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“You want I should go an’ have a look at his boat?” said Detritus. “No, sergeant. There won’t be any silk, and there won’t be any paperwork. There won’t be anything except a lingering aroma of fish guts.” “Wow, dem damn Klatchians steals everything that ain’t nailed down, right?”
“Leshp,” said Detritus. “Now dere’s a name that ain’t got its teef in.” “It’s the land that came back up from under the sea last week,” said Vimes despondently.
Ankh-Morpork had been at peace with Klatch, or at least in a state of non-war, for almost a century. It was, after all, the neighboring country.
Neighbors . . . hah! But what did that mean? The Watch could tell you a thing or two about neighbors. So could lawyers, especially the real rich ones to whom “neighbor” meant a man who’d sue for twenty years over a strip of garden two inches wide. People’d live for ages side by side, nodding at one another amicably on their way to work every day, and then some trivial thing would happen and someone would be having a garden fork removed from their ear.
“Why are our people going out there?” said Mr. Boggis of the Thieves’ Guild. “Because they are showing a brisk pioneering spirit and seeking wealth and . . . additional wealth in a new land,” said Lord Vetinari. “What’s in it for the Klatchians?” said Lord Downey. “Oh, they’ve gone out there because they are a bunch of unprincipled opportunists always ready to grab something for nothing,” said Lord Vetinari.
Mr. Slant, I believe you have something to say here?” The president of the Guild of Lawyers cleared his throat. The sound was like a death rattle and technically it was, since the man had been a zombie for several hundred years although historical accounts suggested that the only difference dying had made to Mr. Slant was that he’d started to work through his lunch break.
“that the new land is ours by Eminent Domain, Extra-Territoriality and, most importantly, Acquiris Quodcumque Rapis. I am given to understand that it was one of our fishermen who first set foot on it this time.”
Sto Lat and Pseudopolis and the other cities?”
Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He’d been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me.
“I heard this wizard down the University say that the Klatchians invented nothing. That was their great contribution to maffs, he said. I said ‘What?’ an’ he said, they come up with zero.” “Dun’t sound that clever to me,” said Nobby. “Anyone could invent nothing. I ain’t invented anything.”
“You mean, like . . . they viciously attack you while cowardly running away after tasting cold steel?” said Nobby, who sometimes had a treacherously good memory for detail.
“Here, you’re a zombie!” “That’s right, kick a man when he’s dead,” said Constable Shoe sharply.
just because my people invented advanced mathematics and all-day camping we are complete barbarians
No wonder this man was a diplomat. You couldn’t trust him an inch, he thought in loops, and you couldn’t help liking him despite it.
Doctorum Adamus cum Flabello Dulci—Is
the degree is Doctor of Sweet Fanny Adams.
“No! I meant ‘Always act stupid,’ Carrot.”
That was one of Leonard of Quirm’s traits: he picked up conversations out of the air, he assumed everyone was an interested friend, and he took it for granted that you were as intelligent as he was.
“Dice?” he said. Leonard smiled in an embarrassed fashion. “Yes. I can’t think why I thought they’d help it go better. It was just, well, an idea. You know how it is.”
Not that the man was a prisoner, except by dull, humdrum standards. He appeared rather grateful to be confined in this light, airy attic with as much wood, paper, sticks of charcoal and paint as he desired and no rent or food bills to pay.
In any case, you couldn’t really imprison someone like Leonard of Quirm. The most you could do was lock up his body.
The sight of a waterfall or a soaring bird would send him spinning down some new path of practical speculation that invariably ended in a heap of wire and springs and a cry of “I think I know what I did wrong.”
After all, when you seek advice from someone it’s certainly not because you want them to give it. You just want them to be there while you talk to yourself.
“I always thought it was the presence of the desert. It leads to an urgency of thought. It makes you aware of the briefness of life.”
green coat.” “You can smell the color?” “No. The dye. It comes from Sto Lat,
NOT SOMEONE YOU KNOW? said Death.
“Dis is der Riot Act and you’ve all got to read it, right? Pass it round.” “What if we don’t read it?” said a voice in the crowd.
Well, it must be true what they say about men who like big weapons . . .” “And that is?” said Carrot, lifting the lid of the box. She looked at the top of his head. As always, Carrot radiated innocence like a small sun. But he’d . . . They’d . . . Surely he . . . “They, er . . . they’re rather small,”
you’ve never thought of getting a job in Quirm or somewhere, have you? The other cities are headhunting Ankh-Morpork watchmen now.”
Dibbler’s Homoeopathic Shampoo.
Anyone know the time?” “Bingeley-bingeley beep!” said a cheerful voice from his pocket.
the city is to be placed under martial law.” “Yessir? What kind of law’s that, sir?” said Vimes, staring straight ahead. “You know very well, Vimes.” “Is it the kind where you shout ‘Stop!’ before you fire, sir, or the other kind?”
“This belonged to my great-grandad,” he said. “He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great-gran gave him this book of prayers for soldiers, ’cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me, and he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, ’cos he couldn’t afford armor, and next day in battle—whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look. You can see the hole.” “Pretty miraculous,” Carrot agreed. “Yeah, it was, I s’pose,” said the sergeant. He looked ruefully at the battered
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Oh . . . it’s just something women used to say when they sent their men off to war. Come back with your shield, or on it.” “On your shield?” said Nobby. “You mean like . . . sledging, sort of thing?”
“Oh, there might be a few problems, I grant you. But if you ask Mr. Slant he’ll say ‘This is a very interesting case,’ which as you know is lawyer-talk for ‘One thousand dollars a day plus expenses and it’ll take months.’
It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people.
It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.
“Well done!” said Leonard. “Tell me, sergeant, are you of a nautical persuasion?” Colon saluted again. “Nossir! Happily married man, sir!”
“Veni, vidi, vici.” I came, I saw, I conquered.
“It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country,” he read. “This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.”
sine qua appointments,”
But Carrot really did believe that personal wasn’t the same as important. Of course, Vimes believed the same thing.
Odd thing, ain’t it . . . you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.”
Theft was the only crime, whether the loot was gold, innocence, land or life.
“Look, it’s no good taking it out on me just because you’re not on the right time line!” “What the hell does that mean?” “Aha, I knew you didn’t read the manual! Chapter xvii-2(c) makes it very clear that sticking to one reality is vitally important, otherwise the Uncertainty Principle says—”
“It a million-to-one chance,” he said.
The sudden appearance of a naked woman always causes a rethink of anyone’s immediate plans.
There are six hundred and fifty-three religions on the Klatchian continent.”
‘If you would seek peace, prepare for war,’”
while the nature of the talons may change, the nature of the beast does not.
