Night Watch

because I’m interested in you, although I’d admit to a macabre fascination about how long you’re going to survive. If it hadn’t been a cold wet night I’d have left you in the road. I’m a working girl, and I don’t need trouble. But you look like a man who can lay his hands on a few dollars, and there will be a bill.”
    “I’ll leave the money on the dressing table,” said Vimes.
    The slap in the face knocked him against the wall.
    “Consider that a sign of my complete lack of a sense of humor, will you?” said Rosie, shaking some life back into her hand.
    “I’m…sorry,” said Vimes. “I didn’t mean to…I mean…look, thank you for everything. I mean it. But this is not being a good night.”
    “Yes, I can see that.”
    “It’s worse than you think. Believe me.”
    “We all have our troubles. Believe me,” said Rosie.
    Vimes was glad of the Agony Aunts behind them as they walked back to The Shades. This was the old Shades, and Lawn lived a street’s width away from it. The Watch never set foot here. In truth, the new Shades wasn’t a lot better, but people had at least learned what happened if anyone attacked a watchman. The Aunts were a different matter. No one attacked the Aunts.
    A night’s sleep, thought Vimes. Maybe, in the morning, this won’t have happened.
    “She wasn’t there, was she,” said Rosie after a while. “Your wife? That was Lord Ramkin’s house. Are you in trouble with him?”
    “Never met the man,” said Vimes absently.
    “You were lucky someone told us where you’d gone. Those men were probably in the pay of someone up there. They’re a law unto themselves, over in Ankh. Some rough man walking around with no tradesman’s tools…well, he’s to be turned off the patch, and if they rob you blind while they’re doing it who’s going to care?”
    Yes, thought Vimes. That’s the way it was. Privilege, which just means “private law.” Two types of people laugh at the law; those that break it and those that make it. Well, it’s not like that now…
    …but I’m not in “now” now. Damn those wizards…
    The wizards. Right! In the morning I’ll go and explain! Easy! They’ll understand! I’ll bet they can send me right back to when I left! There’s a whole university full of people to deal with this! It’s not my problem anymore!
    Relief filled his body like warm pink mist. All he had to do was get through the night…
    But why wait? They were open all night, weren’t they? Magic didn’t shut. Vimes remembered late-night patrols when he could practically see by the glow coming from some of the windows. He could simply—
    Hold on, hold on. A policeman’s thought had been stirring in his mind. The Aunts didn’t run. They famously didn’t run. They caught up with you slowly. Anyone who’d been, as they called it, “a very naughty boy” would sleep extremely badly knowing that the Aunts on his tail were slowly getting nearer, pausing only for a cream tea somewhere or to visit an interesting jumble sale. But Vimes had run, run all the way up to Scoone Avenue, in the dark, through coach traffic and crowds of people swarming home before curfew. No one had paid him any attention, would surely not have seen his face if they did. And he certainly didn’t know anyone here. He amended the thought: no one who knew him.
    “So,” he said casually, “who told you where I’d gone?”
    “Oh, one of those old monks,” said Rosie.
    “Which old monks?”
    “Who knows? A little bald man with a robe and a broom. There’s always monks begging and chanting somewhere. He was in Phedre Road.”
    “And you asked him where I’d gone?”
    “What? No. He just looked around and said ‘Mr. Keel ran up to Scoone Avenue,’ and then he went on sweeping.”
    “Sweeping?”
    “Oh, it’s the kind of holy thing they do. So they don’t tread on ants, I think. Or they sweep sins away. Or maybe they just like the place clean. Who cares what monks do?”
    “And nothing about that struck you as odd?”
    “Why? I thought perhaps you were naturally kind to beggars!” snapped Rosie. “It doesn’t bother me. Dotsie said she put something in his begging bowl, though.”
    “What?”
    “Would you ask?”
    The majority of Vimes thought: who does care about what monks do? They’re monks. That’s why they’re weird. Maybe one had a moment of revelation or something, they like that kind of thing. So what? Find the wizards, explain what’s happened, and leave