Feet of Clay

home?”
    “Yessir. Gran said they gave a lovely light, sir…”
    “I expect she sat up with your little brother, did she? Because I expect he got took sick first, so she sat up with him all night long, night after night and, hah, if I know old Mrs. Easy, she did her sewing…”
    “Yessir.”
    There was a pause.
    “Use my handkerchief,” said Vimes, after a while.
    “Am I going to lose my position, sir?”
    “No. That’s definite. No one involved deserves to lose their jobs,” said Vimes. He looked at the candle. “Except possibly me,” he added.
    He stopped at the doorway, and turned. “And if you ever want candle-ends, we’ve always got lots at the Watch House. Nobby’ll have to starting buying cooking fat like everyone else.”

    “What’s it doing now?” said Sergeant Colon.
    Wee Mad Arthur peered over the edge of the roof again. “It’s havin’ problems with its elbows,” he said conversationally. “It keeps lookin’ at one of ’em and tryin’ it all ways up and it’s not workin’.”
    “I had that trouble when I put up them kitchen units for Mrs. Colon,” said the sergeant. “The instructions on how to open the box were inside the box—”
    “Oh-oh, it’s worked it out,” said the rat-catcher. “Looks like it had it mixed up with its knees after all.”
    Colon heard a clank below him.
    “And now its gone round the corner”—there was a crash of splintering wood—” and now it’s got into the building. I expect it’ll come up the stairs, but it looks like yer’ll be OK.”
    “Why?”
    “’Cos all you gotta do is let go of the roof, see?”
    “I’ll drop to my death!”
    “Right! Nice clean way to go. None of that ‘arms-and-legs-bein’-ripped-off’ stuff first.”
    “I wanted to buy a farm!” moaned Colon.
    “Could be,” said Arthur. He looked over the roof again. “Or,” he said, as if this were hardly a better option, “yez could try to grab the drainpipe.”
    Colon looked sideways. There was a pipe a few feet away. If he swung his body and really made an effort, he might just miss it by inches and plunge to his death.
    “Does it look safe?” he said.
    “Compared with what, mister?”
    Colon tried to swing his legs like a pendulum. Every muscle in his arm screamed at him. He knew he was overweight. He’d always meant to take exercise one day. He just hadn’t been aware that it was going to be today.
    “I reckon I can hear it walking up the stairs,” said Wee Mad Arthur.
    Colon tried to swing faster.
    “What’re you going to do?” he said.
    “Oh, don’t yez worry about me,” said Wee Mad Arthur. “I’ll be fine. I’ll jump.”
    “ Jump? ”
    “Sure. I’ll be safe ’cos of being normal-sized, see.”
    “You think you’re normal-sized?”
    Wee Mad Arthur looked at Colon’s hands. “Are these yer fingers right here by my boots?” he said.
    “Right, right, you’re normal sized. ’S not your fault you’ve moved into a city full of giants,” said Colon.
    “Right. The smaller yez are the lighter yez fall. Well known fact. A spider’ll not even notice a drop like this, a mouse’d walk away, a horse’d break every bone in its body and a helephant would spla—”
    “Oh, gods,” muttered Colon. He could feel the drainpipe with his boot now. But getting a grip would mean there would have to be one long, bottomless moment when he was not exactly holding on to the roof and not exactly holding on to the drainpipe and in very serious peril of holding on to the ground.
    There was another crash from somewhere on the roof.
    “Right,” said Wee Mad Arthur. “See you at the bottom.”
    “Oh, gods…”
    The gnome stepped off the roof.
    “All OK so far,” he shouted, as he went past Colon.
    “Oh, gods…”
    Sergeant Colon looked up into two red glows.
    “Doing fine up to now,” said a dopplering voice from below.
    “Oh, gods …”
    Colon heaved his legs around, stood on fresh air for a moment, grabbed the top of the pipe, ducked his head as a pottery fist swung at him, heard the nasty little noise as the pipe’s rusty bolts said goodbye to the wall and, still clinging to a tilting length of cast-iron pipe as if it were going to help, disappeared backwards into the fog.

    Mr. Sock looked up at the sound of the door opening, and then cowered back against the sausage machine.
    “ You? ” he whispered. “Here, you can’t come back! I sold you!”
    Dorfl regarded him steadily for a few seconds, and then walked past him and