“I knew it wasn’t killed,” growled Vimes.’ “There were no bits. It was too neat. It was sent somewhere by some sort of magic, I bet. Look at it. It’s bloody impossible! It needs magic to keep it alive!”

“What do you mean?” said Lady Ramkin, not tearing her gaze from its armoured flanks.

What did he mean? What did he mean? He thought fast.

“It’s just not physically possible, that’s what I mean,” he said. “Nothing that heavy should be able to fly, or breathe fire like that. I told you.”

“But it looks real enough. I mean, you’d expect a magical creature to be, well, gauzy.”

“Oh, it’s real. It’s real all right,” said Ramkin bitterly. “But supposing it needs magic like we need, like we need . . . sunlight? Or food.”

“It’s a thaumivore, you mean?”

“I just think it eats magic, that’s all,” said Vimes, who had not had a classical education. “I mean, all these little swamp dragons, always on the point of extinction, suppose one day back in prehistoric times some of them found out how to use magic?”

‘ “There used to be a lot of natural magic around once,” said Lady Ramkin thoughtfully.

“There you are, then. After all, creatures use the air and the sea. I mean, if there’s a natural resource around, something’s going to use it, aren’t they? Then it wouldn’t matter about bad digestion and weight and wing size and so on, because the magic would take care of it. Wow!”

But you’d need a lot, he thought. He wasn’t certain how much magic you’d need to change the world enough to let tons of armoured carcass flit around the sky like a swallow, but he’d bet it was lots.

All those thefts. Someone’d been feeding the dragon.

He looked at the bulk of the Unseen University Library of magic books, the greatest accumulation of distilled magical power on the Discworld.

And now the dragon had learned how to feed itself.

He became terribly aware that Lady Ramkin had moved, and saw to his horror that she was striding towards the dragon, chin stuck out like an anvil.

“What the hell are you doing?” he whispered loudly.

“If it’s descended from the swamp dragons then I can probably control it,” she called back. “You have to look them in the eye and use a no-nonsense tone of voice. They can’t resist a stern human voice. They don’t have the willpower, you know. They’re just big softies.”

To his shame, Vimes realised that his legs were going to have nothing to do with any mad dash to drag her back.

His pride didn’t like that, but his body pointed out that it wasn’t his pride that stood a very reasonable chance of being thinly laminated to the nearest building. Through ears burning with embarrassment he heard her say: “Bad boy!”

The echoes of that stern injunction rang out across the plaza.

Oh gods, he thought, is that how you train a dragon? Point them at the melted patch on the floor and threaten to rub their nose in it?

He risked a peep over the horsetrough.

The dragon’s head was swinging around slowly, like a crane jib. It had some difficulty focusing on her, right below it. Vimes could see the great red eyes narrow as the creature tried to squint down the length of its own nose. It looked puzzled. He wasn’t surprised.

“Sit!” bellowed Lady Ramkin, in a tone so undisobeyable that even Vimes felt his legs involuntarily sag. “Good boy! I think I may have a lump of coke somewhere-“ She patted her pockets.

Eye contact. That was the important thing. She really, Vimes thought, shouldn’t have looked down even for a moment.

The dragon raised one talon in a leisurely fashion and pinned her to the ground.

As Vimes half-rose in horror Errol escaped from his grip and cleared the trough in one leap. He bounced across the plaza in a series of wing-whirring arcs, mouth gaping, emitting wheezing burps, trying to flame.

He was answered with a tongue of blue-white fire that melted a streak of bubbling rock several yards long but failed to strike the challenger. It was hard to pick him out of the air because, quite clearly, even Errol didn’t know where he was going to be, or what way up he was going to be when he got there. His only hope at this point lay in movement, and he vaulted and spun between the increasingly furious bursts of fire like a scared but determined random particle.

The great dragon reared up with the sound of a dozen anchor chains being thrown into a corner, and tried to bat the tormenter out of the air.

Vimes’s legs gave in at that point and decided that they might allow themselves to be heroic legs for a while. He scurried across the intervening space, sword at the ready for what good it might do, grabbed Lady Ramkin by an arm and a handful of bedraggled ballgown, and swung her on to his shoulder.

He got several yards before the essential bad judgement of this move dawned on him.

He went “Gngh”. His vertebrae and knees were trying to fuse into one lump. Purple spots flashed on and off in front of his eyes. On top of it all, something unfamiliar but apparently made of whalebone was poking sharply into the back of his neck.

He managed a few more steps by sheer momentum, knowing that when he stopped he was going to be utterly crushed. The Ramkins hadn’t bred for beauty, they’d bred for healthy solidity and big bones, and they’d got very good at it over the centuries.

A gout of livid dragonfire crackled into the flagstones a few feet away.

Afterwards he wondered if he’d only imagined leaping several inches into the air and covering the rest of the distance to the horsetrough at a respectable run. Perhaps, in extremis, everyone learned the kind of instant movement that was second nature to Nobby. Anyway, the horsetrough was behind him and Lady Ramkin was in his arms, or at least was pinning his arms to the ground. He managed to free them and tried to massage a bit of life back. What did you do next? She didn’t seem to be injured. He recalled something about loosening a person’s clothing, but in Lady Ramkin’s case that might be dangerous without special tools.

She solved the immediate problem by grabbing the edge of the trough and hauling herself upright.

“Right,” she said,”it’s the slipper for you-“ Her eyes focused on Vimes for the first time.

“What the hell’s going on-“ she began again, and then caught the scene over his shoulder.

“Oh sod,” she said. “Pardon my Klatchian.”

Errol was running out of energy. The stubby wings were indeed incapable of real flight, and he was remaining airborne solely by flapping madly, like a chicken. The great talons swished through the air. One of them caught one of the plaza’s fountains, and demolished it.

The next one swatted Errol neatly.

He shot over Vimes’s head in a straight rising line, hit a roof behind him, and slid down it.

“You’ve got to catch him!” shouted Lady Vimes. “You must! It’s vital!”

Vimes stared at her, and then dived forward as Errol’s pear-shaped body slithered over the edge of the roof and dropped. He was surprisingly heavy.

“Thank goodness,” said Lady Ramkin, struggling to her feet.”They explode so easily, you know. It could have been very dangerous.”

They remembered the other dragon. It wasn’t the exploding sort. It was the killing-people kind. They turned, slowly.

The creature loomed over them, sniffed and then, as if they were of no importance at all, turned away. It sprang ponderously into the air and, with one slow flap of its wings, began to scull leisurely away down the plaza and up and into the mists that were rolling over the city.

Vimes was currently more concerned with the smaller dragon in his hands. Its stomach was rumbling alarmingly. He wished he’d paid more attention to the book on dragons. Was a stomach noise like this a sign they were about to explode, or was the point you had to watch out for the point when the rumbling stopped?

“We’ve got to follow it!” said Lady Ramkin. “What happened to the carriage?”

Vimes waved a hand vaguely in the direction that, as far as he could tell, the horses had take in their panic.

Enrol sneezed a cloud of warm gas that smelled worse than something walled up in a cellar, pawed the air weakly, licked Vimes’s face with a tongue like a hot cheese-grater, struggled out of his arms and trotted away.

“ Where’s he off to?” boomed Lady Ramkin, emerging from the mists dragging the horses behind her. They didn’t want to come, their hooves were scraping up sparks, but they were fighting a losing battle.

“He’s still trying to challenge it!” said Vines. “You’d think he’d give in, wouldn’t you?”

“They fight like blazes,” said Lady Ramkin, as he climbed on to the coach. “It’s a matter of making your opponent explode, you see.”

“I thought, in Nature, the defeated animal just rolls on its back hi submission and that’s the end of it,” said Vimes, as they clattered after the disappearing swamp dragon.

“Wouldn’t work with dragons,” said Lady Ramkin. “Some daft creature rolls on its back, you disembowel it. That’s how they look at it. Almost human, really.”

. . .

The clouds were clustered thickly over Ankh-Morpork. Above them, the slow golden sunlight of the Disc-world unrolled.

The dragon sparkled in the dawn as it trod the air joyously, doing impossible turns and rolls for the sheer delight of it. Then it remembered the business of the day.

They’d had the presumption to summon it . . .

Below it, the rank wandered from side to side up the Street of Small Gods. Despite the thick fog it was beginning to get busy.

“What d’you call them things, like thin stairs?” said Sergeant Colon.

“Ladders,” said Carrot.

“Lot of ‘em about,” said Nobby. He mooched over to the nearest one, and kicked it.

“Oi!” A figure struggled down, half buried in a string of flags.

“What’s going on?” said Nobby.

The flag bearer looked him up and down.

“Who wants to know, tiddler?” he said.

“Excuse me, we do,” said Carrot, looming out of the fog like an iceberg. The man gave a sickly grin.

“Well, it’s the coronation, isn’t it,” he said. “Got to get the streets ready for the coronation. Got to have the flags up. Got to get the old bunting out, haven’t we?”

Nobby gave the dripping finery a jaundiced look. “Doesn’t look that old to me,” he said. “It looks new. What’re them fat saggy things on that shield?”

“Those are the royal hippos of Ankh,” said the man proudly. “Reminders of our noble heritage.”

“How long have we had a noble heritage, then?” said Nobby.

“Since yesterday, of course.”

“You can’t have a heritage in a day,” said Carrot. “It has to last a long time.”

“If we haven’t got one,” said Sergeant Colon, “I bet we’ll soon have had one. My wife left me a note about it. All these years, and she turns out to be a monarchist.” He kicked the pavement viciously. “Huh!” he said. “A man knocks his pipes out for thirty years to put a bit of meat on the table, but all she’s talking about is some boy who gets to be king for five minutes’ work. Know what was for my tea last night? Beef dripping sandwiches!”

This did not have the expected response from the two bachelors.

“Cor!” said Nobby.

“Real beef dripping?” said Carrot. “The kind with the little crunchy bits on top? And shiny blobs of fat?”

“Can’t remember when I last addressed the crust on a bowl of dripping,” mused Nobby, in a gastronomic heaven. “With just a bit of salt and pepper, you’ve got a meal fit for a k-“

“Don’t even say it,” warned Colon.

“The best bit is when you stick the knife in and crack the fat and all the browny gold stuff bubbles up,” said Carrot dreamily. “A moment like that is worth a ki-“

“Shutup! Shutup!” shouted Colon. “You’re just- what the hell was that?”

They felt the sudden downdraught, saw the mist above them roll into coils that broke against the house walls. A blast of colder air swept along the street, and was gone.

“It was like something gliding past, up there somewhere,” said the sergeant. He froze. “Here, you don’t think-?”

“We saw it killed, didn’t we?” said Nobby urgently.

“We saw it vanish, “ said Carrot.

They looked at one another, alone and damp in the mist-shrouded street. There could be anything up there. The imagination peopled the dank air with terrible apparitions. And what was worse was the knowledge that Nature might have done an even better job.

“Nah,” said Colon. “It was probably just some . . . some big wading bird. Or something.”

“Isn’t there anything we should do?” said Carrot.

“Yes,” said Nobby. “We should go away quickly. Remember Gaskin.”

“Maybe it’s another dragon,” said Carrot. “We should warn people and-“

“No,” said Sergeant Colon vehemently, “because, Ae, they wouldn’t believe us and, Bee, we’ve got a king now. ‘S his job, dragons.”

“S’right,” said Nobby. “He’d probably be really angry. Dragons are probably, you know, royal animals. Like deer. A man could probably have his tridlins plucked just for thinking about killing one, when there’s a king around.”[17]

“Makes you glad you’re common,” said Colon.

“Commoner,” corrected Nobby.

“That’s not a very civic attitude-“ Carrot began. He was interrupted by Errol.

The little dragon came trotting up the middle of the street, stumpy tail high, his eyes fixed on the clouds above him. He went right by the rank without giving them any attention at all.

“What’s up with him?” said Nobby.

A clatter behind them introduced the Ramkin coach.

“Men?” said Vimes hesitantly, peering through the fog.

“Definitely,” said Sergeant Colon.

“Did you see a dragon go past? Apart from Errol?”

“Well, er,” said the sergeant, looking at the other two. “Sort of, sir. Possibly. It might of been.”

“Then don’t stand there like a lot of boobies,” said Lady Ramkin. “Get in! Plenty of room inside!”

There was. When it was built, the coach had probably been the marvel of the day, all plush and gilt and tasselled hangings. Time, neglect and the ripping out of the seats to allow its frequent use to transport dragons to shows had taken their toll, but it still reeked of privilege, style and, of course, dragons.

“What do you think you’re doing?” said Colon, as it rattled off through the fog.

“Wavin’,” said Nobby, gesturing graciously to the billows around them.

“Disgusting, this sort of thing, really,” mused Sergeant Colon. “People goin’ around in coaches like this when there’s people with no roof to their heads.”

“It’s Lady Ramkin’s coach,” said Nobby. “She’s all right.”

“Well, yes, but what about her ancestors, eh? You don’t get big houses and carriages without grindin’ the faces of the poor a bit.”

“You’re just annoyed because your missus has been embroidering crowns on her undies,” said Nobby.

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” said Sergeant Colon indignantly. “I’ve always been very firm on the rights of man.”

“And dwarf,” said Carrot.

“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant uncertainly. “But all this business about kings and lords, it’s against basic human dignity. We’re all born equal. It makes me sick.”

“Never heard you talk like this before, Frederick,” said Nobby.

“It’s Sergeant Colon to you, Nobby.

“Sorry, Sergeant.”

The fog itself was shaping up to be a real Ankh-Morpork autumn gumbo.* Vimes squinted through it as the droplets buckled down to a good day’s work soaking him to the skin.

“I can just make him out,” he said. “Turn left here.”

“Any ideas where we are?” said Lady Ramkin.

“Business district somewhere,” said Vimes shortly. Errol’s progress was slowing a bit. He kept looking up and whining.

“Can’t see a damn thing above us in the fog,” he said. “I wonder if-“

The fog, as if in acknowledgement, lit up. Ahead of them it blossomed like a chrysanthemum and made a noise like “whoomph”.

