Feet of Clay

Angua’s uniform and, eyes closed for decency’s sake, handed it around the crates.
    “No one told me she was a were—” Cheri moaned.
    “Look at it like this, Corporal,” said Vimes, as patiently as he could. “If she hadn’t been a werewolf you would by now be the world’s largest novelty candle, all right?”
    Angua walked from behind the crates, rubbing her mouth. The skin around it looked too pink…
    “It burned you?” said Cheri.
    “It’ll heal,” said Angua.
    “You never said you were a werewolf!”
    “How would you’ve liked me to have put it?”
    “Right,” said Vimes, “If that’s all sorted out, ladies, I want this place searched. Understand?”
    “I’ve got some ointment,” said Cheri meekly.
    “Thank you.”
    They found a bag in a cellar. There were several boxes of candles. And a lot of dead rats.

    Igneous the troll opened the door of his pottery a fraction. He’d intended the fraction to be no more than about one-sixteenth, but someone immediately pushed hard and turned it into rather more than one and three-quarters.
    “Here, what’s dis?” he said, as Detritus and Carrot came in with the shell of Dorfl between them. “You can’t jus’ break in here—”
    “We ain’t just breakin’ in,” said Detritus.
    “Dis is an outrage,” said Igneous, “You got no right comin’ in here. You got no reason—”
    Detritus let go of the golem and spun around. His hand shot out and caught Igneous around the throat. “You see dose statchoos of Monolith over dere? You see dem?” he growled, twisting the other troll’s head to face a row of troll religious statues on the other side of the warehouse, “You want I should smash one open, see what dey’re fill wit’, maybe find a reason?”
    Igneous’s slitted eyes darted this way and that. He might have been hard of thinking, but he could feel a killing mood when it was in the air. “No call for dat, I always help der Watch,” he muttered. “What dis all about?”
    Carrot laid out the golem on a table. “Start, then,” he said. “Rebuild him. Use as much of the old clay as you can, understand?”
    “How can it work when its lights’re out?” said Detritus, still puzzled by this mission of mercy.
    “The clay remembers!”
    The sergeant shrugged.
    “And give him a tongue,” said Carrot.
    Igneous looked shocked. “I won’t do dat ,” he said. “Everbody know it blasphemy if golems speak.”
    “Oh, yeah?” said Detritus. He strode across the warehouse to the group of statues and glared at them. Then he said, “Whoops, here’s me accident’ly trippin’ up, ooo, dis is me grabbin’ a statchoo for support, oh, der arm have come right off, where can I put my face…and what is dis white powder what I sees here with my eyes accident’ly spillin’ on der floor?”
    He licked a finger and gingerly tasted the stuff.
    “Slab,” he growled, walking back to the trembling Igneous. “You tellin’ me about blasphemy, you sedimentr’y coprolith? You doin’ what Captain Carrot say right now or you goin’ out of here in a sack! ”
    “Dis is police brutality…” Igneous muttered.
    “No, dis is just police shoutin’!” yelled Detritus. “You want to try for brutality it OK wit’ me!”
    Igneous tried to appeal to Carrot. “It not right, he got a badge, he puttin’ me in fear, he can’t do dis,” he said.
    Carrot nodded. There was a glint in his eye that Igneous should have noticed. “That’s correct,” he said. “Sergeant Detritus?”
    “Sir?”
    “It’s been a long day for all of us. You can go off-duty.”
    “Yessir!” said Detritus, with considerable enthusiasm. He removed his badge and laid it down carefully. Then he started to struggle out of his armor.
    “Look at it like this,” said Carrot. “It’s not that we’re making life, we’re simply giving life a place to live.”
    Igneous finally gave up. “OK, OK ,” he muttered. “I doin’ it. I doin ’ it.”
    He looked at the various lumps and shards that were all that remained of Dorfl, and rubbed the lichen on his chin.
    “You got most of the bits,” he said, professionalism edging resentment aside for a moment. “I could glue him together wit’ kiln cement. Dat’d do the trick if we bakes him overnight. Lessee…I reckon I got some over dere…”
    Detritus blinked at his finger, which was still white with the dust, and sidled over to Carrot. “Did I just lick dis?” he said.
    “Er, yes,” said Carrot.
    “T’ank