Men at Arms

been made for him by the finest tailor in the city. Sybil Ramkin had a generous heart. She was a woman out for all she could give.
    The suit was blue and deep purple, with lace on the wrists and at the throat. It was the height of fashion, he had been told. Sybil Ramkin wanted him to go up in the world. She’d never actually said it, but he knew she felt he was far too good to be a copper.
    He stared at it in muzzy incomprehension. He’d never really worn a suit before. When he was a kid there’d been whatever rags could be tied on, and later on there’d been the leather knee britches and chainmail of the Watch—comfortable, practical clothes.
    There was a hat with the suit. It had pearls on it.
    Vimes had never worn any headgear before that hadn’t been hammered out of one piece of metal.
    The shoes were long and pointy.
    He’d always worn sandals in the summer, and the traditional cheap boots in the winter.
    Captain Vimes could just about manage to be an officer. He wasn’t at all sure how to become a gentleman. Putting on the suit would seem to be part of it…
    Guests were arriving. He could hear the crunch of carriage wheels on the driveway, and the flip-flop of the sedan-chair carriers.
    He glanced out of the window. Scoone Avenue was higher than most of Morpork and offered unrivalled views of the city, if that was your idea of a good time. The Patrician’s Palace was a darker shape in the dusk, with one lighted window high up. It was the center of a well-lit area, which got darker and darker as the view widened and began to take in those parts of the city where you didn’t light a candle because that was wasting good food. There was red torchlight around Quarry Lane…well, Trolls’ New Year, understandable. And a faint glow over the High Energy Magic building at Unseen University; Vimes would arrest all wizards on suspicion of being too bloody clever by half. But more lights than you’d expect to see around Cable and Sheer, the part of the city that people like Captain Quirke referred to as “tinytown”…
    “Samuel!”
    Vimes adjusted his cravat as best he could.
    He’d faced trolls and dwarfs and dragons, but now he was having to meet an entirely new species. The rich.

    It was always hard to remember, afterwards, how the world looked when she was dans une certaine condition , as her mother had delicately called it.
    For example, she remembered seeing smells. The actual streets and buildings…they were there, of course, but only as a drab monochrome background against which the sounds and, yes, the smells seared like brilliant lines of…colored fire and clouds of…well, of colored smoke.
    That was the point. That was where it all broke down. There were no proper words afterwards for what she heard and smelled. If you could see an eighth distinct color just for a while, and then describe it back in the seven-colored world, it’d have to be…“something like a sort of greenish-purple”. Experience did not cross over well between species.
    Sometimes, although not very often, Angua thought she was very lucky to get to see both worlds. And there was always twenty minutes after a Change when all the senses were heightened, so that the world glowed in every sensory spectrum like a rainbow. It was nearly worth it just for that.
    There were varieties of werewolf. Some people merely had to shave every hour and wear a hat to cover the ears. They could pass for nearly normal.
    But she could recognize them, nevertheless. Werewolves could spot another werewolf across a crowded street. There was something about the eyes. And, of course, if you had time, there were all sorts of other clues. Werewolves tended to live alone and take jobs that didn’t bring them into contact with animals. They wore scent or aftershave a lot and tended to be very fastidious about their food. And kept diaries with the phases of the moon carefully marked in red ink.
    It was no life, being a werewolf in the country. A stupid chicken went missing and you were a number one suspect. Everyone said it was better in the city.
    It was certainly overpowering.
    Angua could see several hours of Elm Street all in one go. The mugger’s fear was a fading orange line. Carrot’s trail was an expanding pale green cloud, with an edge that suggested he was slightly worried; there were additional tones of old leather and armor polish. Other trails, faint or powerful, criss-crossed the street.
    There was one that smelled like an old privy