“Oh, no,” moaned Vimes. “Not again!”

“Like a pea-souper, only much thicker, fishier, and with things in it you’d probably rather not know about.

. . .

“Are the Cups of Integrity well and truly suffused?” intoned Brother Watchtower.

“Aye, suffused full well.”

“The Waters of the World, are they Abjured?”

“Yea, abjured full mightily.”

“Have the Demons of Infinity been bound with many chains?”

“Damn,” said Brother Plasterer, “there’s always something.”

Brother Watchtower sagged. “Just once it would be nice if we could get the ancient and timeless rituals right, wouldn’t it. You’d better get on with it.”

“Wouldn’t it be quicker, Brother Watchtower, if I just did it twice next time?” said Brother Plasterer.

Brother Watchtower gave this some grudging consideration. It seemed reasonable.

“All right,” he said. “Now get back down there with the others. And you should call me Acting Supreme Grand Master, understand?”

This did not meet with what he considered to be a proper and dignified reception among the brethren.

“No-one said anything to us about you being Acting Supreme Grand Master,” muttered Brother Doorkeeper.

“Well, that’s all you know because I bloody well am because Supreme Grand Master asked me to open the Lodge on account of him being delayed with all this coronation work,” said Brother Watchtower haughtily. “If that doesn’t make me Acting Supreme Grand bloody Master I’d like to know what does, all right?”

“I don’t see why,” muttered Brother Doorkeeper. “You don’t have a grand title like that. You could just be called something like, well . . . Rituals Monitor.”

“Yeah,” said Brother Plasterer. “Don’t see why you should give yourself airs. You ain’t even been taught the ancient and mystic mysteries by monks, or anything.”

“We’ve been hanging around for hours, too,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “That’s not right. I thought we’d get rewarded-“

Brother Watchtower realised that he was losing control. He tried wheedling diplomacy.

“I’m sure Supreme Grand Master will be along directly,” he said. “Let’s not spoil it all now, eh? Lads? Arranging that fight with the dragon and everything, getting it all off right, that was something, wasn’t it? We’ve been through a lot, right? It’s worth waiting just a bit longer, okay?’

The circle of robed and cowled figures shuffled in grudging agreement.

“Okay.”

“Fair enough.”

“Yeah.”

certainly.

“Okay.”

“If you say so.”

It began to creep over Brother Watchtower that something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t quite put a name to it.

“Uh,” he said. “Brothers?”

They, too, shifted uneasily. Something in the room was setting their teeth on edge. There was an atmosphere.

“Brothers,” repeated Brother Watchtower, trying to reassert himself, “we are all here, aren’t we?”

There was a worried chorus of agreement.

“Of course we are.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Yes!”

yes.

“Yes.”

There it was again, a subtle wrongness about things that you couldn’t quite put your finger on because your finger was too scared. But Brother Watchtower’s troublesome thoughts were interrupted by a scrabbling sound on the roof. A few nubs of plaster dropped into the circle.

“Brothers?” repeated Brother Watchtower nervously.

Now there was one of those silent sounds, a long, buzzing silence of extreme concentration and just possibly the indrawing of breath into lungs the size of haystacks. The last rats of Brother Watchtower’s self-confidence fled the sinking ship of courage.

“Brother Doorkeeper, if you could just unbolt the dread portal-“ he quavered.

And then there was light.

There was no pain. There was no time.

Death strips away many things, especially when it arrives at a temperature hot enough to vaporise iron, and among them are your illusions. The immortal remains of Brother Watchtower watched the dragon flap away into the fog, and then looked down at the congealing puddle of stone, metal and miscellaneous trace elements that was all that remained of the secret headquarters. And of its occupants, he realised in the dispassionate way that is part of being dead. You go through your whole life and end up a smear swirling around like cream in a coffee cup. Whatever the gods’ games were, they played them in a damn mysterious way.

He looked up at the hooded figure beside him.

“We never intended this,” he said weakly. “Honestly. No offence. We just wanted what was due to us.”

A skeletal hand patted him on the shoulder, not unkindly.

And Death said, congratulations.

. . .

Apart from the Supreme Grand Master, the only Elucidated Brother to be away at the time of the dragon was Brother Fingers. He’d been sent out for some pizzas. Brother Fingers was always the one sent out for takeaway food. It was cheaper. He’d never bothered to master the art of paying for things.

When the guards rolled up just behind Errol, Brother Fingers was standing with a stack of cardboard boxes in his hands and his mouth open.

Where the dread portal should have been was a warm melted patch of assorted substances.

“Oh, my goodness,” said Lady Ramkin.

Vimes slid down from the coach and tapped Brother Fingers on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “did you by any chance see what-“

When Brother Fingers turned towards him his face was the face of a man who has hang-glided over the entrance to Hell. He kept opening and shutting his mouth but no words were coming out.

Vimes tried again. The sheer terror frozen in Brother Fingers’s expression was getting to him.

“If you would be so kind to accompany me to the Yard,” said Vimes, “I have reason to believe that you-“ He hesitated. He wasn’t entirely certain what it was that he had reason to believe. But the man was clearly guilty. You could tell just by looking at him. Not, perhaps, guilty of anything specific. Just guilty in general terms.

“Mmmmmuh,” said Brother Fingers.

Sergeant Colon gently lifted the lid of the top box.

“What do you make of it, Sergeant?” said Vimes, stepping back.

“Er. It looks like a Klatchian Hots with anchovies, sir,” said Sergeant Colon knowledgeably.

“I mean the man,” said Vimes wearily.

“Nnnnn,” said Brother Fingers.

Colon peered under the hood. “Oh, I know him,

sir,” he said. “Bengy ‘Lightfoot’ Boggis, sir. He’s a capo de monty in the Thieves’ Guild. I know him of old, sir. Sly little bugger. Used to work at the University.”

“What, as a wizard?” said Vimes.

“Odd job man, sir. Gardening and carpentry and that.”

“Oh. Did he?”

“Can’t we do something for the poor man?” said Lady Ramkin.

Nobby saluted smartly. “I could kick him in the bollocks for you if you like, m’lady.”

“Dddrrr,” said Brother Fingers, beginning to shake uncontrollably, while Lady Ramkin smiled the iron-hard blank smile of a high-born lady who is determined not to show that she has understood what has just been said to her.

“Put him in the coach, you two,” said Vimes. “If it’s all right with you, Lady Ramkin-“

“-Sybil-“ corrected Lady Ramkin. Vimes blushed, and plunged on-“it might be a good idea to get him indoors. Charge him with the theft of one book, to wit, The Summoning of Dragons. “

“Right you are, sir,” said Sergeant Colon. “The pizzas’re getting cold, too. You know how the cheese goes all manky when it gets cold.”

“And no kicking him, either,” Vimes warned. “Not even where it doesn’t show. Carrot, you come with me.”

“DDddrrraa,” Brother Fingers volunteered.

“And take Errol,” added Vimes. “He’s driving himself mad here. Game little devil, I’ll give him that.”

“Marvellous, when you come to think about it,” said Colon.

Errol was trotting up and down in front of the ravaged building, whining.

“Look at him,” said Vimes. “Can’t wait to get to grips.” His gaze found itself drawn, as though by wires, up to the rolling clouds of fog.

It’s in there somewhere, he thought.

“What we going to do now, sir?” said Carrot, as the carriage rattled off.

“Not nervous, are you?” said Vimes.

“No, sir.”

The way he said it jogged something in Vimes’s mind.

“No,” he said, “you’re not, are you? I suppose it’s being brought up by the dwarfs that did it. You’ve got no imagination.”

“I’m sure I try to do my best, sir,” said Carrot firmly.

“Still sending all your pay home to your mother?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re a good boy.”

“Yessir. So what are we going to do, Captain Vimes?” Carrot repeated.

Vimes looked around him. He walked a few aimless, exasperated steps. He spread his arms wide and then flopped them down by his sides.

“How should I know?” he said. “Warn people, I guess. We’d better get over to the Patrician’s palace. And then-“

There were footsteps in the fog. Vimes stiffened, put his finger to his lips and pulled Carrot into the shelter of a doorway.

A figure loomed out of the billows.

Another one of ‘em, thought Vimes. Well, there’s no law about wearing long black robes and deep cowls. There could be dozens of perfectly innocent reasons why this person is wearing long black robes and a deep cowl and standing in front of a melted-down house at dawn.

Perhaps I should ask him to name just one.

He stepped out.

“Excuse me, sir-“ he began.

The cowl swung around. There was a hiss of indrawn breath.

“I just wonder if you would mind-after him, lance-constable! “

The figure had a good start. It scuttled along the street and had reached the corner before Vimes was halfway there. He skidded around it in time to see a shape vanish down an alley.

Vimes realised he was running alone. He panted to a halt and looked back just in time to see Carrot jog gently around the corner.

“What’s wrong?” he wheezed.

“Sergeant Colon said I wasn’t to run,” said Carrot.

Vimes looked at him vaguely. Then slow comprehension dawned.

“Oh,” he said. “I, er, see. I don’t think he meant in every circumstance, lad.” He stared back into the fog. “Not that we had much of a chance in this fog and these streets.”

“Might have been just an innocent bystander, sir,” said Carrot.

“What, in Ankh-Morpork?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We should have grabbed him, then, just for the rarity value,” said Vimes.

He patted Carrot on the shoulder. “Come on. We’d better get along to the Patrician’s palace.”

“The King’s palace,” corrected Carrot.

“What?” said Vimes, his train of thought temporarily shunted.

“It’s the King’s palace now,” said Carrot. Vimes squinted sideways at him.

He gave a short, mirthless laugh.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he conceded. “Our dragon-killing king. Well done that man.” He sighed. “They’re not going to like this.”

. . .

They didn’t. None of them did.

The first problem was the palace guard.

Vimes had never liked them. They’d never liked him. Okay, so maybe the rank were only one step away from petty scofflaws, but in Vimes’s professional opinion the palace guard these days were only one step away from being the worst criminal scum the city had ever produced. A step further down. They’d have to reform a bit before they could even be considered for inclusion in the Ten Most Unwanted list.

They were rough. They were tough. They weren’t the sweepings of the gutter, they were what you still found sticking to the gutter when the gutter sweepers had given up in exhaustion. They had been extremely well-paid by the Patrician, and presumably were extremely well-paid by someone else now, because when Vimes walked up to the gates a couple of them stopped lounging against the walls and straightened up while still maintaining just the right amount of psychological slouch to cause maximum offense.

“Captain Vimes,” said Vimes, staring straight ahead. “To see the king. It’s of the utmost importance.”

“Yeah? Well, it’d have to be,” said a guard. “Captain Slimes, was it?”

“Vimes,” said Vimes evenly. “With a Vee.”

One of the guards nodded to his companion.

“Vimes,” he said. “With a Vee.”

“Fancy,” said the other guard.

“It’s most urgent,” said Vimes, maintaining a wooden expression. He tried to move forward.

The first guard sidestepped neatly and pushed him sharply in the chest.

“No-one is going nowhere,” he said. “Orders of the king, see? So you can push off back to your pit, Captain Vimes with a Vee.”

It wasn’t the words which made up Vimes’s mind. It was the way the other man sniggered.

“Stand aside,” he said.

The guard leaned down. “Who’s going to make me,” he rapped on Vimes’s helmet, “copper?”

There are times when it is a veritable pleasure to drop the bomb right away.

“Lance-constable Carrot, I want you to charge these men,” said Vimes.

Carrot saluted. “Very good, sir,” he said, and turned and trotted smartly back the way they had come.

“Hey!” shouted Vimes, as the boy disappeared around a corner.

“That’s what I like to see,” said the first guard, leaning on his speak. “That’s a young man with initiative, that young man. A bright lad. He doesn’t want to stop along here and have his ears twisted off. That’s a young man who’s going to go a long way, if he’s got any sense.”

“Very sensible,” said the other guard.

He leaned the spear against the wall.

“You Watch men make me want to throw up,” he said conversationally. “Poncing around all the time, never doing a proper job of work. Throwing your weight about as if you counted for something. So me and Clarence are going to show you what real guarding is all about, isn’t that right?”

I could just about manage one of them, Vimes thought as he took a few steps backward. If he was facing the other way, at least.

Clarence propped his spear against the gateway and spat on his hands.

There was a long, terrifying ululation. Vimes was amazed to realise it wasn’t coming from him.

Carrot appeared around the corner at a dead run. He had a felling axe in either hand.

His huge leather sandals flapped on the cobblestones as he bounded closer, accelerating all the time. And all the time there was this cry, deedahdeedahdeedah, like something caught in a trap at the bottom of a two-tone echo canyon.

The two palace guards stood rigid with astonishment.

“I should duck, if I was you,” said Vimes from near ground level.

The two axes left Carrot’s hands and whirred through the air making a noise like a brace of partridges. One of them hit the palace gate, burying half the head in the woodwork. The other one hit the shaft of the first one, and split it. Then Carrot arrived.

Vimes went and sat down on a nearby bench for a while, and rolled himself a cigarette.

Eventually he said, “I think that’s about enough, constable. I think they’d like to come quietly now.”

“Yes, sir. What are they accused of, sir?” said Carrot, holding one limp body in either hand.

“Assaulting an officer of the Watch in the execution of his duty and . . . oh, yes. Resisting arrest.”

“Under Section (vii) of the Public Order Act of 1457?” said Carrot.

“Yes,” said Vimes solemnly. “Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

“But they didn’t resist very much, sir,” Carrot pointed out.

“Well, attempting to resist arrest. I should just leave them over by the wall until we come back. I don’t expect they’ll want to go anywhere.”

“Right you are, sir.”

“Don’t hurt them, mind,” said Vimes. “You mustn’t hurt prisoners.”

“That’s right, sir,” said Carrot, conscientiously. “Prisoners once Charged have Rights, sir. It says so in the Dignity of Man (Civic Rights) Act of 1341. I keep telling Corporal Nobbs. They have Rights, I tell him. This means you do not Put the Boot in.”

“Very well put, constable.”

