The Truth

does seem such a waste. The things one could do with Charlie…”
    “I told you, it would not work. The man is a clown.”
    “I suppose you are right. Better something once-and-for-all, then.”
    “I’m sure we understand one another. And now…this meeting of the Committee to Unelect the Patrician is declared closed. And hasn’t happened.”

    Lord Vetinari by habit rose so early that bedtime was merely an excuse to change his clothes.
    He liked the time just before a winter’s dawn. It was generally foggy, which made it hard to see the city, and for a few hours there was no sound but the occasional brief scream.
    But the tranquillity was broken this morning by a cry just outside the Palace gates.
    “Hoinarylup!”
    He went to the window.
    “Squidaped- oyt !”
    The Patrician walked back to his desk and rang the bell for his clerk Drumknott, who was dispatched to the walls to investigate.
    “It is the beggar known as Foul Ole Ron, sir,” he reported five minutes later. “Selling this…paper full of things.”
    Drumknott held it between two fingers as though expecting it to explode. Lord Vetinari took it and read through it. Then he read through it again.
    “Well, well,” he said. “‘The Ankh-Morpork Times.’ Was anyone else buying this?”
    “A number of people, my lord. People coming off the night shifts, market people, and so on.”
    “I see no mention of Hoinarylup or Squidaped- oyt. ”
    “No, my lord.”
    “How very strange.” Lord Vetinari read for a moment, and said, “Hm- hm. Clear my appointments this morning, will you? I will see the Guild of Town Criers at nine o’clock and the Guild of Engravers at ten past.”
    “I wasn’t aware they had appointments, sir.”
    “They will have,” said Lord Vetinari. “When they see this, they will have. Well, well…I see fifty-six people were hurt in a tavern brawl.”
    “That seems rather a lot, my lord.”
    “It must be true, Drumknott,” said the Patrician. “It’s in the paper. Oh, and send a message to that nice Mr. de Worde, too. I will see him at nine-thirty.”
    He ran his eye down the gray type again.
    “And please also put out the word that I wish to see no harm coming to Mr. de Worde, will you?”
    Drumknott, usually so adept in his understanding of his master’s requirements, hesitated a moment.
    “My lord, do you mean that you want no harm to come to Mr. de Worde, or that you want no harm to come to Mr. de Worde? ”
    “Did you wink at me, Drumknott?”
    “No, sir!”
    “Drumknott, I believe it is the right of every citizen of Ankh-Morpork to walk the streets unmolested.”
    “Good gods, sir! Is it?”
    “Indeed.”
    “But I thought you were very much against movable type, sir. You said that it would make printing too cheap, and people would—”
    “Sheearna-plp!” shouted the newspaper seller, down by the gates.
    “Are you poised for the exciting new millennium that lies before us, Drumknott? Are you ready to grasp the future with a willing hand?”
    “I don’t know, my lord. Is special clothing required?”

    The other lodgers were already at the breakfast table when William hurried down. He was hurrying because Mrs. Arcanum had Views about people who were late for meals.
    Mrs. Arcanum, proprietress of Mrs. Eucrasia Arcanum’s Lodging House for Respectable Working Men, was what Sacharissa was unconsciously training to be. She wasn’t just respectable, she was Respectable; it was a lifestyle, religion, and hobby combined. She liked respectable people who were Clean and Decent; she used the phrase as if it was impossible to be one without being the other. She kept respectable beds and cooked cheap but respectable meals for her respectable lodgers, who, apart from William, were mostly middle-aged, unmarried, and extremely sober. They were mainly craftsmen in small trades, and were almost all heavily built, well scrubbed, owned serious boots, and were clumsily polite at the dining table.
    Oddly enough—or at least, oddly enough to William’s expectations of people like Mrs. Arcanum—she wasn’t adverse to dwarfs and trolls. At least, the Clean and Decent ones. Mrs. Arcanum rated Decency above species.
    “It says here fifty-six people were hurt in a brawl,” said Mr. Mackleduff, who by dint of being the longest-surviving lodger acted as a kind of president at mealtimes. He had bought a copy of the Times on his way home from the bakery, where he was night-shift foreman.
    “Fancy,” said Mrs.