Feet of Clay (Discworld #19)

Feet of Clay (Discworld #19) Page 16

'The boot it was holding came off,' moaned Colon.

'How did that happen?'

'It got... lubricated...'

Wee Mad Arthur tugged at a finger. 'Up yez come, then.'

'Can't.'

'Why not? It ain't holding on to yez no more.'

'Arms tired. Another ten seconds and I'm gonna be a chalk outline...'

'Nah, no one's got that much chalk.' Wee Mad Arthur knelt down so that his head was level with Colon's eyes. 'If you gonna die, d'yez mind signing a chitty to say yez promised me a dollar?'

Down below, there was a chink of pottery shards.

'What was that?' said Colon. 'I thought the damn thing smashed up ...

Wee Mad Arthur looked down. 'D'yez believe in that reincarnation stuff, Mr Colon?' he said.

'You wouldn't get me touching that foreign muck,' said Colon.

'Well, it's putting itself together. Like one of them jiggling saw puzzles.'

'Well done, Wee Mad Arthur,' said Colon. 'But I know you're just saying that so's I'll make the effort to haul meself up, right? Statues don't go putting themselves back together when they're smashed up.'

'Please yezself. It's done nearly a whole leg already.'

Colon managed to peer down through the small and smelly space between the wall and his armpit. All he could see were shreds of fog and a faint glow.

'You sure?' he said.

'Yez run around rat holes, yez learns to see good in the dark,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'Otherwise yez dead.'

Something hissed, somewhere below Colon's feet.

With his one booted foot and his toes he scrabbled at the brickwork.

'It's having a wee bit o' trouble,' said Wee Mad Arthur conversationally. 'Looks like it's put its knees on wrong way round.'

Dorfl sat hunched in the abandoned cellar where the golems had met. Occasionally the golem raised its head and hissed. Red light spilled from its eyes. If something had streamed back down through the glow, soared through the eye-sockets into the red sky beyond, there would be ...

Dorfl huddled under the glow of the universe. Its murmur was a long way off, muted, nothing to do with Dorfl.

The Words stood around the horizon, reaching all the way to the sky.

And a voice said quietly, 'You own yourself.' Dorfl saw the scene again arid again, saw the concerned face, hand reaching up, filling its vision, felt the sudden icy knowledge...

'... Own yourself...'

It echoed off the Words, and then rebounded, and then rolled back and forth, increasing in volume until the little world between the Words was gripped in the sound.

Golem Must Have a Master. The letters towered against the world, but the echoes poured around them, blasting like a sandstorm. Cracks started and then ran, zigzagging across the stone, and then -

The Words exploded. Great slabs of them, mountain-sized, crashed in showers of red sand.

The universe poured in. Dorfl felt the universe pick it up and bowl it over and then lift it off its feet and up ...

... and now the golem was among the universe. It could feel it all around, the purr of it, the busyness, the spinning complexity of it, the roar...

There were no Words between you and It.

You belonged to It, It belonged to you.

You couldn't turn your back on It because there It was, in front of you.

Dorfl was responsible for every tick and swerve of It.

You couldn't say, 'I had orders.' You couldn't say, 'It's not fair.' No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself.

Dorfl orbited a pair of glowing suns and hurtled off again.

Not Thou Shalt Not. Say I Will Not.

Dorfl tumbled through the red sky, then saw a dark hole ahead. The golem felt it dragging at him, and streamed down through the glow and the hole grew larger and sped across the edges of Dorfl's vision...

The golem opened his eyes.

NO MASTER!

Dorfl unfolded in one movement and stood upright. He reached out one arm and extended a finger.

The golem pushed the finger easily into the wall where the argument had taken place, and then dragged it carefully through the splintering brickwork. It took him a couple of minutes but it was something Dorfl felt needed to be said.

Dorfl completed the last letter and poked a row of three dots after it. Then the golem walked away, leaving behind:

NO MASTER...

