabbed the dunging fork from its hook on the wall.

“One step nearer, I warn you, and you’ll be sorry,” she said.

The leader looked beyond her to the frantic dragons.

“Yeah?” he said, nastily. “And what’ll you do, eh?”

Her mouth opened and shut once or twice. “I shall summon the Watch!” she said at last.

The threat did not have the effect she had expected. Lady Ramkin had never paid much attention to those bits of the city that didn’t have scales on.

“Well, that’s too bad,” said the leader. “That’s really worrying, you know that? Makes me go all weak at the knees, that does.”

He extracted a lengthy cleaver from his belt. “And now you just stand aside, lady, because-“

A streak of green fire blasted out of the back of the shed, passed a foot over the heads of the mob, and burned a charred rosette in the woodwork over the door.

Then came a voice that was a honeyed purr of sheer deadly menace.

“This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off. “

Captain Vimes limped forward from the shadows.

A small and extremely frightened golden dragon was clamped firmly under one arm. His other hand held it by the tail.

The rioters watched it, hypnotised.

“Now I know what you’re thinking,” Vimes went on, softly. “You’re wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left? And, y’know, I ain’t so sure myself . . .”

He leaned forward, sighting between the dragon’s ears, and his voice buzzed like a knife blade:

“What you’ve got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky?”

They swayed backwards as he advanced.

“Well?” he said. “Are you feeling lucky?”

For a few moments the only sound was Lord Mount-joy Quickfang Winterforth IV’s stomach rumbling ominously as fuel sloshed into his flame chambers.

“Now look, er,” said the leader, his eyes fixed hypnotically on the dragon’s head, “there’s no call for anything like that-“

“In fact he might just decide to flare off all by himself,” said Vimes. “They have to do it to stop the gas building up. It builds up when they get nervous. And, y’know, I reckon you’ve made them all pretty nervous now.”

The leader made what he hoped was a vaguely conciliatory gesture, but unfortunately did it with the hand that was still holding a knife.

“Drop it,” said Vimes sharply, “or you’re history.”

The knife clanged on the flagstones. There was a scuffle at the back of the crowd as a number of people, metaphorically speaking, were a long way away and knew nothing about it.

“But before the rest of you good citizens disperse quietly and go about your business,” said Vimes meaningfully, “I suggest you look hard at these dragons. Do any of them look sixty feet long? Would you say they’ve got an eighty-foot wingspan? How hot do they flame, would you say?”

“Dunno,” said the leader.

Vimes raised the dragon’s head slightly. The leader rolled his eyes.

“Dunno, sir,” he corrected.

“Do you want to find out?”

The leader shook his head. But he did manage to find his voice.

“Who are you, anyway?” he said.

Vimes drew himself up. “Captain Vimes, City Watch,” he said.

This met with almost complete silence. The exception was the cheerful voice, somewhere in the back of the crowd, which said: “Night shift, is it?”

Vimes looked down at his nightshirt. In his hurry to get off his sickbed he’d shuffled hastily into a pair of Lady Ramkin’s slippers. For the first time he saw they had pink pompoms on them.

And it was at this moment that Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV chose to belch.

It wasn’t another stab of roaring fire. It was just a near-invisible ball of damp flame which rolled over the mob and singed a few eyebrows. But it definitely made an impression.

Vimes rallied magnificently. They couldn’t have noticed his brief moment of sheer horror.

“That one was just to get your attention,” he said, poker-faced. “The next one will be a little lower.”

“Er,” said the leader. “Right you are. No problem. We were just going anyhow. No big dragons here, right enough. Sorry you’ve been troubled.”

“Oh, no,” said Lady Ramkin triumphantly. “You don’t get away that easily!” She reached up on to a shelf and produced a tin box. It had a slot in the lid. It rattled. On the side was the legend: The Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons.

The initial whip-round produced four dollars and thirty-one pence. After Captain Vimes gestured pointedly with the dragon, a further twenty-five dollars and sixteen pence were miraculously forthcoming. Then the mob fled.

“We made a profit on the day, anyway,” said Vimes, when they were alone again.

“That was jolly brave of you!”

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t catch on,” said Vimes, gingerly putting the exhausted dragon back in its pen. He felt quite lightheaded.

Once again he was aware of eyes staring fixedly at him. He glanced sideways into the long, pointed face of Goodboy Bindle Featherstone, rearing up in a pose best described as The Last Puppy in the Shop.

To his astonishment, he found himself reaching over and scratching it behind its ears, or at least behind the two spiky things at the sides of its head which were presumably its ears. It responded with a strange noise that sounded like a complicated blockage in a brewery. He took his hand away hurriedly.

“It’s all right,” said Lady Ramkin. “It’s his stomachs rumbling. That means he likes you.”

To his amazement, Vimes found that he was rather pleased about this. As far as he could recall, nothing in his life before had thought him worth a burp.

“I thought you were, er, going to get rid of him,” he said.

“I suppose I shall have to,” she said. “You know how it is, though. They look up at you with those big, soulful eyes-“

There was a brief, mutual, awkward silence.

“How would it be if I-“

“You don’t think you might like-“

They stopped.

“It’d be the least I could do,” said Lady Ramkin.

“But you’re already giving us the new headquarters and everything!”

“That was simply my duty as a good citizen,” said Lady Ramkin. “Please accept Goodboy as, as a friend. “

Vimes felt that he was being inched out over a very deep chasm on a very thin plank.

“I don’t even know what they eat,” he said.

“They’re omnivores, actually,” she said. “They eat everything except metal and igneous rocks. You can’t be finicky, you see, when you evolve in a swamp.”

“But doesn’t he need to be taken for walks? Or flights, or whatever?”

“He seems to sleep most of the time.” She scratched the ugly thing on top of its scaly head. “He’s the most relaxed dragon I’ve ever bred, I must say.”

“What about, er, you know?” He indicated the dunging fork.

“Well, it’s mainly gas. Just keep him somewhere well ventilated. You haven’t got any valuable carpets, have you? It’s best not to let them lick your face, but they can be trained to control their flame. They’re very helpful for lighting fires.”

Goodboy Bindle Featherstone curled up amidst a barrage of plumbing noises.

They’ve got eight stomachs, Vimes remembered; the drawings in the book had been very detailed. And there’s lots of other stuff like fractional-distillation tubes and mad alchemy sets in there.

No swamp dragon could ever terrorise a kingdom, except by accident. Vimes wondered how many had been killed by enterprising heroes. It was terribly cruel to do something like that to creatures whose only crime was to blow themselves absent-mindedly to pieces in mid-air, which was not something any individual dragon made a habit of. It made him quite angry to think about it. A race of, of whittles, that’s what dragons were. Born to lose. Live fast, die wide. Omnivores or not, what they must really live on was their nerves, flapping apologetically through the world in mortal fear of their own digestive system. The family would be just getting over father’s explosion, and some twerp in a suit of armour would come plodding into the swamp to stick a sword into a bag of guts that was only one step away from self-destruction in any case.

Huh. It’d be interesting to see how the great dragon slayers of the past stood up to the big dragon. Armour? Best not to wear it. It’d all be the same in any case, and at least your ashes wouldn’t come prepackaged in their own foil.

