More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Letters rarely got written in that mine. Work stopped and the whole clan had sat around in respectful silence as his pen scrittered across the parchment. His aunt had been sent up to Varneshi’s to beg his pardon but could he see his way clear to sparing a smidgen of wax. His sister had been sent down to the village to ask Mistress Garlick the witch how you stopped spelling recommendation.
Sergeant Colon, he thought, as he stumbled into the musty gloom. Now there was a man who liked the dark. Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs. Colon worked all day and Sergeant Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. He got her tea ready before he left at night, she left his breakfast nice and hot in the oven in the mornings. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting.
You tell them a lie, and then when you don’t need it anymore you tell them another lie and tell them they’re progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they’ll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing.
It is difficult for an orangutan to stand to attention. Its body can master the general idea, but its skin can’t. The Librarian was doing his best, however, standing in a sort of respectful heap at the end of the line and maintaining the kind of complex salute you can only achieve with a four-foot arm.
For a moment the rank felt as though they had just returned from single-handedly conquering a distant province. They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt.
The dragon—the dragon—was peering down interestedly over the guttering. Its face alone was taller than a man. Its eyes were the size of very large eyes, colored a smoldering red and filled with an intelligence that had nothing to do with human beings.
Vimes stalked gloomily through the crowded streets, feeling like the only pickled onion in a fruit salad.
Normally the only decoration in there was on Sham Harga’s vest and the food was good solid stuff for a cold morning, all calories and fat and protein and maybe a vitamin crying softly because it was all alone.
“Oh, come on!” said Sergeant Colon. “No, seriously. What’s the alternative?” “A human being, for a start!” “Please yourself,” said the little man primly. “But I reckon one person a month is pretty good compared to some rulers we’ve had. Anyone remember Nersh the Lunatic? Or Giggling Lord Smince and his Laugh-A-Minute Dungeon?”
It was the “eventually” that was the problem. Eventually Great A ’Tuin would reach the end of the universe. Eventually the stars would go out. Eventually Nobby might have a bath, although that would probably involve a radical re-thinking of the nature of Time.
The pond was a swamp of debris, covered with a coating of ash. Out of it, dripping slime, rose Sergeant Colon. He clawed his way to the bank and pulled himself up, like some sea-dwelling lifeform that was anxious to get the whole evolution thing over with in one go.
Vimes marched the rank to the center of the hall and stamped to a halt with his helmet under his arm, as per regulations. He’d been amazed to see that even Nobby had made an effort—the suspicion of shiny metal could be seen here and there on his breastplate. And Colon was wearing an expression of almost constipated importance.
