Thud!

glance at Lady Sybil. “One is indeed dead, I am afraid. If you recall, I must have stabbed him with the ice knife I happened to be innocently holding, having been cutting ice for the kitchen,” he added, poker-faced.
    “Put him on the roof of the coach,” said Vimes.
    “The other one also appears to be dead, sir. I’d swear he was fine when I tied him up, sir, because he was cursing me in their lingo.”
    “You didn’t tie him up too hard, did—” Vimes began, and gave up on it. If Willikins wanted someone dead, he wouldn’t have taken a prisoner. It must have been a surprise, breaking into a cellar and meeting something like Willikins. Anyway, to hell with them.
    “Just…died?” he said.
    “Yes, sir. Do dwarfs naturally salivate green?”
    “What?”
    “There is green around his mouth, sir. Could be a clue, in my opinion.”
    “All right, put him on the roof of the coach, too. Let’s go, shall we?”
    Vimes had to insist that Sybil traveled on the inside. Usually, she got her own way and he was happy to give it to her, but the unspoken agreement was that when he really insisted, she listened. It’s a married couple thing.
    Vimes rode beside Willikins, and got him to stop halfway down the hill where a man was selling the evening edition of the Times , still damp from the press.
    The picture on the front page was of a mob of dwarfs. They were pulling open one of the mine’s big, round metal doors; it was hanging off its hinges. In the middle of the group, hands gripping the edge of the frame and muscles bulging, was Captain Carrot. Gleaming, with his shirt off.
    Vimes grunted happily, folded up the paper, and lit a cheroot. The shaking in his legs was barely noticeable now, the fires of that terrible rage banked but still glowing.
    “A Free Press, Willikins. You just can’t beat it,” he said.
    “I’ve often heard you remark as much, sir,” said Willikins.

T he entity slithered through the rainy streets. Confounded again!
    It was getting through, it knew it! It was being heard! And yet every time it tried to follow the words, it was thrown back. Bars had blocked its way, doors that had been open locked themselves as it approached. And what was this? Some kind of low-class soldier! By now it would have had berserkers biting their shields in half!
    That was not the main problem, though. It was being watched. And that had never happened before.

T here was a crowd of dwarfs milling around outside the Yard. They did not look belligerent—that is to say, any more than a species the members of which, by custom and practice, wear a big heavy helmet, mail, iron boots, and carry an axe all the time can fail to look belligerent—but they did look lost and bewildered and unsure why they were there.
    Vimes got Willikins to drive in through the coach arch and take the bodies of the attackers down to Igor, who knew about things like people dying with green mouths.
    Sybil, Purity, and Young Sam were hustled away to a clean office. Interesting thing, Vimes thought as he watched Cheery and a group of dwarf officers fuss over the child: even now—in fact, especially now, given the way the tension had made everyone revert to old certainties—he wasn’t sure how many female dwarf officers he had. It was a brave female dwarf who advertised the fact, in a society where the wearing of even a decent, floor-length leather-and-chain-mail dress instead of leggings positioned you on the moral map at the far side of Tawneee and her hardworking coworkers at the PussyCat Club. But introduce a gurgling kid into the room, and you could spot them instantly, for all their fearsome clang and beards you could lose a rat in.
    Carrot pushed his way through the crowd and saluted.
    “A lot’s been happening, sir!”
    “My word, has it?” said Vimes, with manic brightness.
    “Yessir. Everyone was pretty…angry when we brought the dead dwarfs up, and what with one thing and another, opening the big door in Treacle Street was pretty popular. All the deep-downers have gone, except one—”
    “That’d be Helmclever,” said Vimes, heading for his office.
    Carrot looked surprised. “That’s right, sir. He’s in a cell. I’d like you to have a look at him, if you don’t mind. He was crying and moaning and trembling in a corner, with lit candles all ’round him.”
    “More candles? Afraid of the dark?” Vimes suggested.
    “Could be, sir. Igor says the trouble’s in his head.”
    “Don’t let Igor try to give him