He stared and stared at the malformed little thing, and the idea that had been knocking for attention for the last few minutes finally gained entrance. Everyone in Ankh-Morpork wanted to find the dragon’s lair. At least, wanted to find it empty. Bits of wood on a stick wouldn’t do it, he was certain. But, as they said, set a thief. . . [16]

He said, “Could one dragon sniff out another? I mean, follow a scent?”

. . .

Dearest Mother [wrote Carrot] Talk about a Turn Up for the Books. Last night the dragon burned up our Headquarters and Lo and Behold we have been given a better one, it is in a place called Pseudopolis Yard, opposite the Opera House. Sgt Colon said we have gone Up in the World and has told Nobby not to try to sell the furnishings. Going Up in the World is a metaphor, which I am learning about, it is like Lying but more decorative. There are proper carpets to spit on. Twice today groups of people have tried to search the cellars here for the dragon, it is amazing. And digging up people’s privies and poking into attics, it is like a Fever. One thing is, people haven’t got time for much else, and Sgt Colon says, when you go out on your Rounds and shout Twelve of the Clock and All’s Well while a dragon is melting the street you feel a bit of a Burke.

I have moved out of Mrs Palm’s because, there are dozens of bedrooms here. It was sad and they made me a cake but I think it is for the best, although Mrs Palm never charged me rent which was very nice of her considering she is a widow with so many fine daughters to bring up plus dowries ekcetra.

Also I have made friends with this ape who keeps coming round to see if we have found his book. Nobby says it is a flea-ridden moron because it won 18d off him playing Cripple Mr Onion, which is a game of chance with cards which I do not play, I have told Nobby about the Gambling (Regulation) Acts, and he said Piss off, which I think is in violation of the Decency Ordinances of 1389 but I have decided to use my Discretion.

Capt Vimes is ill and is being looked after by a Lady. Nobby says it is well known she is Mental, but Sgt Colon says its just because of living in a big house with a lot of dragons but she is worth a Fortune and well done to the Capt for getting his feet under the table. I do not see what the furniture has to do with it. This morning I went for a walk with Reet and showed her many interesting examples of the ironwork to be found in the city. She said it was very interesting. She said I was quite different to anyone she’s ever met. Your loving son, Carrot.X

PS I hope Minty is keeping well.

He folded the paper carefully and shoved it into the envelope.

“Sun’s going down,” said Sergeant Colon.

Carrot looked up from his sealing wax.

“That means it will be night soon,” Colon went on, accurately.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Colon ran a finger round his collar. His skin was impressively pink, the result of a morning’s scrubbing, but people were still staying at a respectful distance.

Some people are born to command. Some people achieve command. And others have command thrust upon them, and the sergeant was now included in this category and wasn’t very happy about it.

Any minute now, he knew, he was going to have to say that it was time they went out on patrol. He didn’t want to go out on patrol. He wanted to find a nice sub-basement somewhere. But nobblyess obligay-if he was in charge, he had to do it.

It wasn’t the loneliness of command that was bothering him. It was the being-fried-alive of command that was giving him problems.

He was also pretty sure that unless they came up with something about this dragon very soon then the Patrician was going to be unhappy. And when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that un-happiness as far as possible. Responsibility, the sergeant thought, was a terrible thing. So was being horribly tortured. As far as he could see, the two facts were rapidly heading towards one another.

And thus he was terribly relieved when a small coach pulled up outside the Yard. It was very old, and battered. There was a faded coat of arms on the door. Painted on the back, and rather newer, was the little message: Whinny If You Love Dragons.

Out of it, wincing as he got down, stepped Captain Vimes. Following him was the woman known to the sergeant as Mad Sybil Ramkin. And finally, hopping down obediently on the end of its lead, was a small-

The sergeant was too nervous to take account of actual size.

“Well, I’ll be mogadored! They’ve only gone and caught it!”

Nobby looked up from the table in the corner where he was continually failing to learn that it is almost impossible to play a game of skill and bluff against an opponent who smiles all the time. The Librarian took advantage of the diversion to help himself to a couple of cards off the bottom of the pack.

“Don’t be daft. That’s just a swamp dragon,” said Nobby. “She’s all right, is Lady Sybil. A real lady.”

The other two guards turned and stared at him. This was Nobby talking.

“You two can bloody well stop that,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I know a lady when I sees one? She give me a cup of tea in a cup fin as paper and a silver spoon in it,” he said, speaking as one who had peeped over the plateau of social distinction. “And I give it back to her, so you can stop looking at me like that!”

“What is it you actually do on your evenings off?” said Colon.

“No business of yourn.”

“Did you really give the spoon back?” said Carrot.

“Yes I bloody well did!” said Nobby hotly.

“Attention, lads,” said the sergeant, flooded with relief.

The other two entered the room. Vimes gave his men his usual look of resigned dismay. “My squad,” he mumbled.

“Fine body of men,” said Lady Ramkin. “The good old rank and file, eh?”

“The rank, anyway,” said Vimes.

Lady Ramkin beamed encouragingly. This led to a strange shuffling among the men. Sergeant Colon, by dint of some effort, managed to make his chest stick out more than his stomach. Carrot straightened up from his habitual stoop. Nobby vibrated with soldierly bearing, hands thrust straight down by his sides, thumbs pointing sharply forward, pigeon chest inflated so much that his feet were in danger of leaving the ground.

“I always think we can all sleep safer in my bed knowing that these brave men are watching over us,” said Lady Ramkin, walking sedately along the rank, like a treasure galleon running ahead of a mild breeze. “And who is this?”

It is difficult for an orangutan to stand to attention. Its body can master the general idea, but its skin can’t. The Librarian was doing his best, however, standing in a sort of respectful heap at the end of the line and maintaining the kind of complex salute you can only achieve with a four-foot arm.

“ ‘E’s plain clothes, ma’am,” said Nobby smartly. “Special Ape Services.”

“Very enterprising. Very enterprising indeed,” said Lady Ramkin. “How long have you been an ape, my man?”

“Oook.”

“Well done.” She turned to Vimes, who was definitely looking incredulous.

“A credit to you,” she said. “A fine body of men-“

“Oook.”

“-anthropoids,” corrected Lady Ramkin, with barely a break in the flow.

For a moment the rank felt as though they had just returned from single-handedly conquering a distant province. They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt. Even the Librarian felt favoured, and for once had let the phrase ‘my man’ pass without comment.

A trickling noise and a strong chemical smell prompted them to look around.

Goodboy Bindle Featherstone was squatting with an air of sheepish innocence alongside what was not so much a stain on the carpet as a hole in the floor. A few wisps of smoke were curling up from the edges.

Lady Ramkin sighed.

“Don’t you worry, ma’am,” volunteered Nobby cheerfully. “Soon have that cleaned up.”

“I’m afraid they’re often like that when they’re excited,” she said.

“Fine specimen you got there, ma’am,” Nobby went on, revelling in the new-found experience of social intercourse.

“It’s not mine,” she said. “It belongs to the captain now. Or all of you, perhaps. A sort of mascot. His name is Goodboy Bindle Featherstone.”

Goodboy Bindle Featherstone bore up stoically under the weight of the name, and sniffed a table leg.

“He looks more like my brother Errol,” said Nobby, playing the cheeky chirpy lovable city sparrow card for all it was worth. “Got the same pointed nose, excuse me for saying so, milady.”