Carrot looked down. “You have the right to remain silent,” he said. “You have the right not to injure yourself falling down the steps on the way to the cells. You have the right not to jump out of high windows. You do not have to say anything, you see, but any thing you do say, well, I have to take it down and it might be used in evidence.” He pulled out his notebook and licked his pencil. He leaned down further.

“Pardon?” he said. He looked up at Vimes.

“How do you spell ‘groan’, sir?” he said.

“G-R-O-N-E, I think.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Oh, and constable?’

“Yes, sir?”

“Why the axes?”

“They were armed, sir. I got them from the blacksmith in Market Street, sir. I said you’d be along later to pay for them.”

“And the cry?” said Vimes weakly.

“Dwarfish war yodel, sir,” said Carrot proudly.

“It’s a good cry,” said Vimes, picking his words with care. “But I’d be grateful if you’d warn me first another time, all right?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“In writing, I think.”

. . .

The Librarian swung on. It was slow progress, because there were things he wasn’t keen on meeting. Creatures evolve to fill every niche in the environment, and some of those in the dusty immensity of L-space were best avoided. They were much more unusual than ordinary unusual creatures.

Usually he could forewarn himself by keeping a careful eye on the kickstool crabs that grazed harmlessly on the dust. When they were spooked, it was time to hide. Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small slim volumes of literary criticism. And there were other things, things which he hurried away from and tried not to look hard at . . .

And you had to avoid cliches at all costs.

He finished the last of his peanuts atop a stepladder, which was browsing mindlessly off the high shelves.

The territory definitely had a familiar feel, or at least he got the feeling that it would eventually be familiar. Time had a different meaning in L-space.

There were shelves whose outline he felt he knew. The book titles, while still unreadable, held a tantalising hint of legibility. Even the musty air had a smell he thought he recognised.

He shambled quickly along a side passage, turned the corner and, with only the slightest twinge of disorientation, shuffled into that set of dimensions that people, because they don’t know any better, think of as normal.

He just felt extremely hot and his fur stood straight out from his body as temporal energy gradually discharged.

He was in the dark.

He extended one arm and explored the spines of the books by his side. Ah. Now he knew where he was.

He was home.

He was home a week ago.

It was essential that he didn’t leave footprints. But that wasn’t a problem. He shinned up the side of the nearest bookcase and, under the starlight of the dome, hurried onwards.

. . .

Lupine Wonse glared up, red-eyed, from the heap of paperwork on his desk. No-one in the city knew anything about coronations. He’d had to make it up as he went along. There should be plenty of things to wave, he knew that.

“Yes?” he said, abruptly.

“Er, there’s a Captain Vimes to see you,” said the flunkey.

“Vimes of the Watch?”

“Yes, sir. Says it’s of the upmost importance.”

Wonse looked down his list of other things that were also of the utmost importance. Crowning the king, for one thing. The high priests of fifty-three religions were all claiming the honour. It was going to be a scrum. And then there were the crown jewels.

Or rather, there weren’t the crown jewels. Somewhere in the preceding generations the crown jewels had disappeared. A jeweller in the Street of Cunning Artificers was doing the best he could in the time with gilt and glass.

Vimes could wait.

“Tell him to come back another day,” said Wonse.

“Good of you to see us,” said Vimes, appearing in the doorway.

Wonse glared at him.

“Since you’re here . . .” he said. Vimes dropped his helmet on Wonse’s desk in what the secretary thought was an offensive manner, and sat down.

“Take a seat,” said Wonse.

“Have you had breakfast yet?” said Vimes.

“Now really-“ Wonse began.

“Don’t worry,” said Vimes cheerfully. “Constable Carrot will go and see what’s hi the kitchens. This chap will show him the way.”

When they had gone Wonse leaned across the drifts of paperwork.

“There had better,” he said, “be a very good reason for-“

“The dragon is back,” said Vimes.

Wonse stared at him for a while.

Vimes stared back.

Wonse’s senses came back from whatever corners they’d bounced into.

“You’ve been drinking, haven’t you,” he said.

“No. The dragon is back. “

“Now, look-“ Wonse began.

“I saw it,” said Vimes flatly.

“A dragon? You’re sure?”

Vimes leaned across the desk. “No! I could be bloody mistaken!” he shouted. “It may have been something else with sodding great big claws, huge leathery wings and hot, fiery breath! There must be masses of things like that!”

“But we all saw it killed!” said Wonse.

“I don’t know what we saw!” said Vimes, “But I know what I saw!”

He leaned back, shaking. He was suddenly feeling extremely tired.

“Anyway,” he said, in a more normal voice, “it’s flamed a house in Bitwash Street. Just like the other ones.”

“Any of them get out?”

Vimes put his head in his hands. He wondered how long it was since he’d last had any sleep, proper sleep, the sort with sheets. Or food, come to that. Was it last night, or the night before? Had he ever, come to think of it, ever slept at all in all his life? It didn’t seem like it. The arms of Morpheus had rolled up their sleeves and were giving the back of his brain a right pummelling, but bits were fighting back. Any of them get. . . ?

“Any of who?” he said.

“The people in the house, of course,” said Wonse. “I assume there were people in it. At night, I mean.”

“Oh? Oh. Yes. It wasn’t like a normal house. I think it was some sort of secret society thing,” Vimes managed. Something was clicking in his mind, but he was too tired to examine it.

“Magic, you mean?”

“Dunno,” said Vimes. “Could be. Guys in robes.”

He’s going to tell me I’ve been overdoing it, he said. He’ll be right, too.

“Look,” said Wonse, kindly. “People who mess around with magic and don’t know how to control it, well, they can blow themselves up and-“

“Blow themselves up?”

“And you’ve had a busy few days,” said Wonse soothingly. “If I’d been knocked down and almost burned alive by a dragon I expect I’d be seeing them all the time.”

Vimes stared at him with his mouth open. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Whatever stretched and knotted elastic had been driving him along these last few days had gone entirely limp.

“You don’t think you’ve been overdoing it, do you?” said Wonse.

Ah, thought Vimes. Jolly good.

He slumped forward.

. . .

The Librarian leaned cautiously over the top of the bookcase and unfolded an arm into the darkness.

There it was.

His thick fingernails grasped the spine of the book, pulled it gently from its shelf and hoisted it up. He raised the lantern carefully.

No doubt about it. The Summoning of Dragons. Single copy, first edition, slightly foxed and extremely dragoned.

He set the lamp down beside him, and began to read the first page.

. . .

“Mmm?” said Vimes, waking up.

“Brung you a nice cup of tea, Cap’n,” said Sergeant Colon. “And a figgin.’

Vimes looked at him blankly.

“You’ve been asleep,” said Sergeant Colon helpfully. “You was spark out when Carrot brought you back.”

Vimes looked around at the now-familiar surroundings of the Yard. “Oh,” he said.

“Me and Nobby have been doing some detector-ing,” said Colon. “You know that house that got melted? Well, no-one lives there. It’s just rooms that get hired out. So we found out who hires them. There’s a caretaker who goes along every night to put the chairs away and lock up. He wasn’t half creating about it being burned down. You know what caretakers are like.”

He stood back, waiting for the applause.

“Well done,” said Vimes dutifully, dunking the figgin into the tea.

“There’s three societies use it,” said Colon. He extracted his notebook. “To wit, viz, The Ankh-Morpork Fine Art Appreciation Society, hem hem, the Morpork Folk-Dance and Song Club, and the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night.”

“Why hem hem?” said Vimes.

“Well, you know. Fine Art. It’s just men paintin’ pictures of young wimmin in the nudd. The altogether,” explained Colon the connoisseur. “The caretaker told me. Some of them don’t even have any paint on their brushes, you know. Shameful.”

There must be a million stories in the naked city, thought Vimes. So why do I always have to listen to ones like these?

“When do they meet?” he said.

“Mondays, 7.30, admission ten pence,” said Colon, promptly. “As for the folk-dance people-well, no problem there. You know you always wondered what Corporal Nobbs does on his evenings off?”

Colon’s face split into a watermelon grin.

“No!” said Vimes incredulously. “Not Nobby?”

“Yep!” said Colon, delighted at the result.

“What, jumping about with bells on and waving his hanky in the air?”

“He says it is important to preserve old folkways,” said Colon.

“Nobby? Mr Steel-toecaps-in-the-groin, I-was-just-checking-the-doorhandle-and-it-opened-all-by-itself ?”

“Yeah! Funny old world, ain’t it? He was very bashful about it.”

“Good grief,” said Vimes.

“It just goes to show, you never can tell,” said Colon. “Anyway, the caretaker said the Elucidated Brethren always leave the place in a mess. Scuffed chalk marks on the floor, he said. And they never put the chairs back properly or wash out the tea urn. They’ve been meeting a lot lately, he said. The nuddy wimmin painters had to meet somewhere else last week.”

“What did you do with our suspect?” said Vimes.

“Him? Oh, he done a runner, Captain,” said the sergeant, looking embarrassed.

“Why? He didn’t look in any shape to run anywhere.”

“Well, when we got back here, we sat him down by the fire and wrapped him up because he kept on shivering,” said Sergeant Colon, as Vimes buckled his armour on.

“I hope you didn’t eat his pizzas.”

“Errol et ‘em. It’s the cheese, see, it goes all-“

“Goon.”

“Well,” said Colon awkwardly, “he kept on shivering, sort of thing, and groaning on about dragons and that. We felt sorry for him, to tell the truth. And then he jumps up and runs out of the door for no reason at all.”

Vimes glanced at the sergeant’s big, open, dishonest face.

“No reason?” he prompted.

“Well, we decided to have a bite, so I sent Nobby out to the baker’s, see, and, well, we fought the prisoner ought to have something to eat . . .”

“Yes?” said Vimes encouragingly.

“Well, when Nobby asked him if he wanted his figgin toasted, he just give a scream and ran off.”

“Just that?” said Vimes. “You didn’t threaten him in any way?”

“Straight up, Captain. Bit of a mystery, if you ask me. He kept going on about someone called Supreme Grand Master.”

“Hmm.” Vimes glanced out of the window. Grey fog lagged the world with dim light. “What time is it?” he said.

“Five of the clock, sir.”

“Right. Well, before it gets dark-“

Colon gave a cough. “In the morning, sir. This is tomorrow, sir.”

“You let me sleep all day?”

“Didn’t have the heart to wake you up, sir. No dragon activity, if that’s what you’re thinking. Dead quiet all round, in fact.”

Vimes glared at him and threw the window open.

The fog rolled in, in a slow, yellow-edged waterfall.

“We reckon it must of flown away,” said Colon’s voice, behind him.

Vimes stared up into the heavy, rolling clouds.

“Hope it clears up for the coronation,” Colon went on, in a worried voice. “You all right, sir?”

It hasn’t flown away, Vimes thought. Why should it fly away? We can’t hurt it, and it’s got everything it wants right here. It’s up there somewhere.

“You all right, sir?” Colon repeated.

It’s got to be up high somewhere, in the fog. There’s all kinds of towers and things.

“What time’s the coronation, Sergeant?” he said.

“Noon, sir. And Mr Wonse has sent a message about how you’re to be in your best armour among all the civic leaders, sir.”

“Oh, has he?”

“And Sergeant Hummock and the day squad will be lining the route, sir.”

“What with?” said Vimes vaguely, watching the skies.

“Sorry, sir?”

Vimes squinted upwards to get a better view of the roof. “Hmm?” he said.

“I said they’ll be lining the route, sir,” said Sergeant Colon.

“It’s up there, Sergeant,” said Vimes. “I can practically smell it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Colon obediently.

“It’s deciding what to do next.”

“Yes, sir?”

“They’re not unintelligent, you know. They just don’t think like us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So be damned to any lining of the route. I want you three up on roofs, understand?”

“Yes, si-what?”

“Up on the roofs. Up high. When it makes its move, I want us to be the first to know.”

Colon tried to indicate by his expression that he didn’t.

“Do you think that’s a good idea, sir?” he ventured.

Vimes gave him a blank look. “Yes, Sergeant, I do. It was one of mine,” he said coldly. “Now go and see toil.”

When he was left to himself Vimes washed and shaved in cold water, and then rummaged in his campaign chest until he unearthed his ceremonial breastplate and red cloak. Well, the cloak had been red once, and still was, here and there, although most of it resembled a small net used very successfully for catching moths. There was also a helmet, defiantly without plumes, from which the molecule-thick gold leaf had long ago peeled.

He’d started saving up for a new cloak, once. Whatever had happened to the money?

There was no-one in the guardroom. Errol lay in the wreckage of the fourth fruit box Nobby had scrounged for him. The rest had all been eaten, or had dissolved.

In the warm silence the everlasting rumbling of his stomach sounded especially loud. Occasionally he whimpered.

“What’s up with you, boy?” he said.

The door creaked open. Carrot came in, saw Vines hunkered down by the ravaged box, and saluted.

“We’re a bit worried about him, Captain,” he volunteered. “He hasn’t eaten his coal. Just lies there twitching and whining all the time. You don’t think something’s wrong with him, do you?”

“Possibly,” said Vimes. “But having something wrong with them is quite normal for a dragon. They always get over it. One way or another.”

Errol gave him a mournful look and closed his eyes again. Vimes pulled his scrap of blanket over him.

There was a squeak. He fished around beside the dragon’s shivering body, pulled out a small rubber hippo, stared at it in surprise and then gave it one or two experimental squeezes.

“I thought it would be something for him to play with,” said Carrot, slightly shamefaced.

“You bought him a little toy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What a kind thought.”

Vimes hoped Carrot hadn’t noticed the fluffy ball tucked into the back of the box. It had been quite expensive.

He left the two of them and stepped into the outside world.

There was even more bunting now. People were beginning to line the main streets, even though there were hours to wait. It was still very depressing.

