'Very odd family, the Nobbses.'
'Yessir.'
'Fred, you don't have to keep calling me sir .'
'Got comp'ny, sir,' said the sergeant, glancing meaningfully towards a bench in the main office. 'Come for that alchemy job.'
A dwarf smiled nervously at Vimes. 'All right,' said Vimes. 'I'll see him in my office.' He reached into his coat and took out the assassin's money pouch. 'Put it in the Widows and Orphans Fund, will you, Fred?'
'Right. Oh, well done, sir. Any more windfalls like this and we'll soon be able to afford some more widows.'
Sergeant Colon went back to his desk, surreptitiously opened his drawer and pulled out the book he was reading. It was called Animal Husbandry. He'd been a bit worried about the title - you heard stories about strange folk in the country - but it turned out to be nothing more than a book about how cattle and pigs and sheep should breed.
Now he was wondering where to get a book that taught them how to read.
Upstairs, Vimes pushed open his office door carefully. The Assassins' Guild played to rules. You could say that about the bastards. It was terribly bad form to kill a bystander. Apart from anything else, you wouldn't get paid. So traps in his office were out of the question, because too many people were in and out of it every day. Even so, it paid to be careful. Vimes was good at making the kind of rich enemies who could afford to employ assassins. The assassins had to be lucky only once, but Vimes had to be lucky all the time.
He slipped into the room and glanced out of the window. He liked to work with it open, even in cold weather. He liked to hear the sounds of the city. But anyone trying to climb up or down to it would run into everything in the way of loose tiles, shifting handholds and treacherous drainpipes that Vimes's ingenuity could contrive. And Vimes had installed spiked railings down below. They were nice and ornamental but they were, above all, spiky.
So far, Vimes was winning.
There was a tentative knock at the door.
It had issued from the knuckles of the dwarf applicant. Vimes ushered him into the office, shut the door, and sat down at his desk.
'So,' he said. 'You're an alchemist. Acid stains on your hands and no eyebrows.'
'That's right, sir.'
'Not usual to find a dwarf in that line of work. You people always seem to toil in your uncle's foundry or something.'
You people, the dwarf noted. 'Can't get the hang of metal,' he said.
'A dwarf who can't get the hang of metal? That must be unique.'
'Pretty rare, sir. But I was quite good at alchemy.'
'Guild member?'
'Not any more, sir.'
'Oh? How did you leave the guild?' 'Through the roof, sir. But I'm pretty certain I know what I did wrong.'
Vimes leaned back. The alchemists are always blowing things up. I never heard of them getting sacked for it.'
'That's because no one's ever blown up the Guild Council, sir.' 'What, all of it?'
'Most of it, sir. All the easily detachable bits, at least.'
Vimes found he was automatically opening the bottom drawer of his desk. He pushed it shut again and, instead, shuffled the papers in front of him. 'What's your name, lad?'
The dwarf swallowed. This was clearly the bit he'd been dreading. 'Littlebottom, sir.' Vimes didn't even look up. 'Ah, yes. It says here. That means you're from the Uberwald mountain area, yes?'
'Why... yes, sir,' said Littlebottom, mildly surprised. Humans generally couldn't distinguish between dwarf clans.
'Our Constable Angua comes from there,' said Vimes. 'Now... it says here your first name is... can't read Fred's handwriting... er...'
There was nothing for it. 'Cheery, sir,' said Cheery Littlebottom.