Vimes looked at the creature, which was investigating its new environment, and knew that it was now, irrevocably, an Errol. The little dragon took an experimental bite out of the table, chewed it for a few seconds, spat it out, curled up and went to sleep.

“He ain’t going to set fire to anything, is he?” said the sergeant anxiously.

“I don’t think so. He doesn’t seem to have worked out what his flame ducts are for yet,” said Lady Ramkin.

“You can’t teach him anything about relaxing, though,” said Vimes. “Anyway, men . . .”

“Oook.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, sir. What’s this doing here?”

“Er,” said Sergeant Colon hurriedly, “I, er . . . with you being away and all, and us likely to be short-handed . . . Carrot here says it’s all according to the law and that . . . I swore him in, sir. The ape, sir.”

“Swore him in what, Sergeant?” said Vimes.

“As Special Constable, sir,” said Colon, blushing. “You know, sir. Sort of citizen’s Watch.”

Vimes threw up his hands.  “Special? Bloody ‘ unique!”

The Librarian gave Vimes a big smile.

“Just temporarily, sir. For the duration, like,” said Colon pleadingly. “We could do with the help, sir, and . . . well, he’s the only one who seems to like us . . .”

“I think it’s a frightfully good idea,” said Lady Ramkin. “Well done, that ape.”

Vimes shrugged. The world was mad enough already, what could make it worse?

“Okay,” he said. “Okay! I give in. Fine! Give him a badge, although I’m damned if I know where he’ll wear it! Fine! Yes! Why not?”

“You all right, Captain?” said Colon, all concern.

“Fine! Fine! Welcome to the new Watch!” snapped Vimes, striding vaguely around the room. “Great! After all, we pay peanuts, don’t we, so we might as well employ mon-“

The sergeant’s hand slapped respectfully across Vimes’s mouth.

“Er, just one thing, Captain,” said Colon urgently, to Vimes’s astonished eyes. “You don’t use the ‘M’ word. Gets right up his nose, sir. He can’t help it, he loses all self-control. Like a red rag to a wossname, sir. ‘Ape’ is all right, sir, but not the ‘M’ word. Because, sir, when he gets angry he doesn’t just go and sulk, sir, if you get my drift. He’s no trouble at all apart from that, sir. All right? Just don’t say monkey. Ohshit.”

. . .

The Brethren were nervous.

He’d heard them talking. Things were moving too fast for them. He thought he’d led them into the conspiracy a bit at a time, never giving them more truth than their little brains could cope with, but he’d still overestimated them. A firm hand was needed. Firm but fair.

“Brothers,” said the Supreme Grand Master, “are the Cuffs of Veracity duly enhanced?”

“What?” said Brother Watchtower vaguely. “Oh. The Cuffs. Yeah. Enhanced. Right.”

“And the Martlets of Beckoning, are they fittingly divested?”

Brother Plasterer gave a guilty start. “Me? What? Oh. Fine, no problem. Divested. Yes.”

The Supreme Grand Master paused.

“Brothers,” he said softly. “We are so near. Just once more. Just a few hours. Once more and the world is ours. Do you understand, Brothers?”

Brother Plasterer shuffled a foot.

“Well,” he said. “I mean, of course. Yes. No fears about that. Behind you one hundred and ten percent-“

He’s going to say only, thought the Supreme Grand Master.

“-only-“

Ah.

“-we, that is, all of us, we’ve been . . . odd, really, you feel so different, don’t you, after summoning the dragon, sort of-“

“Cleaned out,” said Brother Plasterer helpfully.

“-yes, like it’s sort of-“ Brother Watchtower struggled with the serpents of self-expression-“taking something out of you . . .”

“Sucked dry,” said Brother Plasterer.

“Yes, like he said, and we . . . well, it’s maybe it’s a bit risky . . .”

“Like stuff’s been dragged from your actual living brain by eldritch creatures from the Beyond,” said Brother Plasterer.

“I’d have said more like a bit of a sick headache, myself,” said Brother Watchtower helplessly. “And we was wondering, you know, about all this stuff about cosmic balance and that, because, well, look what happened to poor old Dunnykin. Could be a bit of a judgement. Er.”

“It was just a maddened crocodile hidden in a flower bed,” said the Supreme Grand Master. “It could have happened to anyone. I understand your feelings, however.”

“You do?” said Brother Watchtower.

“Oh, yes. They’re only natural. All the greatest wizards feel a little ill-at-ease before undertaking a great work such as this.” The Brethren preened themselves. Great wizards. That’s us. Yeah. “But in a few hours it’ll be over, and I am sure that the king will reward you handsomely. The future will be glorious.”

This normally did the trick. It didn’t appear to be working this time.

“But the dragon-“ Brother Watchtower began.

“There won’t be any dragon! We won’t need it. Look,” said the Supreme Grand Master, “it’s quite simple. The lad will have a marvellous sword. Everyone knows kings have marvellous swords-“

“This’d be the marvellous sword you’ve been telling us about, would it?” said Brother Plasterer.

“And when it touches the dragon,” said the Supreme Grand Master, “it’ll be . . . foom!”

“Yeah, they do that,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “My uncle kicked a swamp dragon once. He found it eating his pumpkins. Damn thing nearly took his leg off.”

The Supreme Grand Master sighed. A few more hours, yes, and then no more of this. The only thing he hadn’t decided was whether to let them alone- who’d believe them, after all?-or send the Guard to arrest them for being terminally stupid.

“No,” he said patiently, “I mean the dragon will vanish. We’ll have sent it back. End of dragon.”

“Won’t people be a bit suspicious?” said Brother Plasterer. “Won’t they expect lumps of dragon all over the place?”

“No,” said the Supreme Grand Master triumphantly, “because one touch from the Sword of Truth and Justice will totally destroy the Spawn of Evil!”

The Brethren stared at him.

“That’s what they’ll believe, anyway,” he added. “We can provide a bit of mystic smoke at the time.”

“Dead easy, mystic smoke,” said Brother Fingers.

“No bits, then?” said Brother Plasterer, a shade disappointed.

Brother Watchtower coughed. “Dunno if people will accept that,” he said. “Sounds a bit too neat, like.”

“Listen,” snapped the Supreme Grand Master, “they’ll accept anything! They’ll see it happen! People will be so keen to see the boy win, they won’t think twice about it! Depend upon it! Now . . . let us commence . . .”

He concentrated.

Yes, it was easier. Easier every time. He could feel the scales, feel the rage of the dragon as he reached into the place where the dragons went and took control.

This was power, and it was his.

. . .

Sergeant Colon winced. “Ow.”

“Don’t be a big softy,” said Lady Ramkin cheerfully, tightening the bandage with a well-practised skill handed down through many generations of Ramkin womenfolk. “He hardly touched you.”

“And he’s very sorry,” said Carrot sharply. “Show the sergeant how sorry you are. Go on.”

“Oook,” said the Librarian, sheepishly.

“Don’t let him kiss me!” squeaked Colon.

“Do you think picking someone up by their ankles and bouncing their head on the floor comes under the heading of Striking a Superior Officer?” said Carrot.

“I’m not pressing charges, me,” said the sergeant hurriedly.

