Night Watch

handy, but there were times she wondered whether a) she should have a talk with the girl, or b) she was being very gently wound up. She suspected the latter, since Sandra was taking more money than her most of the time. It was getting embarrassing.
    “It’s a kind of jam doughnut,” she said. “Now, you’d better go and hide the—”
    Someone knocked on the door behind her. She motioned Sandra through the bead curtain, took a moment to pull herself together, and opened the door a fraction.
    There was a very small old man standing in the hall. Everything about him sloped hopelessly downward. His gray mustache could have been stolen from a walrus, or a bloodhound that had just been given some very bad news. His shoulders sagged hopelessly. Even parts of his face seemed to be losing the battle with gravity.
    He held his cap in his hands and was twisting it nervously.
    “Yes?” said Rosie.
    “Er, it said ‘seamstress’ on the sign,” the old man mumbled. “An’, well, since my ol’ woman died, you know, what with one thing an’ another, never bin any good at doing it for meself…”
    He gave Rosie a look of sheer, hopeless embarrassment.
    She glanced down at the sack by his feet, and picked it up. It was full of very clean, but very worn, socks.
    Every single one had holes in the heel and toe.
    “Sandra,” she said, “I think this one’s for you…”

    It was so very early in the morning that “late at night” wasn’t quite over. White mist hung everywhere in the streets and deposited droplets like tiny pearls on Vimes’s shirt as he prepared to break the law.
    If you stood on the roof of the privy behind the Watch House and steadied yourself on the drainpipe, one of the upstairs windows would bounce open if you hit it with the palm of your hand in exactly the right place.
    It was a useful bit of information, and Vimes wondered if he should pass it on to young Sam. Every honest copper ought to know how to break into his own nick.
    Tilden had limped home long ago, but Vimes did a quick sweep of his office and it was with great satisfaction that he did not see what he hadn’t expected to be there. Down below, a few of the more conscientious officers were signing off before heading home. He waited in the shadows until the door had banged shut for the last time and there were no footsteps for several minutes. Then he made his way down the stairs and into the locker room.
    He had been issued a key to his own locker, but still oiled the hinge from a small bottle before he opened it. He had not, in fact, put anything in there yet but, behold, there was a rumpled sack on the floor. He lifted it up…
    Well done , lads.
    Inside was Captain Tilden’s silver inkwell.
    Vimes stood up and looked around at the lockers, with their ancient carved initials and occasional knife marks on the doors. He pulled from his pocket the little black cloth roll he’d taken from the evidence locker earlier. A selection of lock picks glinted in the gray light. Vimes wasn’t a genius with the hooks and rakes, but the cheap and worn door locks were hardly a major challenge.
    Really, it was just a matter of choosing.
    And afterward he walked back through the mists.
    He was horrified to find he was feeling good again. It was a betrayal of Sybil and the future Watch, and even of His Grace Sir Samuel Vimes, who had to think about the politics of distant countries and manpower requirements and how to raise that damn boat that River Division kept sinking. And, yes, he wanted to go back, or forward, or across, or whatever. He really did. He wanted to go home so much he could taste it. Of course, he did. But he couldn’t, not yet, and here he was, and as Dr. Lawn said, you did the job. And currently the job involved survival on the street in the great game of Silly Buggers, and Vimes knew all about that game, oh yes. And there was a thrill in it. It was the nature of The Beast.
    And thus he was walking along, lost in thought, when the men jumped him out of the mouth of a shadowy alley.
    The first one got a foot in the stomach, because The Beast does not fight fair. Vimes stepped aside and grabbed the other one. He felt the knife skitter along his breastplate as he lowered his head and tugged the man hard into the helmet.
    The man folded up quite neatly on the cobbles.
    Vimes spun around to the first man, who was bent almost double, and wheezing, but had nevertheless kept hold of his knife, which he waved around in front of him