Oh, he'll be watched, and maybe one day when Vetinari is ready a really good assassin will be sent with a wooden dagger soaked in garlic, and it'll all be done in the dark. That's how politics works in this city. It's a game of chess. Who cares if a few pawns die?
I'll know. And I'll be the only one who knows, deep down.
His hands automatically patted his pockets for a cigar.
It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone spills a drop of blood in the wrong place and guess who's back ? They returned more times than raw broccoli.
These were dangerous thoughts, he knew. They were the kind that crept up on a watchman when the chase was over and it was just you and him, facing one another in that breathless little pinch between the crime and the punishment.
And maybe a watchman had seen civilization with the skin ripped off one time too many and stopped acting like a watchman and started acting like a normal human being and realized that the click of the crossbow or the sweep of the sword would make all the world so clean.
And you couldn't think like that, even about vampires. Even though they'd take the lives of other people because little lives don't matter and what the hell can we take away from them ?
And you couldn't think like that because they gave you a sword and a badge and that turned you into something else and that had to mean there were some thoughts you couldn't think.
Only crimes could take place in darkness.
Punishment had to be done in the light. That was thejob of a good watchman, Carrot always said. To light a candle in the dark.
He found a cigar. Now his hands did the automatic search for matches.
The volumes were piled up against the walls. The candlelight picked up gold lettering and the dull gleam of leather. There they were, the lineages, the books of heraldic minutiae, the Who's Whom of the centuries, the stock books of the city. People stood on them to look down.
No matches...
Quietly, in the dusty silence of the College, Vimes picked up a candelabrum and lit his cigar.
He took a few deep luxuriant puffs, and looked thoughtfully at the books. In his hand, the candles spluttered and flickered.
The clock ticked its arrhythmic tock. It finally stuttered its way to one o'clock, and Vimes got up and went into the Oblong Office.
'Ah, Vimes,' said Lord Vetinari, looking up.
'Yes, sir.'
Vimes had managed a few hours' sleep and had even attempted to shave.
The Patrician shuffled some papers on his desk. 'It seems to have been a very busy night last night...'
'Yes, sir.' Vimes stood to attention. All uniformed men knew in their very soul how to act in circumstances like this. You stared straight ahead, for one thing.
'It appears that I have Dragon King of Arms in the cells,' said the Patrician.
'Yes, sir.'
'I've read your report. Somewhat tenuous evidence, I feel.'
'Sir?'
'One of your witnesses isn't even alive, Vimes.'
'No, sir. Neither is the suspect, sir. Technically.'
'He is, however, an important civic figure. An authority.'
'Yes, sir.'
Lord Vetinari shuffled some of the papers on his desk. One of them was covered in sooty fingermarks. 'It also appears I have to commend you, Commander.'