Terry Pratchett - Night Watch

“Was Stronginthearm married?” he said.

“No, sir. Lived in New Cobblers with his parents.”

Parents, thought Vimes. That made it worse.

“Anyone been to tell them?” he asked. “And don't say it was Nobby. We don't want any repeat of that ‘bet you a dollar you're the widow Jackson’ nonsense.”

“I went, sir. As soon as we got the news.”

“Thank you. They took it badly?”

“They took it…solemnly, sir.”

Vimes groaned. He could imagine the expressions.

“I'll write them the official letter,” he said, pulling open his desk. “Get someone to take it round, will you? And say I'll be over later. Perhaps this isn't the time to—” No, hold on, they were dwarfs, dwarfs weren't bashful about money. “Forget that—say we'll have all the details of his pension and so on. Died on duty, too. Well, near enough. That's extra. It all adds up.” He rummaged in his cupboards. “Where's his file?”

“Here, sir,” said Carrot, handing it over smoothly. “We are due at the palace at ten, sir. Watch Committee. But I'm sure they'll understand,” he added, seeing Vimes's face. “I'll go and clean out Stronginthearm's locker, sir, and I expect the lads'll have a whip-round for flowers and everything…”

Vimes pondered over a sheet of headed paper after the captain had gone. A file, he had to refer to a damn file . But there were so many coppers these days…

A whip-round for flowers. And a coffin. You look after your own. Sergeant Dickins had said that, a long time ago…

He wasn't good with words, least of all ones written down, but after a few glances at the file to refresh his memory he wrote down the best he could think of.

And they were all good words and, more or less, they were the right ones. But in truth Stronginthearm was just a decent dwarf who'd been paid to be a copper. He'd joined up because, these days, joining the Watch was quite a good choice of career. The pay wasn't bad, there was a worthwhile pension, there was a wonderful medical scheme if you had the nerve to submit to Igor's ministrations in the cellar and, after a year or so, an Ankh-Morpork trained copper could leave the city and get a job in the Watches of the other cities on the plain with instant promotion. That was happening all the time. Sammies, they were called, even in towns that had never heard of Sam Vimes. He was just a little proud of that. “Sammies” meant watchmen who could think without their lips moving, who didn't take bribes—much, and then only at the level of beer and doughnuts, which even Vimes recognized as the grease that helps the wheels run smoothly—and were, on the whole, trustworthy. For a given value of “trust”, at least.

The sound of running feet indicated that Sergeant Detritus was bringing some of the latest trainees back from their morning run. He could hear the jody Detritus had taught them. Somehow, you could tell it was made up by a troll:

It still irked Vimes that the little training school in the old lemonade factory was turning out so many coppers who quit the city the moment their probation was up. But it had its advantages. There were Sammies almost as far as Uberwald now, all speeding up the local promotion ladder. It helped, knowing names, and knowing that those names had been taught to salute him. The ebb and flow of politics often meant that the local rulers weren't talking to one another, but via the semaphore towers, the Sammies talked all the time .

He realized he was humming a different song under his breath. It was a tune he'd forgotten for years. It went with the lilac, scent and song together. He stopped, feeling guilty.

He was finishing the letter when there was a knock at the door.

“Nearly done!” he shouted.

“It'th me, thur,” said Constable Igor, pushing his head round the door, and then he added, “Igor, sir.”

“Yes, Igor?” said Vimes, wondering not for the first time why anyone with stitches all round his head needed to tell anyone who he was. 1

“I would just like to thay, sir, that I could have got young Thtronginthearm back on his feet, thur,” said Igor, a shade reproachfully.

Vimes sighed. Igor's face was full of concern, tinged with disappointment. He had been prevented from plying his…craft. He was naturally disappointed.

“We've been through this, Igor. It's not like sewing a leg back on. And dwarfs are dead set against that sort of thing.”

“There's nothing thupernatural about it, thur. I am a man of Natural Philothophy! And he was still warm when they brought him in—”

“Those are the rules, Igor. Thanks all the same. We know your heart is in the right place—”

“ They are in the right places , sir,” said Igor reproachfully.

“That's what I meant,” Vimes said, without missing a beat, just as Igor never did.

“Oh, very well, sir,” said Igor, giving up. He paused, and then said: “How is her ladyship, sir?”

Vimes had been expecting this. It was a terrible thing for a mind to do, but his had already presented him with the idea of Igor and Sybil in the same sentence. Not that he disliked Igor. Quite the reverse. There were watchmen walking around the streets right now who wouldn't have legs if it wasn't for Igor's genius with a needle. But—

“Fine. She's fine,” he said abruptly.

“Only I heard that Mrs Content was a bit worr—”

“Igor, there are some areas where…Look, do you know anything about…women and babies?”

“Not in so many wordth, sir, but I find that once I've got someone on the slab and had a good, you know, rummage around, I can thort out most thingth—”

Vimes's imagination actually shut down at this point.

“Thank you, Igor,” he managed, without his voice trembling, “but Mrs Content is a very experienced midwife.”

“Jutht as you say, sir,” said Igor, but doubt rode on the words.

“And now I've got to go,” said Vimes. “It's going to be a long day.”

He ran down the stairs, tossed the letter to Sergeant Colon, nodded to Carrot and they set off at a fast walk for the palace.

After the door had shut one of the watchmen looked up from the desk where he'd been wrestling with a report and the effort of writing down, as policemen do, what ought to have happened.

“Sarge?”

“Yes, Corporal Ping?”

“Why're some of you wearing purple flowers, sarge?”

There was a subtle change in the atmosphere, a suction of sound caused by many pairs of ears listening intently. All the officers in the room had stopped writing.

“I mean, I saw you and Reg and Nobby wearing 'em this time last year, and I wondered if we were all supposed to…” Ping faltered. Sergeant Colon's normally amiable eyes had narrowed and the message they were sending was: you're on thin ice, lad, and it's starting to creak…

“I mean, my landlady's got a garden and I could easily go and cut a—” Ping went on, in an uncharacteristic attempt at suicide.

“You'd wear the lilac today, would you?” said Colon quietly.

“I just meant that if you wanted me to I could go and—”

“Were you there?” said Colon, getting to his feet so fast that his chair fell over.