Thud!

face now bore an expression of amused contempt that Vimes longed to remove.
    He said: “How do you know this? Was it witnessed?”
    “Not as such. But a troll’s club was found beside the body,” said the dwarf.
    “And that’s all you have to go on?” Vimes stood up. “I’ve had enough of this. Sergeant Angua!”
    “Sir?” said Angua, beside him.
    “Let’s go. We’re going to find the murder scene while there’s still any clues left to find!”
    “You have no business in the lower areas!” snapped Ardent, standing up.
    “How are you going to stop me?”
    “How are you going to get past locked doors?”
    “How are you going to find out who murdered Hamcrusher?”
    “I told you, a troll’s club was found!”
    “And that’s it ? ‘We found a club, so a troll did it?’ Is anyone going to believe that? You’re prepared to start a war in my city with a piece of flimflam like that? Because, believe me, that’s what’s going to happen when this gets out. Try it and I’ll arrest you!”
    “And start a war in your city?” said Ardent.
    Dwarf and man glared at each other while they caught their breath. On the ceiling above them, vurms congregated, feasting on spittle and rage.
    “Why would anyone but a troll strike down the grag?” said Ardent.
    “Good! You’re asking questions!” Vimes leaned across the desk. “If you really want answers, unlock those doors!”
    “No! You cannot go down there, Blackboard Monitor Vimes!”
    The dwarf could not have put more venom in the words “child murderer.”
    Vimes stared.
    Blackboard monitor. Well, he had been, in that little street school, more than forty-five years ago. Mum had insisted. Gods knew where she’d sprung the penny a day it cost, although most of the time Dame Slightly had been happy to accept payment in old clothes and firewood, or, preferably, gin. Numbers, Letters, Weights, Measures; it was not what you’d call a rich curriculum. Vimes had attended for nine months or so, until the streets demanded he learn much harder and sharper lessons. But, for a while, he’d been trusted to hand out the slates and clean the blackboard. Oh, the heady, strutting power of it, when you’re six years old!
    “Do you deny it?” said Ardent. “You destroy written words? You admitted as much to the Low King in Uberwald.”
    “It was a joke!” said Vimes.
    “Oh? Then you do deny it?”
    “What? No! He was impressed by my titles, and I just threw that one in for…fun.”
    “Then you deny the crime?” Ardent persisted.
    “Crime? I cleaned the blackboard so that new things could be written on it! How is that a crime?”
    “You did not care where those words went?” said Ardent.
    “Care? They were just chalk dust!”
    Ardent sighed and rubbed his eyes.
    “Busy night?” said Vimes.
    “Commander, I understand that you were young and may not have realized what you were doing, but you must understand that to us you appear to be proud of being complicit in the most heinous of crimes: the destruction of words.”
    “Sorry? Rubbing out ‘A is for Apple’ is a capital crime?”
    “One that would be unthinkable for a true dwarf,” said Ardent.
    “Really? But I have the trust of the Low King himself,” said Vimes.
    “So I understand. There are six venerable grags below us, Commander, and in their eyes, the Low King and his kind have strayed from the true seam. He is,” Ardent rattled off a sentence in staccato dwarfish, too fast for Vimes to catch it, and then translated: “Wishy-washy. Dangerously liberal. Shallow. He has seen the light.”
    Ardent was watching him carefully. Think hard. From what Vimes could remember, the Low King and his circle had been pretty crusty types. But these people think they’re soppy liberals.
    “Wishy-washy?” he said.
    “Indeed. I invite you, therefore, to derive from that statement something of the nature of those I serve below.”
    Ah, thought Vimes. There’s something there. Just a hint. Friend Ardent is a thinker.
    “When you say ‘he has seen the light’ you sound as if you mean ‘corrupted,’ ” he said.
    “Something like that, yes. Different worlds, Commander. Down here, it would be unwise to trust your metaphors. To see the light is to be blinded. Do you not know that in the darkness, the eyes open wider?”
    “Take me to see these people down below,” said Vimes.
    “They will not listen to you. They will not even look at you. They have nothing to do with the World Above. They