Guards! Guards!

watched the panorama of panic for a while. Then Sergeant Colon said, “You sure about the voonerables?”
    “Yes. Oh, yes.”
    “I wish you hadn’t been, lad.”
    They looked at the terrified city again.
    “You know,” said Nobby, “you always told me you used to win prizes for archery in the army, Sergeant. You said you had a lucky arrow, you always made sure you got your lucky arrow back, you said you—”
    “All right! All right! But this isn’t the same thing, is it? Anyway, I’m not a hero. Why should I do it?”
    “Captain Vimes pays us thirty dollars a month,” said Carrot.
    “Yes,” said Nobby, grinning, and you get five dollars extra responsibility allowance.”
    “But Captain Vimes has gone,” said Colon wretchedly.
    Carrot looked at him sternly. “I am sure,” he said, “that if he were here, he’d be the first to—”
    Colon waved him into silence. “That’s all very well,” he said. “But what if I miss?”
    “Look on the bright side,” said Nobby. “You’ll probably never know it.”
    Sergeant Colon’s expression mutated into an evil, desperate grin. “ We’ll never know it, you mean,” he said.
    “What?”
    “If you think I’m standing on some rooftop on my tod, you can think again. I order you to accompany me. Anyway,” he added, “you get one dollar responsibility allowance, too.”
    Nobby’s face twisted in panic. “No I don’t!” he croaked. “Captain Vimes said he was docking it for five years for being a disgrace to the species!”
    “Well, you might just get it back. Anyway, you know all about voonerables. I’ve watched you fight.”
    Carrot saluted smartly. “Permission to volunteer, sir,” he said. “And I only get twenty dollars a month training pay an I don’t mind at all, sir.”
    Sergeant Colon cleared his throat. Then he straightened the hang of his breastplate. It was one of those with astonishingly impressive pectoral muscles embossed upon it. His chest and stomach fitted into it in the same way that jelly fits into a mold.
    What would Captain Vimes do now? Well, he’d have a drink. But if he didn’t have a drink, what would he do?
    “What we need,” he said slowly, “is a Plan.”
    That sounded good. That sentence alone sounded worth the pay. If you had a Plan, you were halfway there.
    And already he thought he could hear the cheering of crowds. They were lining the streets, and they were throwing flowers, and he was being carried triumphantly through the grateful city.
    The drawback was, he suspected, that he was being carried in an urn.

    Lupine Wonse padded along the drafty corridors to the Patrician’s bedroom. It had never been a sumptuous apartment at best, and contained little more than a narrow bed and a few battered cupboards. It looked even worse now, with one wall gone. Sleepwalk at night now and you could step right into the vast cavern that was the Great Hall.
    Even so, he shut the door behind him for a semblance of privacy. Then, cautiously and with many nervous glances at the great space beyond, he knelt down in the center of the floor and pried up a board.
    A long black robe was dragged into view. Then Wonse reached further down into the dusty space between the floors and rummaged around. He rummaged still further. Then he lay down and stuck both arms into the gap and flailed desperately.
    A book sailed across the room and hit him in the back of the head.
    “Looking for this, were you?” said Vimes.
    He stepped out of the shadows.
    Wonse was on his knees, his mouth opening and shutting.
    What’s he going to say, Vimes thought. Is it going to be: I know what this looks like , or will it be: How did you get in here , or maybe it’ll be: Listen, I can explain everything . I wish I had a loaded dragon in my hands right now.
    Wonse said, “Okay. Clever of you to guess.”
    Of course, that was always an outside chance, Vimes added.
    “Under the floorboards,” he said aloud. “First place anyone’d look. Rather foolish, that was.”
    “I know. I suppose he didn’t think anyone would be searching,” said Wonse, standing up and brushing the dust off himself.
    “I’m sorry?” said Vimes pleasantly.
    “Vetinari. You know how he was for scheming and things. He was involved in most of the plots against himself, that was how he ran things. He enjoyed it. Obviously he called it up and couldn’t control it. Something even more cunning than he was.”
    “So what were you doing?” said Vimes.
    “I wondered if it