A blue overcast from the cigars hid the ceiling of the smoking-room.

'Ah, yes. Captain Carrot,' said a chair. 'Yes... indeed... but... is he the right man?'

S got a birthmark shaped like a crown. I seen it,' said Nobby helpfully.

'But his background...'

'He was raised by dwarfs,' said Nobby. He waved his brandy glass at a waiter. 'Same again, mister.'

'I shouldn't think dwarfs could raise anyone very high,' said another chair. There was a hint of laughter.

'Rumours and folklore,' someone murmured.

'This is a large and busy and above all complex city. I'm afraid that having a sword and a birthmark are not much in the way of qualifications. We would need a king from a lineage that is used to command.'

'Like yours, my lord.'

There was a sucking, draining noise as Nobby attacked the fresh glass of brandy. 'Oh, I'm used to command, all right,' he said, lowering the glass. 'People are always orderin' me around.'

'We would need a king who had the support of the great families and major guilds of the city.'

'People like Carrot,' said Nobby.

'Oh, the people

'Anyway, whoever got the job'd have his work cut out,' said Nobby. 'Ole Vetinari's always pushin' paper. What kinda fun is that? 'S no life, sittin' up all hours, worryin', never a moment to yerself.' He held out the empty glass. 'Same again, my old mate. Fill it right up this time, eh? No sense in havin' a great big glass and only sloshin'a bit in the bottom, is there?'

'Many people prefer to savour the bouquet,' said a quietly horrified chair. They enjoy sniffing it.'

Nobby looked at his glass with the red-veined eyes of one who'd heard rumours about what the upper crust got up to. 'Nah,' he said. 'I'll go on stickin' it in my mouth, if it's all the same to you.'

'If we may get to the point,' said another chair, 'a king would not have to spend every moment running the city. He would of course have people to do that. Advisors. Counsellors. People of experience.'

'So what'd he have to do?' said Nobby.

'He'd have to reign,' said a chair.

'Wave.'

'Preside at banquets.'

'Sign things.'

'Guzzle good brandy disgustingly.'

'Reign.'

'Sounds like a good job to me,' said Nobby. 'All right for some, eh?'

'Of course, a king would have to be someone who could recognize a hint if it was dropped on his head from a great height/ said a speaker sharply, but the other chairs shushed him into silence.

Nobby managed to find his mouth after several goes and took another long pull at his cigar. 'Seems to me,' he said, 'seems to me, what you want to do is find some nob with time on his hands and say, Yo, it's your lucky day. Let's see you wave that hand. '

'Ah! That's a good idea! Does any name cross your mind, my lord? Have a drop more brandy.'

'Why, thanks, you're a toff. O' course, so 'm I, eh? That's right, flunkey, all the way to the top. No, can't think of anyone that fits the bill.'

'In fact, my lord, we were indeed thinking of offering the crown to you - '

Nobby's eyes bulged. And then his cheek bulged.

It is not a good idea to spray finest brandy across the room, especially when your lighted cigar is in the way. The flame hit the far wall, where it left a perfect chrysanthemum of scorched woodwork, while in accordance with a fundamental rule of physics Nobby's chair screamed back on its castors and thudded into the door.

'King?' Nobby coughed, and then they had to slap him on the back until he got his breath again. 'King?' he wheezed. 'And have Mr Vimes cut me head off?'

'All the brandy you can drink, my lord,' said a wheedling voice.

S no good if you ain't got a throat for it to go down!'

'What're you talking about?'

'Mr Vimes?d go spare! He'd go spared

'Good heavens, man - '

'My lord,' someone corrected.

'My lord, I mean - when you're king you can tell that wretched Sir Samuel what to do. You'll be, as you would call it, the boss . You could - '

'Tell ole Stoneface what to do?' said Nobby.

That's right!'

Td be a king and tell ole Stoneface what to do?' said Nobby.

'Yes!'

Nobby stared into the smoky gloom.

