Snuff

rosebushes like a bloody-handed revolutionary looking for his next aristocrat. “Do you know what the bitch said? She said, ‘My dear, who cares what happens to a few trolls! Let them take drugs if they want to, that’s what I say.’ ” Eyes ablaze, Sybil continued, “And so I thought about Sergeant Detritus and how often he’s saved your life, and then there was young Brick, that troll lad he adopted. And it made me so angry that I nearly said something unrepeatable! They think that I’m like them! I hate that! They just don’t get it! They’ve got on well for years without ever having to think differently, and now they don’t know how!” Snip! Snip! Crack!
    â€œYou’ve just killed a rosebush, dear,” said Vimes, impressed. It took a pretty good grip to push those blades through an inch of what looked like a small tree.
    â€œIt was a brier, Sam, wouldn’t ever do any good.”
    â€œYou could have given it a chance, perhaps?”
    â€œSam Vimes, you treasure your ignorance of gardening, so don’t start weaving a social hypothesis in front of an angry woman holding a blade! There is a difference between plants and people!”
    â€œDo you think her husband sent her?” Vimes said, standing back a little. “He is in the frame, you know, and I expect by the end of the day to be able to link him to smuggling, trafficking in goblins and certainly in attempting to send Jethro Jefferson abroad to get him out of the way. I know what happens to the goblins taken to Howondaland and it’s not good for their health. Jefferson told me that Rust was behind the eviction of the local goblins three years ago. I’m hoping to get confirmation of this very shortly. All in all, it’ll wipe the smile off his aristocratic face, at least.”
    The birds were singing and roses were pumping perfume into the air and Lady Sybil dropped the shears into her apron pocket.
    â€œIt will shame old Lord Rust, you know.”
    â€œDon’t think I don’t know that,” said Vimes. “The old boy tried to warn me off when we first got here, which just about shows his talent as a tactician. But I’ll say this for the old bastard: he is honorable, honest and straightforward. It’s a shame that he is also pigheaded, stupid, and incompetent. But you’re right, it’ll hurt him, although he must have killed so many soldiers by his own incompetence that shame should by now be second nature to him, an old friend as it were.” He sighed. “Sybil, every time I have to arrest some twit who thought he could get away with swindling or extortion or blackmail, well, I know that there is probably going to be a family in difficulties, you understand? I think about it. It preys on my mind. The trouble is, the idiots commit the crimes! As it is, I’m trying to spare some of the hangers-on in this case, provided their gratitude results in testimony. I can stretch the law for the greater good, but that’s the end of it.”
    Sybil nodded sadly, and then sniffed and said, “Can you smell smoke?”
    Willikins, who had been standing patiently, said, “Corporal Nobbs and his, ahem, young…lady wandered off into the shrubbery with Young Sam, your ladyship. Sergeant Detritus accompanied them with what I now believe to be called…” Willikins savored the word like a toffee, “surreptition.”
    This last fact was testified to by the shrubbery itself, because no shrubbery, however large, could hide the fact that a troll had just walked through it.

T here was a small, neat fire burning in the shrubbery, watched passively by Detritus and Young Sam, and nervously by Corporal Nobbs, who was watching his new young lady cooking something on a spit.
    â€œOh, she’s cooking snails,” said Sybil, with every sign of approval. “What a provident young lady.”
    â€œSnails?” said Vimes, shocked.
    â€œQuite traditional in these parts, as a matter of fact,” said Sybil. “My father and his chums used to cook them up sometimes after a drinking session. Very wholesome, and full of vitamins and minerals, or so I understand. Apparently if you feed them on garlic they taste of garlic.”
    Vimes shrugged. “I suppose that has to be better than them tasting of snails.”
    Sybil pulled Sam off to one side and said quietly, “I think the goblin girl is the one that they call Shine