Night Watch

kidneys.” This time it was Vimes’s smile that drained. “Lamb,” the doctor added.
    In the tiny kitchen he prized the lid off a tall stone jar and pulled out a can. Vapor poured off it.
    “Ice,” he said. “Get it from over the road. Keeps food fresh.”
    Vimes’s brow wrinkled. “Over the road? You mean the mortuary?”
    “Don’t worry, it’s not been used,” said Lawn, putting a pan on the stove. “Mr. Garnish drops off a lump a few times a week, in payment for being cured of a rather similar medical condition.”
    “But mostly you work for the ladies of, shall we say, negotiable affection?” said Vimes. Lawn gave him a sharp look to see if he was joking, but Vimes’s expression hadn’t changed.
    “Not just them,” he said. “There are others.”
    “People who come in by the back door,” said Vimes, looking around the little room. “People who for one reason or another don’t want to go to the…better known doctors?”
    “Or can’t afford them,” said Lawn. “People who turn up with no identity. And you had a point… John ?”
    “No, no, just asking,” said Vimes, cursing himself for walking right into it. “I just wondered where you trained.”
    “Why?”
    “The kind of people who come in by the back door are the kind of people who want results, I imagine.”
    “Hah. Well, I trained in Klatch. They have some novel ideas about medicine over there. They think it’s a good idea to get patients better, for one thing.” He turned the kidneys over with a fork. “Frankly, Sergeant, I’m pretty much like you. We do what needs doing, we work in, er, unpopular areas, and I suspect we both draw the line somewhere. I’m no butcher. Rosie says you aren’t. But you do the job that’s in front of you, or people die.”
    “I’ll remember that,” said Vimes.
    “And when all’s said and done,” said Lawn, “there are worse things to do in the world than take the pulse of women.”
    After breakfast, Sergeant-at-Arms John Keel stepped out into the first day of the rest of his life.
    He stood still for a moment, shut his eyes, and swiveled both feet like a man trying to stub out two cigarettes at once. A slow, broad smile spread across his face. Snouty had found just the right kind of boots. Willikins and Sybil between them conspired to prevent him wearing old, well-worn boots these da—those days, and stole them away in the night to have the soles repaired. It was good to feel the streets with dry feet again. And after a lifetime of walking them, he did feel the streets. There were the cobblestones: catheads, trollheads, loaves, short and long setts, rounders, Morpork Sixes, and the eighty-seven types of paving brick, and the fourteen types of stone slab, and the twelve types of stone never intended for street slabs but which had got used anyway and had their own patterns of wear, and the rubbles, and the gravels, and the repairs, and the thirteen different types of cellar covers, and twenty types of drain lids—
    He bounced a little, like a man testing the hardness of something. “Elm Street,” he said. He bounced again. “Junction with Twinkle. Yeah.”
    He was back.
    It wasn’t many steps to Treacle Mine Road, and as he turned toward the Watch House, a flash of color caught his eye.
    And there it was, overhanging a garden wall. Lilac was common in the city. It was vigorous and hard to kill, and had to be.
    The flower buds were noticeably swelling.
    He stood and stared, as a man might stare at an old battlefield.
    … they rise hands up, hands up, hands up… .
    How did it go, now? Think of things happening one after the other. Don’t assume that you know what’s going to happen, because it might not. Be yourself.
    And, because he was himself, he made a few little purchases in little shops in dark alleys, and went to work.
    The Treacle Mine Road Night Watch House was generally deserted around midday, but Vimes knew that Snouty, at least, would be there. He was a Persistent Floater, just like Nobby and Colon and Carrot and, when you got down to it, Vimes as well. Being on duty was their default state of being. They hung around the Watch House even when off duty, because that’s where their lives took place. Being a copper wasn’t something you left hanging by the door when you went home.
    But I promise I’ll learn how, thought Vimes. When I get back, it’ll all be different.
    He went around the back and let himself in by the stable entrance. It wasn’t even locked.