He felt an appetite for once, one that it’d take more than a drink or two to satisfy. He strolled along for breakfast at Harga’s House of Ribs, the habit of years, and got another unpleasant surprise. Normally the only decoration in there was on Sham Harga’s vest and the food was good solid stuff for a cold morning, all calories and fat and protein and maybe a vitamin crying softly because it was all alone. Now laboriously-made paper streamers criss-crossed the room and he was confronted with a crayonned menu in which the words “Coronasion” and “Royall” figured somewhere on every crooked line.

Vimes pointed wearily at the top of the menu.

“What’s this?” he said.

Harga peered at it. They were alone in the grease-walled cafe.

“It says ‘Bye Royarl Appointmente’, Captain,” he said proudly.

“What’s it mean?”

Harga scratched his head with a ladle. “What it means is,” he said, “if the king comes in here, he’ll like it.”

“Have you got anything that isn’t too aristocratic for me to eat, then?” said Vimes sourly, and settled for a slice of plebeian fried bread and a proletarian steak cooked so rare you could still hear it bray. Vimes ate it at the counter.

A vague scraping noise disturbed his thoughts. “What’re you doing?” he said.

Harga looked up guiltily from his work behind the counter.

“Nothing, Cap’n,” he said. He tried to hide the evidence behind him when Vimes glared over the knife-chewed woodwork.

“Come on, Sham. You can show me.”

Harga’s beefy hands came reluctantly into view.

“I was only scraping the old fat out of the pan,” he mumbled.

“I see. And how long have we known each other, Sham?” said Vimes, with terrible kindness.

“Years, Cap’n,” said Harga. “You bin coming in here nearly every day, reg’lar. One of my best customers.”

Vimes leaned over the counter until his nose was level with the squashy pink thing in the middle of Har-ga’s face.

“And in all that time, have you ever changed the fat?” he demanded.

Harga tried to back away. “Well-“

“It’s been like a friend to me, that old fat,” said Vimes. “There’s little black bits in there I’ve grown to know and love. It’s a meal in itself. And you’ve cleaned out the coffee jug, haven’t you. I can tell. This is love-in-a-canoe coffee if ever I tasted it. The other stuff had flavour. “

“Well, I thought it was time-“

“Why?”

Harga let the pan fall from his pudgy fingers. “Well, I thought, if the king should happen to come in-“

“But, Cap’n-“

Vimes’s accusing finger buried itself up to the second joint in Harga ‘s expansive vest.

“You don’t even know the wretched fellow’s name!” he shouted.

Harga rallied. “I do, Cap’n,” he stuttered. “Course I do. Seen it on the decorations and everything. He’s called Rex Vivat.”

Very gently, shaking his head in despair, crying in his heart for the essential servility of mankind, Vimes let him go.

. . .

In another time and place, the Librarian finished reading. He’d reached the end of the text. Not the end of the book-there was plenty more book. It had been scorched beyond the point of legibility, though.

Not that the last few unburned pages were very easy to read. The author’s hand had been shaking, he’d been writing fast, and he’d blotted a lot. But the Librarian had wrestled with many a terrifying text in some of the worst books ever bound, words that tried to read you as you read them, words that writhed on the page. At least these weren’t words like that. These were just the words of a man frightened for his life. A man writing a dreadful warning.

It was a page a little back from the burned section that drew the Librarian’s eye. He sat and stared at it for some time.

Then he stared at the darkness.

It was his darkness. He was asleep out there somewhere. Somewhere out there a thief was heading for this place, to steal this book. And then someone would read this book, read these words, and do it anyway.

His hands itched.

All he had to do was hide the book, or drop on to the thief’s head and unscrew it by the ears.

He stared into the darkness again . . .

But that would be interfering with the course of history. Horrible things could happen. The Librarian knew all about this sort of thing, it was part of what you had to know before you were allowed into L-space. He’d seen pictures in ancient books. Time could bifurcate, like a pair of trousers. You could end up in the wrong leg, living a life that was actually happening in the other leg, talking to people who weren’t in your leg, walking into walls that weren’t there any more. Life could be horrible in the wrong trouser of Time.

Besides, it was against Library rules.[18] The assembled Librarians of Time and Space would certainly have something to say about it if he started to tinker with causality.

He closed the book carefully and tucked it back into the shelf. Then he swung gently from bookcase to bookcase until he reached the doorway. For a moment he stopped and looked down at his own sleeping body. Perhaps he wondered, briefly, whether to wake himself up, have a little chat, tell himself that he had friends and not to worry. If so, he must have decided against it. You could get yourself into a lot of trouble that way.

Instead he slipped out of the door, and lurked in the shadows, and followed the hooded thief when it came out clutching the book, and waited near the dread portal in the rain until the Elucidated Brethren had met and, when the last one left, followed him to his home, and murmured to himself in anthropoid surprise . . .

And then ran back to his Library and the treacherous pathways of L-space.

. . .

By mid-morning the streets were packed, Vimes had docked Nobby a day’s salary for waving a flag, and an air of barbed gloom settled over the Yard, like a big black cloud with occasional flashes of lightning in it.

“ ‘Get up in a high place’, “ muttered Nobby. “That’s all very well to say.”

“I was looking forward to lining the streets,” said Colon. “I’d have got a good view.”

“You were going on about privilege and the rights of man the other night,” said Nobby accusingly.

“Yes, well, one of the privileges and rights of this man is getting a good view,” said the sergeant. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“I’ve never seen the captain in such a filthy temper,” said Nobby. “I liked it better when he was on the drink. I reckon he’s-“

“You know, I think Errol is really ill,” said Carrot.

They turned towards the fruit basket.

“He’s very hot. And his skin looks all shiny.”

“What’s the right temperature for a dragon?” said Colon.

“Yeah. How do you take it?” said Nobby.

“I think we ought to ask Lady Ramkin to have a look at him,” said Carrot. “She knows about these things.”

“No, she’ll be getting ready for the coronation. We shouldn’t go disturbing her,” said Colon. He stretched out his hand to Errol’s quivering flanks. “I used to have a dog that-arrgh! That’s not hot, that’s boiling!”

“I’ve offered him lots of water and he just won’t touch it. What are you doing with that kettle, Nobby?”

Nobby looked innocent. “Well, I thought we might as well make a cup of tea before we go out. It’s a shame to waste-“

“Take it off him!”

. . .

Noon came. The fog didn’t lift but it did thin a bit, to allow a pale yellow haze where the sun should have been.

Although the passage of years had turned the post of Captain of the Watch into something rather shabby, it still meant that Vimes was entitled to a seat at official occasions. The pecking order had moved it, though, so that now he was in the lowest tier on the rickety bleachers between the Master of the Fellowship of Beggars and the head of the Teachers’ Guild. He didn’t mind that. Anything was better than the top row, among the Assassins, Thieves, Merchants and all the other things that had floated to the top of society. He never knew what to talk about. Anyway, the teacher was restful company since he didn’t do much but clench and unclench his hands occasionally, and whimper.

“Something wrong with your neck, Captain?” said the chief beggar politely, as they waited for the coaches.

“What?” said Vimes distractedly.

“You keep on staring upwards,” said the beggar.

“Hmm? Oh. No. Nothing wrong,” said Vimes.

The beggar wrapped his velvet cloak around him.

“You couldn’t by any chance spare-“ he paused, calculating a sum in accordance with his station- “about three hundred dollars for a twelve-course civic banquet, could you?”

“No.”

“Fair enough. Fair enough,” said the chief beggar amiably. He sighed. It wasn’t a rewarding job, being chief beggar. It was the differentials that did for you. Low-grade beggars made a reasonable enough living on pennies, but people tended to look the other way when you asked them for a sixteen-bedroom mansion for the night.

Vimes resumed his study of the sky.

Up on the dais the High Priest of Blind Io, who last night by dint of elaborate ecumenical argument and eventually by a club with nails in it had won the right to crown the king, fussed over his preparations. By the small portable sacrificial altar a tethered billy goat was peacefully chewing the cud and possibly thinking, in Goat: What a lucky billy goat I am, to be given such a good view of the proceedings. This is going to be something to tell the kids.

Vimes scanned the diffused outlines of the nearest buildings.

A distant cheering suggested that the ceremonial procession was on its way.

There was a scuffle of activity around the dais as Lupine Wonse chivvied a scramble of servants who rolled a purple carpet down the steps.

Across the square, amongst the ranks of Ankh-Morpork’s faded aristocracy, Lady Ramkin’s face tilted upwards.

Around the throne, which had been hastily created out of wood and gold foil, a number of lesser priests, some of them with slight head wounds, shuffled into position.

Vimes shifted in his seat, aware of the sound of his own heartbeat, and glared at the haze over the river.

. . . and saw the wings.

. . .

Dear Mother and Father [wrote Carrot, in between staring dutifully into the fog] Well, the town is On Fate for the coronation, which is more complicated than at home, and now I am on Day duty as well. This is a shame because, I was going to watch the Coronation with Reet, but it does not do to complain. I must go now because we are expecting a dragon any minute although it does not exist really. Your loving son, Carrot. PS. Have you seen anything of Minty lately?

. . .

“You idiot!”

“Sorry,” said Vimes. “Sorry.”

People were climbing back into their seats, many of them giving him furious looks. Wonse was white with fury.

“How could you have been so stupid? “ he raged.

Vimes stared at his own fingers.

“I thought I saw-“ he began.

“It was a raven! You know what ravens are? There must be hundreds of them in the city!”

“In the fog, you see, the size wasn’t easy to-“ Vimes mumbled.

“And poor Master Greetling, you ought to have known what loud noises do to him!” The head of the Teachers’ Guild had to be led away by some kind people.

“Shouting out like that!” Wonse went on.

“Look, I said I’m sorry! It was an honest mistake!”

“I’ve had to hold up the procession and everything!”

Vimes said nothing. He could feel hundreds of amused or unsympathetic eyes on him.

“Well,” he muttered, “I’d better be getting back to the Yard-“

Wonse’s eyes narrowed. “No,” he snapped. “But you can go home, if you like. Or anywhere your fancies take you. Give me your badge.”

“Huh?”

Wonse held out his hand.

“Your badge,” he repeated.

“My badge?”

“That’s what I said. I want to keep you out of trouble.”

Vimes looked at him in astonishment. “But it’s my badge!”

“And you’re going to give it to me,” said Wonse grimly. “By order of the king.”

“What d’you mean? He doesn’t even know!” Vimes heard the wailing in his own voice.

Wonse scowled. “But he will,” he said. “And I don’t expect he’ll even bother to appoint a successor.”

Vimes slowly undipped the verdigrised disc of copper, weighed it in his hand, and then tossed it to Wonse without a word.

For a moment he considered pleading, but something rebelled. He turned, and stalked off through the crowd.

So that was it.

As simple as that. After half a lifetime of service. No more City Watch. Huh. Vimes kicked at the pavement. It’d be some sort of Royal Guard now.

With plumes in their damn helmets.

Well, he’d had enough. It wasn’t a proper life anyway, in the Watch. You didn’t meet people in the best of circumstances. There must be hundreds of other things he could do, and if he thought for long enough he could probably remember what some of them were.

Pseudopolis Yard was off the route of the procession, and as he stumbled into the Watch House he could hear the distant cheering beyond the rooftops. Across the city the temple gongs were being sounded.

Now they are ringing the gongs, thought Vimes, but soon they will-they will-they will not be ringing the gongs. Not much of an aphorism, he thought, but he could work on it. He had the time, now.

Vimes noticed the mess.

Errol had started eating again. He’d eaten most of the table, the grate, the coal scuttle, several lamps and the squeaky rubber hippo. Now he lay in his box again, skin twitching, whimpering in his sleep.

“A right mess you’ve made,” said Vimes enigmatically. Still, at least he wouldn’t have to tidy it up.

He opened his desk drawer.

Someone had eaten into that, too. All that was left was a few shards of glass.

. . .

Sergeant Colon hauled himself on to the parapet around the Temple of Small Gods. He was too old for this sort of thing. He’d joined for the bell ringing, not sitting around on high places waiting for dragons to find him.

He got his breath back, and peered through the fog.

“Anyone human still up here?” he whispered.

Carrot’s voice sounded dead and featureless in the dull air.

“Here I am, Sergeant,” he said.

“I was just checking if you were still here,” said Colon.

“I’m still here, Sergeant,” said Carrot, obediently.

Colon joined him.

“Just checking you were not et,” he said, trying to grin.

“I haven’t been et,” said Carrot.

“Oh,” said Colon. “Good, then.” He tapped his fingers on the damp stonework, feeling he ought to make his position absolutely clear.

“Just checking,” he repeated. “Part of my duty, see. Going around, sort of thing. It’s not that I’m frightened of being up on the roofs by myself, you understand. Thick up here, isn’t it.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Everything all okay?” Nobby’s muffled voice sidled its way through the thick air, quickly followed by its owner.

“Yes, Corporal,” said Carrot.

“What you doing up here?” Colon demanded.

“I was just coming up to check Lance-constable Carrot was all right,” said Nobby innocently. “What were you doing, Sergeant?”

“We’re all all right,” said Carrot, beaming. “That’s good, isn’t it.”

The two NCOs shifted uneasily and avoided looking at one another. It seemed like a long way back to their posts, across the damp, cloudy and, above all, exposed rooftops.

Colon made an executive decision.

“Sod this,” he said, and found a piece of fallen statuary to sit on. Nobby leaned on the parapet and winkled a damp dog-end from the unspeakable ashtray behind his ear.

“Heard the procession go by,” he observed. Colon filled his pipe, and struck a match on the stone beside him.

“If that dragon’s alive,” he said, blowing out a plume of smoke and turning a small patch of fog into smog, “then it’ll have got the hell away from here, I’m telling you. Not the right sort of place for dragons, a city,” he added, in the tones of someone doing a great job of convincing himself. “It’ll have gone off to somewhere where there’s high places and plenty to eat, you mark my words.”

“Somewhere like the city, you mean?” said Carrot.

“Shut up,” said the other two in unison.

“Chuck us the matches, Sergeant,” said Nobby.

Colon tossed the bundle of evil yellow-headed lucifers across the leads. Nobby struck one, which was immediately blown out. Shreds of fog drifted past him.

