Night Watch

nose.
    “That’s it,” he said wearily. “A bit of stitching and he’ll be fine.”
    “And there’s some others I need you to take a look at,” said Vimes.
    “You know, that comes as no surprise,” said the doctor.
    “One’s got a lot of holes in his feet, one dropped through the privy roof and has got a twisted leg, and one’s dead.”
    “I don’t think I can do much about the dead one,” said the doctor. “How do you know he’s dead? I realize that I may regret asking that question.”
    “He’s got a broken neck from falling off a roof and I reckon he fell off because he got a steel crossbow dart in his brain.”
    “Ah. That sounds like dead, if you want my medical opinion. Did you do it?”
    “No!”
    “Well, you’re a busy man, Sergeant. You can’t be everywhere.” The doctor’s face cracked into a grin when he saw Vimes go red, and he walked over to the corpse.
    “Yes, I’d say that life is definitely extinct,” he said. “And?”
    “I want you to write that down, please. On paper. With official-sounding words like ‘contusion’ and ‘abrasions.’ I want you to write that down, and I want you to write down what time you found he was dead. And then, if you don’t mind, two lads’ll take you down to look at the other two, and after you’ve treated them, thank you, I’d like you to sign another piece of paper saying you did and I called you in. Two copies of everything, please.”
    “All right. Dare I ask why?”
    “I don’t want anyone to say I killed him.”
    “Why should anyone say that? You told me he fell off a roof!”
    “These are suspicious times, Doctor. Ah, here’s Fred. Any luck?”
    Corporal Colon was carrying a box. He put it down on his desk with a grunt.
    “Old Mrs. Arbiter didn’t like being knocked up in the middle of the night,” he announced. “I had to give her a dollar!”
    Vimes didn’t dare look at Lawn’s face.
    “Really?” he said, as innocently as possible. “And you got the ginger beer?”
    “Six pints of her best stuff,” said Colon. “There’s three pence back on the bottles, by the way. And…er…” He shuffled uneasily. “Er…I heard they set fire to the Watch House at Dolly Sisters, Sarge. It’s very bad up at Nap Hill, too. And, er…the Chitterling Street house got all its windows broke, and up at the Leastgate house some of the lads went out to stop kids throwing stones and, er, one of them drew his sword, Sarge…”
    “And?”
    “He’ll probably live, Sarge.”
    Doctor Lawn looked around at the crowded office, where people were still talking. Snouty was going around with a tray of cocoa. Out in the street, some of the watchmen were standing around a makeshift fire with the remnant of the crowd.
    “Well, I must say I’m impressed,” he said. “Sounds like you’re the only Watch House not under siege tonight. I don’t want to know how you did it.”
    “Luck played a part,” said Vimes. “And I’ve got three men who carry no personal identification whatsoever in the cells, and another anonymous would-be assassin who has been assassinated.”
    “Quite a problem,” said Lawn. “Now me, I just have to deal with simple mysteries like what the rash means.”
    “I intend to solve mine quite quickly,” said Vimes.

    The Assassin moved quietly from roof to roof until he was well away from the excitement around the Watch House.
    His movements could be called catlike, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things.
    Eventually he reached one of the upper world’s many hidden places, where several thickets of chimneys made a little hidden space, invisible from the ground and from most of the surrounding roofscape. He didn’t enter it immediately, but circled it for a while, moving with absolute silence from one vantage point to another.
    What would have intrigued a watcher who knew the ways of Ankh-Morpork’s Guild of Assassins was how invisible this one was. When he moved, you saw movement; when he stopped, he wasn’t there. Magic would have been suspected and, in an oblique way, the watcher would have been right. Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.
    At last the man appeared satisfied, and dropped into the space. He picked up a bag from its nesting place between the smoking pots, and there was some faint swishing and heavier breathing that suggested clothes were being changed.
    After a minute of so, he emerged from the hidden niche and now, somehow, he was