The Truth

Then can I write down why I can't write anything down?' William said, smiling brightly.

Detritus reached up and moved a little lever on the side of his helmet. A barely audible whirring noise became fractionally louder. The troll had a helmet with a clockwork fan, to blow air across his silicon brain when overheating threatened to reduce its operating efficiency. Right now he obviously needed a cooler head.

'Ah. Dis is some kind of politics, right?' he said.

'Um, maybe. Sorry.'

Otto had staggered to his feet and was fiddling with the icono-graph again.

Detritus reached a decision. He nodded to a constable.

'Fiddyment, you take dese... two to Mister Vimes. Dey are not to fall down any steps on der way or any stuff like dat.'

Mister Vimes, thought William, as they hurried after the constable. All the watchmen called him that. The man had been a knight and was now a duke and a commander, but they called him Mister. And it was Mister, too, the full two syllables, not the everyday unheeded 'Mr'; it was the 'mister' you used when you wanted to say things like Tut down that crossbow and turn around real slow, mister.' He wondered why.

William had not been brought up to respect the Watch. They weren't our kind of people. It was conceded that they were useful, like sheepdogs, because clearly someone had to keep people in order, heavens knew, but only a fool would let a sheepdog sleep in the parlour. The Watch, in other words, was a regrettably necessary sub-set of the criminal classes, a section of the population informally defined by Lord de Worde as anyone with less than a thousand dollars a year.

William's family and everyone they knew also had a mental map of the city that was divided into parts where you found upstanding citizens and other parts where you found criminals. It had come as a shock to them... no, he corrected himself, it had come as an affront to learn that Vimes operated on a different map. Apparently he'd instructed his men to use the front door when calling at any

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building, even in broad daylight, when sheer common sense said that they should use the back, just like any other servant.* The man simply had no idea.

That Vetinari had made him a duke was just another example of the Patrician's lack of grip.

William therefore felt predisposed to like Vimes, if only because of the type of enemies he made, but as far as he could see everything about the man could be prefaced by the word 'badly', as in -spoken, -educated and -in need of a drink.

Fiddyment stopped in the big hall of the palace.

'Don't you go anywhere and don't you do anything,' he said. 'I'll go and--'

But Vimes was already coming down the wide stairs, trailed by a giant of a man William recognized as Captain Carrot.

You could add '-dressed' to Vimes's list. It wasn't that he wore bad clothes. He just seemed to generate an internal scruffiness field. The man could rumple a helmet.

Fiddyment met them halfway. There was a muttered conversation, out of which the unmistakable words 'He's what?' arose, in Vimes's voice. He glared darkly at William. The expression was clear. It said: it's been a bad day and now there's you.

Vimes walked the rest of the way down the stairs and looked William up and down.

'What is it you're wanting?' he demanded.

'I want to know what's happened here, please,' said William.

'Why?'

'Because people will want to know.'

'Hah! They'll find out soon enough!'

'But who from, sir?'

Vimes walked round William as if he was examining some strange new thing.

'You're Lord de Worde's boy, aren't you?'

'Yes, your grace.'

'Commander will do,' said Vimes sharply. 'And you write that little gossipy thing, right?'

~blk~~foot~

* William's class understood that justice was like coal or potatoes. You ordered it when you needed it.

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'Broadly, sir.'

'What was it you did to Sergeant Detritus?'

'I only wrote down what he said, sir.'

'Aha, pulled a pen on him, eh?'

'Sir?'

'Writing things down at people? Teh, tch... that sort of thing only causes trouble.'

Vimes stopped walking round William, but having him glare from a few inches away was no improvement.

'This has not been a nice day,' he said. 'And it's going to get a lot worse. Why should I waste my time talking to you?'

'I can tell you one good reason,' said William.

'Well, go on, then.'

'You should talk to me so that I can write it down, sir. All neat and correct. The actual words you say, right down there on the paper. And you know who I am, and if I get them wrong you know where to find me.'

'So? You're telling me that if I do what you want you'll do what you want?'

'I'm saying, sir, that a lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.'

'Ha! Did you just make that up?'

'No, sir. But you know it's true.'

Vimes sucked on his cigar. 'And you'll let me see what you've written?'

'Of course. I'll make sure you get one of the first papers off the press, sir.'

'I meant before it gets published, and you know it.'

'To tell you the truth, no, I don't think I should do that, sir.'

'I am the Commander of the Watch, lad.'