Night Watch

who could think without moving their lips, who didn’t take bribes—much, and then only at the level of beer and doughnuts, which even Vimes recognized as the grease that helps the wheels run smoothly—and were, on the whole, trustworthy. For a given value of “trust,” at least.
    The sound of running feet indicated that Sergeant Detritus was bringing some of the latest trainees back from their morning run. He could hear the jody Detritus had taught them. Somehow, you could tell it was made up by a troll:
“Now we sing dis stupid song!
Sing it as we run along!
Why we sing dis we don’t know!
We can’t make der words rhyme prop’ly!”
“Sound off!”
“One! Two!”
“Sound off!”
“Many! Lots!”
“Sound off!”
“Er…what?”
    It still irked Vimes that the little training school in the old lemonade factory was turning out so many coppers who quit the city the moment their probation was up. But it had its advantages. There were Sammies almost as far as Uberwald now, all speeding up the local promotion ladder. It helped, knowing names and knowing that those names had been taught to salute him. The ebb and flow of politics often meant that the local rulers weren’t talking to one another, but, via the semaphore towers, the Sammies talked all the time.
    He realized he was humming a different song under his breath. It was a tune he’d forgotten for years. It went with the lilac, scent and song together. He stopped, feeling guilty.
    He was finishing the letter when there was a knock at the door.
    “Nearly done!” he shouted.
    “It’th me, thur,” said Constable Igor, pushing his head around the door, and then he added, “Igor, sir.”
    “Yes, Igor?” said Vimes, wondering not for the first time why anyone with stitches all around his head needed to tell anyone who he was. *
    “I would just like to thay, sir, that I could have got young Thronginthearm back on his feet, thur,” said Igor, a shade reproachfully.
    Vimes sighed. Igor’s face was full of concern tinged with disappointment. He had been prevented from plying his…craft. He was naturally disappointed.
    “We’ve been through this, Igor. It’s not like sewing a leg back on. And dwarfs are dead set against that sort of thing.”
    “There’s nothing thupernatural about it, thur. I am a man of Natural Philothophy! And he was still warm when they brought him in—”
    “Those are the rules, Igor. Thanks all the same. We know your heart is in the right place—”
    “ They are in the right places , sir,” said Igor reproachfully.
    “That’s what I meant,” Vimes said without missing a beat, just as Igor never did.
    “Oh, very well, sir,” said Igor, giving up. He paused, and then said: “How is her ladyship, sir?”
    Vimes had been expecting this. It was a terrible thing for a mind to do, but his had already presented him with the idea of Igor and Sybil in the same sentence. Not that he disliked Igor. Quite the reverse. There were watchmen walking around the streets right now who wouldn’t have legs if it wasn’t for Igor’s genius with a needle. But—
    “Fine. She’s fine,” he said abruptly.
    “Only I heard that Mrs. Content was a bit worr—”
    “Igor, there are some areas where…look, do you know anything about…women and babies?”
    “Not in so many wordth, sir, but I find that once I’ve got someone on the slab and had a good, you know, rummage around, I can thort out most thingth—”
    Vimes’s imagination actually shut down at this point.
    “Thank you, Igor,” he managed without his voice trembling, “but Mrs. Content is a very experienced midwife.”
    “Jutht as you say, sir,” said Igor, but doubt rode on the words.
    “And now I’ve got to go,” said Vimes. “It’s going to be a long day.”
    He ran down the stairs, tossed the letter to Sergeant Colon, nodded to Carrot, and set off at a fast walk for the Palace.
    After the door had shut one of the watchmen looked up from the desk where he’d been wrestling with a report and the effort of writing down, as policemen do, what ought to have happened.
    “Sarge?”
    “Yes, Corporal Ping?”
    “Why’re some of you wearing purple flowers, Sarge?”
    There was a subtle change in the atmosphere, a suction of sound caused by many pairs of ears listening intently. All the officers in the room had stopped writing.
    “I mean, I saw you and Reg and Nobby wearing ’em this time last year, and I wondered if we were all supposed to…” Ping faltered.