The Fifth Elephant

are…uncomplicated people.”
    The grille on the door was swung back. A glowing wire cage was put on the ledge.
    “What’s this? A sick glow-worm?”
    “It is a kind of beetle, yes. You will find that it will very soon seem quite bright. We are very accustomed to darkness.”
    “Look,” said Vimes, as the grille was shut again, “You know this is ridiculous! I…don’t know what the position is with Mister Skimmer, but I damn well intend to find out! And there’s the Scone theft, I’m pretty certain I’m close to working that out, too. If you let me return to the embassy, where else could I go?”
    “We would not wish to find out. You may just feel that life would be more pleasant in Ankh-Morpork.”
    “Really? And how would we get there?”
    “You may have friends in unexpected places.”
    Vimes thought of the evil little weapon in the pillow.
    “You will not be badly treated. This is our way,” said Dee. “I will return when I have news.”
    “Hey—”
    But Dee was a retreating shape in the crepid, almost-light.
    In Vimes’s cell, the glow beetle was doing its best. All it managed to achieve, though, was to turn the darkness into a variety of green shadows. You could find your way with it without walking into walls, but that was about the extent of it.
    One shot, that they didn’t know you had.
    That’d probably get him out of the door. Into a corridor. Underground. Full of dwarfs.
    On the other hand…it was amazing how the evidence could stack up against you when people wanted it to.
    Anyway, Vimes was an ambassador! What happened to diplomatic immunity? But that was hard to argue when you were faced by uncomplicated people with weaponry; there was a risk that they’d experiment to see if it was true.
    One shot they didn’t expect…
    Sometime later there was a rattling of keys and the door was pulled open. Vimes could make out the shape of two dwarfs. One was holding an ax, the other was bearing a tray.
    The dwarf with the ax motioned Vimes to step back.
    An ax wasn’t a good idea, Vimes considered. It was always the weapon of choice amongst dwarfs, but it wasn’t sensible in a confined space.
    He raised his hands and, as the other dwarf walked cautiously over to the stone slab, let them move toward the back of his neck.
    These dwarfs were nervous of him. Perhaps they didn’t see humans very often.
    They’d remember this one.
    “Want to see a trick?” said Vimes.
    “Grz’dak?”
    “Watch this ,” said Vimes, and brought his hands around and shut his eyes just before the match flared.
    He heard the ax drop as its owner tried to cover his face. That was an unexpected bonus, but there wasn’t time to thank the god of desperate men. Vimes plunged forward, kicked as hard as he could, and heard an “oof” of expelled breath. Then he leapt into the patch of darkness that contained the other dwarf, found a head, spun around and rammed it into an unseen wall.
    The other dwarf was trying to get to his feet. Vimes fumbled for him in the gloom, pulled him up by his jerkin, and rasped: “ Someone left me a weapon. They wanted me to kill you. Remember that. I could have killed you .”
    He punched the dwarf in the stomach. This was no time to play by the Marquis of Fantailler rules. *
    Then he turned, snatched the little cage containing the light beetle, and headed for the door.
    There was a feeling of passageway, stretching off in both directions. Vimes paused for just long enough to sense the draft on his face, and headed that way.
    Another glow beetle was hanging in a cage a little distance off. It illuminated, if such a bright word could be used for a light that merely made the darkness less black, a huge circular opening in which a fan turned lazily.
    The blades were so slow that Vimes was able to step between them, into the velvet cavern beyond.
    Someone really wants me dead, he thought, as he inched his way along the nearest invisible wall with his face to the draft. One shot they weren’t expecting…but someone was expecting it, weren’t they?
    If you want to get a prisoner out of the clink, then you gave him a key, or a file. You didn’t give him a weapon. A key might get him out; a weapon would get him killed.
    He stopped, one foot over emptiness. The glow beetle revealed a hole in the floor. It had the huge suckingness of depth.
    Then he gripped the beetle’s basket between his teeth, took a few steps back and completely misjudged the distance. He hit the other side of the