Feet of Clay

“It’s the talk of the city.”
    “A picture forms in my mind,” said Dr. Downey. “Small monkey-like chap, always smoking very short cigarettes. Spotty. He squeezes them in public.”
    “That’s Nobby!” Queen Molly chuckled. “Face like a blind carpenter’s thumb!”
    “Him? But the man’s a tit!”
    “And dim as a penny candle,” said Mr. Boggis. “I don’t see—”
    Suddenly he stopped, and then contracted the contemplative silence that was gradually affecting everyone else around the table.
    “Don’t see why we shouldn’t…give this…due consideration,” he said, after a while.
    The assembled leaders looked at the table. Then they looked at the ceiling. Then they studiously avoided one another’s gaze.
    “Blood will out,” said Mr. Carry.
    “When I’ve watched him go down the street I’ve always thought: ‘There’s a man who walks in greatness,’” said Mrs. Palm.
    “He squeezes them in a very regal way, mind you. Very graciously.”
    The silence rolled over the assembly again. But it was busy, in the same way that the silence of an anthill is busy.
    “I must remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that poor Lord Vetinari is still alive,” said Mrs. Palm.
    “Indeed, indeed,” said Mr. Slant. “And long may he remain so. I’ve merely set out for you one option against that day, may it be a long time coming, when we should consider a…successor.”
    “In any case,” said Dr. Downey, “there is no doubt that Vetinari has been overdoing it. If he survives—which is greatly to be hoped, of course—I feel we should require him to step down for the sake of his health. Well done thou good and faithful servant, and so on. Buy him a nice house in the country somewhere. Give him a pension. Make sure there’s a seat for him at official dinners. Obviously, if he can be so easily poisoned now he should welcome the release from the chains of office…”
    “What about the wizards?” said Mr. Boggis.
    “They’ve never got involved in civic concerns,” said Dr. Downey. “Give ’em four meat meals a day and tip your hat to them and they’re happy. They know nothing about politics.”
    The silence that followed was broken by the voice of Queen Molly of the Beggars. “What about Vimes?”
    Dr. Downey shrugged. “He is a servant of the city.”
    “That’s what I mean.”
    “Surely we represent the city?”
    “Hah! He won’t see it that way. And you know what Vimes thinks about kings. It was a Vimes who chopped the head off the last one. There ’s a bloodline that thinks a swing of an axe can solve anything.”
    “Now, Molly, you know Vimes’d probably take an axe to Vetinari if he thought he could get away with it. No love lost there, I fancy.”
    “He won’t like it. That’s all I tell you. Vetinari keeps Vimes wound up. No knowing what happens if he unwinds all at once—”
    “He’s a public servant!” snapped Dr. Downey.
    Queen Molly made a face, which was not difficult in one so naturally well endowed, and sat back. “So this is the new way of things, is it?” she muttered. “Lot of ordinary men sit around a table and talk and suddenly the world’s a different place? The sheep turn round and charge the shepherd?”
    “There’s a soirée at Lady Selachii’s house this evening,” said Dr. Downey, ignoring her. “I believe Nobbs’s being invited. Perhaps we can…meet him.”

    Vimes told himself he was really going to inspect the progress on the new Watch House in Chittling Street. Cockbill Street was just round the corner. And then he’d call in, informally. No sense in sparing a man when they were pushed anyway, what with these murders and Vetinari and Detritus’s anti-Slab crusade.
    He turned the corner, and stopped.
    Nothing much had changed. That was the shocking thing. After…oh, too many years…things had no right not to have changed.
    But washing lines still criss-crossed the street between the gray, ancient buildings. Antique paint still peeled in the way cheap paint peeled when it had been painted on wood too old and rotten to take paint. Cockbill Street people were usually too penniless to afford decent paint, but always far too proud to use whitewash.
    And the place was slightly smaller than he remembered. That was all.
    When had he last come down here? He couldn’t remember. It was beyond the Shades, and up until quite recently the Watch had tended to leave that area to its own unspeakable devices.
    Unlike the Shades, though, Cockbill