The Truth

day’s out. Sorry, but we’re doing the best we can. If we had a day to redesign and rebuild properly—”
    “Print a few hundred and do the rest in black and white, then,” said Sacharissa, and sighed. “At least it’ll catch people’s attention.”
    “Vunce zey see it, the Inqvirer vill vork out how it vas done,” said Otto.
    “Then at least we’ll go down with our colors flying,” said Sacharissa. She shook her head, as a little dust floated down from the room.
    “Hark at that,” said Boddony. “Can you feel the floor shake? That’s their big presses again.”
    “They’re undermining us everywhere,” said Sacharissa. “And we’ve all worked so hard. It’s so unfair .”
    “I’m surprised the floor takes it,” said Goodmountain. “It’s not as though anything’s on solid ground round here.”
    “Undermining us, eh?” said Boddony.
    One or two of the dwarfs looked up when he said this. Boddony said something in Dwarfish. Goodmountain snapped something in reply. A couple of other dwarfs joined in.
    “Excuse me, ” said Sacharissa tartly.
    “The lads were…wondering about going in and having a look,” said Goodmountain.
    “I tried going in the other day,” said Sacharissa. “But the troll on the door was most impolite.”
    “Dwarfs…approach matters differently,” said Goodmountain.
    Sacharissa saw a movement. Boddony had pulled his ax out from under the bench. It was a traditional dwarf ax. One side was a pickax, for the extraction of interesting minerals, and the other side was a war ax, because the people who own the land with the valuable minerals in it can be so unreasonable sometimes.
    “You’re not going to attack anyone, are you?” she said, shocked.
    “Well, someone did say that if you want a good story you have to dig and dig,” said Boddony. “We’re just going to go for a walk.”
    “In the cellar?” said Sacharissa, as they headed for the steps.
    “Yeah, a walk in the dark,” said Boddony.
    Goodmountain sighed. “The rest of us will get on with the paper, shall we?” he said.
    After a minute or two there was the sound of a few ax blows below them, and then someone swore in Dwarfish, very loudly.
    “I’m going to see what they’re doing,” said Sacharissa, unable to resist anymore, and hurried away.
    The bricks that once had filled the old doorway were already down when she got there. Since the stones of Ankh-Morpork were recycled over the generations, no one had ever seen the point of making strong mortar, and especially not for blocking up an old doorway. Sand, dirt, water, and phlegm would do the trick, they felt. They always had done up to now, after all.
    The dwarfs were peering into the darkness beyond. Each one had stuck a candle on his helmet.
    “I thought your man said they filled up the old street,” said Boddony.
    “He’s not my man,” said Sacharissa evenly. “What’s in there?”
    One of the dwarfs had stepped through with a lantern.
    “There’s like…tunnels,” he said.
    “The old pavements,” said Sacharissa. “It’s like this all round this area, I think. After the big floods they built up the sides of the road with timber and filled it in, but they left the pavements on either side because not all the properties had built up yet and people objected.”
    “What?” said Boddony. “You mean the roads were higher than the pavements?”
    “Oh, yes,” said Sacharissa, following him into the gap.
    “What happens if a horse pi…if a horse made water on the street?”
    “I’m sure I don’t know,” sniffed Sacharissa.
    “How did people cross the street?”
    “Ladders.”
    “Oh, come on, miss!”
    “No, they used ladders. And a few tunnels. It wasn’t going to be for very long. And then it was simpler just to put heavy slabs over the old pavements. And so there’s these—well, forgotten spaces.”
    “There’s rats up here,” said Dozy, who was wandering into the distance.
    “Hot damn!” said Boddony. “Anyone brought the cutlery? Only joking, miss. Hey, what do we have here…?”
    He hacked at some planks, which crumbled away under the blows.
    “Someone didn’t want to use a ladder,” he said, peering into another hole.
    “It goes right under the street?” said Sacharissa.
    “Looks like it. Must have been allergic to horses.”
    “And…er…you can find your way?”
    “I’m a dwarf. We are underground. Dwarf. Underground . What was your question again?”
    “You’re not proposing to hack