The Truth

muck to the Water Gate, by which the river Ankh had the good fortune to enter the city. The water was invisible in the dark, but the occasional ghostly shape of an ice floe drifted past below the parapet.
    “Hang on,” said Nobby, as they laid hands on the windlass of the portcullis. “There’s someone down there.”
    “In the river?” said Colon.
    He listened. There was the creak of an oar, far below.
    Sergeant Colon cupped his hands around his mouth and issued the traditional policeman’s cry of challenge.
    “Oi! You!”
    For a moment there was no sound but the wind and the gurgling of the water. Then a voice said: “Yes?”
    “Are you invading the city or what?”
    There was another pause. Then:
    “What?”
    “What what?” said Colon, raising the stakes.
    “What were the other options?”
    “Don’t mess me about…are you , down there in the boat, invading this city? ”
    “No.”
    “Fair enough,” said Colon, who on a night like this would happily take someone’s word for it. “Get a move on, then, ’cos we’re going to drop the gate.”
    After a while the splash of the oars resumed, and disappeared downriver.
    “You reckon that was enough, just askin’ ’em?” said Nobby.
    “Well, they ought to know,” said Colon.
    “Yeah, but—”
    “It was a tiny little rowin’ boat, Nobby. Of course, if you want to go all the way down to them nice icy steps on the jetty—”
    “No, Sarge.”
    “Then let’s get back to the Watch House, all right?”

    William turned up his collar as he hurried towards Cripslock the engraver. The usual busy streets were deserted. Only those with the most pressing business were out of doors. It was turning out to be a very nasty winter indeed, a gazpacho of freezing fog, snow, and Ankh-Morpork’s ever-present, ever-rolling smog.
    His eye was caught by a little pool of light by the Watchmakers’ Guild. A small hunched figure was outlined in the glow.
    He wandered over.
    A hopeless sort of voice said, “Hot sausages? Inna bun?”
    “Mr. Dibbler?” said William.
    Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Ankh-Morpork’s most enterprisingly unsuccessful businessman, peered at William over the top of his portable sausage-cooking tray. Snowflakes hissed in the congealing fat. William sighed.
    “You’re out late, Mr. Dibbler,” he said, politely.
    “Ah, Mr. Worde. Times is hard in the hot sausage trade,” said Dibbler.
    “Can’t make both ends meat, eh?” said William. He couldn’t have stopped himself for a hundred dollars and a shipload of figs.
    “Definitely in a period of slump in the comestibles market,” said Dibbler, too sunk in gloom to notice. “Don’t seem to find anyone ready to buy a sausage in a bun these days.”
    William looked down at the tray. If Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler was selling hot sausages, it was a sure sign that one of his more ambitious enterprises had gone wahooni-shaped yet again. Selling hot sausages from a tray was by way of being the ground state of Dibbler’s existence, from which he constantly sought to extricate himself and back to which he constantly returned when his latest venture went all fruity. Which was a shame, because Dibbler was an extremely good hot sausage salesman. He had to be, given the nature of his sausages.
    “I should have got a proper education like you,” said Dibbler despondently. “A nice job indoors with no heavy lifting. I could have found my nitch, if’n I have got a good education.”
    “Nitch?”
    “One of the wizards told me about ’em,” said Dibbler. “Everything’s got a nitch. You know. Like: where they ought to be. What they was cut out for?”
    William nodded. He was good with words. “Niche?” he said.
    “One of them things, yes.” Dibbler sighed. “I missed out on the semaphore. Just didn’t see it coming. Next thing you know, everyone’s got a clacks company. Big money. Too rich for my blood. I could’ve done all right with the Fung Shooey, though. Sheer bloody bad luck there.”
    “I’ve certainly felt better with my chair in a different position,” said William. That advice had cost him two dollars, along with an injunction to keep the lid on the privy down so that the Dragon of Unhappiness wouldn’t fly up his bottom.
    “You were my first customer and I thank you,” said Dibbler. “I was all set up, I’d got the Dibbler wind chimes and the Dibbler mirrors, it was all gravy all the way—I mean, everything was positioned for maximum harmony, and then…smack.