“Can we get on?” said Vimes impatiently. “We’re going to see if Errol can sniff out the dragon’s lair. Lady Ramkin thinks it’s got to be worth a try.”

“You mean set a deep hole with spring-loaded sides, tripwires, whirling knife blades driven by water power, broken glass and scorpions, to catch a thief, Captain?” said the sergeant doubtfully. “Ow!”

“Yes, we don’t want to lose the scent,” said Lady Ramkin. “Stop being a big baby, Sergeant.”

“Brilliant idea about using Errol, ma’am, if I may make so bold,” said Nobby, while the sergeant blushed under his bandage.

Vimes was not certain how long he would be able to put up with Nobby the social mountaineer.

Carrot said nothing. He was gradually coming to terms with the fact that he probably wasn’t a dwarf, but dwarf blood flowed in his veins in accordance with the famous principle of morphic resonance, and his borrowed genes were telling him that nothing was going to be that simple. Finding a hoard even when the dragon wasn’t at home was pretty risky. Anyway, he was certain he’d know if there was one around. The presence of large amounts of gold always made a dwarf’s palms itch, and his weren’t itching.

“We’ll start by that wall in the Shades,” said the captain.

Sergeant Colon glanced sideways at Lady Ramkin, and found it impossible to show cowardice in the face of the supportive. He contented himself with, “Is that wise, Captain?”

“Of course it isn’t. If we were wise, we wouldn’t be in the Watch.”

“I say! All this is tremendously exciting,” said Lady Ramkin.

“Oh, I don’t think you should come, m’lady-“ Vimes began.

“-Sybil, please!-“

“-it’s a very disreputable area, you see.”

“But I’m sure I shall be perfectly safe with your men,” she said. “I’m sure vagabonds just melt away when they see you.”

That’s dragons, thought Vimes. They melt away when they see dragons, and just leave their shadows on the wall. Whenever he felt that he was slowing down, or that he was losing interest, he remembered those shadows, and it was like having dull fire poured down his backbone. Things like that shouldn’t be allowed to happen. Not in my city.

. . .

In fact the Shades were not a problem. Many of its denizens were out hoard-hunting anyway, and those that remained were far less inclined than hitherto to lurk in dark alleys. Besides, the more sensible of them recognised that Lady Ramkin, if waylaid, would probably tell them to pull up their socks and not be silly, in a voice so used to command that they would probably find themselves doing it.

The wall hadn’t been knocked down yet and still bore its grisly fresco. Errol sniffed around it, trotted up the alley once or twice, and went to sleep.

“Dint work,” said Sergeant Colon.

“Good idea, though,” said Nobby loyally.

“It could be all the rain and people walking about, I suppose,” said Lady Ramkin.

Vimes scooped up the dragon. It had been a vain hope anyway. It was just better to be doing something than nothing.

“We’d better get back,” he said. “The sun’s gone down.”

They walked back in silence. The dragon’s even tamed the Shades, Vimes thought. It’s taken over the whole city, even when it isn’t here. People’11 start tying virgins to rocks any day now.

It’s a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s also a bloody great hot flying thing.

He pulled out the key to the new headquarters. While he was fumbling in the lock, Errol woke up and started to yammer.

“Not now,” Vimes said. His side twinged. The night had barely started and already he felt too tired.

A slate slid down the roof and smashed on the cobbles beside him.

“Captain,” hissed Sergeant Colon.

“What?”

“It’s on the roof, Captain.”

Something about the sergeant’s voice got through to Vimes. It wasn’t excited. It wasn’t frightened. It just had a tone of dull, leaden terror.

He looked up. Errol started to bounce up and down under his arm.

The dragon-the dragon-was peering down interestedly over the guttering. Its face alone was taller than a man. Its eyes were the size of very large eyes, coloured a smouldering red and filled with an intelligence that had nothing to do with human beings. It was far older, for one thing. It was an intelligence that had already been long basted in guile and marinated in cunning by the time a group of almost-monkeys were wondering whether standing on two legs was a good career move. It wasn’t an intelligence that had any truck with, or even understood, the arts of diplomacy.

It wouldn’t play with you, or ask you riddles. But it understood all about arrogance and power and cruelty and if it could possibly manage it, it would burn your head off. Because it liked to.

It was even more angry than usual at the moment. It could sense something behind its eyes. A tiny, weak, alien mind, bloated with self-satisfaction. It was infuriating, like an unscratchable itch. It was making it do things it didn’t want to do . . . and stopping it from doing things it wanted to do very much.

Those eyes were, for the moment, focused on Errol, who was going frantic. Vimes realised that all that stood between him and a million degrees of heat was the dragon’s vague interest in why Vimes had a smaller dragon under his arm.

“Don’t make any sudden moves,” said Lady Ramkin’s voice behind him. “And don’t show fear. They can always tell when you’re afraid.”

“Is there any other advice you can offer at this time?” said Vimes slowly, trying to speak without moving his lips.

“Well, tickling them behind their ears often works.”

“Oh,” said Vimes weakly.

“And a good sharp ‘no!’ and taking away their food bowl.”

“Ah?”

“And hitting them on the nose with a roll of paper is what I do in extreme cases.”

In the slow, brightly-outlined, desperate world Vimes was now inhabiting, which seemed to revolve around the craggy nostrils a few metres away from him, he became aware of a gentle hissing sound.

The dragon was taking a deep breath.

The intake of air stopped. Vimes looked into the darkness of the flame ducts and wondered whether he’d see anything, whether there’d be some tiny white glow or something, before fiery oblivion swept over him.

At that moment a horn rang out.

The dragon raised its head in a puzzled way and made a noise that sounded vaguely interrogative without being in any way a word.

The horn rang out again. The noise seemed to have a number of echoes that lived a life of their own. It sounded like a challenge. If that wasn’t what it was, then the horn blower was soon going to be in trouble, because the dragon gave Vimes a smouldering look, unfolded its enormous wings, leapt heavily into the air and, against all the rules of aeronautics, flew slowly away in the direction of the sound.

Nothing in the world should have been able to fly like that. The wings thumped up and down with a noise like potted thunder, but the dragon moved as though it was idly sculling through the air. If it stopped flapping, the movement suggested, it would simply glide to a halt. It floated, not flew. For something the size of a barn with an armour-plated hide, it was a pretty good trick.

It passed over their heads like a barge, heading for the Plaza of Broken Moons.

“Follow it!” shouted Lady Ramkin.

“That’s not right, it flying like that. I’m pretty sure there’s something in one of the Witchcraft Laws,” said Carrot, taking out his notebook. “And it’s damaged the roof. It’s really piling up the offences, you know.”

“You all right, Captain?” said Sergeant Colon.

“I could see right up its nose,” said Captain Vimes dreamily. His eyes focused on the worried face of the sergeant. “Where’s it gone?” he demanded. Colon pointed along the street.

Vimes glowered at the shape disappearing over the rooftops.

“Follow it!” he said.

. . .

The horn sounded again.

Other people were hurrying towards the plaza. The dragon drifted ahead of them like a shark heading towards a wayward airbed, its tail flicking slowly from side to side.

“Some loony is going to fight it!” said Nobby.

“I thought someone would have a go,” said Colon. “Poor bugger’ll be baked in his own armour.”

