Jingo

At the end of the table Vimes's lips were moving. Let's see, Acquiris… “‘You get what you grab’?” he said aloud.

“We're not going to take their word for it, are we?” said Slant, pointedly ignoring him. “Excuse me, my lord, but I don't believe that proud Ankh-Morpork is told what to do by a bunch of thieves with towels on their heads.”

“No, indeed! It's about time Johnny Klatchian was taught a lesson,” said Lord Selachii. “Remember all that business last year with the cabbages? Ten damn boatloads they wouldn't accept!”

“And everyone knows caterpillars add to the flavour,” said Vimes, more or less to himself.

The Patrician shot him a glance.

“That's right!” said Selachii. “Good honest protein! And you remember all that trouble Captain Jenkins had over that cargo of mutton? They were going to imprison him! In a Klatchian jail!”

“Surely not? Meat is at its best when it's going green,” said Vimes.

“It's not as if it'd taste any different under all that curry,” said Burleigh. “I was at a dinner in their embassy once, and do you know what they made me eat? It was a sheep's—”

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Vimes, standing up. “There are some urgent matters I must deal with.”

He nodded to the Patrician and hurried out of the room. He shut the door behind him and took a breath of fresh air, although right now he'd have happily inhaled deeply in a tannery.

Corporal Littlebottom stood up and looked at him expectantly. She had been sitting next to a box, which cooed peacefully.

“Something's up. Run down to… I mean, send a pigeon down to the Yard,” said Vimes.

“Yes, sir?”

“All leave is cancelled as of now and I want to see every officer, and I mean every officer, at the Yard at, oh, let's say six o'clock.”

“Right, sir. That might mean an extra pigeon unless I can write small enough.”

Littlebottom hurried off.

Vimes glanced out of the window. There was always a certain amount of activity outside the palace but today there was… not so much a crowd as, just, rather more people than you normally saw, hanging around. As if they were waiting for something.

Klatch!

Everyone knows it.

Old Detritus was right. You could hear the little pebbles bouncing. It's not just a few fishermen having a scrap, it's a hundred years of… well, like two big men trying to fit in one small room, trying to be polite about it, and then one day one of them just has to stretch and pretty soon they're both smashing the furniture.

But it couldn't really happen, could it? From what he'd heard, the present Seriph was a competent man who was mostly concerned with pacifying the rowdy edges of his empire. And there were Klatchians living in Ankh-Morpork, for heaven's sake! There were Klatchians born in Ankh-Morpork. You saw some lad with a face that'd got camels written all over it, and when he opened his mouth it'd turn out he had an Ankhian accent so thick you could float rocks. Oh, there's all the jokes about funny food and foreigners, but surely…

Not very funny jokes, come to think of it.

When you hear the bang, there's no time to wonder how long the little fuse has been fizzing.

There were raised voices when he went back into the Rats Chamber.

“Because, Lord Selachii,” the Patrician was saying, “these are not the old days. It is no longer considered… nice… to send a warship over there to, as you put it, show Johnny Foreigner the error of his ways. For one thing, we haven't had any warships since the Mary–Jane sank four hundred years ago. And times have changed. These days, the whole world watches. And, my lord, you are no longer allowed to say ‘What're you lookin' at?’ and black their eyes.” He leaned back. “There's Chimeria, and Khanli, and Ephebe, and Tsort. And Muntab, these days, too. And Omnia. Some of these are powerful nations, gentlemen. Many of them don't like Klatch's current expansionist outlook, but they don't like us much, either.”

“Whyever not?” said Lord Selachii.

“Well, because during our history those we haven't occupied we've tended to wage war on,” said Lord Vetinari. “For some reason the slaughter of thousands of people tends to stick in the memory.”

“Oh, history,” said Lord Selachii. “That's all in the past!”

“A good place for history, agreed,” said the Patrician solemnly.

“I meant: why don't they like us now? Do we owe them money?”

“No. Mostly they owe us money. Which is, of course, a far better reason for their dislike.”

“How about Sto Lat and Pseudopolis and the other cities?” said Lord Downey.

“They don't like us much, either.”

“Why not? I mean t'say, we do share a common heritage,” said Lord Selachii.

“Yes, my lord, but that common heritage largely consists of having had wars with one another,” said the Patrician. “I can't see much support there. Which is a little unfortunate because we do not, in fact, have an army. I am not, of course, a military man but I believe that one of those is generally considered vital to the successful prosecution of a war.”

He looked along the table.