Feet of Clay

greatest of its cities, spring was nudged aside by summer, and summer was prodded in the back by autumn.
    Geographically speaking, there was not a lot of difference within the city itself, although in later spring the scum on the river was often a nice emerald green. The mist of spring became the fog of autumn, which mixed with fumes and smoke from the magical quarter and the workshops of the alchemists until it seemed to have a thick, choking life of its own.
    And time moved on.

    Autumn fog pressed itself against the midnight windowpanes.
    Blood ran in a trickle across the pages of a rare volume of religious essays, which had been torn in half.
    There had been no need for that, thought Father Tubelcek.
    A further thought suggested that there had been no need to hit him either. But Father Tubelcek had never been very concerned about that sort of thing. People healed, books didn’t. He reached out shakily and tried to gather up the pages, but slumped back again.
    The room was spinning.
    The door swung open. Heavy footsteps creaked across the floor—one footstep at least, and one dragging noise.
    Step. Drag. Step. Drag.
    Father Tubelcek tried to focus. “You?” he croaked.
    Nod.
    “Pick…up the…books.”
    The old priest watched as the books were retrieved and piled carefully with fingers not well suited to the task.
    The newcomer took a quill pen from the debris, carefully wrote something on a scrap of paper, then rolled it up and placed it delicately between Father Tubelcek’s lips.
    The dying priest tried to smile.
    “We don’t work like that,” he mumbled, the little cylinder wobbling like a last cigarette, “We…make…our…own…w…”
    The kneeling figure watched him for a while and then, taking great care, leaned forward slowly and closed his eyes.

    Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Guard, frowned at himself in the mirror and began to shave.
    The razor was a sword of freedom. Shaving was an act of rebellion.
    These days, someone ran his bath (every day!—you wouldn’t think the human skin could stand it). And someone laid out his clothes (such clothes!). And someone cooked his meals (what meals!—He was putting on weight, he knew). And someone even polished his boots (and such boots!—no cardboard-soled wrecks but big, well-fitting boots of genuine shiny leather). There was someone to do nearly everything for him, but there were some things a man ought to do for himself, and one of them was shaving.
    He knew that Lady Sybil mildly disapproved. Her father had never shaved himself in his life. He had a man for it. Vimes had protested that he’d spent too many years trudging the night-time streets to be happy about anyone else wielding a blade anywhere near his neck, but the real reason, the unspoken reason, was that he hated the very idea of the world being divided into the shaved and the shavers. Or those who wore the shiny boots and those who cleaned the mud off them. Every time he saw Willikins the butler fold his, Vimes’s, clothes, he suppressed a terrible urge to kick the butler’s shiny backside as an affront to the dignity of man.
    The razor moved calmly over the stubble of the night.
    Last night there had been some official dinner. He couldn’t recall now what it had been for. He seemed to spend his whole life at the things. Arch, giggling women and braying young men who’d been at the back of the line when the chins were handed out. And, as usual, he’d come back through the fog-bound city in a filthy temper with himself.
    He’d noticed a light under the kitchen door and heard conversation and laughter, and had gone in. Willikins was there, with the old man who stoked the boiler, and the head gardener, and the boy who cleaned the spoons and lit the fires. They were playing cards. There were bottles of beer on the table.
    He’d pulled up a chair, and cracked a few jokes and asked to be dealt in. They’d been…welcoming. In a way. But as the game progressed Vimes had been aware of the universe crystallizing around him. It was like becoming a cogwheel in a glass clock. There was no laughter. They’d called him “sir” and kept clearing their throats. Everything was very…careful.
    Finally he’d mumbled an excuse and stumbled out. Halfway along the passage he’d thought he’d heard a comment followed by…well, maybe it was only a chuckle. But it might have been a snigger.
    The razor carefully circumnavigated the nose.
    Hah. A couple of years ago a man like