'He'd go spared

'Listen, you silly little man - '

'My lord - '

'You silly little lord, you'd be able to have him executed if you wished!'

'I couldn't do that!'

'Why not?'

'He'd go spare!'

'The man calls himself an officer of the law, and whose law does he listen to, eh? Where does his law come from?'

'I don't know!' groaned Nobby. 'He says it comes up through his boots!' He looked around. The shadows in the smoke seemed to be closing in.

'I can't be king! Ole Vimes'd go spare!'

'Will you stop saying that!'

Nobby pulled at his collar.

S a bit hot and smoky in here,' he mumbled. 'Which way's the window?'

'Over there - '

The chair rocked. Nobby hit the glass helmet-first, landed on top of a waiting carriage, bounced off and ran into the night, trying to escape destiny in general and axes in particular.

Cheri Littlebottom strode into the palace kitchens and fired her crossbow into the ceiling.

'Don't nobody move!' she yelled.

The Patrician's domestic staff looked up from their dinner.

'When you say don't nobody move,' said Drum-knott carefully, fastidiously taking a piece of plaster off his plate, 'do you in fact mean - '

'All right, Corporal, I'll take over now,' said Vimes, patting Cheri on the shoulder. 'Is Mildred Easy here?'

All heads turned.

Mildred's spoon dropped into her soup.

'It's all right,' said Vimes. 'I just need to ask you a few more questions - '

'I'm... s-s-sorry, sir - '

'You haven't done anything wrong,' said Vimes, walking around the table. 'But you didn't just take food home for your family, did you?'

'S-sir?'

'What else did you take?'

Mildred looked at the suddenly blank expressions on the faces of the other servants. 'There was the old sheets but Mrs Dipplock did s-say I could have - '

'No, not that,' said Vimes.

Mildred licked her dry lips. 'Er, there was... there was some boot polish...'

'Look,' said Vimes, as kindly as possible, 'everyone takes small things from the place where they work. Small stuff that no one notices. No one thinks of it as stealing. It's like... it's like rights. Odds and ends. Ends, Miss Easy? I'm thinking about the word ends .'

'Er... you mean... the candle ends, sir?'

Vimes took a deep breath. It was such a relief to be right, even though you knew you'd only got there by trying every possible way to be wrong. 'Ah,' he said.

'B-but that's not stealing, sir. I've never stolen nothing, s-sir!'

'But you take home the candle stubs? Still half an hour of light in 'em, I expect, if you burn them in a saucer?' said Vimes gently.

'But that's not stealing, sir! That's perks, sir.'

Sam Vimes smacked his forehead. 'Perks! Of course! That was the word I was looking for. Perks! Everyone's got to have perks, aren't I right? Well, that's fine, then,' he said. 'I expect you get the ones from the bedrooms, yes?'

Even through her nervousness, Mildred Easy was able to grin the grin of someone with an Entitlement that lesser beings hadn't got. 'Yessir. I'm allowed, sir. They're much better than the ole coarse ones we use in the main halls, sir.'

'And you put in fresh candles when necessary, do you?'

'Yessir.'

Probably slightly more often than necessary, Vimes thought. No point in letting them burn down too much...

'Perhaps you can show me where they're kept, miss?'

The maid looked along the table to the housekeeper, who glanced at Commander Vimes and then nodded. She was bright enough to know when something that sounded like a question really wasn't one.

'We keep them in the candle pantry next door, sir,' said Mildred.

'Lead the way, please.'

It wasn't a big room, but its shelves were stacked floor-to-ceiling with candles. There were the yard-high ones used in the public halls and the small everyday ones used everywhere else, sorted according to quality.

'These are what we uses in his lordship's rooms, sir.' She handed him twelve inches of white candle.

