Feet of Clay

‘Come in, then.’ It was nice to know there was at least one person in the world with more problems than him. ‘How is his lordship?’

‘Stable,’ said Littlebottom.

‘Dead is stable,’ said Vimes.

‘I mean he’s alive, sir, and sitting up reading. Mr Doughnut made up some sticky stuff that tasted of seaweed, sir, and I mixed up some Gloobool’s Salts. Sir, you know the old man in the house on the bridge?’

‘What old … oh. Yes.’ It seemed a long time ago. ‘What about him?’

‘Well … you asked me to look around and … I took some pictures. This is one, sir.’ He handed Vimes a rectangle that was nearly all black.

‘Odd. Where’d you get it?’

‘Er … have you ever heard the story about dead men’s eyes, sir?’

‘Assume I haven’t had a literary education, Littlebottom.’

‘Well … they say …’

‘Who say?’

‘They, sir. You know, they.’

‘The same people who’re the “everyone” in “everyone knows”? The people who live in “the community”?’

‘Yes, sir. I suppose so, sir.’

Vimes waved a hand. ‘Oh, them. Well, go on.’

‘They say that the last thing a dying man sees stays imprinted in his eyes, sir.’

‘Oh, that. That’s just an old story.’

‘Yes. Amazing, really. I mean, if it weren’t true, you’d have thought it wouldn’t have survived, wouldn’t you? I thought I saw this little red spark, so I got the imp to paint a really big picture before it faded completely. And, right in the centre …’

‘Couldn’t the imp have made it up?’ said Vimes, staring at the picture again.

‘They haven’t got the imagination to lie, sir. What they see is what you get.’

‘Glowing eyes.’

‘Two red dots,’ said Littlebottom, conscientiously, ‘which might indeed be a pair of glowing eyes, sir.’

‘Good point, Littlebottom.’ Vimes rubbed his chin. ‘Blast! I just hope it’s not a god of some sort. That’s all I need at a time like this. Can you make copies so I can send them to all the Watch Houses?’

‘Yes, sir. The imp’s got a good memory.’

‘Hop to it, then.’

But before Littlebottom could go the door opened again. Vimes looked up. Carrot and Angua were there.

‘Carrot? I thought you were on your day off?’

‘We found a murder, sir! At the Dwarf Bread Museum. But when we got back to the Watch House they told us Lord Vetinari’s dead!’

Did they? thought Vimes. That’s rumour for you. If we could modulate it with the truth, how useful it could be …

‘He’s breathing well for a corpse,’ he said. ‘I think he’ll be okay. Someone got past his guard, that’s all. I’ve got a doctor to see him. Don’t worry.’

Someone got past his guard, he thought. Yes. And I’m his guard.

‘I hope the man’s a leader in the field, that’s all I can say,’ said Carrot severely.

‘He’s even better than that — he’s the doctor to the leaders of the field,’ said Vimes. I’m his guard and I didn’t see it coming.

‘It’d be terrible for the city if anything happened to him!’ said Carrot.

Vimes saw nothing but innocent concern behind Carrot’s forthright stare. ‘It would, wouldn’t it?’ he said. ‘Anyway, it’s under control. You said there’s been another murder?’

‘At the Dwarf Bread Museum. Someone killed Mr Hopkinson with his own bread!’

‘Made him eat it?’

‘Hit him with it, sir,’ said Carrot reproachfully. ‘Battle Bread, sir.’

‘Is he the old man with the white beard?’

‘Yes, sir. You remember, I introduced you to him when I took you to see the Boomerang Biscuit exhibition.’^{34}

Angua thought she saw a faint wince of recollection speed guiltily across Vimes’s face. ‘Who’s going around killing old men?’ he said to the world at large.

‘Don’t know, sir. Constable Angua went plain clothes’ — Carrot waggled his eyebrows conspiratorially — ‘and couldn’t find a sniff of anyone. And nothing was taken. This is what it was done with.’

The Battle Bread was much larger than an ordinary loaf. Vimes turned it over gingerly. ‘Dwarfs throw it like a discus, right?’

‘Yes, sir. At the Seven Mountains games last year Snori Shieldbiter took the tops off a line of six hardboiled eggs at fifty yards, sir. And that was with just a standard hunting loaf. But this is, well, it’s a cultural artefact. We haven’t got the baking technology for bread like this any more. It’s unique.’

‘Valuable?’

‘Very, sir.’

‘Worth stealing?’

‘You’d never be able to get rid of it! Every honest dwarf would recognize it!’

‘Hmm. Did you hear about that priest being murdered on Misbegot Bridge?’

Carrot looked shocked. ‘Not old Father Tubelcek? Really?’

Vimes stopped himself from asking: ‘You know him, then?’ Because Carrot knew everyone. If Carrot were to be dropped into some dense tropical jungle it’d be ‘Hello, Mr Runs Swiftly Through The Trees! Good morning, Mr Talks To The Forest, what a splendid blowpipe! And what a novel place for a feather!’

‘Did he have more than one enemy?’ said Vimes.

‘Sorry, sir? Why more than one?’

‘I should say the fact that he had one is obvious, wouldn’t you?’