"Yes, sir."
"You"re free to wear whatever you want, you know that."
"Yes, sir. And then I thought about Dee. And I watched the King when he was talking to you, and... well, I can wear what I like, sir. That"s the point. I don"t have to wear that dress and I shouldn"t wear it just because other people don"t want me to. Besides, it made me look like a rather stupid lettuce."
"That"s all a bit complicated for me, Cheery."
"It"s probably a dwarf thing, sir."
Vimes pushed open the doors to the drawing room. "It"s over," he said.
"Did you hurt anyone else?" said Sybil.
"Only Wolfgang."
"He"ll be back," said Angua.
No.
"You killed him?"
"No. I put him down. I see you"re up, captain."
Carrot got to his feet, awkwardly, and saluted. "Sorry I haven"t been much use, sir."
"You just chose the wrong time to fight fair. Are you well enough to come?"
"Er, Angua and I want to stay here, if it"s all right with you, sir. We"ve got things to talk about. And, er... do."
It was the first coronation Vimes had attended. He"d expected it to be... stranger, touched somehow by glory.
Instead it was dull, but at least it was big dull, dullness distilled and cultivated over thousands of years until it had developed an impressive shine, as even grime will if you polish it long enough. It was dull hammered into the shape and form of ceremony.
It had also been timed to test the capacity of the average bladder.
A number of dwarfs read passages from ancient scrolls. There were what sounded like excerpts from the Koboldean Saga, and Vimes wondered desperately if they were in for another opera, but they were over after a mere hour. There were more readings from different dwarfs. At one point the King, who had been standing alone in the centre of a circle of candlelight, was presented with a leather bag, a small mining axe and a ruby. Vimes didn"t catch the meaning of any of this, but by the sounds it was clear that each item was of huge and satisfying significance to the thousands who were standing behind him. Thousands? No, there must be tens of thousands, he thought. The bowl of the cavern was full of tier upon tier of dwarfs. Maybe a hundred thousand...
... and he was in the front row. No one had said anything. The four of them had simply been led there and left, although the murmurings suggested that the presence of Detritus was causing considerable attention. Senior, long-bearded and richly clothed dwarfs were all around them.
Someone was being taught something. Vimes wondered who the lesson was directed at.
Finally, the Scone was brought in, small and dull and yet carried by twenty-four dwarfs on a large bier. It was laid, reverentially, on a stool.
He could sense the change in the air of the huge cavern, and once again he thought: there"s no magic, you poor devils, there"s no history. I"ll bet my wages the damn thing was moulded with rubber from a vat that had last been used in the preparation of Sonky"s Eversure Dependables, and there"s your holy relic for you...
There were more readings, much shorter this time.
Then the dwarfs who had been participating in the endless and baffling hours withdrew from the centre of the cavern, leaving the King looking as small and alone as the Scone itself.
He stared around him and, although it was surely impossible for him to have seen Vimes among the thousands in the gloom, it did seem that his gaze rested on the Ankh-Morpork party for a fraction of a second.
The King sat down.
A sigh began. It grew louder and louder, a hurricane made up of the breath of a nation. It echoed back and forth among the rocks until it drowned out all other sounds.
Vimes had half expected the Scone to explode, or crumble, or flash red-hot. Which was stupid, said a dwindling part of himself - it was a fake, a nonsense, something made in Ankh-Morpork for money, something that had already cost lives. It was not, it could not be real.
But in the roaring air he knew that it was, for all who needed to believe, and in a belief so strong that truth was not the same as fact... he knew that for now, and yesterday, and tomorrow, both the thing, and the whole of the thing.