'Oh, yes... very good quality. Number Fives. Nice white tallow,' said Vimes, tossing it up and down. 'We burn these at home. The stuff we use at the Yard is damn near pork dripping. We get ours from Carry's in the Shambles now. Very reasonable prices. We used to deal with Spadger and Williams but Mr Carry's really cornered the market these days, hasn't he?'

'Yessir. And he delivers 'em special, sir.'

'And you put these candles in his lordship's room every day?'

'Yessir.'

'Anywhere else?'

'Oh, no, sir. His lordship's particular about that! We just use Number Threes.'

'And you take your, er, perks home?'

'Yessir. Gran said they gave a lovely light, sir...'

'I expect she sat up with your little brother, did she? Because I expect he got took sick first, so she sat up with him all night long, night after night and, hah, if I know old Mrs Easy, she did her sewing...'

'Yessir.'

There was a pause.

'Use my handkerchief,' said Vimes, after a while.

'Am I going to lose my position, sir?'

'No. That's definite. No one involved deserves to lose their jobs,' said Vimes. He looked at the candle. 'Except possibly me,' he added.

He stopped at the doorway, and turned. 'And if you ever want candle-ends, we've always got lots at the Watch House. Nobby'll have to start buying cooking fat like everyone else.'

'What's it doing now?' said Sergeant Colon.

Wee Mad Arthur peered over the edge of the roof again. 'It's havin' problems with its elbows,' he said conversationally. 'It keeps lookin' at one of'em and tryin' it all ways up and it's not workin'.'

'I had that trouble when I put up them kitchen units for Mrs Colon,' said the sergeant. 'The instructions on how to open the box were inside the box - '

'Oh-oh, it's worked it out,' said the rat-catcher. 'Looks like it had it mixed up with its knees after all.'

Colon heard a clank below him;

'And now it's gone round the corner'  -  there was a crash of splintering wood - 'and now it's got into the building. I expect it'll come up the stairs, but it looks like yer'll be okay.'

'Why?'

Cos all you gotta do is let go of the roof, see?'

'I'll drop to my death!'

'Right! Nice clean way to go. None of that arms-and-legs-bein'-ripped-off' stuff first.'

'I wanted to buy a farm!' moaned Colon.

'Could be,' said Arthur. He looked over the roof again. 'Or,' he said, as if this were hardly a better option, 'yez could try to grab the drainpipe.'

Colon looked sideways. There was a pipe a few feet away. If he swung his body and really made an effort, he might just miss it by inches and plunge to his death.

'Does it look safe?' he said.

'Compared with what, mister?'

Colon tried to swing his legs like a pendulum. Every muscle in his arm screamed at him. He knew he was overweight. He'd always meant to take exercise one day. He just hadn't been aware that it was going to be today.

'I reckon I can hear it walking up the stairs,' said Wee Mad Arthur.

Colon tried to swing faster. 'What're you going to do?' he said.

'Oh, don't yez worry about me,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'I'll be fine. I'll jump.'

'Jump?'

'Sure. I'll be safe 'cos of being normal-sized, see.'

'You think you're normal-sized?'

Wee Mad Arthur looked at Colon's hands. 'Are these yer fingers right here by my boots?' he said.

'Right, right, you're normal-sized. 'S not your fault you've moved into a city full of giants,' said Colon.

'Right. The smaller yez are the lighter yez fall. Well known fact. A spider'll not even notice a drop like this, a mouse'd walk away, a horse'd break every bone in its body and a helephant would spla - '

'Oh, gods,' muttered Colon. He could feel the drainpipe with his boot now. But getting a grip would mean there would have to be one long, bottomless moment when he was not exactly holding on to the roof and not exactly holding on to the drainpipe and in very serious peril of holding on to the ground.

There was another crash from somewhere on the roof.

'Right,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'See you at the bottom.'

'Oh, gods.'

The gnome stepped off the roof.

'All okay so far,' he shouted, as he went past Colon.

'Oh, gods.'

Sergeant Colon looked up into two red glows.

'Doing fine up to now,' said a dopplering voice from below.