This seemed to be the opinion of the crowds lining the plaza. The people of Ankh-Morpork had a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to entertainment, and while they were looking forward to seeing a dragon slain, they’d be happy to settle instead for seeing someone being baked alive in his own armour. You didn’t get the chance every day to see someone baked alive in their own armour. It would be something for the children to remember.

Vimes was jostled and bounced around by the crowd as more people flooded into the plaza behind them.

The horn sounded a third challenge.

“That’s a slug-horn, that is,” said Colon knowledgeably. “Like a tocsin, only deeper.”

“You sure?” said Nobby.

“Yep.”

“It must have been a bloody big slug.”

“Peanuts! Figgins! Hot sausages!” whined a voice behind them. “Hallo, lads. Hallo, Captain Vimes! In at the death, eh? Have a sausage. On the house.”

“What’s going on, Throat?” said Vimes, clinging to the vendor’s tray as more people spilled around them.

“Some kid’s ridden into the city and said he’d kill the dragon,” said Cut-me-own-Throat. “Got a magic sword, he says.”

“Has he got a magic skin?”

“You’ve got no romance in your soul, Captain,”

said Throat, removing a very hot toasting fork from the tiny frying pan on his tray and applying it gently to the buttock of a large woman in front of him. “Stand aside, madam, commerce is the lifeblood of the city, thank you very much. O’course,” he continued, “by rights there should be a maiden chained to a rock. Only the aunt said no. That’s the trouble with some people. No sense of tradition. This lad says he’s the rightful air, too.”

Vimes shook his head. The world was definitely going mad around him. “You’ve lost me there,” he said.

“Air,” said Throat patiently. “You know. Air to the throne.”

“What throne?”

“The throne of Ankh.”

“What throne of Ankh?”

“You know. Kings and that.” Throat looked reflective. “Wish I knew what his bloody name is,” he said. “I put an order in to Igneous the Troll’s all-night wholesale pottery for three gross of coronation mugs and it’s going to be a right pain, painting all the names in afterwards. Shall I put you down for a couple, Cap’n? To you ninety pence, and that’s cutting me own throat.”

Vimes gave up, and shoved his way back through the throng using Carrot as a lighthouse. The lance-constable loomed over the crowd, and the rest of the rank had anchored themselves to him.

“It’s all gone mad,” he shouted. “What’s going on, Carrot?”

“There’s a lad on a horse in the middle of the plaza,” said Carrot. “He’s got a glittery sword, you know. Doesn’t seem to be doing much at the moment, though.”

Vimes fought his way into the lee of Lady Ramkin.

“Kings,” he panted. “Of Ankh. And Thrones. Are there?”

“What? Oh, yes. There used to be,” said Lady Ramkin. “Hundreds of years ago. Why?”

“Some kid says he’s heir to the throne!”

“That’s right,” said Throat, who’d followed Vimes in the hope of clinching a sale. “He made a big speech about how he was going to kill the dragon, overthrow the usurpers and right all wrongs. Everyone cheered. Hot sausages, two for a dollar, made of genuine pig, why not buy one for the lady?”

“Don’t you mean pork, sir?” said Carrot warily, eyeing the glistening tubes.

“Manner of speaking, manner of speaking,” said Throat quickly. “Certainly your actual pig products. Genuine pig.”

“Everyone cheers any speech in this city,” growled Vimes. “It doesn’t mean anything!”

“Get your pig sausages, five for two dollars!” said Throat, who never let a conversation stand in the way of trade. “Could be good for business, could monarchy. Pig sausages! Pig sausages! Inna bun! And righting all wrongs, too. Sounds like a solid idea to me. With onions!”

“Can I press you to a hot sausage, ma’am?” said Nobby.

Lady Ramkin looked at the tray around Throat’s neck. Thousands of years of good breeding came to her aid and there was only the faintest suggestion of horror in her voice when she said, “My, they look good. What splendid foodstuffs.”

“Are they made by monks on some mystic mountain?” said Carrot.

Throat gave him an odd look. “No,” he said patiently, “by pigs.”

“What wrongs?” said Vimes urgently. “Come on, tell me. What wrongs is he going to right?”

“We-ell,” said Throat, “there’s, well, taxes. That’s wrong, for a start.” He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. Paying taxes was something that, in Throat’s world, happened only to other people.

“That’s right,” said an old woman next to him. “And the gutter of my house leaks something dreadful and the landlord won’t do nothing. That’s wrong.”

“And premature baldness,” said the man in front of her. “That’s wrong, too.” Vimes’s mouth dropped open.

“Ah. Kings can cure that, you know,” said another protomonarchist knowingly.

“As a matter of fact,” said Throat, rummaging in his pack, “I’ve got one bottle left of this astonishing ointment what is made-“ he glared at Carrot-“by some ancient monks who live on a mountain-“

“And they can’t answer back, you know,” the monarchist went on. “That’s how you can tell they’re royal. Completely incapable of it. It’s to do with being gracious.”

“Fancy,” said the leaky-guttering woman.

“Money, too,” said the monarchist, enjoying the attention. “They don’t carry it. That’s how you can always tell a king.”

“Why? It’s not that heavy,” said the man whose remaining hair was spread across the dome of his head like the remnant of a defeated army. “I can carry hundreds of dollars, no problem.”

“You probably get weak arms, being a king,” said the woman wisely. “Probably with the waving.”

“I’ve always thought,” said the monarchist, pulling out a pipe and beginning to fill it with the ponderous air of one who is going to deliver a lecture, “that one of the major problems of being a king is the risk of your daughter getting a prick.”

There was a thoughtful pause.

“And falling asleep for a hundred years,” the monarchist went on stolidly.

“Ah,” said the others, unaccountably relieved.

“And then there’s wear and tear on peas,” he added.

“Well, there would be,” said the woman, uncertainly.

“Having to sleep on them all the time,” said the monarchist.

“Not to mention hundreds of mattresses.”

“Right.”

“Is that so? I think I could get ‘em for him wholesale,” said Throat. He turned to Vimes, who had been listening to all this with leaden depression. “See, Captain? And you’d be in the royal guard, I expect. Get some plumes in your helmet.”

“Ah, pageantry,” said the monarchist, pointing with his pipe. “Very important. Lots of spectacles.”

“What, free?” said Throat.

“We-ell, I think maybe you have to pay for the frames,” said the monarchist.

“You’re all bloody mad!” shouted Vimes. “You don’t know anything about him and he hasn’t even won yet!”

“Bit of a formality, I expect,” said the woman.

“It’s a fire-breathing dragon!” screamed Vimes, remembering those nostrils. “And he’s just a guy on a horse, for heaven’s sake!”

Throat prodded him gently in the breastplate. “You got no soul, Cap’n,” he said. “When a stranger comes into the city under the thrall of the dragon and challenges it with a glittery sword, weeell, there’s only one outcome, ain’t there? It’s probably destiny.”

“Thrall?” shouted Vimes. “Thrall? You thieving bugger, Throat, you were flogging cuddly dragon dolls yesterday!”

“That’s was just business, Cap’n. No need to get excited about it,” said Throat pleasantly.