“Wind’s getting up,” he observed.

“Good. Can’t stand this fog,” said Colon. “What was I saying?”

“You were saying the dragon’ll be miles away,” prompted Nobby.

“Oh. Right. Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? I mean, I wouldn’t hang around here if I could fly away. If I could fly, I wouldn’t be sitting on a roof on some manky old statue. If I could fly, I’d-“

“What statue?” said Nobby, cigarette halfway to his mouth.

“This one,” said Colon, thumping the stone. “And don’t try to give me the willies, Nobby. You know there’s hundreds of mouldy old statues up on Small Gods.”

“No I don’t,” said Nobby. “What I do know is, they were all taken down last month when they re-leaded the roof. There’s just the roof and the dome and that’s it. You have to take notice of little things like that,” he added, “when you’re detectoring.”

In the damp silence that followed Sergeant Colon looked down at the stone he was sitting on. It had a taper, and a scaly pattern, and a sort of indefinable tail-like quality. Then he followed its length up and into the rapidly-thinning fog.

On the dome of Small Gods the dragon raised its head, yawned, and unfolded its wings.

The unfolding wasn’t a simple operation. It seemed to go on for some time, as the complex biological machinery of ribs and pleats slid apart. Then, with wings outstretched, the dragon yawned, took a few steps to the edge of the roof, and launched itself into the air.

After a while a hand appeared over the edge of the parapet. It flailed around for a moment until it got a decent grip.

There was a grunt. Carrot hauled himself back on to the roof and pulled the other two up behind him. They lay flat out on the leads, panting. Carrot observed the way that the dragon’s talons had scored deep grooves in the metal. You couldn’t help noticing things like that.

“Hadn’t,” he panted, “hadn’t we better warn people?”

Colon dragged himself forward until he could look across the city.

“I don’t think we need bother,” he said. “I think they’ll soon find out.”

. . .

The High Priest of Blind Io was stumbling over his words. There had never been an official coronation service in Ankh-Morpork, as far as he could find out. The old kings had managed quite well with something on the lines of: “We hath got the crown, i’faith, and we will kill any whoreson who tries to takes it away, by the Lord Harry.” Apart from anything else, this was rather short. He’d spent a long time drafting something longer and more in keeping with the spirit of the times, and was having some trouble remembering it.

He was also being put off by the goat, which was watching him with loyal interest.

“Get on with it!” Wonse hissed, from his position behind the throne.

“All in good time,” the high priest hissed back. “This is a coronation, I’ll have you know. You might try to show a little respect.”

“Of course I’m showing respect! Now get on-“

There was a shout, off to the right. Wonse glared into the crowd.

“It’s that Ramkin woman,” he said. “What’s she up to?”

People around her were chattering excitedly now. Fingers pointed all the same way, like a small fallen forest. There were one or two screams, and then the crowd moved like a tide.

Wonse looked along the wide Street of Small Gods.

It wasn’t a raven out there. Not this time.

. . .

The dragon flew slowly, only a few feet above the ground, wings sculling gracefully through the air.

The flags that crisscrossed the street were caught up and snapped like so much cobweb, piling up on the creature’s spine plates and flapping back along the length of its tail.

It flew with head and neck fully extended, as if the great body was being towed like a barge. The people on the street yelled and fought one another for the safety of doorways. It paid them no attention.

It should have come roaring, but the only sounds were the creaking of wings and the snapping of banners.

It should have come roaring. Not like this, not slowly and deliberately, giving terror time to mature. It should have come threatening. Not promising.

It should have come roaring, not flying gently to the accompaniment of the zip and zing of merry bunting.

. . .

Vimes pulled open the other drawer of his desk and glared at the paperwork, such as there was of it. There wasn’t really much in there that he could call his own. A scrap of sugar bag reminded him that he now owed the Tea Kitty six pence. Odd. He wasn’t angry yet. He would be later on, of course. By evening he’d be furious. Drunk and furious. But not yet. Not yet. It hadn’t really sunk in, and he knew he was just going through the motions as a preventative against thinking.

Errol stirred sluggishly in his box, raised his head and whined.

“What’s the matter, boy?” said Vimes, reaching down. “Upset stomach?”

The little dragon’s skin was moving as though heavy industry was being carried on inside. Nothing in Diseases of the Dragon said anything about this. From the swollen stomach came sounds like a distant and complicated war in an earthquake zone.

That surely wasn’t right. Sybil Ramkin said you had to pay great attention to a dragon’s diet, since even a minor stomach upset would decorate the walls and ceiling with pathetic bits of scaly skin. But in the past few days . . . well, there had been cold pizzas, and the ash from Nobby’s horrible dog-ends, and all-in-all Errol had eaten more or less what he liked. Which was just about everything, to judge by the room. Not to mention the contents of the bottom drawer.

“We really haven’t looked after you very well, have we?” said Vimes. “Treated you like a dog, really.” He wondered what effect squeaky rubber hippos had on the digestion.

Vimes became slowly aware that the distant cheering had turned to screams.

He stared vaguely at Errol, and then smiled an incredibly evil smile and stood up.

There were sounds of panic and the mob on the run.

He placed his battered helmet on his head and gave it a jaunty tap. Then, humming a mad little tune, he sauntered out of the building.

Errol remained quite still for a while and then, with extreme difficulty, half-crawled and half-rolled out of his box. Strange messages were coming from the massive part of his brain that controlled his digestive system. It was demanding certain things that he couldn’t put a name to. Fortunately it was able to describe them in minute detail to the complex receptors in his enormous nostrils. They flared, subjecting the air of the room to an intimate examination. His head turned, triangulating.

He pulled himself across the floor and began to eat, with every sign of enjoyment, Carrot’s tin of armour polish.

. . .

People streamed past Vimes as he strolled up the Street of Small Gods. Smoke rose into the air from the Plaza of Broken Moons.

The dragon squatted in the middle of it, on what remained of the coronation dais. It had a self-satisfied expression.

There was no sign of the throne, or of its occupant, although it was possible that complicated forensic examination of the small pile of charcoal in the wrecked and smouldering woodwork might offer some clue.

Vimes caught hold of an ornamental fountain to steady himself as the crowds stampeded by. Every street out of the plaza was packed with struggling bodies. Not noisy ones, Vimes noticed. People weren’t wasting their breath with screaming any more. There was just this solid, deadly determination to be somewhere else.

The dragon spread its wings and flapped them luxuriously. The people at the rear of the crowd took this as a signal to climb up the backs of the people in front of them and run for safety from head to head.

Within a few seconds the square was empty of all save the stupid and the terminally bewildered. Even the badly trampled were making a spirited crawl for the nearest exit.

Vimes looked around him. There seemed to be a lot of fallen flags, some of which were being eaten by an elderly goat which couldn’t believe its luck. He could distantly see Cut-me-own-Throat on his hands and knees, trying to restore the contents of his tray.

By Vimes’s side a small child waved a flag hesitantly and shouted “Hurrah”.

Then everything went quiet.

Vimes bent down.

“I think you should be going home,” he said.

The child squinted up at him.

“Are you a Watch man?” it said.

“No,” said Vimes. “And yes.”

“What happened to the king, Watch man?”

“Er. I think he’s gone off for a rest,” said Vimes.

“My auntie said I shouldn’t talk to Watch men,” said the child.

“Do you think it might be a good idea to go home and tell her how obedient you’ve been, then?” said Vimes.

“My auntie said, if I was naughty, she’d put me on the roof and call the dragon,” said the child, conversationally. “My auntie said it eats you all up starting with the legs, so’s you can see what’s happening.”

“Why don’t you go home and tell your auntie she’s acting in the best traditions of Ankh-Morpork child-rearing?” said Vimes. “Go on. Run along.”

“It crunches up all your bones,” said the child happily. “And when it gets to your head, it-“

“Look, it’s up there!” shouted Vimes. “The great big dragon that crunches you up! Now go home!”

The child looked up at the thing perched on the crippled dais.

“I haven’t seen it crunch anyone yet,” it complained.

“Push off or you’ll feel the back of my hand,” said Vimes.

This seemed to fit the bill. The child nodded understandingly.

“Right. Can I shout hurrah again?”

“If you like,” said Vimes.

“Hurrah.”

So much for community policing, Vimes thought. He peered out from behind the fountain again.

A voice immediately above him rumbled, “Say what you like, I still swear it’s a magnificent specimen.”

Vimes’s gaze travelled upwards until it crested the edge of the fountain’s top bowl.

“Have you noticed,” said Sybil Ramkin, hauling herself upright by a piece of eroded statuary and dropping down in front of him, “how every time we meet, a dragon turns up?” She gave him an arch smile. “It’s a bit like having your own tune. Or something.”

“It’s just sitting there,” said Vimes hurriedly. “Just looking around. As if it’s waiting for something to happen.”

The dragon blinked with Jurassic patience.

The roads off the square were packed with people. That’s the Ankh-Morpork instinct, Vimes thought. Run away, and then stop and see if anything interesting is going to happen to other people.

There was a movement in the wreckage near the dragon’s front talon, and the High Priest of Blind Io staggered to his feet, dust and splinters cascading from his robes. He was still holding the ersatz crown in one hand.

Vimes watched the old man look upwards into a couple of glowing red eyes a few feet away.

“Can dragons read minds?” whispered Vimes.

“I’m sure mine understand every word I say,” hissed Lady Ramkin. “Oh, no! The silly old fool is giving it the crown!”

“But isn’t that a smart move?” said Vimes. “Dragons like gold. It’s like throwing a stick for a dog, isn’t it?”

“Oh dear,” said Sybil Ramkin. “It might not, you know. Dragons have such sensitive mouths.”

The great dragon blinked at the tiny circle of gold.

Then, with extreme delicacy, it extended one metre-long claw and hooked the thing out of the priest’s trembling fingers.

“What d’you mean, sensitive?” said Vimes, watching the claw travel slowly towards the long, horse-like face.

“A really incredible sense of taste. They’re so, well, chemically orientated.”

“You mean it can probably taste gold?” whispered Vimes, watching the crown being carefully licked.

“Oh, certainly. And smell it.”

Vimes wondered what the chances were of the crown being made of gold. Not high, he decided. Gold foil over copper, perhaps. Enough to fool human beings. And then he wondered what someone’s reaction would be if they were offered sugar which turned out, once you’d put three spoonfuls in your coffee, to be salt.

The dragon removed the claw from its mouth in one graceful movement and caught the high priest, who was just sneaking away, a blow which knocked him high into the air. When he was screaming at the top of the arc the great mouth came around and-“Gosh!” said Lady Ramkin.

There was a groan from the watchers.

“The temperature of the thing!” said Vines. “I mean, nothing left! Just a wisp of smoke!”

There was another movement in the rubble. Another figure pulled itself upright and leaned dazedly against a broken spar.

It was Lupine Wonse, under a coating of soot.

Vimes watched him look up into a pair of nostrils the size of drain-covers.

Wonse broke into a run. Vimes wondered what it felt like, running away from something like that, expecting any minute your backbone to reach, very briefly, a temperature somewhere beyond the vaporisation point of iron. He could guess.

Wonse made it halfway across the square before the dragon darted forward with surprising agility for such a bulk and snatched him up. The talon swept on upward until the struggling figure was being held a few feet from the dragon’s face.

It appeared to examine him for some time, turning him this way and that. Then, moving on its three free legs and flapping its wings occasionally to help with its balance, it trotted away across the plaza and headed towards the-what once had been the Patrician’s palace. To what once had been the king’s palace, too.

It ignored the frightened spectators silently pressing themselves against the walls. The arched gateway was shouldered aside with depressing ease. The doors themselves, tall and iron-bound and solid, lasted a surprising ten seconds before collapsing into a heap of glowing ash.

The dragon stepped through.

Lady Ramkin turned in astonishment. Vimes had started to laugh.

There was a manic edge to it and there were tears in his eyes, but it was still laughter. He laughed and laughed until he slid gently down the edge of the fountain, his legs splaying out in front of him.

“Hooray, hooray, hooray!” he giggled, almost choking.

“What on earth d’you mean?” Lady Ramkin demanded.

“Put out more flags! Blow the cymbals, roast the tocsin! We’ve crowned it! We’ve got a king after all! What ho!”

“Have you been drinking?” she snapped.

“Not yet!” sniggered Vimes. “Not yet! But I will be!”

He laughed on, knowing that when he stopped black depression was going to drop on him like a lead souffle. But he could see the future stretching out ahead of them . . .

. . . after all, it was definitely noble. And it didn’t carry money, and it couldn’t answer back. It could certainly do something for the inner cities, too. Like torching them to the bedrock.

We’ll really do it, he thought. That’s the Ankh-Morpork way. If you can’t beat it or corrupt it, you pretend it was your idea in the first place.

Vivat Draco.

He became aware that the small child had wandered up again. It waved its flag gently at him and said, “Can I shout hurrah again now?”

“Why not?” said Vimes. “Everyone else will.”

From the palace came the muffled sounds of complicated destruction . . .

. . .

Errol pulled a broomstick across the floor with his mouth and, whimpering with effort, hauled it upright. After a lot more whimpering and several false starts he managed to winkle the end of it between the wall and the big jar of lamp oil.

He paused for a moment, breathing like a bellows, and pushed.

The jar resisted for a moment, rocked back and forth once or twice, and then fell over and smashed on the flagstones. Crude, very badly-refined oil spread out in a black puddle.

Errol’s huge nostrils twitched. Somewhere in the back of his brain unfamiliar synapses clicked like telegraph keys. Great balks of information flooded down the thick nerve cord to his nose, carrying inexplicable information about triple bonds, alkanes and geometric isomerism. However, almost all of it missed the small part of Errol’s brain that was used for being Errol.

All he knew was that he was suddenly very, very thirsty.

. . .

Something major was happening in the palace. There was the occasional crash of a floor or thump of a falling ceiling . . .

In his rat-filled dungeon, behind a door with more locks than a major canal network, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork lay back and grinned in the darkness.

. . .

Outside, bonfires flared in the dusk.

