Guards! Guards!

opened and shut once or twice. “I shall summon the Watch!” she said at last.
    The threat did not have the effect she had expected. Lady Ramkin had never paid much attention to those bits of the city that didn’t have scales on.
    “Well, that’s too bad,” said the leader. “That’s really worrying you know that? Makes me go all weak at the knees, that does.”
    He extracted a lengthy cleaver from his belt. “And now you just stand aside, lady, because—”
    A streak of green fire blasted out of the back of the shed, passed a foot over the heads of the mob, and burned a charred rosette in the woodwork over the door.
    Then came a voice that was a honeyed purr of sheer deadly menace.
    “This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off.”
    Captain Vimes limped forward from the shadows.
    A small and extremely frightened golden dragon was clamped firmly under one arm. His other hand held it by the tail.
    The rioters watched it, hypnotized.
    “Now I know what you’re thinking,” Vimes went on, softly. “You’re wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left? And, y’know, I ain’t so sure myself…”
    He leaned forward, sighting between the dragon’s ears, and his voice buzzed like a knife blade:
    “What you’ve got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky?”
    They swayed backward as he advanced.
    “Well?” he said. “ Are you feeling lucky?”
    For a few moments the only sound was Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV’s stomach rumbling ominously as fuel sloshed into his flame chambers.
    “Now look, er,” said the leader, his eyes fixed hypnotically on the dragon’s head, “there’s no call for anything like that—”
    “In fact he might just decide to flare off all by himself,” said Vimes. “They have to do it to stop the gas building up. It builds up when they get nervous. And, y’know, I reckon you’ve made them all pretty nervous now.”
    The leader made what he hoped was a vaguely conciliatory gesture, but unfortunately did it with the hand that was still holding a knife.
    “Drop it,” said Vimes sharply, “or you’re history.”
    The knife clanged on the flagstones. There was a scuffle at the back of the crowd as a number of people, metaphorically speaking, were a long way away and knew nothing about it.
    “But before the rest of you good citizens disperse quietly and go about your business,” said Vimes meaningfully, “I suggest you look hard at these dragons. Do any of them look sixty feet long? Would you say they’ve got an eighty-foot wingspan? How hot do they flame, would you say?”
    “Dunno,” said the leader.
    Vimes raised the dragon’s head slightly. The leader rolled his eyes.
    “Dunno, sir,” he corrected.
    “Do you want to find out?”
    The leader shook his head. But he did manage to find his voice.
    “Who are you, anyway?” he said.
    Vimes drew himself up. “Captain Vimes, City Watch,” he said.
    This met with almost complete silence. The exception was the cheerful voice, somewhere in the back of the crowd, which said: “Night shift, is it?”
    Vimes looked down at his nightshirt. In his hurry to get off his sickbed he’d shuffled hastily into a pair of Lady Ramkin’s slippers. For the first time he saw they had pink pompoms on them.
    And it was at this moment that Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV chose to belch.
    It wasn’t another stab of roaring fire. It was just a near-invisible ball of damp flame which rolled over the mob and singed a few eyebrows. But it definitely made an impression.
    Vimes rallied magnificently. They couldn’t have noticed his brief moment of sheer horror.
    “That one was just to get your attention,” he said, pokerfaced. “The next one will be a little lower.”
    “Er,” said the leader. “Right you are. No problem. We were just going anyhow. No big dragons here, right enough. Sorry you’ve been troubled.”
    “Oh, no,” said Lady Ramkin triumphantly. “You don’t get away that easily!” She reached up onto a shelf and produced a tin box. It had a slot in the lid. It rattled. On the side was the legend: The Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons .
    The initial whip-around produced four dollars and thirty-one pence. After Captain Vimes gestured pointedly with the dragon, a further twenty-five dollars and sixteen pence were miraculously forthcoming. Then the mob fled.
    “We made a profit on the day, anyway,” said