Terry Pratchett - The Fifth Elephant

'It's fifteen hundred years old,' said Carrot, with something like awe in his voice.

'I thought this was the replica.'

'Well, yes... but it's a replica of a very important thing, sir,' said Carrot.

Vimes sniffed. The air had a certain pungent quality. 'Smells strongly of cats in here, doesn't it?'

'I'm afraid they get in after the rats, sir. A rat who's nibbled on dwarf bread tends not to be able to run very fast.'

Vimes lit a cigar. Carrot gave it a look of uncertain disapproval. 'We do thank people for not smoking in here, sir,' he said.

'Why? You don't know they're not going to,' said Vimes. He leaned against the display cabinet. 'All right, captain. Why am I really going to... Bonk? I don't know a lot about diplomacy, but I do know it's never just about one thing. What's the Low King? Why're our dwarfs scrapping?'

'Well, sir... Have you heard of kruk?'

'Dwarf mining law?' said Vimes.

'Well done, sir. But it's a lot more than that. It's about... how you live. Laws of ownership, marriage laws, inheritance, rules for dealing with disputes of all kinds, that sort of thing. Everything, really. And the Low King... well, you could call him the final court of appeal. He's advised, of course, but he's got the last word. Still with me?'

'Makes sense so far.'

'And he is crowned on the Scone of Stone and sits on it to give his judgements because all the Low Kings have done that ever since B'hrian Bloodaxe, fifteen hundred years ago. It... gives authority.'

Vimes nodded dourly. That made sense, too. You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was 'But we've always done it this way.' A million dead people can't have been wrong, can they?

'Does he get elected, or born or what?' he said.

'I suppose you could say he's elected,' said Carrot. 'But really a lot of senior dwarfs arrange it among themselves. After listening to other dwarfs, of course. Taking soundings, it's called. Traditionally he's from one of the big families. But... er...'

'Yes?'

'Things are a little different this year. Tempers are a bit... stretched.'

Ah , thought Vimes.

'Wrong dwarf won?' he said.

'Some dwarfs would say so. But it's more that the whole process has been called into question,' said Carrot. 'By the dwarfs in the biggest dwarf city outside Uberwald.'

'Don't tell me, that must be that place Hubwards of—'

'It's Ankh-Morpork, sir.'

'What? We're not a dwarf city!'

'Fifty thousand dwarfs now, sir.'

'Really?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, sir.'

Of course he is, Vimes thought. He probably knows them all by name.

'You have to understand, sir, that there's a sort of big debate going on,' said Carrot. 'On how you define a dwarf.'

'Well, some people might say that they're called dwarfs because—'

'No, sir. Not size. Nobby Nobbs is shorter than many dwarfs, and we don't call him a dwarf.'

'We don't call him a human, either,' said Vimes.

'And, of course, I am also a dwarf.'

'You know, Carrot, I keep meaning to talk to you about that—'

'Adopted by dwarfs, brought up by dwarfs. To dwarfs I'm a dwarf, sir. I can do the rite of k'zakra, I know the secrets of h'ragna, I can ha'lk my g'rakha correctly... I am a dwarf.'

'What do those things mean?'

'I'm not allowed to tell non-dwarfs.' Carrot tactfully tried to stand out of the way of the cigar smoke. 'Unfortunately, some of the mountain dwarfs think that dwarfs who've moved away aren't proper dwarfs either. But this time the kingship has been swung by the views of the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs, and a lot of dwarfs back home don't like it. There's been a lot of bad feeling all round. Families falling out, that sort of thing. Much pulling of beards.'

'Really?' Vimes tried not to smile.

'It's not funny if you're a dwarf.'

'Sorry.'

'And I'm afraid this new Low King is only going to make matters worse, although of course I wish him well.'

'Tough, is he?'

'Er, I think you can assume, sir, that any dwarf who rises sufficiently in dwarf society to even be considered as a candidate for the kingship did not get there by singing the hi-ho song and bandaging wounded animals in the forest. But by dwarf standards, King Rhys Rhysson is a modern thinker, although I hear he doesn't like Ankh-Morpork very much.'

'Sounds like a very clear thinker, too.'

'Anyway, this has upset a lot of the more, er, traditional mountain dwarfs who thought the next king would be Albrecht Albrechtson.'

'Who is not a modern thinker?'

'He thinks even coming up above ground is dangerously non-dwarfish.'

Vimes sighed. 'Well, I can see there's a problem, Carrot, but the thing about this problem, the key point, is that it's not mine. Or yours, dwarf or not.' He tapped the Scone's case.

'Replica, eh?' he said. 'Sure it's not the real one?'

'Sir! There is only one real Scone. We call it the "thing and the whole of the thing".'

'Well, if it's a good replica, who'd know?'

'Any dwarf would, sir,'

'Only joking.'

There was a hamlet down there, where two rivers met. There would be boats. This was working. The slopes behind him were white and free of dark shapes. No matter how good they were, let them try to outswim a boat...

Hard-packed snow crunched under his feet. He staggered past the few rough hovels, saw the jetty, saw the boats, fought with the frozen rope that moored the nearest one, grabbed an oar and pushed himself out into the current.

There was still no movement on the hills.

Now, at last, he could take stock. It was a bigger boat than one man could handle, but all he had to do was fend off the banks. That'd do for tonight. In the morning he could leave it somewhere, perhaps ask someone to get a message through to the tower, and then he'd buy a horse and...

Behind him, under the tarpaulin in the bows, something started to growl.

They really were very clever.

In a castle not far away the vampire Lady Margolotta sat quietly, leafing through Twurp's Peerage.

It wasn't a very good reference book for the countries on this side of the Ramtops, where the standard work was The Almanac de Gothick, in which she herself occupied almost four pages, but if you needed to know who thought they were who in Ankh-Morpork it was invaluable.

Her copy was now bristling with bookmarks. She sighed and pushed it away.

Beside her was a fluted glass containing a red liquid. She took a sip and made a face. Then she stared at the candlelight, and tried to think like Lord Vetinari.

How much did he suspect? How much news got back? The clacks tower had only been up for a month, and it was being roundly denounced throughout Bonk as an intrusion. But it seemed to be doing a good if stealthy local traffic.

Who would he send?

His choice would tell her everything, she was sure. Someone like Lord Rust or Lord Selachii... ? Well, she'd think a lot less of him. From all that she had heard, and Lady Margolotta heard a lot of things, the Ankh-Morpork diplomatic corps as a whole could not find its backside with a map. Of course, it was good business for a diplomat to appear stupid, right up to the moment where he'd stolen your socks, but Lady Margolotta had met some of Ankh-Morpork's finest and no one could act that well.

The growing howling outside began to get on her nerves. She rang for her butler.

'Yeth, mithtreth?' said Igor, materializing out of the shadows.

'Go and tell the children of the night to make vonderful music somevhere else, Vill you? I have a headache.'

'Indeed, mithtreth.'

Lady Margolotta yawned. It had been a long night. She'd think better after a good day's sleep.