Terry Pratchett - Jingo

“Discussed it with him, have you?” said Vimes.

“ Not yet .”

Vimes opened and shut his mouth a few times. The Patrician went back to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper.

“And, of course, other details would have to be taken care of…” he said.

“Such as?” Vimes croaked.

“The Vimes coat of arms would be resurrected, of course. It would have to be. I know Lady Sybil was extremely upset when she found you weren't entitled to one. And a coronet, I believe, with knobs on—”

“You can take that coronet with the knobs on and—”

“—which I hope you will wear on formal occasions, such as, for example, the unveiling of the statue which has for so long disgraced the city by its absence.”

For once, Vimes managed to get ahead of the conversation.

“Old Stoneface again?” he said. “That part of it, is it? A statue to old Stoneface?”

“Well done,” said Lord Vetinari. “Not of you, obviously. Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we'd be melting the bronze already. No. I was thinking of the first Vimes who tried to make a future and merely made history. I thought perhaps somewhere in Peach Pie Street—”

They watched one another like cats, like poker players.

“Top of Broad Way,” Vimes said hoarsely. “Right in front of the palace.”

The Patrician glanced out of the window. “Agreed. I shall enjoy looking at it.”

“And right up close to the wall. Out of the wind.”

“Certainly.”

Vimes looked nonplussed for a moment. “We lost people—”

“Seventeen, caught in skirmishes of one sort or another,” said Lord Vetinari.

“I want—”

“Financial arrangements will be made for widows and dependants.”

Vimes gave up.

“Well done, sir!” said Carrot.

The new duke rubbed his chin.

“But that means I'll have to be married to a duchess,” he said. “That's a big fat word, duchess . And Sybil's never been very interested in that sort of thing.”

“I bow to your knowledge of the female psyche,” said Vetinari. “I saw her face just now. No doubt when she next takes tea with her friends, who I believe include the Duchess of Quirm and Lady Selachii, she will be entirely unmoved and not faintly smug in any way.”

Vimes hesitated. Sybil was an amazingly level-headed woman, of course, and this sort of thing… She'd left it entirely up to him, hadn't she?… This sort of thing wouldn't… Well, of course she wouldn't, she… Of course she would, wouldn't she? She wouldn't swank, she'd just be very comfortable knowing that they knew that she knew that they knew…

“All right,” he said, “but, look I thought only a king could make someone a duke. It's not like all these knights and barons, that's just, well, political, but something like a duke needs a—”

He looked at Vetinari. And then at Carrot. Vetinari had said that he'd been reminded …

“I'm sure, if ever there is a king in Ankh-Morpork again, he will choose to ratify my decision,” said Vetinari smoothly. “And if there never is a king, well, I see no practical problems.”

“I'm bought and sold, aren't I?” said Vimes, shaking his head. “Bought and sold.”

“Not at all,” said Vetinari.

“Yes, I am. We all are. Even Rust. And all those poor buggers who went off to get slaughtered. We're not part of the big picture, right? We're just bought and sold.”

Vetinari was suddenly in front of Vimes, his chair hitting the floor behind his desk.

“Really? Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!” He hesitated, and then shrugged. “And you say bought and sold? All right. But not, I think, needlessly spent.” The Patrician flashed one of those sharp, fleeting little smiles to say that something that wasn't very funny had nevertheless amused him. “ Veni, vici … Vetinari.”

Seaweed floated away on aimless currents. Apart from the driftwood, there was nothing to show that Leshp had ever been.

Seabirds wheeled. But their cries were more or less drowned out by the argument going on just above sea level.

“It is entirely our wood, you nodding acquaintance of a dog!”

“Oh? Really? On your side of the island, is it? I don't think so!”

“It floated up!”

“How do you know we didn't have some driftwood on our side of the island? Anyway, we've still got a barrel of fresh water, camel breath!”

“All right! We'll share! You can have half the raft!”

“Aha! Aha! Want to negotiate, eh, now we've got you over a barrel?”

“Can we just say yes, Dad? I'm fed up with treading water!”

“And you'll have to do your share of the paddling.”

“Of course.”

The birds glided and turned, white scribbles against the clear blue sky.

“To Ankh-Morpork!”

“To Klatch!”

Down below, as the sunken mountain of Leshp settled further onto the sea bed, the Curious Squid jetted back along its curious streets. They had no idea why, at enormous intervals, their city disappeared up into the sky, but it never went away for very long. It was just one of those things. Things happened, or sometimes they didn't. The Curious Squid just assumed that it all worked out, sooner or later.

A shark swam by. If anyone had risked placing an ear to its side, they would have heard: “Bingeley-bingeley beep! Three pee em… Eat, Hunger, Swim. Things To Do Today: Swim, Hunger, Eat. Three oh five pee em: Feeding Frenzy…”

It wasn't the most interesting of schedules, but it was very easy to organize.

Unusually, Sergeant Colon had put himself on the patrol roster. It was good to get out in the cool air. And also, for some reason, the news had got around that the Watch were somehow bound up with what seemed, in some indefinable way, to have been a victory, which meant that a Watch uniform was probably good for the odd free pint at the back door of the occasional pub.

He patrolled with Corporal Nobbs. They walked with the confident tread of men who had been places and seen things.

With a true copper's instinct, the tread took them past Mundane Meals. Mr Goriff was cleaning the windows. He stopped when he saw them and darted inside.

“Call that gratitude?” sniffed Colon.

The man reappeared carrying two large packages.

“My wife made this specially for you,” he said. He added, “She said she knew you'd be along.”

Colon pulled aside the waxed paper.

“My word,” he said.

“Special Ankh-Morpork curry,” said Mr Goriff. “Containing yellow curry powder, big lumps of swede, green peas and soggy sultanas the—”

“—size of eggs!” said Nobby.

“Thank you very much,” said Colon. “How's your lad, then, Mr Goriff?”

“He says you have set him an example and now he will be a watchman when he grows up.”

“Ah, right,” said Colon happily. “That'll please Mr Vimes. You just tell him—”

“In Al-Khali,” said Goriff. “He is staying with my brother.”

“Oh. Well… fair enough, then. Er… thanks for the curry, anyway.”

“What sort of example do you think he meant?” said Nobby, as they strolled away.

“The good sort, obviously,” said Colon, through a mouthful of mildly spiced swede.

“Yeah, right.”

Chewing slowly and walking even slower, they headed towards the docks.

“I was gonna write Bana a letter,” said Nobby, after a while.

“Yeah, but… she thought you was a woman, Nobby.”

“Right. So she saw, like, my inner self, shorn of…” Nobby's lips moved as he concentrated, “shorn of surface thingy. That's what Angua said. Anyway, then I thought, well, her boyfriend'll be coming back, so I thought I'd be noble about it and give her up.”