Night Watch

said Vimes.
    “I would say she is richer in years than many other primagravida,” said Willikins smoothly. “But she is a well-built lady, if you don’t mind me saying so, and her family have traditionally had very little trouble in the childbirth department—”
    “Prima what?”
    “New mothers, Your Grace. I’m sure her ladyship would much rather know that you were running after miscreants than wearing a hole in the library carpet.”
    “I expect you’re right, Willikins. Er…oh, yes, there’s a young lady dogpaddling in the old cesspit, Willikins.”
    “Very good, Your Grace. I shall send the kitchen boy down there with a ladder directly. And a message to the Assassins’ Guild?”
    “Good idea. She’ll need clean clothes and a bath.”
    “I think, perhaps, the hose in the old scullery might be more appropriate, Your Grace? To start with, at least?”
    “Good point. See to it. And now I must be off.”

    In the crowded main office of the Pseudopolis Yard Watch House, Sergeant Colon absentmindedly adjusted the sprig of lilac that he’d stuck into his helmet like a plume.
    “They go very strange, Nobby,” he said, leafing listlessly through the morning’s paperwork. “It’s a copper thing. Happened to me when I had kids. You get tough.”
    “What do you mean, tough?” said Corporal Nobbs, possibly the best living demonstration that there was some smooth evolution between humans and animals.
    “We-ell,” said Colon, leaning back in his chair. “It’s like…well, when you’re our age…” he looked at Nobby and hesitated. Nobby had been giving his age as “probably thirty-four” for years; the Nobbs family were not good at keeping count.
    “I mean, when a man reaches…a certain age,” he tried again, “he knows the world is never going to be perfect. He’s got used to it being a bit, a bit…”
    “Manky?” Nobby suggested. Tucked behind his ear, in the place usually reserved for his cigarette, was another wilting lilac flower.
    “Exactly,” said Colon. “Like, it’s never going to be perfect, so you just do the best you can, right? But when there’s a kid on the way, well, suddenly a man sees it different. He thinks: my kid’s going to have to grow up in this mess. Time to clean it up. Time to make it a Better World. He gets a bit…keen. Full of ginger. When he hears about Stronginthearm it’s going to be very hot around here for—morning, Mister Vimes!”
    “Talking about me, eh?” said Vimes, striding past them as they jerked to attention. He had not, in fact, heard any of the conversation, but Sergeant Colon’s face could be read like a book and Vimes had learned it by heart years ago.
    “Just wondering if the happy event—” Colon began, trailing after Vimes as he took the stairs two at a time.
    “It hasn’t,” said Vimes shortly. He pushed open the door to his office. “Morning, Carrot!”
    Captain Carrot sprang to his feet and saluted.
    “Morning, sir! Has Lady—”
    “No, Carrot. She has not. What’s been happening overnight?”
    Carrot’s gaze went to the sprig of lilac and back to Vimes’s face.
    “Nothing good, sir,” he said. “Another officer killed.”
    Vimes stopped.
    “Who?” he demanded.
    “Sergeant Stronginthearm, sir. Killed in Treacle Mine Road. Carcer again.”
    Vimes glanced at his watch. They had ten minutes to get to the Palace. But time suddenly wasn’t important anymore.
    He sat down at his desk.
    “Witnesses?”
    “Three this time, sir.”
    “That many?”
    “All dwarfs. Stronginthearm wasn’t even on duty, sir. He’d signed off and was picking up a rat pie and chips from a shop and walked out straight into Carcer. The devil stabbed him in the neck and ran for it. He must’ve thought we’d found him.”
    “We’ve been looking for the man for weeks! And he bumped into poor old Stronginthearm when all the dwarf was thinking of was his breakfast? Is Angua on the trail?”
    “Up to a point, sir,” said Carrot awkwardly.
    “Why only up to a point?”
    “He…well, we assume it was Carcer…dropped an aniseed bomb in Sator Square. Almost pure oil.”
    Vimes sighed. It was amazing how people adapted. The Watch had a werewolf. That news had got around, in an underground kind of way. And so the criminals had mutated, to survive in a society where the law had a very sensitive nose. Scent bombs were the solution. They didn’t have to be that dramatic. You just poured pure peppermint or aniseed in the street where a