Monstrous Regiment

the far end, behind which voices were being raised.
    Angua left.
    “Just like that?” said Maladict. “What’s to stop us taking over the place?”
    “All those men with crossbows we passed on the way up?” said Polly. Why us? she thought, looking blankly at the wall.
    “Oh, yes. Those. Yes,” said Maladict. “Er…Poll?”
    “Yes?”
    “I’m actually Maladicta.” She sat back. “There! I’ve told someone!”
    “Dat’s nice,” said Jade.
    “Oh, good,” said Polly. I’d be going out to give the latrines their afternoon swill about now, she thought. This has got to be better than that, right?
    “I thought I did pretty well,” Maladicta went on. “Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: vampires have a pretty good time of it whatever sex they are, right? But it’s the same everywhere. Velvet dresses, underwired nightgowns, acting crazy all the time, and don’t let’s even go near the whole ‘bathing in virgin’s blood’ thing. You get taken a lot more seriously if they think you’re male.”
    “Right,” said Polly. All in all, it’s been a long day. A bath would be nice .
    “I thought I did pretty well right up until the whole coffee thing. A necklace of the roast beans, that’d be the thing. I’ll be better prepared another time.”
    “Yeah,” said Polly. “Good idea. With real soap.”
    “Soap? How would soap work?”
    “What? Oh…sorry,” said Polly.
    “Did you hear anything I said?” said Maladicta looking pained.
    “Oh, that. Yes. Thank you for telling me.”
    “Is that it? ”
    “Yes,” said Polly. “You’re you. That’s good. I’m me, whoever I am. Tonker’s Tonker. It’s all just…people. Look, a week ago the high spot of my day was reading the new graffiti in the men’s latrines. I think you’d agree that a lot has happened since then. I don’t think I’m going to be surprised at anything anymore. The coffee-bean necklace sounds good, by the way.” She drummed her feet on the floor impatiently. “Right now, I just wish they’d hurry up in there.”
    They sat and listened, and then Polly became aware of a little column of smoke coming from behind a bench on the other side of the space. She walked over and peered over the back. A man was lying there, head on one arm, smoking a cigar.
    He nodded when he saw Polly’s face.
    “They’re going to be ages yet,” he said.
    “Aren’t you that sergeant I saw in the old kitchen? Making faces behind Lord Rust from Ankh-Morpork?”
    “I was not making faces, Corporal,” said the man, sitting up. “That’s how I always look when Lord Rust is talking. And I was a sergeant once, it’s true, but, look, no stripes.”
    “Make der faces once too often?” said Jade.
    The man laughed. He hadn’t shaved today, by the look of it.
    “Something like that, yes. Come along to my office, it’s warmer. I only came out here because people complain about the smoke. Don’t worry about that lot in there, they can wait. I’m only down the passage.”
    They followed him. The door was, indeed, only a few steps away. The man pushed it open, walked across the little room beyond, and sat down in a chair. The table in front of it overflowed with papers.
    “I think we can get enough food up here to see you through the winter,” he said, picking up a sheet of paper, apparently at random. “Grain’s a bit short but we’ve got a handy surplus of white drumhead cabbage, keeps wonderfully, full of vitamins and minerals…but you might want to keep your windows open, if you follow me. Don’t stare, I know the country’s a month away from starvation.”
    “But I haven’t even shown this letter to anyone!” Polly protested. “You don’t know what we—”
    “I don’t have to,” said the man. “This is about food and mouths. Good grief, we don’t have to fight you. Your country is going to fall over anyway. Your fields are overgrown, most of your farmers are old men, the bulk of the grub goes to the army. And armies don’t do much for agriculture except marginally raise the fertility of the battlefield. The honor, the pride, the glory…none of that matters. This war stops, or Borogravia dies. Do you understand?”
    Polly remembered the gale-swept fields, the old people salvaging what they could…
    “We’re just messengers,” she said. “I can’t negotiate—”
    “You know your god’s dead?” said the man. “Nothing left but a voice, according to some of our priests. The last three