Guards! Guards!

said Nobby. “Looks like the ground to me. Got a light, Sarge?”
    “That was right, wasn’t it, sir?” said Carrot anxiously. “You said to—”
    “Yes, yes,” said Vimes. “Don’t worry.” He reached down with a shaking hand, picked up the bag Wonse had been holding, and tipped out a pile of stones. Every one had a hole in it. Why? he thought.
    A metallic noise behind him made him look around. The Patrician was holding the remains of the royal sword. As the captain watched, the man wrenched the other half of the sword out of the far wall. It was a clean break.
    “Captain Vimes,” he said.
    “Sir?”
    “That sword, if you please?”
    Vimes handed it over. He couldn’t, right now, think of anything else to do. He was probably due for a scorpion pit of his very own as it was.
    Lord Vetinari examined the rusty blade carefully.
    “How long have you had this, Captain?” he said mildly.
    “Isn’t mine, sir. Belongs to Lance-constable Carrot, sir.”
    “Lance—?”
    “Me, sir, your graciousness,” said Carrot, saluting.
    “Ah.”
    The Patrician turned the blade over and over slowly, staring at it as if fascinated. Vimes felt the air thicken, as though history was clustering around this point, but for the life of him he couldn’t think why. This was one of those points where the Trousers of Time bifurcated themselves, and if you weren’t careful you’d go down the wrong leg—

    Wonse arose in a world of shades, icy confusion pouring into his mind. But all he could think of at the moment was the tall cowled figure standing over him.
    “I thought you were all dead,” he mumbled. It was strangely quiet and the colors around him seemed washed-out, muted. Something was very wrong. “Is that you, Brother Doorkeeper?” he ventured.
    The figure reached out.
    M ETAPHORICALLY , it said.

    —and the Patrician handed the sword to Carrot.
    “Very well done, young man,” he said. “Captain Vimes, I suggest you give your men the rest of the day off.”
    “Thank you, sir,” said Vimes. “Okay, lads. You heard his lordship.”
    “But not you, Captain. We must have a little talk.”
    “Yes, sir?” said Vimes innocently.
    The rank scurried out, giving Vimes sympathetic and sorrowful glances.
    The Patrician walked to the edge of the floor and looked down.
    “Poor Wonse,” he said.
    “Yes, sir.” Vimes stared at the wall.
    “I would have preferred him alive, you know.”
    “Sir?”
    “Misguided, yes, but a useful man. His head could have been of further use to me.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “The rest, of course, we could have thrown away.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “That was a joke, Vimes.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “The chap never grasped the idea of secret passages, mind you.”
    “No, sir.”
    “That young fellow. Carrot, you called him?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Keen fellow. Likes it in the Watch?”
    “Yes, sir. Right at home, sir.”
    “You saved my life.”
    “Sir?”
    “Come with me.”
    He stalked away through the ruined palace, Vimes trailing behind, until he reached the Oblong Office. It was quite tidy. It had escaped most of the devastation with nothing more than a layer of dust. The Patrician sat down, and suddenly it was as if he’d never left. Vimes wondered if he ever had.
    He picked up a sheaf of papers and brushed the plaster off them.
    “Sad,” he said. “Lupine was such a tidy-minded man.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The Patrician steepled his hands and looked at Vimes over the top of them.
    “Let me give you some advice, Captain,” he said.
    “Yes, sir?”
    “It may help you make some sense of the world.”
    “Sir.”
    “I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,” said the man. “You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides .”
    He waved his thin hand toward the city and walked over to the window.
    “A great rolling sea of evil,” he said, almost proprietorially. “Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing!” He slapped Vimes good-naturedly on the back.
    “Down there,” he said, “are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great