Night Watch

(because he was a better copper than them, and so were things floating in gutters), and therefore delivering a swift bucketful of darkness had no obvious downside.
    On the other hand, thieves, assassins, and Swing’s men, by all accounts, did a lot of creeping up on people and were probably pretty good at it, whereas the person tracking him was keeping their back so close to the wall he could hear the scraping. That meant they were probably just a member of the public with something on their mind, and he was not inclined to add several ounces of lead shot simply for that reason (because he’d like to believe he wasn’t that sort of copper).
    He settled for stepping out into the alley and saying “Yeah?”
    A boy stared up at him. It had to be a boy. Nature would not have been so cruel as to do that to a girl. No single feature in itself was worse than passably ugly, but the combination was greater than the sum of the parts. There was also the smell. It wasn’t bad, as such. It just wasn’t entirely human. There was something feral about it.
    “Er…” said the pinched-up face, “Look, tell you what, mister, you tell me where you’re going and I’ll stop following you, have we got a deal? Cost you no more’n a penny and that’s a special price. Some people pay me a lot more’n that to stop following ’em.”
    Vimes continued to stare. The creature was wearing an oversized evening-dress jacket, shiny with grease and greenish with age, and a top hat that must once have been trodden on by a horse. But the bits that were visible between the two were regrettably familiar.
    “Oh, no…” he moaned. “No, no, no…”
    “You all right, mister?”
    “No, no, no…oh, ye gods, it had to happen, didn’t it…”
    “You want I should go’n fetch Mossy, mister?”
    Vimes lowered the creature and pointed an accusing finger.
    “You’re Nobby Nobbs, right?”
    The urchin backed away.
    “Might be. So what? Is that a crime?” He turned to run but Vimes’s hand fell heavily on his shoulder.
    “Some people might say so. You’re Nobby Nobbs, son of Maise Nobbs and Sconner Nobbs?”
    “Prob’ly, prob’ly! But I ain’t done nothin’, mister!”
    Vimes bent down to look into eyes that peered out at the world through a mask of grime.
    “How about whizzing wipers, snitching tinklers, pulling wobblers, flogging tumblers, and running rumbles?”
    Nobby’s brow creased in genuine puzzlement.
    “What’s ‘pulling wobblers’ mean?” he said.
    Vimes gave him a similar look. Street parly had changed a lot in thirty years.
    “That’s stealing trifles…small items. Isn’t it?”
    “Nah, nah, mister. That’s ‘tottering nevils,’” said Nobby, relaxing. “But you ain’t doin’ badly, for someone who’s new. What’s ‘oil of angels’?”
    Memory flicked a card.
    “A bribe,” said Vimes.
    “And a dimber?” said Nobby, grinning.
    “Easy. Could be a head beggar, could be just a handsome man.”
    “Well done. Bet you don’t know how to fleague a jade, though.”
    Once again, from a dusty recess, a memory unrolled. This one stuck in your mind.
    “Dear me, do you know that? What a shame in one so young,” said Vimes. “That’s when you want to sell a broken-down horse and have to make it a bit frisky in front of the punters, and so you take some fresh, raw, hot ginger, lift up its tail, and push the ginger—”
    “Cor,” said Nobby, suddenly impressed. “Everyone says you’re a real quick learner, and that’s true enough. You could’ve been born here.”
    “Why’re you following me, Nobby Nobbs?” said Vimes.
    The urchin held out a grubby hand. Some street language never changes.
    Vimes pulled out sixpence. It shone in Nobby’s palm like a diamond in a chimney-sweep’s ear.
    “One of ’em’s a lady,” he said and grinned. The hand stayed out.
    “That was a bloody sixpence I just gave you, kid,” Vimes growled.
    “Yeah, but I got to think of—”
    Vimes grabbed the lapels of Nobby’s greasy coat and lifted him up, and was mildly shocked to realize that there was practically no weight there.
    Street urchin, he thought. Urchin sounds about right…spiky, slimy, and smell slightly of rotting seaweed. But there’s hundreds of them round here, clawing a living off the very margins, and, as I recall, Nobby was one of the sharpest. And as trustworthy as a chocolate hammer. But that’s okay. There’s ways to deal with that.
    “How much,” he said, “for you to work for me ,