Vimes went back to the rank in a gloomy rage. Say what you liked about the people of Ankh-Morpork, they had always been staunchly independent, yielding to no man their right to rob, defraud, embezzle and murder on an equal basis. This seemed absolutely right, to Vimes’s way of thinking. There was no difference at all between the richest man and the poorest beggar, apart from the fact that the former had lots of money, food, power, fine clothes, and good health. But at least he wasn’t any better. Just richer, fatter, more powerful, better dressed and healthier. It had been like that for hundreds of years.

“And now they get one sniff of an ermine robe and they go all gooey,” he muttered.

The dragon was circling the plaza slowly and warily. Vimes craned to see over the heads in front of him.

In the same way that various predators have the silhouette of their prey almost programmed into their genes, it was possible that the shape of someone on a horse holding a sword clicked a few tumblers in a dragon’s brain. It was showing keen but wary interest.

Back in the crowd, Vimes shrugged. “I didn’t even know we were a kingdom.”

“Well, we haven’t been for ages,” said Lady Ramkin. “The kings got thrown out, and jolly good job too. They could be quite frightful.”

“But you’re, well, from a pos-from a high-born family,” he said. “I should have thought you’d be all for kings.”

“Some of them were fearful oiks, you know,” she said airily. “Wives all over the place, and chopping people’s heads off, fighting pointless wars, eating with their knife, chucking half-eaten chicken legs over their shoulders, that sort of thing. Not our sort of people at all.”

The plaza went quiet. The dragon had flapped slowly to the far end and was almost stationary in the air, apart from the slow beating of its wings.

Vimes felt something claw gently at his back, and then Errol was on his shoulder, gripping with his hind claws. His stubby wings were beating in time with those of the bigger specimen. He was hissing. His eyes were fixed on the hovering bulk.

The boy’s horse jigged nervously on the plaza’s flagstones as he dismounted, flourished the sword and turned to face the distant enemy.

He certainly looks confident, Vimes told himself. On the other hand, how does the ability to slay dragons fit you for kingship in this day and age?

It was certainly a very shiny sword. You had to admit that.

. . .

And now it was two of the clock the following morning. And all was well, apart from the rain. It was drizzling again.

There are some towns in the multiverse which think they know how to have a good time. Places like New Orleans and Rio reckon they not only know how to push the boat out but set fire to the harbour as well; but compared to Ankh-Morpork with its hair down they’re a Welsh village at 2 p.m. on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Fireworks banged and sparkled in the damp air over the turbid mud of the river Ankh. Various domesticated animals were being roasted in the streets. Dancers conga’d from house to house, often managing to pick up any loose ornaments while doing so. There was a lot of quaffing going on. People who in normal circumstances would never think of doing it were shouting “Hurrah”.

Vimes stalked gloomily through the crowded streets, feeling like the only pickled onion in a fruit salad. He’d given the rank the evening off.

He wasn’t feeling at all royalist. He didn’t think he had anything against kings as such, but the sight of Ankh-Morporkians waving flags was mysteriously upsetting. That was something only silly subject people did, in other countries. Besides, the idea of royal plumes in his hat revolted him. He’d always had a thing about plumes. Plumes sort of, well, bought you off,

told everyone that you didn’t belong to yourself. And he’d feel like a bird. It’d be the last straw.

His errant feet led him back to the Yard. After all, where else was there? His lodgings were depressing and his landlady had complained about the holes which, despite much shouting, Errol kept making in the carpet. And the smell Errol made. And Vimes couldn’t drink in a tavern tonight without seeing things that would upset him even more than the things he normally saw when he was drunk.

It was nice and quiet, although the distant sounds of revelry could be heard through the window.

Errol scrambled down from his shoulder and started to eat the coke in the fireplace.

Vimes sat back and put his feet up.

What a day! And what a fight! The dodging, the weaving, the shouts of the crowd, the young man standing there looking tiny and unprotected, the dragon taking a deep breath in a way now very familiar to Vimes . . .

And not flaming. That had surprised Vimes. It had surprised the crowd. It had certainly surprised the dragon, which had tried to squint at its own nose and clawed desperately at its flame ducts. It had remained surprised right up to the moment when the lad ducked in under one claw and thrust the sword home.

And then a thunderclap.

You’d have thought there’d have been some bits of dragon left, really.

Vimes pulled a scrap of paper towards him. He looked at the notes he’d made yesterday:

Itym: Heavy draggon, but yet it can flye right welle;

Itym: The fyre be main hot, yet issueth from ane living Thinge;

Itym: The Swamp dragons be right Poor Thinges, yet this monstrous Form waxeth full mightily;

Itym: From whence it cometh none knowe, nor wither it goeth, nor where it bideth betweentimes; Itym: Why fore did it burneth so neatlie ?

He pulled the pen and ink towards him and, in a slow round hand, added:

Itym: Can a draggon be destroyed into utterlye noe-thinge?

He thought for a while, and continued:

Itym: Whyfore did it Explode that noone may find It, search they greatly?

A puzzler, that. Lady Ramkin said that when a swamp dragon exploded there was dragon everywhere. And this one had been a damn great thing. Admittedly its insides must have been an alchemical nightmare, but the citizens of Ankh-Morpork should still have been spending the night shovelling dragon off the streets. No-one seemed to have bothered about this. The purple smoke was quite impressive, though.

Errol finished off the coke and started on the fire irons. So far this evening he had eaten three cobblestones, a doorknob, something unidentifiable he’d found in the gutter and, to general astonishment, three of Cut-me-own Throat’s sausages made of genuine pork organs. The crunching of the poker going down mingled with the patter of rain on the windows.

Vimes stared at the paper again and then wrote:

Itym: How can Kinges come of noethinge?

He hadn’t even seen the lad close to. He looked personable enough, not exactly a great thinker, but definitely the kind of profile you wouldn’t mind seeing on your small change. Mind you, after killing the dragon he could have been a cross-eyed goblin for all that it mattered. The mob had borne him in triumph to the Patrician’s palace.

Lord Vetinari had been locked up in his own dungeons. He hadn’t put up much fight, apparently. Just smiled at everyone and went quietly.

What a happy coincidence for the city that, just when it needed a champion to kill the dragon, a king came forth.

Vimes turned this thought over for a while. Then he turned it back to front. He picked up the quill and wrote:

Itym: What a happy chance it be, for a lad that would be Kinge, that there be a Draggon to sloe to prove beyond doubt his honey fiddes.

It was a lot better than birthmarks and swords, that was for sure. He twiddled the quill for a while, and then doodled:

Itym: The draggon was not a Mechanical devise, yette surety no wizzard has the power to create a beaste of that mag. magg. maggnyt. Size.

Itym: Whye, in the Pinche, could it not Flame?

Itym: Where did it come from?

Itym: Where did it goe?

The rain pounded harder on the window. The sounds of celebration became distinctly damp, and then faded completely. There was a murmur of thunder.

Vimes underlined goe several times. After further consideration he added two more question marks:??

After staring at the effect for some time he rolled the paper into a ball and threw it into the fireplace, where it was fielded and swallowed by Errol.

There had been a crime. Senses Vimes didn’t know he possessed, ancient policeman’s senses, prickled the hairs on his neck and told him there had been a crime. It was probably such an odd crime that it didn’t figure anywhere in Carrot’s book, but it had been committed all right. A handful of high-temperature murders was only the start of it. He’d find it, and give it a name.

Then he stood up, took his leather rain cape from its hook behind the door, and stepped out into the naked city.

