The Fifth Elephant

fast.”
    Vimes lit a cigar. Carrot gave it a look of uncertain disapproval.
    “We do thank people for not smoking in here, sir,” he said.
    “Why? You don’t know they’re not going to,” said Vimes. He leaned against the display cabinet. “All right, Captain. Why am I really going to…Bonk? I don’t know a lot about diplomacy, but I do know it’s never just about one thing. What’s the Low King? Why’re our dwarfs scrapping?”
    “Well, sir…have you heard of kruk ?”
    “Dwarf mining law?” said Vimes.
    “Well done, sir. But it’s a lot more than that. It’s about…how you live. Laws of ownership, marriage laws, inheritance, rules for dealing with disputes of all kinds, that sort of thing. Everything, really. And the Low King…well, you could call him the final court of appeal. He’s advised, of course, but he’s got the last word. Still with me?”
    “Makes sense so far.”
    “And he is crowned on the Scone of Stone and sits on it to give his judgments because all the Low Kings have done that ever since B’hrian Bloodaxe, fifteen hundred years ago. It…gives authority.”
    Vimes nodded, dourly. That made sense, too. You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was “but we’ve always done it this way.” A million dead people can’t have been wrong, can they?
    “Does he get elected, or born or what?” he said.
    “I suppose you could say he’s elected,” said Carrot. “But really a lot of senior dwarfs arrange it among themselves. After listening to other dwarfs, of course. Taking soundings, it’s called. Traditionally he’s from one of the big families. But…er…”
    “Yes?”
    “Things are a little different this year. Tempers are a bit…stretched.”
    Ah, thought Vimes.
    “Wrong dwarf won?” he said.
    “Some dwarfs would say so. But it’s more that the whole process has been called into question,” said Carrot. “By the dwarfs in the biggest dwarf city outside Uberwald.”
    “Don’t tell me, that must be that place hubward of—”
    “It’s Ankh-Morpork, sir.”
    “What? We’re not a dwarf city!”
    “Fifty thousand dwarfs now, sir.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Are you sure ?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Of course he is, Vimes thought. He probably knows them all by name.
    “You have to understand, sir, that there’s a sort of big debate going on,” said Carrot. “On how you define a dwarf.”
    “Well, some people might say that they’re called dwarfs because—”
    “No, sir. Not size. Nobby Nobbs is shorter than many dwarfs, and we don’t call him a dwarf.”
    “We don’t call him a human, either,” said Vimes.
    “And, of course, I am also a dwarf.”
    “You know, Carrot, I keep meaning to talk to you about that—”
    “Adopted by dwarfs, brought up by dwarfs…to dwarfs, I’m a dwarf, sir. I can do the rite of k’zakra , I know the secrets of h’ragna , I can ha’lk my g’rakha correctly…I am a dwarf.”
    “What do those things mean?”
    “I’m not allowed to tell non-dwarfs.” Carrot tactfully tried to stand out of the way of the cigar smoke. “Unfortunately, some of the mountain dwarfs think that dwarfs who have moved away aren’t proper dwarfs, either. But this time, the kingship has been swung by the views of the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs, and a lot of dwarfs back home don’t like it. There’s been a lot of bad feeling all round. Families falling out, that sort of thing. Much pulling of beards.”
    “Really?” Vimes tried not to smile.
    “It’s not funny if you’re a dwarf.”
    “Sorry.”
    “And I’m afraid this new Low King is only going to make matters worse, although of course I wish him well.”
    “Tough, is he?”
    “Er…I think you can assume, sir, that any dwarf who rises sufficiently in dwarf society to even be considered as a candidate for the kingship did not get there by singing the hi-ho song and bandaging wounded animals in the forest. But by dwarf standards, King Rhys Rhysson is a modern thinker, although I hear he doesn’t like Ankh-Morpork very much.”
    “Sounds like a very clear thinker, too.”
    “Anyway, this has upset a lot of the more, er, traditional mountain dwarfs who thought the next king would be Albrecht Albrechtson.”
    “Who is not a modern thinker?”
    “He thinks even coming up above ground is dangerously non-dwarfish.”
    Vimes sighed. “Well, I can see there’s a problem, Carrot, but the thing about this problem, the key point, is that it’s not