'Oh, gods...'

Colon heaved his legs around, stood on fresh air for a moment, grabbed the top of the pipe, ducked his head as a pottery fist swung at him, heard the nasty little noise as the pipe's rusty bolts said goodbye to the wall and, still clinging to a tilting length of cast-iron pipe as if it were going to help, disappeared backwards into the fog.

Mr Sock looked up at the sound of the door opening, and then cowered back against the sausage machine.

' You!' he whispered. 'Here, you can't come back! I sold you!'

Dorfl regarded him steadily for a few seconds, and then walked past him and took the largest cleaver from the blood-stained rack on the wall.

Sock began to shake.

'I-I-I was always g-g-good to you,' he said. 'A-a-always let you h-have your h-holy d-d-days off - '

Dorfl stared at him again. It's only red light, Sock gibbered to himself...

But it seemed more focused. He felt it entering his head through his own eyes and examining his soul.

The golem pushed him aside and stepped out of the slaughterhouse and towards the cattle pens.

Sock unfroze. They never fought back, did they? They couldn't. It was how the damn things were made.

He stared around at the other workers, humans and trolls alike. 'Don't just stand there! Get it!'

One or two hesitated. It was a big cleaver in the golem's hand. And when Dorfl stopped to look around at them there was something different about the golem's stance, too. It didn't look like something that wouldn't fight back.

But Sock didn't employ people for the muscles in their heads. Besides, no one had really liked a golem around the place.

A troll aimed a pole-axe at him. Dorfl caught it one-handed without turning his head and snapped the hickory handle with his fingers. A man with a hammer had it plucked from his hand and thrown so hard at the wall that it left a hole.

After that they followed at a cautious distance. Dorfl took no further notice of them.

The steam over the cattle pens mingled with the fog. Hundreds of dark eyes watched Dorfl curiously as he walked between the fences. They were always quiet when the golem was around.

He stopped by one of the largest pens. There were voices from behind.

'Don't tell me it's going to slaughter the lot of 'em! We'll never get that lot jointed this shift!'

'I heard where there was one at a carpenter's that went odd and made five thousand tables in one night. Lost count or something.'

'It's just staring at them...'

'I mean, five thousand tables? One of them had twenty-seven legs. It got stuck on legs...'

Dorfl brought the cleaver down hard and sliced the lock off the gate. The cattle watched the golem, with that guarded expression which cattle have that means they're waiting for the next thought to turn up.

He walked on to the sheep pens and opened them, too. The pigs were next, and then the poultry.

'All of them?' said Mr Sock.

The golem walked calmly back down the line of pens, ignoring the watchers, and re-entered the slaughterhouse. He came out very shortly afterwards leading the ancient and hairy billygoat on a piece of string. He went past the waiting animals until he reached the wide gates that led on to the main road, which he opened. Then he let the goat loose.

The animal sniffed the air and rolled its slotted eyes. Then, apparently deciding that the distant odour of the cabbage fields beyond the city wall was much preferable to the smells immediately around it, it trotted away up the road.

The animals followed it in a rush, but with hardly any other noise than the rustle of movement and the sounds of their hooves. They streamed around the stationary figure of Dorfl, who stood and watched them go.

A chicken, bewildered by the stampede, landed on the golem's head and started to cluck.

Anger finally overcame Sock's terror. 'What the hell are you doing?' he shouted, trying to field a few stray sheep as they bolted out of the pens. 'That's money walking out of the gate, you - '

Dorfl's hand was suddenly around his throat. The golem picked him up and held the struggling man at arm's-length, turning his head this way and that as if considering his next course of action.

Finally he tossed away the cleaver, reached up under the chicken that had taken up residence, and produced a small brown egg. With apparent ceremony the golem smashed it carefully on Sock's scalp and dropped him.

The golem's former co-workers jumped back out of the way as Dorfl walked back through the slaughterhouse.

