The Fifth Elephant

was whipping thick snowflakes around the tower when Inigo finished setting up the red mortar on the platform below the big square shutters.
    He lit a couple of matches but the wind streamed them out before he could even cup his hands around them.
    “Damn. Mmm, mmm.”
    He slid down the ladder and into the warmth of the tower. It’d be better to spend the night here, he thought, as he rummaged in drawers. The night didn’t hold many terrors for him, but this storm had the feel of another big snow and the mountain roads would soon be treacherous.
    Finally an idea struck him, and he opened the door of the stove and pulled out a smoldering log on the tongs.
    It burst into flame when he carried it out at the top of the tower, and he directed them into the touch hole at the base of the tube.
    The mortar fired with a phut that was lost in the wind. The flare itself tumbled invisibly up into the snow and then, a few seconds later, exploded a hundred feet overhead, casting a brief red glare over the forests.
    Inigo had just gotten back into the room when there was a knock at the door, down at ground level.
    He paused. There was a window and hatch at this level; the designers of the tower had at least realized that it would be a good idea to be able to look down and see who was a-knocking.
    There was no one there.
    When he’d climbed back into the room, the knock came again.
    He hadn’t locked the door after Vimes went. A bit late to regret that now, he realized. But Inigo Skimmer had trained in an academy that made the School of Hard Knocks look like a sandpit.
    He lit a candle and crept down the ladder in the darkness, shadows fleeing and dancing among the stacks of provisions.
    With the candle set down on a box, he pulled the one-shot crossbow from inside his coat and, with an effort, cocked it against the wall. Then he flexed his left arm and felt the palm dagger ease itself into position.
    He clicked his heels in a certain way and sensed the tiny blades slide out from the toes.
    And Inigo settled down to wait.
    Behind him, something blew the candle out.
    As he turned, and the crossbow’s one bolt whirred into darkness, and the palm dagger scythed at nothing, it occurred to Inigo Skimmer that you could knock on either side of a door.
    They really were very clever…
    “Mhm, m—”

    Cheery twirled, or at least attempted to. It was not a movement that came naturally to dwarfs.
    “You look very…nice,” said Lady Sybil. “It goes all the way to the ground, too. I don’t think anyone could possibly complain.”
    Unless they were remotely fashion conscious, she had to admit.
    The problem was that the…well, she had to think of them as the new dwarf women—hadn’t quite settled on a look.
    Lady Sybil herself usually wore ball gowns of a light blue, a color often chosen by ladies of a certain age and girth to combine the maximum of quiet style with the minimum of visibility. But dwarf girls had heard about sequins. They seemed to have decided in their bones that, if they were going to overturn thousands of years of subterranean tradition, they weren’t going to go all through that for no damn twin-set and pearls.
    “And red is good ,” said Lady Sybil sincerely. “Red is a very nice color. It’s a nice red dress. Er. And the feathers. Er. The bag to carry your ax, er—”
    “Not glittery enough?” said Cheery.
    “No! No…if I was going to carry a large ax on my back to a diplomatic function, I think I’d want it glittery, too. Er. It is such a very large ax, of course,” she finished lamely.
    “You think perhaps a smaller one might be better? For evening wear?”
    “That would be a start, yes.”
    “Perhaps with a few rubies set in the handle?”
    “Yes,” said Lady Sybil weakly. “Why not, after all?”
    “What about me, Ladyship?” Detritus rumbled.
    Igor had certainly risen to the occasion, applying to a number of suits found in the embassy wardrobes the same pioneering surgical skills that he used on unfortunate loggers and other people who may have strayed too close to a band saw. It had taken him just ninety minutes to construct something around Detritus. It was definitely evening dress. You couldn’t get away with it in daylight. The troll looked like a wall with a bow tie.
    “How does all it feel?” said Lady Sybil, playing for safety.
    “It are rather tight around der—what’s this bit called?”
    “I really have no idea,” said Lady Sybil.
    “It makes me lurch a bit,” said