. . .

This is where the dragons went.

They lie . . .

Not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation. Possibly the word we’re looking for here is . . .

. . . angry.

It could remember the feel of real air under its wings, and the sheer pleasure of the flame. There had been empty skies above and an interesting world below, full of strange running creatures. Existence had a different texture there. A better texture.

And just when it was beginning to enjoy it, it had been crippled, stopped from flaming and whipped back, like some hairy canine mammal.

The world had been taken away from it.

In the reptilian synapses of the dragon’s mind the suggestion was kindled that, just possibly, it could get the world back. It had been summoned, and disdainfully banished again. But perhaps there was a trail, a scent, a thread which would lead it to the sky . . .

Perhaps there was a pathway of thought itself . . .

It recalled a mind. The peevish voice, so full of its own diminutive importance, a mind almost like that of a dragon, but on a tiny, tiny scale.

Aha.

It stretched its wings.

. . .

Lady Ramkin made herself a cup of cocoa and listened to the rain gurgling in the pipes outside.

She slipped off the hated dancing shoes, which even she was prepared to concede were like a pair of pink canoes. But nobblyess obligay, as the funny little sergeant would say, and as the last representative of one of Ankh-Morpork’s oldest families she’d had to go to the victory ball to show willing.

Lord Vetinari seldom had balls. There was a popular song about it, in fact. But now it was going to be balls all the way.

She couldn’t stand balls. For sheer enjoyment it wasn’t a patch on mucking out dragons. You knew where you were, mucking out dragons. You didn’t get hot and pink and have to eat silly things on sticks, or wear a dress that made you look like a cloud full of cherubs. Little dragons didn’t give a damn what you looked like so long as there was a feeding bowl in your hands.

Funny, really. She’d always thought it took weeks, months, to organise a ball. Invitations, decorations, sausages on poles, ghastly chickeny mixture to force into those little pastry cases. But it had all been done in a matter of hours, as if someone had been expecting it. One of the miracles of catering, obviously. She’d even danced with the, for want of a better word, new king, who had said some polite words to her although they had been rather muffled.

And a coronation tomorrow. You’d have thought it’d take months to sort out.

She was still musing on that as she mixed the dragons’ late night feed of rock oil and peat, spiked with flowers of sulphur. She didn’t bother to change out of the ballgown but slipped the heavy apron over the top, donned the gloves and helmet, pulled the visor down over her face and ran, clutching the feed buckets, through the driving rain to the shed.

She knew it as soon as she opened the door. Normally the arrival of food would be greeted with hoots and whistles and brief bursts of flame.

The dragons, each in its pen, were sitting up in attentive silence and staring up through the roof.

It was somehow scary. She clanged the buckets together.

“No need to be afraid, nasty big dragon all gone!” she said brightly. “Get stuck in to this, you people!”

One or two of them gave her a brief glance, and then went back to their-

What? They didn’t seem to be frightened. Just very, very attentive. It was like a vigil. They were waiting for something to happen.

The thunder muttered again.

A couple of minutes later she was on her way down into the damp city.

. . .

There are some songs which are never sung sober. “Nellie Dean” is one. So is any song beginning “As I was a walking . . .” In the area around Ankh-Morpork, the favoured air is “A Wizard’s Staff Has A Knob On The End”.

The rank were drunk. At least, two out of three of the rank were drunk. Carrot had been persuaded to try a shandy and hadn’t liked it much. He didn’t know all the words, either, and many of the ones he did know he didn’t understand.

“Oh, I see,” he said eventually. “It’s a sort of humorous play on words, is it?”

“You know,” said Colon wistfully, peering into the thickening mists rolling in off the Ankh, “s’at times like this I wish old-“

“You’re not to say it,” said Nobby, swaying a little. “You agreed, we wouldn’t say nothing, it’s no good talking about it.”

“It was his favourite song,” said Colon sadly. “He was a good light tenor.”

“Now, Sarge-“

“He was a righteous man, our Gaskin,” said Colon.

“We couldn’t of helped it,” said Nobby sulkily.

“We could have,” said Colon. “We could have run faster.”

“What happened, then?” said Carrot.

“He died,” said Nobby, “in the hexecution of his duty.”

“I told him,” said Colon, taking a swig at the bottle they had brought along to see them through the night, “I told him. Slow down, I said. You’ll do yourself a mischief, I said. I don’t know what got into him, running ahead like that.”

“I blame the Thieves’ Guild,” said Nobby. “Allowing people like that on the streets-“

“There was this bloke we saw done a robbery one night,” said Colon miserably. “Right in front of us! And Captain Vimes, he said Come On, and we run, only the point is you shouldn’t run too fast, see. Else you might catch them. Leads to all sorts of problems, catching people-“

“They don’t like it,” said Nobby. There was a mutter of thunder, and a flurry of rain.

“They don’t like it,” agreed Colon. “But Gaskin went and forgot, he ran on, went around the corner and, well, this bloke had a couple of mates waiting-“

“It was his heart really,” said Nobby.

“Well. Anyway. And there he was,” said Colon. “Captain Vimes was very upset about it. You shouldn’t run fast in the Watch, lad,” he said solemnly. “You can be a fast guard or you can be an old guard, but you can’t be a fast old guard. Poor old Gaskin.”

“It didn’t ought to be like that,” said Carrot.

Colon took a pull at the bottle.

“Well, it is,” he said. Rain bounced on his helmet and trickled down his face.

“But it didn’t ought to be,” said Carrot flatly.

“But it is,” said Colon.

. . .

Someone else in the city was also ill at ease. He was the Librarian.

Sergeant Colon had given him a badge. The Librarian turned it round and round in his big gentle hands, nibbling at it.

It wasn’t that the city suddenly had a king. Orangs are traditionalists, and you couldn’t get more traditional than a king. But they also liked things neat, and things weren’t neat. Or, rather, they were too neat. Truth and reality were never as neat as this. Sudden heirs to ancient thrones didn’t grow on trees, and he should know.

Besides, no-one was looking for his book. That was human priorities for you.

The book was the key to it. He was sure of that. Well, there was one way to find out what was in the book. It was a perilous way, but the Librarian ambled along perilous ways all day.

In the silence of the sleeping library he opened his desk and removed from its deepest recesses a small lantern carefully built to prevent any naked flame being exposed. You couldn’t be too careful with all this paper around . . .

He also took a bag of peanuts and, after some thought, a large ball of string. He bit off a short length of the string and used it-to tie the badge around his neck, like a talisman. Then he tied one end of the ball to the desk and, after a moment’s contemplation, knuckled off between the bookshelves, paying out the string behind him.

Knowledge equals power. . .

The string was important. After a while the Librarian stopped. He concentrated all his powers of librarianship.

Power equals energy . . .

People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.

Energy equals matter. . . .

He swung into an avenue of shelving that was apparently a few feet long and walked along it briskly for half an hour.

Matter equals mass.

And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-space.

So, while the Dewey system has its fine points, when you’re setting out to look something up in the multidimensional folds of L-space what you really need is a ball of string.

. . .

Now the rain was trying hard. It glistened off the flagstones in the Plaza of Broken Moons, littered here and there with torn bunting, flags, broken bottles and the occasional regurgitated supper. There was still plenty of thunder about, and a green, fresh smell in the air. A few shreds of mist from the Ankh hovered over the stones. It would be dawn soon.