There was a tally board by the entrance. Dorfl looked at it for a while, then picked up the chalk and wrote:

NO MASTER...

The chalk crumbled in his fingers. Dorfl walked out into the fog.

Cheri looked up from her workbench.

'The wick's full of arsenous acid,' she said. 'Well done, sir! This candle even weighs slightly more than other candles!'

'What an evil way to kill anyone,' said Angua.

'Certainly very clever,' said Vimes. 'Vetinari sits up half the night writing, and in the morning the candle's burned down. Poisoned by the light. The light's something you don't see. Who looks at the light? Not some plodding old copper.'

'Oh, you're not that old, sir,' said Carrot, cheerfully.

'What about plodding?'

'Or that plodding, either,' Carrot added quickly. 'I've always pointed out to people that you walk in a very purposeful and meaningful manner.'

Vimes gave him a sharp look and saw nothing more than a keen and innocently helpful expression.

'We don't look at the light because the light is what we look with,' said Vimes. 'Okay. And now I think we should go and have a look at the candle factory, shouldn't we? You come, Littlebottom, and bring your... have you got taller, Little-bottom?'

'High-heeled boots, sir,' said Cheri.

'I thought dwarfs always wore iron boots...'

'Yes, sir. But I've got high heels on mine, sir. I welded them on.'

'Oh. Fine. Right.' Vimes pulled himself together. 'Well, if you can still totter, bring your alchemy stuff with you. Detritus should've come off-duty from the palace. When it comes to locked doors you can't beat Detritus. He's a walking crowbar. We'll pick him up on the way.'

He loaded his crossbow and lit a match.

'Right,' he said. 'We've done it the modern way, now let's try policing like grandfather used to do it. It's time to - '

'Prod buttock, sir?' said Carrot, hurriedly.

'Close,' said Vimes, taking a deep drag and blowing out a smoke ring, 'but no cigar.'

Sergeant Colon's view of the world was certainly changing. Just when something was about to fix itself firmly in his mind as the worst moment of his entire life, it was hurriedly replaced by something even nastier.

Firstly, the drainpipe he was riding hit the wall of the building opposite. In a well-organized world he might have landed on a fire escape, but fire escapes were unknown in Ankh-Morpork and the flames generally had to leave via the roof.

With the pipe thus leaning against the wall, he found himself sliding down the diagonal. Even this might have been a happy outcome were it not for the fact that Colon was a heavy man and, as his weight slid nearer to the middle of the unsupported pipe, the pipe sagged, and cast iron has only a very limited amount of sag before it snaps, which it novv did.

Colon dropped, and landed on something soft -at least, softer than the street - and the something went 'mur-r-r-r-r-m!'. He bounced off it and landed on something lower and softer which went 'baaaaarp!', and rolled from this on to something even lower and apparently made of feathers, which went insane. And pecked him.

The street was full of animals, milling around uncertainly. When animals are in a state of uncertainty they get nervous, and the street was already, as it were, paved with anxiety. The only benefit to Sergeant Colon was that this made it slightly softer than would otherwise have been the case.

Hooves trod on his hands. Very large dribbly noses sneezed at him.

Sergeant Colon had not hitherto had a great deal of experience of animals, except in portion sizes. When he'd been little he'd had a pink stuffed pig called Mr Dreadful, and he'd got up to Chapter Six in Animal Husbandry. It had woodcuts in it. There was no mention of hot smelly breath and great clomping feet like soup plates on a stick. Cows, in Sergeant Colon's book, should go 'moo'. Every child knew that. They shouldn't go 'mur-r-r-r-r-m!' like some kind of undersea monster and spray you with spit.

He tried to get up, skidded on some cow's moment of crisis, and sat down on a sheep. It went 'blaaaart!' What kind of noise was that for a sheep to make?

He got up again and tried to make his way to the kerb. 'Shoo! Get out of the damn way, you sheep! Gam!'

A goose hissed at him and stuck out altogether too much neck.