Night Watch

up like this?” he was saying. “It looks nasty out on those streets! Very dangerous—”
    “I said we stay open,” said Vimes, coming up the stairs. “Is there a problem, Sergeant?”
    “Well…look, Sarge, I heard on the way over, they’re throwing stones at the Dimwell Street House,” said Knock, deflating. “There’s people in the streets! Mobs! I hate to think what’s happening downtown.”
    “So?”
    “We’re coppers! We should be getting prepared!”
    “To do what? Bar the doors and listen to the stones rattle off the roof?” said Vimes. “Or maybe we should go out and arrest everyone? Any volunteers? No? I’ll tell you what, sergeant, if you want to do some coppering, you can go and arrest the man in the privy. Do him for Breaking And Entering—”
    There was a scream from upstairs.
    Vimes glanced up.
    “And I reckon if you go up onto the attic landing you’ll find there’s a man who dropped through the skylight right onto a doorful of nails that was accidentally left there,” he went on. He looked at Knock’s puzzled face. “It’s the Cable Street boys, Sergeant,” he explained. “They thought they could come across the roofs and scare the dumb brownjobs. Chuck ’em both in the cells.”
    “You’re arresting Unmentionables ?”
    “No uniform. No badge. Carrying weapons. Let’s have a bit of law around here, shall we?” said Vimes. “Snouty, where’s that cocoa?”
    “We’ll get into trouble!” Knock shouted.
    Vimes let Knock wait until he’d lit a cigar. “We’re in trouble anyway, Winsborough,” he said, shaking out the match. “It’s just a case of deciding what kind we want. Thanks, Snouty.”
    He took the mug of cocoa from the jailer and nodded at Sam.
    “Let’s take a stroll outside,” he said.
    He was aware of the sudden silence in the room, except for the whimpering coming from upstairs and the distant yelling from the privy.
    “What’re you all standing around for, gentlemen?” he said. “Want to ring your bells? Anyone fancy shouting out that all’s well?”
    With those words hanging in the room all big and pink, Vimes stepped out into the evening air.
    There were people hanging around out there, in little groups of three or four, talking among themselves and occasionally turning to look at the Watch House.
    Vimes sat down on the steps and took a sip of his cocoa.
    He might as well have dropped his breeches. The groups opened up, became an audience. No man drinking a nonalcoholic chocolate drink had ever been the center of so much attention.
    He’d been right. A closed door is an incitement to bravery. A man drinking from a mug, under a light, and apparently enjoying the cool night air, is an incitement to pause.
    “We’re breaking curfew, you know,” said a young man moving with a quick dart-forward-dart-back movement.
    “Is that right?” said Vimes.
    “Are you going to arrest us, then?”
    “Not me,” said Vimes cheerfully. “I’m on my break.”
    “Yeah?” said the man. He pointed to Colon and Waddy. “They on their break too?”
    “They are now.” Vimes half-turned. “Brew’s up, lads. Off you go. No, no need to run, there’s enough for everyone. And come back out when you’ve got it…”
    When the sound of pounding boots had died away, Vimes turned back and smiled at the group again.
    “So when do you come off your break?” said the man.
    Vimes paid him some extra attention. The stance was a giveaway. He was ready to fight, even though he didn’t look like a fighter. If this was a barroom, the bartender would be taking the more expensive bottles off the shelf, because amateurs like that tended to spread the glass around. Ah, yes…and now he could see why the word “barroom” had occurred to him. There was a bottle sticking out of the man’s pocket. He’d been drinking his defiance.
    “Oh, around Thursday, I reckon,” said Vimes, eyeing the bottle. There was laughter from somewhere in the growing crowd.
    “Why Thursday?” said the drinker.
    “Got my day off on Thursday.”
    There were a few more laughs this time. When the tension is drawing out, it doesn’t take much to snap it.
    “I demand you arrest me!” said the drinker. “Come on, try it!”
    “You’re not drunk enough,” said Vimes. “I should go home and sleep it off, if I was you.”
    The man’s hand grasped the neck of the bottle. Here it comes, thought Vimes. By the look of him, the man had one chance in five…
    Fortunately, the crowd