The Truth

if a normal person was following him. Mister Vimes liked to refer to himself as a simple copper, just as Harry King thought of himself as a rough diamond. William suspected that the world was littered with the remains of those people who had taken them at their word.
    He slowed down, and climbed some outside stairs. And then he waited.
    You’re a fool, said the internal editor. Some people have tried to kill you. You’re concealing information from the Watch. You’re mixing with strange people. You’re about to do something that’s going to get so far up Mister Vimes’s nose it will raise his hat. And why?
    Because it makes my blood tingle, he thought. And because I’m not going to be used. By anyone.
    There was a faint sound at the end of the alley, which might not have been heard by anyone who wasn’t expecting it. It was the sound of something sniffing.
    William looked down and saw, in the gloom, a four-legged shape break into a trot while keeping its muzzle close to the ground.
    William measured the distance carefully. Declaring independence was one thing. Assaulting a member of the Watch was a very different thing.
    He lobbed the fragile bottle so that it landed about twenty feet ahead of the werewolf, dropped from the stairs onto the top of a wall, and jumped down onto a privy roof as the glass broke with a “pof!” inside the sock.
    There was a yelp, and the sound of scrabbling claws.
    William jumped from the roof onto another wall, inched along the top of it, and climbed down into another alley. Then he ran.
    It took five minutes, dodging into convenient cover and cutting through buildings, to arrive at the livery stables. In the general bustle no one took any notice of him. He was just another man coming to fetch his horse.
    The stall that may or may not have contained Deep Bone was occupied by a horse now. It looked down its nose at him.
    “Don’t turn around, Mr. Paper Man,” said a voice behind him.
    William tried to remember what had been behind him. Oh, yes…the hay loft. And huge bags of straw. Plenty of room for someone to hide.
    “All right,” he said.
    “Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,” said Deep Bone. “You must be ment’l. ”
    “But I’m on the right track,” said William. “I think I’ve—”
    “’Ere, you sure you weren’t followed?”
    “Corporal Nobbs was on my trail,” said William. “But I shook him off.”
    “Hah! Walkin’ round the corner’d shake off Nobby Nobbs!”
    “Oh, no, he kept right up. I knew Vimes would have me tracked,” said William proudly.
    “By Nobbs?”
    “Yes. Obviously…in his werewolf shape…” There. He’d said it. But today was a day for shadows and secrets.
    “A werewolf shape,” said Deep Bone flatly.
    “Yes. I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone else.”
    “Corporal Nobbs,” said Deep Bone, still in the same dull monotone.
    “Yes. Look, Vimes told me not to—”
    “ Vimes told you Nobby Nobbs was a werewolf?”
    “Well…no, not exactly. I worked that out for myself, and Vimes told me not to tell anyone else…”
    “About Corporal Nobbs bein’ a werewolf…”
    “Yes.”
    “Corporal Nobbs is not a werewolf, mister. In any way, shape, or form. Whether he’s human is another matter, but he ain’t a lycr—a lynco—a lycantro—a bloody werewolf, that’s for sure!”
    “Then whose nose did I just drop a scent bomb in front of?” said William triumphantly.
    There was silence. And then there was the sound of a thin trickle of water.
    “Mr. Bone?” said William.
    “What kind of a scent bomb?” said the voice. It sounded rather strained.
    “I think oil of scallatine was probably the most active ingredient.”
    “Right in front of a werewolf’s nose?”
    “More or less, yes.”
    “Mister Vimes is going to go round the twist,” said the voice of Deep Bone. “He’s going to go totally Librarian-poo. He’s going to invent new ways of being angry just so’s he can try them out on you—”
    “Then I’d better get hold of Lord Vetinari’s dog as soon as possible,” said William. “I can give you a check for fifty dollars, and that’s all I can afford.”
    “What’s one of them, then?”
    “It’s like a legal IOU.”
    “Oh, great, ” said Deep Bone. “Not much good to me when you’re locked up, though.”
    “Right now, Mr. Bone, there’s a couple of very nasty men hunting down every terrier in the city, by the sound of it—”
    “Terriers?” said Deep Bone. “ All