Feet of Clay

meant?”
    “Oh. Yes. Come on into my office.” Vimes relaxed. This wasn’t going to be another one of those painful conversations about the state of his soul and the necessity of giving it a wash and brush-up before eternal damnation set in. This was going to be about something important .
    “It’s ancient Cenotine, sir. It’s out of one of their holy books, although of course when I say ‘holy’ it is a fact that they were basically misguided in a…”
    “Yes, yes, I’m sure,” said Vimes, sitting down. “Does it by any chance say ‘Mr. X did it, aargh, aargh, aargh’?”
    “No, sir. That phrase does not appear anywhere in any known holy book, sir.”
    “Ah,” said Vimes.
    “Besides, I looked at other documents in the room and the paper does not appear to be in the deceased’s handwriting, sir.”
    Vimes brightened up. “Ah-ha! Someone else’s? Does it say something like ‘Take that, you bastard, we’ve been waiting ages to get you for what you did all those years ago’?”
    “No, sir. That phrase also does not appear in any holy book anywhere,” said Constable Visit, and hesitated. “Except in the Apocrypha to The Vengeful Testament of Offler ,” he added conscientiously. “ These words are from the Cenotine Book of Truth ,” he sniffed, “as they called it. It’s what their false god…”
    “Could I just perhaps have the words and leave out the comparative religion?” said Vimes.
    “Very well, sir.” Visit looked hurt, but unfolded a piece of paper and sniffed disparagingly. “These are some of the rules that their god allegedly gave to the first people after he’d baked them out of clay, sir. Rules like ‘Thou shalt labor fruitfully all the days of your life,’ sir, and ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and ‘Thou shalt be humble.’ That sort of thing.”
    “Is that all?” said Vimes.
    “Yes, sir,” said Visit.
    “They’re just religious quotations?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Any idea why it was in his mouth? Poor devil looked like he was having a last cigarette.”

“No, sir.”
    “I could understand if it was one of the ‘smite your enemies’ ones,” said Vimes. “But that’s just saying ‘get on with your work and don’t make trouble’.”
    “Ceno was a rather liberal god, sir. Not big on commandments.”
    “Sounds almost decent, as gods go.”
    Visit looked disapproving. “The Cenotines died through five hundred years of waging some of the bloodiest wars on the continent, sir.”
    “Spare the thunderbolts and spoil the congregation, eh?” said Vimes.
    “Pardon, sir?”
    “Oh, nothing. Well, thank you, Constable. I’ll, er, see that Captain Carrot is informed and, thank you once again, don’t let me keep you from—”
    Vimes’s desperately accelerating voice was too late to prevent Visit pulling a roll of paper out of his breastplate.
    “I’ve brought you the latest Unadorned Facts magazine, sir, and also this month’s Battle Call , which contains many articles that I’m sure will be of interest to you, including Pastor Nasal Pedlers’ exhortation to the congregation to rise up and speak to people sincerely through their letterboxes, sir.”
    “Er, thank you.”
    “I can’t help noticing that the pamphlets and magazines I gave you last week are still on your desk where I left them, sir.”
    “Oh, yes, well, sorry, you know how it is, the amount of work these days, makes it so hard to find the time to—”
    “It’s never too soon to contemplate eternal damnation, sir.”
    “I think about it all the time, Constable. Thank you.”
    Unfair , thought Vimes, when Visit had gone. A note is left at the scene of a crime in my town and does it have the decency to be a death-threat? No. The last dying scrawl of a man determined to name his murderer? No. It’s a bit of religious doggerel. What’s the good of Clues that are more mysterious than the mystery?
    He scribbled a note on Visit’s translation and chucked it into his In Tray.

    Too late, Angua remembered why she avoided the slaughterhouse district at this time of the month.
    She could change at will at any time. That’s what people forgot about werewolves. But they remembered the important thing. Full moonlight was the irresistible trigger: the lunar rays reached down into the center of her morphic memory and flipped all the switches, whether she wanted them switched or not. Full moon was only a couple of days away. And the delicious smell of the penned animals and the blood from the