Night Watch

the nameless people of the kind that everyone meets in the pub—that the wound had poisoned him and made him worse. He suspected everyone and everything, he saw dark assassins on every corner. The rumor was that he woke up sweating every night because they even got into his dreams.
    And he saw plots and spies everywhere throughout his waking hours, and had men root them out, and the thing about rooting out plots and spies everywhere is that, even if there are no real plots to begin with, there are plots and spies galore very soon.
    At least the Night Watch didn’t have to do much of the actual rooting. They just arrested the pieces. It was the special office in Cable Street that was the long hand of his lordship’s paranoia. The Particulars, they were officially, but as far as Vimes could remember they’d reveled in their nickname of the Unmentionables. They were the ones that listened in every shadow and watched at every window. That was how it seemed, anyway. They certainly were the ones who knocked on doors in the middle of the night.
    Vimes stopped in the dark. The cheap clothes were soaked through, the boots were flooded, and rain was trickling off his chin, and he was a long, long way from home. Yet, in a treacherous kind of way, this was home. He’d spent most of his days working nights. Walking through the wet streets of a sleeping city was his life.
    The nature of the night changed, but the nature of The Beast remained the same.
    He reached into the ragged pocket and touched the badge again.
    In the darkness where lamps were few and far between, Vimes knocked on a door. A light was burning in one of the lower windows, so Lawn was presumably still awake.
    After a while, a very small panel slid back, and he heard a voice say: “Oh…it’s you.”
    There was a pause, followed by the sound of bolts being released.
    The doctor opened the door. In one hand he held a very long syringe. Vimes found his gaze inexorably drawn to it. A bead of something purple dripped off the end and splashed onto the floor.
    “What would you have done, inject me to death?” he said.
    “This?” Lawn looked at the instrument as if unaware that he’d been holding it. “Oh…just sorting out a little problem for someone. Patients turn up at all hours.”
    “I’ll bet they do. Er…Rosie said you had a spare room,” said Vimes. “I can pay,” he added quickly. “I’ve got a job. Five dollars a month? I won’t be needing it for long.”
    “Upstairs on the left,” said Lawn, nodding. “We can talk about it in the morning.”
    “I’m not a criminal madman,” said Vimes. He wondered why he said it, and then wondered who he was trying to reassure.
    “Never mind, you’ll soon fit in,” said Lawn. There was a whimper from the door leading to the surgery.
    “The bed’s not aired but I doubt that you’ll care,” he said. “And now, if you’ll excuse me…”
    It wasn’t aired, and Vimes didn’t care. He didn’t even remember getting into it.
    He woke up once, in darkness and panic, and heard the sound of the big black wagon rattling down the street. And then it just, quite seamlessly, became part of the nightmare.

    At ten o’clock in the morning Vimes found a cold cup of tea by his bed, and a pile of clothes and armor on the floor outside the door. He drank the tea while he inspected the pile.
    He’d read Snouty right. The man survived because he was a weathercock and kept an eye on which way the wind was blowing, and right now the wind was blowing due Vimes. He’d even included fresh socks and drawers, which hadn’t been in the specifications. It was a thoughtful touch. They probably hadn’t been paid for, of course. They had been “obtained.” This was the old Night Watch.
    But, glory be, the breathy little crawler had scrounged something else, too. The three stripes for a sergeant had a little gold crown above them. Vimes instinctively disliked crowns, but this was one he was prepared to treasure.
    He went downstairs, doing up his belt, and bumped into Lawn coming out of his surgery, wiping his hands on a cloth. The doctor smiled absently, then focused on the uniform. The smile did not so much fade as drain.
    “Shocked?” said Vimes.
    “Surprised,” said the doctor. “Rosie won’t be, I expect. I don’t do anything illegal, you know.”
    “Then you’ve got nothing to fear,” said Vimes.
    “Really? That proves you’re not from round here,” said Lawn. “Want some breakfast? There’s