Men at Arms (Discworld, #15; City Watch, #2)

by Terry Pratchett

Colon thought Carrot was simple. Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was. Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.

It was a large room, heavily outfitted with the usual badly ventilated furnaces, rows of bubbling crucibles, and one stuffed alligator. Things floated in jars. The air smelled of a limited life expectancy.

And they were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer.

It was strange to find an armory in a city which relied on deceit, bribery and assimilation to defeat its enemies but, as Sergeant Colon said, once you’d won their weapons off ’em you needed somewhere to store the things.

“Did you know she was a werewolf?” “Um . . . Captain Vimes kind of hinted, sir . . .” “How did he hint?” Colon took a step back. “He sort of said, ‘Fred, she’s a damn werewolf.

THAT DOESN’T MEAN I HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT BURIAL CUSTOMS. GENERALLY, I MEET PEOPLE BEFORE THEY’RE BURIED. THE ONES I MEET AFTER THEY’VE BEEN BURIED TEND TO BE A BIT OVER-EXCITED AND DISINCLINED TO DISCUSS THINGS.

- Death

There was a small priest who gave the generic fill-in-deceased’s-name-here service, designed to be vaguely satisfactory to any gods who might be listening.