Ankh-Morpork was celebrating. No-one was quite sure why, but they’d worked themselves up for a celebration tonight, barrels had been broached, oxen had been put on spits, one paper hat and celebratory mug had been issued per child, and it seemed a shame to waste all that effort. Anyway, it had been a very interesting day, and the people of Ankh-Morpork set great store by entertainment.

“The way I see it,” said one of the revellers, halfway through a huge greasy lump of half-raw meat, “a dragon as king mightn’t be a bad idea. When you think it through, is what I mean.”

“It definitely looked very gracious,” said the woman to his right, as if testing the idea. “Sort of, well, sleek. Nice and smart. Not scruffy. Takes a bit of a pride in itself.” She glared at some of the younger revellers further down the table. “The trouble with people today is they don’t take pride in themselves.”

“And there’s foreign policy, of course,” said a third, helping himself to a rib. “When you come to think about it.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Diplomacy,” said the rib-eater, flatly.

They thought about it. And then you could see them turning the idea around and thinking about it the other way, in a polite effort to see what the hell he was getting at.

“Dunno,” said the monarchical expert slowly. “I mean, your actual dragon, it’s got these, basically, two sort of ways of negotiation. Hasn’t it? I mean, it’s either roasting you alive, or it isn’t. Correct me if I’m wrong,” he added.

“That’s my point. I mean, let’s say the ambassador from Klatch comes along, you know how arrogant that lot are, suppose he says: we want this, we want that, we want the other thing. Well,” he said, beaming at them, “what we say is, shut your face unless you want to go home in ajar.”

They tried out this idea for mental fit. It had that certain something.

“They’ve got a big fleet, Klatch,” said the monarchist uncertainly. “Could be a bit risky, roasting diplomats. People see a pile of charcoal come back on the boat, they tend to look a bit askance.”

“Ah, then we say, Ho there, Johnny Klatchian, you no like-um, big fella lizard belong-sky bake mud hut belong-you pretty damn chop-chop.”

“We could really say that?”

“Why not? And then we say, send plenty tribute toot sweet.”

“I never did like them Klatchians,” said the woman firmly. “The stuff they eat! It’s disgustin’. And gab-blin’ away all the time in their heathen lingo . . .”

In the shadows, a match flared.

Vimes cupped his hands around the flame, sucked on the foul tobacco, tossed the match into the gutter and slouched off down the damp, puddle-punctuated alley.

If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life.

We’ve got along with the other guys for centuries, he thought. Getting along has practically been all our foreign policy. Now I think I’ve just heard us declare war on an ancient civilisation that we’ve always got along with, more or less, even if they do talk funny. And after that, the world. What’s worse, we’ll probably win.

. . .

Similar thoughts, although with a different perspective, were going through the minds of the civic leaders of Ankh-Morpork when, next morning, each received a short note bidding them to be at the palace for a working lunch, by order.

It didn’t say whose order. Or, they noted, whose lunch.

Now they were assembled in the antechamber.

And there had been changes. It had never been what you might call a select place. The Patrician had always felt that if you made people comfortable they might want to stay. The furniture had been a few very elderly chairs and, around the walls, portraits of earlier city rulers holding scrolls and things.

The chairs were still there. The portraits were not. Or, rather, the stained and cracked canvases were piled in a corner, but the gilt frames were gone.

The councillors tried to avoid one another’s faces, and sat tapping their fingers on their knees.

Finally a couple of very worried-looking servants opened the doors to the main hall. Lupine Wonse lurched through.

Most of the councillors had been up all night anyway, trying to formulate some kind of policy vis-d-vis dragons, but Wonse looked as though he hadn’t been to sleep in years. His face was the colour of a fermented dishcloth. Never particularly well-padded, he now looked like something out of a pyramid.

“Ah,” he intoned. “Good. Are you all here? Then perhaps you would step this way, gentlemen.”

“Er,” said the head thief, “the note mentioned lunch?”

“Yes?” said Wonse.

“With a dragon?”

“Good grief, you don’t think it would eat you, do you?” said Wonse. “What an idea!”

“Never crossed me mind,” said the head thief, relief blowing from his ears like steam. “The very idea. Haha.”

“Haha,” said the chief merchant.

“Hoho,” said the head assassin. “The very idea.”

“No, I expect you’re all far too stringy,” said Wonse. “Haha.”

“Haha.”

“Ahaha.”

“Hoho.” The temperature lowered by several degrees.

“So if you would kindly step this way?”

The great hall had changed. For one thing, it was a great deal greater. Several walls had been knocked into adjoining rooms, and the ceiling and several storeys of upper rooms had been entirely removed. The floor was a mass of rubble except in the middle of the room, which was a heap of gold-Well, goldish. It looked as though someone had scoured the palace for anything that shone or glittered. There were the picture frames, and the gold thread out of tapestries, and silver, and the occasional gem. There were also tureens from the kitchens, candlesticks, warming pans, fragments of mirror. Sparkly stuff.

The councillors were not in a position to pay much attention to this, however, because of what was hanging above their heads.

It looked like the biggest badly-rolled cigar in the universe, if the biggest badly-rolled cigar in the universe was in the habit of hanging upside down. Two talons could be dimly seen gripping the dark rafters.

Halfway between the glittering heap and the doorway a small table had been laid. The councillors noted without much surprise that the familiar ancient silverware was missing. There were china plates, and cutlery that looked as though it had very recently been whittled from bits of wood. Wonse took a seat at the head of the table and nodded to the servants.

“Please be seated, gentlemen,” he said. “I am sorry things are a little . . . different, but the king hopes you will bear with it until matters can be more suitably organised.”

“The, er,” said the head merchant.

“The king,” repeated Wonse. His voice sounded one dribble away from madness.

“Oh. The king. Right,” said the merchant. From where he was sitting he had a good view of the big hanging thing. There seemed to be some movement there, some trembling in the great folds that wrapped it. “Long life to him, say I,” he added quickly.

The first course was soup with dumplings in it. Wonse didn’t have any. The rest of them ate in a terrified silence broken only by the dull chiming of wood on china.

“There are certain matters of decree to which the king feels your assent would be welcome,” said Wonse, eventually. “A pure formality, of course, and I am sorry to bother you with such petty detail.”

The big bundle appeared to sway in the breeze.

“No trouble at all,” squeaked the head thief.

“The king graciously desires it to be known,” said Wonse, “that it would be pleased to receive coronation gifts from the population at large. Nothing complex, of course. Simply any precious metals or gems they might have by them and can easily spare. I should stress, by the way, that this is by no means compulsory. Such generosity as he is confident of expecting should be an entirely voluntary act.”

The chief assassin looked sadly at the rings on his fingers, and sighed. The head merchant was already resignedly unshipping his gilt chain of office from around his neck.

“Why, gentlemen!” said Wonse. “This is most unexpected!”

“Um,” said the Archchancellor of Unseen University. “You will be-that is, I am sure the king is aware that, traditionally, the University is exempt from all city levies and taxes . . .”

He stifled a yawn. The wizards had spent the night directing their best spells against the dragon. It was like punching fog.

“My dear sir, this is no levy,” protested Wonse. “I hope that nothing I have said would lead you to expect anything like that. Oh, no! No. Any tribute should be, as I said, entirely voluntary. I hope that is absolutely clear.”

“As crystal,” said the head assassin, glaring at the old wizard. “And these entirely voluntary tributes we are about to make, they go-?”

“On the hoard,” said Wonse.

“Ah.”

“While I am positive the people of the city will be very generous indeed once they fully understand the situation,” said the head merchant, “I am sure the king will understand that there is very little gold in Ankh-Morpork?”

“Good point,” said Wonse. “However, the king intends to pursue a vigorous and dynamic foreign policy which should remedy matters.”

“Ah,” the councillors chorused, rather more enthusiastically this time.

“For example,” Wonse went on, “the king feels that our legitimate interests in Quirm, Sto Lat, Pseudopolis and Tsort have been seriously compromised in recent centuries. This will be speedily corrected and, gentlemen, I can assure you that treasure will positively flow into the city from those anxious to enjoy the king’s protection.”

The head assassin glanced at the hoard. A very definite idea formed in his mind as to where all that treasure would end up. You had to admire the way dragons knew how to put the bite on. It was practically human.

“Oh,” he said.

“Of course, there will probably be other acquisitions in the way of land, property and so forth, and the king wishes it to be fully understood that loyal Privy Councillors will be richly rewarded.”

“And, er,” said the head assassin, who was beginning to feel that he had got a firm grip on the nature of the king’s mental processes, “no doubt the, er-“

“Privy Councillors,” said Wonse.

“No doubt they will respond with even greater generosity in the matter of, for example, treasure?”

“I am sure such considerations haven’t crossed the king’s mind,” said Wonse, “but the point is very well made.”

“I thought it would be.”

The next course was fat pork, beans and floury potatoes. More, as they couldn’t help noticing, fattening food.

Wonse had a glass of water.

“Which brings us on to a further matter of some delicacy which I am sure that well-travelled, broad-minded gentlemen such as yourselves will have no difficulty in accepting,” he said. The hand holding the glass was beginning to shake.

“I hope it will also be understood by the population at large, especially since the king will undoubtedly be able to contribute in so many ways to the well-being and defence of the city. For example, I am sure that the people will rest more contentedly in their beds knowing that the dr-the king is tirelessly protecting them from harm. There can, however, be ridiculous ancient . . . prejudices . . . which will only be eradicated by ceaseless work . . . on the part of all men of good will.”

He paused, and looked at them. The head assassin said later that he had looked into the eyes of many men who, obviously, were very near death, but he had never looked into eyes that were so clearly and unmistakably looking back at him from the slopes of Hell.

He hoped he would never, he said, ever have to look into eyes like that again.

“I am referring,” said Wonse, each word coming slowly to the surface like bubbles in some quicksand, “to the matter of . . . the king’s . . . diet.”

There was a terrible silence. They heard the faint rustle of wings behind them, and the shadows in the corners of the hall grew darker and seemed to close in.

“Diet,” said the head thief, in a hollow voice.

“Yes,” said Wonse. His voice was almost a squeak. Sweat was dripping down his face. The head assassin had once heard the word “rictus” and wondered when you should use it correctly to describe someone’s expression, and now he knew. That was what Wonse’s face had become; it was the ghastly rictus of someone trying not to hear the words his own mouth was saying.

“We, er, we thought,” said the head assassin, very carefully, “that the dr- the king, well, must have been arranging matters for himself, over the weeks.”

“Ah, but poor stuff, you know. Poor stuff. Stray animals and so forth,” said Wonse, staring hard at the tabletop. “Obviously, as king, such makeshifts are no longer appropriate.”

The silence grew and took on a texture. The councillors thought hard, especially about the meal they had just eaten. The arrival of a huge trifle with a lot of cream on it only served to concentrate their minds.

“Er,” said the head merchant, “how often is the king hungry?”

“All the time,” said Wonse, “but it eats once a month. It is really a ceremonial occasion.”

“Of course,” said the head merchant. “It would be.”

“And, er,” said the head assassin, “when did the king last, er, eat?”

“I’m sorry to say it hasn’t eaten properly ever since it came here,” said Wonse.

“Oh.”

“You must understand,” said Wonse, fiddling desperately with his wooden cutlery, “that merely waylaying people like some common assassin-“

“Excuse me-“ the head assassin began.

“Some common murderer, I mean-there is no . . . satisfaction there. The whole essence of the king’s feeding is that it should be, well. . . an act of bonding between king and subjects. It is, it is perhaps a living allegory. Reinforcing the close links between the crown and the community,” he added.

“The precise nature of the meal-“ the head thief began, almost choking on the words. “Are we talking about young maidens here?”

“Sheer prejudice,” said Wonse. “The age is immaterial. Marital status is, of course, of importance. And social class. Something to do with flavour, I believe.” He leaned forward, and now his voice was pain-filled and urgent and, they felt, genuinely his own for the first time. “Please consider it!” he hissed. “After all, just one a month! In exchange for so much! The families of people of use to the king, Privy Councillors such as yourselves, would not, of course, even be considered. And when you think of all the alternatives . . .”

They didn’t think about all the alternatives. It was enough to think about just one of them.

The silence purred at them as Wonse talked. They avoided one another’s faces, for fear of what they might see mirrored there. Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I’ll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I’m not as stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard . . .

But no-one said anything. The cowards, each man thought.

And no-one touched the pudding, or the brick-thick chocolate mints served afterwards. They just listened in flushed, gloomy horror as Wonse’s voice droned on, and when they were dismissed they tried to leave as separately as possible, so that they didn’t have to talk to one another.

Except for the head merchant, that is. He found himself leaving the palace with the chief assassin, and they strolled side by side, minds racing. The chief merchant tried to look on the bright side; he was one of those men who organise sing-songs when things go drastically wrong.

“Well, well,” he said. “So we’re privy councillors now. Just fancy.”

“Hmm,” said the assassin.

“I wonder what’s the difference between ordinary councillors and privy councillors?” wondered the merchant aloud.

The assassin scowled at him. “I think,” he said, “it is because you’re expected to eat shit.”

He turned the glare back on his feet again. What kept going through his mind were Wonse’s last words, as he shook the secretary’s limp hand. He wondered if anyone else had heard them. Unlikely . . . they’d been a shape rather than a sound. Wonse had simply moved his lips around them while staring fixedly at the assassin’s moon-tanned face.

Help. Me.

The assassin shivered. Why him? As far as he could see there was only one kind of help he was qualified to give, and very few people ever asked for it for themselves. In fact, they usually paid large sums for it to be given as a surprise present to other people. He wondered what was happening to Wonse that made any alternative seem better . . .

. . .

Wonse sat alone in the dark, ruined hall. Waiting.

He could try running. But it’d find him again. It’d always be able to find him. It could smell his mind.

Or it would flame him. That was worse. Just like the Brethren. Perhaps it was an instantaneous death, it looked an instantaneous death, but Wonse lay awake at night wondering whether those last micro-seconds somehow stretched to a subjective, white-hot eternity, every tiny part of your body a mere smear of plasma and you, there, alive in the middle of it all . . .

