Snuff

this quiet little hideaway, hmm?” An image of poor old Lord Rust artlessly telling him that there was nothing here of interest passed across Vimes’s inner vision.
    Jiminy’s expression was frozen, but Vimes, who knew this game, saw that tiny twitch which, when decoded, meant, “Yes, but I didn’t say anything and no one can prove I did. Not even you, my friend.”
    Further discussion on the point was interrupted when the sons of the soil began to come in, one by one, to celebrate the ending of the working day. This time there was less suspicion in their eyes as they nodded to Vimes en route to the bar, and so he sat nursing his pint of spiced-up beetroot juice and just enjoyed the moment. It was a very short moment, at the end of which the blacksmith swaggered into the bar and walked straight up to him.
    â€œYou are sitting in my seat!”
    Vimes looked around. He was sitting on a bench that was indistinguishable from all the others in the room, but he accepted the possibility that there was something mystic about the one he was occupying, picked up his glass and strolled over to an unoccupied one, where he sat down just in time to hear the blacksmith say, “That one’s my seat too, understand?”
    Oh dear, here was the overture and beginners to a brawl, and Vimes was no beginner, right enough, and the blacksmith’s eyes held the look of a man who wanted to punch somebody and very likely thought that Vimes would make the ideal candidate.
    He felt the gentle pressure of his own brass knuckles in his trouser pocket. Vimes had been economical with the truth when he promised his wife that he would not take any weapons on holiday with him. However, he’d reasoned that a knuckleduster was not so much a weapon as a way of making certain that he stayed alive. It could be called a defensive instrument, a kind of shield, as it were, especially if you needed to get your defense in before you were attacked.
    He stood up. “Mr. Jethro, I’d be grateful if you’d be so kind as to choose which chair is yours for the evening, thank you very much, after which I intend to enjoy my drink in peace .”
    Whoever said that a soft answer turneth away wrath had never worked in a bar. The blacksmith glowered at about the same temperature as his forge. “I ain’t Jethro to you, not by a long way. You can call me Mr. Jefferson, do you hear?”
    â€œAnd you can call me Sam Vimes.” He watched Jefferson very deliberately place his drink on the bar before he strode toward Vimes.
    â€œI know what I can call you , mister…”
    Vimes felt the smooth brass of the surrogate knuckles, polished as they had been by years of abrasion from his pants and, needless to say, the occasional chin. As he dug down, they almost leapt to his grasp.
    â€œSorry about this, your grace,” said Jiminy as he pushed him gently out of the way and said to the smith. “Well now, Jethro, what’s this all about, then?”
    â€œYour grace?” sneered Jethro. “I ain’t going to call you that! I ain’t going to lick your boots like all the others do! Coming back here, lording it over us, ordering us about as if you owned the place! And that’s it, isn’t it? You do own the place! One man with all this country! That’s not right! You tell me, how did that happen? Go on, you tell me!”
    Vimes shrugged. “Well, I’m not an expert, but as I understand it my wife’s ancestors fought somebody for it.”
    The blacksmith’s face bloomed with an evil pleasure as he threw off his leather apron. “Well, okay. No problem. That’s how it’s done, is it? Fair enough. Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll fight you for it, here and now, and, tell you what I’ll do, I’ll fight you with one hand strapped behind my back, on account of you being a bit shorter than me.”
    Vimes heard a slight wooden sound behind him: it was the sound of a barman stealthily pulling a two-foot-long rosewood truncheon from its accustomed place under the bar.
    Jethro must have heard it too, because he called out, “And don’t you try anything with that, Jim. You know I’ll have it out of your hands before you know what’s happening, and this time I’ll shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.”
    Vimes took a look at the rest of the clientele, who were doing remarkable impersonations of stone statues.