Guards! Guards!

body sort of makes it anyway…but Captain Vimes, see, he’s one of those people whose body doesn’t do it naturally. Like, he was born two drinks below normal.”
    “Gosh,” said Carrot.
    “Yes…so, when he’s sober, he’s really sober. Knurd, they call it. You know how you feel when you wake up if you’ve been on the piss all night, Nobby? Well, he feels like that all the time .”
    “Poor bugger,” said Nobby. “I never realized. No wonder he’s always so gloomy.”
    “So he’s always trying to catch up, see. It’s just that he doesn’t always get the dose right. And, of course—” Colon glanced at Carrot—“he was brung low by a woman. Mind you, just about anything brings him low.”
    “So what do we do now, Sergeant?” said Nobby.
    “And do you think he’d mind if we eat his cake?” said Carrot wistfully. “It’d be a shame to let it go stale.”
    Colon shrugged.
    The older men sat in miserable silence as Carrot macerated his way through the cake like a bucket-wheel rock-crusher in a chalk pit. Even if it had been the lightest of soufflés they wouldn’t have had any appetite.
    They were contemplating life without the captain. It was going to be bleak, even without dragons. Say what you liked about Captain Vimes, he’d had style. It was cynical, black-nailed style, but he’d had it and they didn’t. He could read long words and add up. Even that was style, of a sort. He even got drunk in style.
    They’d been trying to drag the minutes out, trying to stretch out the time. But the night had come.
    There was no hope for them.
    They were going to have to go out on the streets.
    It was six of the clock. And all wasn’t well.
    “I miss Errol, too,” said Carrot.
    “He was the captain’s, really,” said Nobby. “Anyway, Lady Ramkin’ll know how to look after him.”
    “It’s not as though we could leave anything around, either,” said Colon. “I mean, even the lamp oil. He even drank the lamp oil.”
    “And mothballs,” said Nobby. “A whole box of mothballs. Why would anyone want to eat mothballs? And the kettle. And sugar. He was a devil for sugar.”
    “He was nice, though,” said Carrot. “Friendly.”
    “Oh, I’ll grant you,” said Colon. “But it’s not right, really, a pet where you have to jump behind a table every time it hiccups.”
    “I shall miss his little face,” said Carrot.
    Nobby blew his nose, loudly.
    It was echoed by a hammering on the door. Colon jerked his head. Carrot got up and opened it.
    A couple of members of the palace guard were waiting with arrogant impatience. They stepped back when they saw Carrot, who had to bend a bit to see under the lintel; bad news like Carrot travels fast.
    “We’ve brung you a proclamation,” said one of them. “You’ve got to—”
    “What’s all that fresh paint on your breastplate?” said Carrot politely. Nobby and the sergeant peered around him.
    “It’s a dragon,” said the younger of the guards.
    “ The dragon,” corrected his superior.
    “’Ere, I know you,” said Nobby. “You’re Skully Maltoon. Used to live in Mincing Street. Your mum made cough sweets, din’t she, and fell in the mixture and died. I never have a cough sweet but I think of your mum.”
    “Hallo, Nobby,” said the guard, without enthusiasm.
    “I bet your old mum’d be proud of you, you with a dragon on your vest,” said Nobby conversationally. The guard gave him a look made of hatred and embarrassment.
    “And new plumes on your hat, too,” Nobby added sweetly.
    “This here is a proclamation what you are commanded to read,” said the guard loudly. “And post up on street corners also. By order.”
    “Whose?” said Nobby.
    Sergeant Colon grabbed the scroll in one ham-like fist.
    “Where As,” he read slowly, tracing the lettering with a hesitant finger, “It hathe Pleas-Sed the Der-Rer-Aa-Ger—the dragon, Ker-Ii—king of kings and Aa-Ber-Ess-Uh-Ler—” sweat beaded on the broad pink cliff of his forehead—“absolute, that is, Rer-Uh-Ler-Eh-Rer, ruler of—”
    He lapsed into the tortured silence of academia, his fingertip jerking slowly down the parchment.
    “No,” he said at last. “That’s not right, is it? It’s not going to eat someone?”
    “Consume,” said the older guard.
    “It’s all part of the social…social contract,” said his assistant woodenly. “A small price to pay, I’m sure you will agree, for the safety and protection of the city.”
    “From what?” said Nobby.