Not you. I would not flame you.

It wasn’t telepathy. As far as Wonse had always understood it, telepathy was like hearing a voice in your head.

This was like hearing a voice in your body. His whole nervous system twanged to it, like a bow.

Rise.

Wonse jerked to his feet, overturning the chair and banging his legs on the table. When that voice spoke, he had as much control over his body as water had over gravity.

Come.

Wonse lurched across the floor.

The wings unfolded slowly, with the occasional creak, until they filled the hall from side to side. The tip of one smashed a window, and stuck out into the afternoon air.

The dragon slowly, sensuously, stretched out its neck and yawned. When it had finished, it brought its head around until it was a few inches in front of Wonse’s face.

What does voluntary mean ?

“It, er, it means doing something of your own free will,” said Wonse.

But they have no free will! They will increase my hoard, or I will flame them!

Wonse gulped. “Yes,” he said, “but you mustn’t-“

The silent roar of fury spun him around.

There is nothing I mustn ‘t!

“No, no, no!” squeaked Wonse, clutching his head. “I didn’t mean that! Believe me! This way is better, that’s all! Better and safer!”

None can defeat me!

“This is certainly the case-“

None can control me!

Wonse flung up his finger-spread hands in a conciliatory fashion. “Of course, of course,” he said. “But there are ways and ways, you know. Ways and ways. All the roaring and flaming, you see, you don’t need it . . .”

Foolish ape! How else can I make them do my bidding ?

Wonse put his hands behind his back.

“They’ll do it of their own free will,” he said. “And in time, they’ll come to believe it was their own idea. It’ll be a tradition. Take it from me. We humans are adaptable creatures.”

The dragon gave him a long, blank stare.

“In fact,” said Wonse, trying to keep the trembling out of his voice, “before too long, if someone comes along and tells them that a dragon king is a bad idea, they’ll kill him themselves.”

The dragon blinked.

For the first time Wonse could remember, it seemed uncertain.

“I know people, you see,” said Wonse, simply.

The dragon continued to pin him with its gaze.

If you are lying . . . it thought, eventually.

“You know I can’t. Not to you.”

And they really act like this?

“Oh, yes. All the time. It’s a basic human trait.”

Wonse knew the dragon could read at least the upper levels of his mind. They resonated in terrible harmony. And he could see the mighty thoughts behind the eyes in front of him.

The dragon was horrified.

“I’m sorry,” said Wonse weakly. “That’s just how we are. It’s all to do with survival, I think.”

There will be no mighty warriors sent to kill me? it thought, almost plaintively.

“I don’t think so.”

No heroes?

“Not any more. They cost too much.”

But I will be eating people!

Wonse whimpered.

He felt the sensation of the dragon rummaging around in his mind, trying to find a clue to understanding. He half-saw, half-sensed the flicker of random images, of dragons, of the mythical age of reptiles and-and here he felt the dragon’s genuine astonishment-of some of the less commendable areas of human history, which were most of it. And after the astonishment came the baffled anger. There was practically nothing the dragon could do to people that they had not, sooner or later, tried on one another, often with enthusiasm.

You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape-the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of its eyes-we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.

The dragon stretched its wings again, once or twice, and then dropped heavily on to the tawdry assortment of mildly precious things. Its claws scrabbled at the pile. It sneered.

A three-legged lizard wouldn’t hoard this lot, it thought.

“There will be better things,” whispered Wonse, temporarily relieved at the change in direction. There had better be.

“Can I-“ Wonse hesitated-“can I ask you a question?”

Ask.

“You don’t need to eat people, surely? I think that’s the only problem from people’s point of view, you see,” he added, his voice speeding up to a gabble. “The treasure and everything, that doesn’t have to be a problem, but if it’s just a matter of, well, protein, then perhaps it has occurred to a powerful intellect such as your own that something less controversial, like a cow, might-“

The dragon breathed a horizontal streak of fire that calcined the opposite wall.

Need? Need? it roared, when the sound had died away. You talk to me of need? Isn ‘t it the tradition that the finest flower of womanhood should be sent to the dragon to ensure peace and prosperity ?

“But, you see, we have always been moderately peaceful and reasonably prosperous-“

DO YOU WANT THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS TO CONTINUE?

The force of the thought drove Wonse to his knees.

“Of course,” he managed.

The dragon stretched its claws luxuriantly.

Then the need is not mine, it is yours, it thought.

Now get out of my sight.

Wonse sagged as it left his mind.

The dragon slithered over the cut-price hoard, leapt up on to the ledge of one of the hall’s big windows, and smashed the stained glass with its head. The multicoloured image of a city father cascaded into the other debris below.

The long neck stretched out into the early evening air, and turned like a seeking needle. Lights were coming on across the city. The sound of a million people being alive made a muted, deep thrumming.

The dragon breathed deeply, joyfully.

Then it hauled the rest of its body on to the ledge, shouldered the remains of the window’s frame aside, and leapt into the sky.

. . .

“What is it?” said Nobby.

It was vaguely round, of a woodish texture, and when struck made a noise like a ruler plucked over the edge of a desk.

Sergeant Colon tapped it again.

“I give in,” he said.

Carrot proudly lifted it out of the battered packaging.

“It’s a cake,” he said, shoving both hands under the thing and raising it with some difficulty. “From my mother.” He managed to put it on the table without trapping his fingers.

“Can you eat it?” said Nobby. “It’s taken months to get here. You’d think it would go stale.”

“Oh, it’s to a special dwarfish recipe,” said Carrot. “Dwarfish cakes don’t go stale.”

Sergeant Colon gave it another sharp rap. “I suppose not,” he conceded.

“It’s incredibly sustaining,” said Carrot. “Practically magical. The secret has been handed down from dwarf to dwarf for centuries. One tiny piece of this and you won’t want anything to eat all day.”

“Get away?” said Colon.

“A dwarf can go hundreds of miles with a cake like this in his pack,” Carrot went on.

“I bet he can,” said Colon gloomily, “I bet all the time he’d be thinking, ‘Bloody hell, I hope I can find something else to eat soon, otherwise it’s the bloody cake again.’ “

Carrot, to whom the word irony meant something to do with metal, picked up his pike and after a couple of impressive rebounds managed to cut the cake into approximately four slices.

“There we are,” he said cheerfully. “One for each of us, and one for the captain.” He realised what he had said. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Yes,” said Colon flatly.

They sat in silence for a moment.

“I liked him,” said Carrot. “I’m sorry he’s gone.”

There was some more silence, very similar to the earlier silence but even deeper and more furrowed with depression.

“I expect you’ll be made captain now,” said Carrot.

Colon started. “Me? I don’t want to be captain! I can’t do the thinking. It’s not worth all that thinking, just for another nine dollars a month.”

He drummed his fingers on the table.

“Is that all he got?” said Nobby. “I thought officers were rolling in it.”

“Nine dollars a month,” said Colon. “I saw the pay scales once. Nine dollars a month and two dollars plumes allowance. Only he never claimed that bit. Funny, really.”

“He wasn’t the plumes type,” said Nobby.

“You’re right,” said Colon. “The thing about the captain, see, I read this book once . . . you know we’ve all got alcohol in our bodies . . . sort of natural alcohol? Even if you never touch a drop in your life, your body sort of makes it anyway . . . but Captain Vimes, see, he’s one of those people whose body doesn’t do it naturally. Like, he was born two drinks below normal.”

“Gosh,” said Carrot.

“Yes . . . so, when he’s sober, he’s really sober. Knurd, they call it. You know how you feel when you wake up if you’ve been on the piss all night, Nobby? Well, he feels like that all the time. “

“Poor bugger,” said Nobby. “I never realised. No wonder he’s always so gloomy.”

“So he’s always trying to catch up, see. It’s just that he doesn’t always get the dose right. And, of course-“ Colon glanced at Carrot-”he was brung low by a woman. Mind you, just about anything brings him low.”

“So what do we do now, Sergeant?” said Nobby.

“And do you think he’d mind if we eat his cake?” said Carrot wistfully. “It’d be a shame to let it go stale.”

Colon shrugged.

The older men sat in miserable silence as Carrot macerated his way through the cake like a bucket-wheel rockcrusher in a chalk pit. Even if it had been the lightest of souffles they wouldn’t have had any appetite.

They were contemplating life without the captain. It was going to be bleak, even without dragons. Say what you liked about Captain Vimes, he’d had style. It was a cynical, black-nailed style, but he’d had it and they didn’t. He could read long words and add up. Even that was style, of a sort. He even got drunk in style.

They’d been trying to drag the minutes out, trying to stretch out the time. But the night had come.

There was no hope for them.

They were going to have to go out on the streets.

It was six of the clock. And all wasn’t well.

“I miss Errol, too,” said Carrot

“He was the captain’s, really,” said Nobby. “Anyway, Lady Ramkin’ll know how to look after him.”

“It’s not as though we could leave anything around, either,” said Colon. “I mean, even the lamp oil. He even drank the lamp oil.”

“And mothballs,” said Nobby. “A whole box of mothballs. Why would anyone want to eat mothballs? And the kettle. And sugar. He was a devil for sugar.”

“He was nice, though,” said Carrot. “Friendly.”

“Oh, I’ll grant you,” said Colon. “But it’s not right, really, a pet where you have to jump behind a table every time it hiccups.”

“I shall miss his little face,” said Carrot.

Nobby blew his nose, loudly.

It was echoed by a hammering on the door. Colon jerked his head. Carrot got up and opened it.

A couple of members of the palace guard were waiting with arrogant impatience. They stepped back when they saw Carrot, who had to bend a bit to see under the lintel; bad news like Carrot travels fast.

“We’ve brung you a proclamation,” said one of them. “You’ve got to-“

“What’s all that fresh paint on your breastplate?” said Carrot politely. Nobby and the sergeant peered around him.

“It’s a dragon,” said the younger of the guards.

“The dragon,” corrected his superior.

“ ‘Ere, I know you,” said Nobby. ‘You’re Skully Maltoon. Used to live in Mincing Street. Your mum made cough sweets, din’t she, and fell in the mixture and died. I never have a cough sweet but I think of your mum.”

“Hallo, Nobby,” said the guard, without enthusiasm.

“I bet your old mum’d be proud of you, you with a dragon on your vest,” said Nobby conversationally. The guard gave him a look made of hatred and embarrassment.

“And new plumes on your hat, too,” Nobby added sweetly.

“This here is a proclamation what you are commanded to read,” said the guard loudly. “And post up on street corners also. By order.”

“Whose?” said Nobby.

Sergeant Colon grabbed the scroll in one ham-like fist.

“Where As,” he read slowly, tracing the lettering with a hesitant finger, “It hathe Pleas-Sed the Der-Rer-Aa-Ger-the dragon, Ker-Ii-king of kings and Aa-Ber-Ess-Uh-Ler-“ sweat beaded on the broad pink cliff of his forehead-“absolute, that is, Rer-Uh-Ler-Eh-Rer, ruler of-“

He lapsed into the tortured silence of academia, his fingertip jerking slowly down the parchment.

“No,” he said at last. “That’s not right, is it? It’s not going to eat someone?”

“Consume,” said the older guard.

“It’s all part of the social. . . social contract,” said his assistant woodenly. “A small price to pay, I’m sure you will agree, for the safety and protection of the city.”

“From what?” said Nobby. “We’ve never had an enemy we couldn’t bribe or corrupt.”

“Until now,” said Colon darkly.

“You catch on fast,” said the guard. “So you’re going to broadcast it. On pain of pain.”

Carrot peered over Colon’s shoulder.

“What’s a virgin?” he said.

“An unmarried girl,” said Colon quickly.

“What, like my friend Reel?” said Carrot, horrified.

“Well, no,” said Colon.

“She’s not married, you know. None of Mrs Palm’s girls are married.”

“Well, yes,” said Colon.

“Well, then,” said Carrot, with an air of finality. “We’re not having any of that kind of thing, I hope.”

“People won’t stand for it,” said Colon. “You mark my words.”

The guards stepped back, out of range of Carrot’s rising wrath.

“They can please themselves,” said the senior guard. “But if you don’t proclaim it, you can try explaining things to His Majesty.”

They hurried off.

Nobby darted out into the street. “Dragon on your vest!” he shouted. “If your old mum knew about this she’d turn in her vat, you goin’ around with a dragon on your vest!”

Colon wandered back to the table and spread out the scroll.

“Bad business,” he mumbled.

“It’s already killed people,” said Carrot. “Contrary to sixteen separate Acts in Council.”

“Well, yes. But that was just like, you know, the hurly-burly of this and that,” said Colon. “Not that it wasn’t bad, I mean, but people sort of participating, just handing over some slip of a girl and standing round watching as if it’s all proper and legal, that’s much worse.”

“I reckon it all depends on your point of view,” said Nobby thoughtfully.

“What d’you mean?”

“Well, from the point of view of someone being burned alive, it probably doesn’t matter much,” said Nobby philosophically.

“People won’t stand for it, I said,” said Colon, ignoring this. “You’ll see. They’ll march on the palace, and what will the dragon do then, eh?”

“Burn ‘em all,” said Nobby promptly.

Colon looked puzzled. “It wouldn’t do that, would it?” he said.

“Don’t see what’s to prevent it, do you?” said Nobby. He glanced out of the doorway. “He was a good lad, that boy. Used to run errands for my grandad. Who’d have thought he’d go around with a dragon on his chest . . .”

“What are we going to do, Sergeant?” said Carrot.

“I don’t want to be burned alive,” said Sergeant Colon. “My wife’d give me hell. So I suppose we’ve got to wossname, proclaim it. But don’t worry, lad,” he said, patting Carrot on one muscular arm and repeating, as if he hadn’t quite believed himself the first time, “it won’t come to that. People’ll never stand for it.”

. . .

Lady Ramkin ran her hands over Errol’s body.

“Damned if I know what’s going on in there,” she said. The little dragon tried to lick her face. “What’s he been eating?”

