Thud!

drew level, jumped onto the door’s step and hung on.
    “Isn’t this the mail coach to Quirm?” he shouted, as the driver urged the horses into a canter.
    “That’s right, sir,” said Carrot. “I explained it was a matter of extreme importance.”
    Vimes redoubled his grip. The mail coaches had good horses. The wheels, not very far away from him, were already a blur.
    “How did you get here so quick?” he yelled.
    “Shortcut through the Apothecary Gardens, sir!”
    “What? That little walk by the river? That’s never wide enough for a coach like this!”
    “It was a bit of a squeeze, sir, yes. It got easier when the coach lamps scraped off.”
    Vimes took in the state of the coach’s side. The paintwork was scored all along it.
    “All right,” he shouted, “tell the driver I’ll meet the bills, of course! But it’ll be wasted, Carrot. Park Lane’ll be jam-packed at this time of day!”
    “Don’t worry, sir! I should hang on very tight if I were you, sir!” shouted Carrot, above the rising wind.
    Vimes heard the whip crack. This was a real mail coach. Mailbags don’t care if they’re comfortable. He could feel the acceleration.
    Park Lane would be coming up very soon. Vimes couldn’t see much, because the wind of their flight was making his eyes water, but up ahead was one of the city’s most fashionable traffic jams. It was bad enough at any time of day, but early evening was particularly horrible, owing to the Ankh-Morpork belief that right of way was the prerogative of the heaviest vehicle or the gobbiest driver. There were minor collisions all the time, which were inevitably followed by both vehicles blocking the junction while the drivers got down to discussing road-safety issues with reference to the first weapon they could get their hands on. And it was into this maelstrom of jostling horses, scurrying pedestrians, and cursing drivers that the mail coach was heading, apparently, at a full gallop.
    He shut his eyes and then, hearing a change in the sound of the wheels, risked opening them again.
    The coach flew across the junction. Vimes had a momentary glimpse of a huge line, fuming and shouting behind a couple of immovable troll officers, before they were spinning on down toward Scoone Avenue.
    “You closed the road? You closed the road!” he yelled as they plunged on.
    “And Kings Way, sir. Just in case,” Carrot shouted down.
    “You closed two major roads? Two whole damn roads? In the rush hour?”
    “Yes, sir,” said Carrot. “It was the only way.”
    Vimes hung on, speechless. Would he have dared to do that? But that was Carrot all over. There was a problem, and now it’s gone. Admittedly, the whole city is probably solid with wagons by now, but that’s a new problem.
    He’d be home in time. Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although his young son appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even two minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go to five minutes, then you’d go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours…and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six o’clock, prompt. Every day. Read to Young Sam. No excuses. He’d promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.
    He had nightmares about being too late.
    He had a lot of nightmares about Young Sam. They involved empty cots and darkness.
    It had all been too…good. In a few short years, he, Sam Vimes, had gone up in the world like a balloon. He was a Duke, he commanded the Watch, he was powerful, he was married to a woman whose compassion, love, and understanding he knew a man such as he did not deserve, and he was as rich as Creosote. Fortune had rained its gravy, and he’d been the man with the big bowl. And it had all happened so fast.
    And then Young Sam had come along. At first it had been fine. The baby was, well, a baby, all lolling head and burping and unfocused eyes, entirely the preserve of his mother. And then, one evening, his son had turned and looked directly at Vimes, with eyes that for his father outshone the lamps of the world, and fear had poured into Sam Vimes’s life in a terrible wave. All this good fortune, all this fierce joy…it was wrong. Surely the universe could not allow this amount of happiness in one man, not without presenting a bill. Somewhere a big wave was cresting, and when it broke over his