The Fifth Elephant

a moment. Then he carefully put the bowl away. “Tings were diff’rent in dem days. Now you don’t chop our heads off an’ we don’t make drums outa your skin. Everyt’ing is hunky-dory. Dat’s all we have to know.”
    He picked up the boxes again and followed Lady Sybil toward the staircase. Vimes took another look at the trophy head. The teeth were longer, far longer than they’d be on a real troll. A hunter’d have to be very brave and very lucky to go up against a fighting troll and survive. It’d be so much easier to go after an old one and later replace the ground-down stumps with sparkly fangs.
    My gods, the things we do…
    “Igor?” he said, as the odd-job man lurched past under the weight of two more bags.
    “Yeth, Your Exthelenthy?”
    “I’m an Excellency?” said Vimes to Inigo.
    “Yes, Your Grace.”
    “And still My Grace as well?”
    “Yes, Your Grace. You are His Grace His Excellency the Duke of Ankh-Morpork, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, Your Grace.”
    “Hang on, hang on…His Grace cancels out the Sir, I know that. It’s like having an ace in poker.”
    “Strictly speaking this is true, Your Grace, but great score is set by titles here and it is best to play with a full deck, mmm.”
    “I was once blackboard monitor at school,” said Vimes sharply. “For a whole term. Would that help? Dame Venting said no one could clean a blackboard like me.”
    “A useful fact, Your Grace, which may possibly be helpful in the event of a tie-breaker, mmm, mhm,” said Inigo, his face carefully blank.
    “We Igorth have alwayth preferred ‘marthter,’” said Igor. “What wath it you were requiring?”
    Vimes gestured toward the heads that covered every wall.
    “I want them taken down as soon as possible. I can do this, can’t I, Mister Skimmer?”
    “You are the ambassador, sir. Mmm, mmm.”
    “Well, they’re coming down. All of them.”
    Igor gave the camphor-smelling multitude a worried look.
    “Even the thwordfith?”
    “Even the swordfish,” said Vimes firmly.
    “And the thnow leopardth?”
    “Both of them, yes.”
    “What about the troll?”
    “ Especially the troll. See to it.”
    Igor could have been said to have looked as if his world had fallen down around his ears were it not for the fact that he already looked as if this had happened.
    “What do you want to do with them, mathter?”
    “That’s up to you. Throw them in the river, maybe. Ask Detritus about the troll…maybe it should be buried, or something. Is there any supper?”
    “There’th walago, * noggi, † sclot, ‡ swinefletht and thauthageth,” said Igor, still clearly upset about the trophies. “I’ll thop tomorrow, if Her Ladythip giveth me inshtructionth.”
    “Is swineflesh the same as pork?” said Vimes. People in drought-stricken areas would have paid good money to have Igor pronounce “sausages.”
    “Yes,” said Inigo.
    “And what’s in the sausages?”
    “Er…meat?” said Igor, looking as though he was ready to run.
    “Good. We’ll give them a try.”
    Vimes went upstairs and followed the sound of conversation until he reached a bedroom, where Sybil was laying clothes on a bed the size of a small country. Cheery was assisting her.
    The walls were carved panels of wood. The bed was carved panels of wood. The Mad Fretworker of Bonk had been hard at work here, too. Only the floors weren’t wood; they were stone, and radiated cold.
    “It’s a bit like the inside of a cuckoo clock, isn’t it,” said Sybil. “Cheery has volunteered to be my lady’s maid for now.”
    Cheery saluted.
    “Why not?” said Vimes. After a day like this, a lady’s maid with a long flowing beard now seemed perfectly normal.
    “The floors are a bit chilly, though. Tomorrow I shall measure up for some carpets,” said Sybil firmly. “I know we won’t be here long, but we ought to leave something for the next people.”
    “Yes, dear. That would be a good idea.”
    “There’s a bathroom through there,” said Sybil, nodding. “There’s hot springs near here, apparently. They pipe them in. You’ll feel better for a hot bath.”
    Ten minutes later Vimes was happy to agree. The water was a funny color and smelled a little of what he would politely call bad eggs, but it was good and hot and he could feel it drawing the tension out of his muscles.
    A distressing scent of secondhand baked beans sloshed around him as he lay back. At the other end of the huge bath, the lump of pumice stone that he’d