Vimes’s footsteps echoed wetly from the surrounding buildings as he picked his way across the plaza. The boy had stood here.

He peered through the mist shreds at the surrounding buildings, getting his bearings. So the dragon had been hovering-he paced forward-here.

“And,” said Vimes, “this is where it was killed.”

He fumbled in his pockets. There were all sorts of things in there-keys, bits of string, corks. His finger closed on a stub end of chalk.

He knelt down. Errol jumped off his shoulder and waddled away to inspect the detritus of the celebration. He always sniffed everything before he ate it, Vimes noticed. It was a bit of a puzzle why he bothered, because he always ate it anyway.

Its head had been about, let’s see, here.

He walked backwards, dragging the chalk over the stones, progressing slowly over the damp, empty square like an ancient worshipper treading a maze. Here a wing, curving away towards a tail which stretched out to here, change hands, now head for the other wing . . .

When he finished he walked to the centre of the outline and ran his hands over the stones. He realised he was half-expecting them to be warm.

Surely there should be something. Some, oh, he didn’t know, some grease or something, some crispy fried dragon lumps. Errol started eating a broken bottle with every sign of enjoyment. “You know what I think?” said Vimes. “I think it went somewhere.”

Thunder rolled again.

“All right, all right,” muttered Vimes. “It was just a thought. It wasn’t that dramatic.”

Errol stopped in mid-crunch.

Very slowly, as though it was mounted on very smooth, well-oiled bearings, the dragon’s head turned to face upwards.

What it was staring at intently was a patch of empty air. There wasn’t much else you could say about it.

Vimes shivered under his cape. This was daft.

“Look, don’t muck about,” he said, “there’s nothing there.”

Errol started to tremble.

“It’s just the rain,” said Vimes. “Go on, finish your bottle. Nice bottle.”

A thin, worried keening noise broke from the dragon’s mouth.

“I’ll show you,” said Vimes. He cast around and spotted one of Throat’s sausages, cast aside by a hungry reveller who had decided he was never going to be that hungry. He picked it up.

“Look,” he said, and threw it upwards.

He felt sure, watching its trajectory, that it ought to have fallen back to the ground. It shouldn’t have fallen away, as if he’d dropped it neatly into a tunnel in the sky. And the tunnel shouldn’t have been looking back at him.

Vivid purple lightning lashed from the empty air and struck the houses on the near side of the plaza, skittering across the walls for several yards before sinking out with a suddenness that almost denied that it had ever happened at all.

Then it erupted again, this time hitting the rimward wall. The light broke where it hit into a network of searching tendrils spreading across the stones.

The third attempt went upwards, forming an actinic column that eventually rose fifty or sixty feet in the air, appeared to stabilise, and started to spin slowly.

Vimes felt that a comment was called for. He said: “Arrgh.”

As the light revolved it sent out thin zigzag streamers that jittered away across the rooftops, sometimes dipping, sometimes doubling back. Searching.

Errol ran up Vimes’s back in a flurry of claws and fastened himself firmly on his shoulder. The excruciating agony recalled to Vimes that there was something he should be doing. Was it time to scream again? He tried another “Arrgh”. No, probably not.

The air started to smell like burning tin.

Lady Ramkin’s coach rattled into the plaza making a noise like a roulette wheel and pounded straight for Vimes, stopping in a skid that sent it juddering around hi a semicircle and forced the horses either to face the other way or plait their legs. A furious vision in padded leather, gauntlets, tiara and thirty yards of damp pink tulle leaned down towards him and screamed: “Come on, you bloody idiot!”

One glove caught him under his unresisting shoulder and hauled him bodily on to the box.

“And stop screaming!” the phantom ordered, focusing generations of natural authority into four syllables. Another shout spurred the horses from a bewildered standing start to a full gallop.

The coach bounced away over the flagstones. An exploratory tendril of flickering light brushed the reins for a moment and then lost interest.

“I suppose you haven’t got any idea what’s happening?” shouted Vimes, against the crackling of the spinning fire.

“Not the foggiest!”

The crawling lines spread like a web over the city, growing fainter with distance. Vimes imagined them creeping through windows and sneaking under doors.

“It looks as though it’s searching for something!” he shouted.

“Then getting away before it finds it is a first-class idea, don’t you think?”

A tongue of fire hit the dark Tower of Art, slid blindly down its ivy-grown flanks, and disappeared through the dome of Unseen University’s Library.

The other lines blinked out.

Lady Ramkin brought the coach to a halt at the far side of the square.

“What does it want the Library for?” she said, frowning.

“Maybe it wants to look something up?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said breezily. “There’s just a lot of books hi there. What would a flash of lightning want to read?”

“Something very short?”

“I really think you could try to be a bit more help.”

The line of light exploded into an arc between the Library’s dome and the centre of the plaza and hung hi the air, a band of brilliance several feet across.

Then, hi a sudden rush, it became a sphere of fire which grew swiftly to encompass almost all the plaza, vanished suddenly, and left the night full of ringing, violet shadows.

And the plaza full of dragon.

. . .

Who would have thought it? So much power, so close at hand. The dragon could feel the magic flowing into it, renewing it from second to second, hi defiance of all boring physical laws. This wasn’t the poor fere it had been given before. This was the right stuff. There was no end to what it could do, with power like this.

But first it had to pay its respects to certain people . . .

It sniffed the dawn air. It was searching for the stink of minds.

Noble dragons don’t have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.

. . .

The air became very still, so still that you could almost hear the slow fall of dust. The Librarian swung on his knuckles between the endless bookshelves. The dome of the Library was still overhead but then, it always was.

It seemed quite logical to the Librarian that, since there were aisles where the shelves were on the outside then there should be other aisles in the space between the books themselves, created out of quantum ripples by the sheer weight of words. There were certainly some odd sounds coming from the other side of some shelving, and the Librarian knew that if he gently pulled out a book or two he would be peeking into different libraries under different skies.

Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky second-hand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it. You stray into L-space at your peril.

Very senior librarians, however, once they have proved themselves worthy by performing some valiant act of librarianship, are accepted into a secret order and are taught the raw arts of survival beyond the Shelves We Know. The Librarian was highly skilled in all of them, but what he was attempting now wouldn’t just get him thrown out of the Order but probably out of life itself.

All libraries everywhere are connected in L-space. All libraries. Everywhere. And the Librarian, navigating by booksign carved on shelves by past explorers, navigating by smell, navigating even by the siren whisperings of nostalgia, was heading purposely for one very special one.

There was one consolation. If he got it wrong, he’d never know it.

. . .

Somehow the dragon was worse on the ground. In the air it was an elemental thing, graceful even when it was trying to burn you to your boots. On the ground it was just a damn great animal.

Its huge head reared against the grey of dawn, turning slowly.

Lady Ramkin and Vimes peered cautiously from behind a watertrough. Vimes had his hand clamped over Errol’s muzzle. The little dragon was whimpering like a kicked puppy, and fighting to get away.

“It’s a magnificent brute,” said Lady Ramkin, in what she probably thought was a whisper.

“I do wish you wouldn’t keep saying that,” said Vimes.

There was a scraping noise as the dragon dragged itself over the stones.