Night Watch

then—probably—Carcer would go away, and he didn’t want that man any closer to young Sam than he could help.
    But Carcer would come back. Oh, yes. Things like Carcer always came back, especially when they thought they’d found a weakness.
    That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that he’d changed things.
    There had been the Morphic Street Conspiracy. The Unmentionables had raided it. A lot of people had died but some had got away, and then there had been a few days of horrible confusion and then it ended when—
    But Sam Vimes hadn’t been anywhere near Morphic Street that night. Keel had been teaching him to shake hands with doorknobs over on the other side of The Shades.
    But you wanted to be clever, Duke. You wanted to put a spoke in the wheel and smack a few heads, didn’t you?
    And now Carcer’s in it as well, and you’re out of the history books and traveling without a map…
    Carcer was still grinning his cheerful grin. Here and now, more than anything else, Vimes wanted to see the end of that grin.
    “Well, I’d like to oblige, Sarge, ” he said. “I really would. But I’ve pinched him now, so I’ve got to take him back to my nick and do the paperwork. He might well be able to help us with our inquiries into a number of unsolved crimes.”
    “Such as?” said Carcer.
    “Dunno,” said Vimes. “Depends on what we’ve got. We’ll take him down the cells, give him a cup of tea, chat to him about this and that… you know how it is. A man can get quite chatty after a cup of tea. Or carbonated beverage of his choice, of course.”
    There was a snigger from among the members of the Night Watch, although Vimes hoped none of them understood what the last sentence meant.
    Carcer’s smile dissolved.
    “I said he’s one of my men, on official business, and I am a sergeant,” he said.
    “And I am sergeant-at-arms and I said we’ll hand him over to you at the nick, Sergeant Carcer. Officially.”
    Carcer nodded toward the lance constable, so imperceptibly that only Vimes saw it. And he lowered his voice.
    “But suddenly I’ve got all the aces, Duke,” he said.
    “But suddenly I’m not playing cards, Carcer. Now, we could have a barney right here and now and, y’know, I’m not sure which way it’d go. But I’m sure as hell that you wouldn’t be a sergeant tomorrow. And if you think you’ve got all the aces, you can afford to raise the stakes.”
    Carcer stared at him for a moment. Then he winked and half-turned away.
    “I told you he’s a caution, eh?” he said to the multitude. He gave Vimes a conspiratorial dig in the ribs. “Always trying it on! Okay, sergeant…at-arms, we’ll do it your way. Got to give you brownjobs something to do, haha, eh? I’ll send a couple of the lads down for him in an hour or so.”
    That’s right, give me time to sweat on whether I’ll pop into nonexistence if you cut the lad’s throat, Vimes thought. Trouble is, I am sweating.
    He straightened up and beckoned to the hurry-up wagon.
    “Me and my lads will all take him back,” he said. “Time for our cocoa break, see? Give me a hand up with him, Waddy. Got any other passengers, Fred?”
    “Just a drunk, Sarge. Been spewing everywhere.”
    “Okay. We’ll put the prisoner in the back and we’ll all hang on the outside.” Vimes nodded at Carcer. “I’m sure we’ll meet again soon, Sergeant.”
    “Yeah,” said Carcer, and there was that impish grin again. “And you be sure to look after yourself, d’you hear?”
    Vimes leaped onto the side of the wagon as it rattled past, and didn’t even look back. That was one thing about Carcer, at least—he wouldn’t shoot you in the back if he thought there was a reasonable chance, pretty soon, of cutting your throat.
    After a while, Constable Wiglet, hanging on beside him as the wagon rocked, said: “What happened back there, Sarge? You know that bloke?”
    “Yes. He’s killed two coppers. One that tried to arrest him and one who was off-duty and eating a pie. Killed other people, too.”
    “But he’s a copper!”
    “Swing gave him a job, Wiglet.”
    Suddenly, the rattle of the wheels sounded much louder. All the other watchmen were listening very intently.
    “You been in the Watch long, Constable?” said Vimes.
    “Two years, Sarge,” said Wiglet. “Used to be a fruit porter down the market, but I got a bad back and a bad chest what with all the cold mornings.”
    “I never heard about coppers being killed,” said Lance