“The last thing, I think, was a kettle,” said Vimes.

“A kettle of what?”

“No. A kettle. A black thing with a handle and spout. He sniffed it for ages, then he ate it.”

Enrol grinned weakly at him, and belched. They both ducked.

“Oh, and then we found him eating soot out of the chimney,” Vimes went on, as their heads rose again over the railings.

They leaned back over the reinforced bunker that was one of Lady Ramkin’s sickbay pens. It had to be reinforced. Usually one of the first things a sick dragon did was lose control of its digestive processes.

“He doesn’t look sick, exactly,” she said. “Just fat.”

“He whines a lot. And you can sort of see things moving under his skin. You know what I think? You know you said they can rearrange their digestive system?”

“Oh, yes. All the stomachs and pancreatic crackers can be hooked up in various ways, you see. To take advantage-“

“Of whatever they can find to make flame with,” said Vimes. “Yes. I think he’s trying to make some sort of very hot flame. He wants to challenge the big dragon. Every time it takes to the air he just sits there whining.”

“And doesn’t explode?”

“Not that we’ve noticed. I mean, I’m sure if he did, we’d spot it.”

“He just eats indiscriminately?”

“Hard to be sure. He sniffs everything, and eats most things. Two gallons of lamp oil, for example. Anyway, I can’t leave him down there. We can’t look after him properly. It’s not as if we need to find out where the dragon is now,” he added bitterly.

“I think you’re being a bit silly about all this,” she said, leading the way back to the house.

“Silly? I was sacked in front of all those people!”

“Yes, but it was all a misunderstanding, I’m sure.”

“I didn’t misunderstand it!”

“Well, I think you’re just upset because you’re impotent.”

Vimes’s eyes bulged. “Whee?” he said.

“Against the dragon,” Lady Ramkin went on, quite unconcerned. “You can’t do anything about it.”

“I reckon this damn city and the dragon just about deserve one another,” said Vimes.

“People are frightened. You can’t expect much of people when they’re so frightened.” She touched him gingerly on his arm. It was like watching an industrial robot being expertly manipulated to grasp an egg gently.

“Not everyone’s as brave as you,” she added, timidly.

“Me?”

“The other week. When you stopped them killing my dragons.”

“Oh, that. That’s not bravery. Anyway, that was just people. People are easier. I’ll tell you one thing for nothing, I’m not looking up that dragon’s nose again. I wake up at days thinking about that.”

“Oh.” She seemed deflated. “Well, if you’re sure . . . I’ve got a lot of friends, you know. If you need any help, you’ve only got to say. The Duke of Sto Helit is looking for a guard captain, I’m sure. I’ll write you a letter. You’ll like them, they’re a very nice young couple.”

“I’m not sure what I shall do next,” said Vimes, more gruffly than he intended. “I’m considering one or two offers.”

“Well, of course. I’m sure you know best.”

Vimes nodded.

Lady Ramkin twisted her handkerchief round and round in her hands.

“Well, then,” she said.

“Well,” said Vimes.

“I, er, expect you’ll be wanting to be off, then.”

“Yes, I expect I had better be going.”

There was a pause. Then they both spoke at once.

“It’s been very-“

“I’d just like to say-“

“Sorry.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you were speaking.”

“No, sorry, you were saying?”

“Oh.” Vimes hesitated. “I’ll be off, then.”

“Oh. Yes.” Lady Ramkin gave him a washed-out smile. “Can’t keep all these offers waiting, can you,” she said.

She thrust out a hand. Vimes shook it carefully.

“So I’ll just be going, then,” he said.

“Do call again,” said Lady Ramkin, more coldly, “if you are ever in this area. And so on. I’m sure Errol would like to see you.”

“Yes. Well. Goodbye, then.”

“Goodbye, Captain Vimes.”

He stumbled out of the door and walked hurriedly down the dark, overgrown path. He could feel her gaze on the back of his neck as he did so or, at least, he told himself that he could. She’d be standing in the doorway, nearly blocking out the light. Just watching me. But I’m not going to look back, he thought. That would be a really silly thing to do. I mean, she’s a lovely person, she’s got a lot of common sense and an enormous personality, but really . . .

I’m not going to look back, even if she stands there while I walk all the way down the street. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

So when he heard the door shut when he was only halfway down the drive he suddenly felt very, very angry, as if he had just been robbed.

He stood still and clasped and unclasped his hands in the darkness. He wasn’t Captain Vimes any more, he was Citizen Vimes, which meant that he could do things he’d once never dreamt of doing. Perhaps he could go and smash some windows.

No, that wouldn’t be any good. He wanted more than that. To get rid of that bloody dragon, to get his job back, to get his hands on whoever was behind all this, to forget himself just once and hit someone until he was exhausted . . .

He stared at nothing. Down below the city was a mass of smoke and steam. He wasn’t thinking of that, though.

He was thinking of a running man. And, further back in the fuddled mists of his life, a boy running to keep up.

And under his breath he said, “Any of them get out?”

. . .

Sergeant Colon finished the proclamation and looked around at the hostile crowd.

“Don’t blame me,” he said. “I just read the things. I don’t write ‘em.”

“That’s human sacrifice, that is,” said someone.

“There’s nothing wrong with human sacrifice,” said a priest.

“Ah, per say, “ said the first speaker quickly. “For proper religious reasons. And using condemned criminals and so on.[19] But that’s different from bunging someone to a dragon just because it’s feeling peckish.”

“That’s the spirit!” said Sergeant Colon.

“Taxes is one thing, but eating people is another.”

“Well said!”

“If we all say we won’t put up with it, what can the dragon do?”

Nobby opened his mouth. Colon clamped a hand over it and raised a triumphant fist in the air.

“It’s just what I’ve always said,” he said. “The people united can never be ignited!”

There was a ragged cheer.

“Hang on a minute,” said a small man, slowly. “As far as we know, the dragon’s only good at one thing. It flies around the city setting fire to people. I’m not actually certain what is being proposed that would stop it doing this.”

“Yes, but if we all protest-“ said the first speaker, his voice modulated with uncertainty.

“It can’t burn everybody, “ said Colon. He decided to play his new ace again and added, proudly, “The people united can never be ignited!” There was rather less of a cheer this time. People were reserving their energy for worrying.

“I’m not exactly sure I understand why not. Why can’t it burn everyone and fly off to another city?”

“Because . . .”

“The hoard,” said Colon. “It needs people to bring it treasure.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, maybe, but how many, exactly?”

“What?”

“How many people? Out of the whole city, I mean. Perhaps it won’t need to burn the whole city down, just some bits. Do we know what bits?”

“Look, this is getting silly,” said the first speaker. “If we go around looking at the problems the whole time, we’ll never do anything.”

“It just pays to think things through first, that’s all I’m saying. Such as, what happens even if we beat the dragon?”

“Oh, come on!” said Sergeant Colon.

“No, seriously. What’s the alternative?”

“A human being, for a start!”

“Please yourself,” said the little man primly. “But I reckon one person a month is pretty good compared to some rulers we’ve had. Anyone remember Nersh the Lunatic? Or Giggling Lord Smince and his Laugh-A-Minute Dungeon?”

There was a certain amount of mumbling of the “he’s got a point” variety.

“But they got overthrown!” said Colon.

“No they didn’t. They were assassinated.”

“Same thing,” said Colon. “I mean, no-one’s going to assassinate the dragon. It’d take more than a dark night and a sharp knife to see it off, I know that.”

I can see what the captain means, he thought. No wonder he always has a drink after he thinks about things. We always beat ourselves before we even start. Give any Ankh-Morpork man a big stick and he’ll end up clubbing himself to death.

“Look here, you mealy-mouthed little twerp,” said the first speaker, picking up the little one by his collar and curling his free hand into a fist, “I happen to have three daughters, and I happen to not want any of them et, thank you very much.”

“Yes, and the people united . . . will . . . never .. .be . . .”

Colon’s voice faltered. He realised that the rest of the crowd were all staring upward.

The bugger, he thought, as rationality began to drain away. It must have flannel feet.

The dragon shifted its position on the ridge of the nearest house, flapped its wings once or twice, yawned, and then stretched its neck down into the street.

The man blessed with daughters stood, with his fist upraised, in the centre of a rapidly expanding circle of bare cobbles. The little man wriggled out of his frozen grasp and darted into the shadows.

It suddenly seemed that no man in the entire world was so lonely and without friends.

“I see,” he said quietly. He scowled up at the inquisitive reptile. In fact it didn’t seem particularly belligerent. It was looking at him with something approaching interest.

“I don’t care!” he shouted, his voice echoing from wall to wall in the silence. “We defy you! If you kill me, you might as well kill all of us!”

There was some uneasy shuffling of feet amongst those sections of the crowd who didn’t feel that this was absolutely axiomatic.

“We can resist you, you know!” growled the man. “Can’t we, everyone. What was that slogan about being united, Sergeant?”

“Er,” said Colon, feeling his spine turn to ice.

“I warn you, dragon, the human spirit is-“

They never found out what it was, or at least what he thought it was, although possibly in the dark hours of a sleepless night some of them might have remembered the subsequent events and formed a pretty good and gut-churning insight, to whit, that one of the things sometimes forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human.

The dragon flame caught him full on the chest. For a moment he was visible as a white-hot outline before the neat, black remains spiralled down into a little puddle of melting cobbles.

The flame vanished.

The crowd stood like statues, not knowing if it was staying put or running that would attract more attention.

The dragon stared down, curious to see what they were going to do next.

Colon felt that, as the only civic official present, it was up to him to take charge of the situation. He coughed.

“Right, then,” he said, trying to keep the squeak out of his voice. “If you would just move along there, ladies and gentlemen. Move along, now. Move along. Let’s be having you, please.”

He waved his arms in a vague gesture of authority as the people shuffled nervously away. Out of the corner of his eye he saw red flames behind the rooftops, and sparks spiralling in the sky.

“Haven’t you got any homes to go to?” he croaked.

. . .

The Librarian knuckled out into the Library of the here and now. Every hair on his body bristled with rage.

He pushed open the door and swung out into the stricken city.

Someone out there was about to find that their worst nightmare was a maddened Librarian.

With a badge.

. . .

The dragon swooped leisurely back and forth over the night-time city, barely flapping its wings. It didn’t need to. The thermals were giving it the lift it needed.

There were fires all over Ankh-Morpork. So many bucket chains had formed between the river and various burning buildings that buckets were getting misdirected and hijacked. Not that you really needed a bucket to pick up the turbid waters of the river Ankh- a net was good enough.

Downstream, teams of smoke-stained people worked feverishly to close the huge, corroded gates under the Brass Bridge. They were Ankh-Morpork’s last defence against fire, since then the Ankh had no outlet and gradually, oozingly, filled the space between the walls. A man could suffocate under it.

The workers on the bridge were the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t run. Many others were teeming through the gates of the city and heading out across the chilly, mist-wreathed plains.

But not for long. The dragon, looping and curving gracefully above the devastation, glided out over the walls. After a few seconds the guards saw actinic fire stab down through the mists. The tide of humanity flowed back, with the dragon hovering over it like a sheepdog. The fires of the stricken city glowed redly off the underside of its wings.

“Got any suggestions about what we do next, Sergeant?” said Nobby.

Colon didn’t reply. I wish Captain Vimes were here, he thought. He wouldn’t have known what to do either, but he’s got a much better vocabulary to be baffled in.

Some of the fires went out as the rising waters and the confused tangle of fire chains did their work. The dragon didn’t appear to be inclined to start any more. It had made its point.

“I wonder who it’ll be,” said Nobby.

“What?” said Carrot.

“The sacrifice, I mean.”

“Sergeant said people wouldn’t put up with it,” said Carrot stoically.

“Yeah, well. Look at it this way: if you say to people, what’s it to be, either your house burned down around you or some girl you’ve probably never met being eaten, well, they might get a bit thoughtful. Human nature, see.”

“I’m sure a hero will turn up in time,” said Carrot. “With some new sort of weapon, or something. And strike at its voonerable spot.”

There was the silence of sudden intense listening.

“What’s one of them?” said Nobby.

“A spot. Where it’s voonerable. My grandad used to tell me stories. Hit a dragon in its voonerables, he said, and you’ve killed it.”

“Like kicking it in the wossnames?” said Nobby, interestedly.

“Dunno. I suppose so. Although, Nobby, I’ve told you before it is not right to-“

“And where’s the spot, like?”

“Oh, a different place on each dragon. You wait till it flies over and then you say, there’s the voonerable spot, and then you kill it,” said Carrot. “Something like that.”

Sergeant Colon stared blankly into space.

“Hmm,” said Nobby.

They watched the panorama of panic for a while. Then Sergeant Colon said, “You sure about the voonerables?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“I wish you hadn’t been, lad.”

They looked at the terrified city again.

“You know,” said Nobby, “you always told me you used to win prizes for archery in the army, Sergeant. You said you had a lucky arrow, you always made sure you got your lucky arrow back, you said you-“

“All right! All right! But this isn’t the same thing, is it? Anyway, I’m not a hero. Why should I do it?”

“Captain Vimes pays us thirty dollars a month,” said Carrot.

“Yes,” said Nobby, grinning, “and you get five dollars extra responsibility allowance.”

“But Captain Vimes has gone,” said Colon wretchedly.

Carrot looked at him sternly. “I am sure,” he said, “that if he were here, he’d be the first to-“

Colon waved him into silence. “That’s all very well,” he said. “But what if I miss?”

“Look on the bright side,” said Nobby. “You’ll probably never know it.”

Sergeant Colon’s expression mutated into an evil, desperate grin. “We’ll never know it, you mean,” he said.

“What?”

“If you think I ‘m standing on some rooftop on my tod, you can think again. I order you to accompany me. Anyway,” he added, “you get one dollar responsibility allowance, too.”

Nobby’s face twisted in panic. “No I don’t!” he croaked. “Captain Vimes said he was docking it for five years for being a disgrace to the species!”

“Well, you might just get it back. Anyway, you know all about voonerables. I’ve watched you fight.”