The Fifth Elephant

he’d leave the embassy unguarded.
    Yet another word for diplomat, Vimes mused, was “spy.” The only difference was that the host government knew who you were. The game was to outwit them, presumably.
    The sun was warm, the breeze was cold, the mountain air made every peak look as if Vimes could reach out and touch it. Outside the town snow-covered vineyards and farms clung to slopes that in Ankh-Morpork would be called walls, but after a while the pine forests closed in. Here and there, at a curve in the road, the river was visible far below.
    Up on the box, Igor was crooning a lament.
    “He told me Igors heal very fast,” said Lady Sybil.
    “They’d have to.”
    “Mister Skimmer said they are very gifted surgeons, Sam.”
    “Except cosmetically, perhaps.”
    The coach slowed.
    “Do you come up here a lot, Igor?” said Vimes.
    “Mister Thleep used to have me drive over on the a week to collect methages, marthter.”
    “I’d have thought it’d be easier to have a pickup tower in Bonk.”
    “The counthil are dead againtht it, thir.”
    “And you?”
    “I am very modern in my outlook, thir.”
    The tower was quite close now, and loomed. The first twenty feet or so were of stone with narrow, barred windows. Then there was a broad platform from which the main tower grew. It was a sensible arrangement. An enemy would find it hard to break in or set fire to it, there was enough storage room inside to see out a siege, and the enemy would be aware that the lads inside would have signaled for help thirty seconds after the attack began. The company had money. They were like the coaching agents in that respect. If a tower went out of action, someone would be along to ask expensive questions. There was no law here; the kind of people who’d turn up would be inclined to leave a message to the world that towers were not to be touched.
    Everyone should know this, and therefore it was odd to see that the big signal arms were stationary.
    The hairs rose on Vimes’s neck.
    “Stay in the carriage, Sybil,” he said.
    “Is there something wrong?”
    “I’m not…sure,” said Vimes, who was sure. He stepped down and nodded to Igor.
    “I’m going to have a look inside,” he said. “If there is any…trouble, you’re to get Lady Sybil back to the embassy, all right?”
    Vimes leaned back into the coach and, trying not to look at Sybil, lifted up one of the seats and pulled out the sword he had hidden there.
    “Sam!” she said, accusingly.
    “Sorry, dear. I thought I ought to carry a spare…”
    There was a bellpull by the door of the tower. Vimes tugged at it, and heard a clang somewhere above.
    When nothing else happened, he tried the door. It swung open.
    “Hello?”
    There was silence.
    “This is the Wa—” Vimes stopped. It wasn’t the Watch, was it. Not out here. The badge didn’t work. He was just an inquisitive trespassing bastard.
    “Anyone there?”
    The room was piled high with sacks, boxes and barrels. A wooden stairway led up to the next floor. Vimes climbed up into a combined bedroom and mess room; there were only two bunks, their covers pulled back.
    A chair was on the floor. A meal was on the table, knife and fork laid down carefully. On the stove something had boiled dry in an iron pot. Vimes opened the firebox door, and there was a whoomph as the inrushing air rekindled the charred wood.
    And, from above, the chink of metal.
    He looked at the ladder and trapdoor to the next floor. Anyone climbing it would be presenting their head at a convenient height for a blade or a boot—
    “Tricky, isn’t it, Your Grace,” said someone above him. “You’d better come up. Mmm, mhm.”
    “Inigo?”
    “It’s safe enough, Your Grace. There’s only me here. Mmm.”
    “That counts as safe, does it?”
    Vimes climbed the ladder. Inigo was sitting at a table, leafing through a stack of papers.
    “Where’s the crew?”
    “That, Your Grace,” said Inigo, “is one of the mysteries, mmm, mmm.”
    “And the others are—?”
    Inigo nodded toward the steps leading upward. “See for yourself.”
    The controls for the arms had been comprehensively smashed. Laths and bits of wire dangled forlornly from their complex framework.
    “Several hours of repair work for skilled men, I’d say,” said Inigo, as Vimes returned.
    “What happened here, Inigo?”
    “I would say the men who lived here were forced to leave, mmm, mhm. In some disorder.”
    “But it’s a fortified tower!”
    “So? They