Terry Pratchett: Men at Arms

He spent the whole day there. When he'd finished, carefully replacing the leafmould as the sun went down, he was quite certain.

Ankh-Morpork had a king again.

And this was right . And it was fate that had let Edward recognize this just when he'd got his Plan. And it was right that it was Fate, and the city would be Saved from its ignoble present by its glorious past. He had the Means, and he had the end . And so on… Edward's thoughts often ran like this.

He could think in italics . Such people need watching.

Preferably from a safe distance.

“I was Interested in your letter where you said people have been coming and asking about me, this is Amazing, I have been here hardly Five Minutes and already I am Famus.

“I was very pleased to hear about the opening of #7 shaft. I don't mind Telling You that although, I am very happy here I miss the Good Times back Home. Sometimes on my day Off I go and, sit in the Cellar and hit my head with an axe handle but, it is Not the Same.

“Hoping this finds you in Good Health, Yrs. faithfully,

“Your loving son, adopted,

Carrot.”

He folded the letter up, inserted the iconographs, sealed it with a blob of candle wax pressed into place with his thumb, and put it in his pants pocket. Dwarf mail to the Ramtops was quite reliable. More and more dwarfs were coming to work in the city, and because dwarfs are very conscientious many of them sent money home. This made dwarf mail just about as safe as anything, since their mail was closely guarded. Dwarfs are very attached to gold. Any highwayman demanding “Your money or your life” had better bring a folding chair and packed lunch and a book to read while the debate goes on.

Then Carrot washed his face, donned his leather shirt and trousers and chainmail, buckled on his breastplate and, with his helmet under his arm, stepped out cheerfully, ready to face whatever the future would bring.

This was another room, somewhere else.

It was a poky room, the plaster walls crumbling, the ceilings sagging like the underside of a fat man's bed. And it was made even more crowded by the furniture.

It was old, good furniture, but this wasn't the place for it. It belonged in high echoing halls. Here, it was crammed. There were dark oak chairs. There were long sideboards. There was even a suit of armour. There was barely room for the half dozen or so people who sat at the huge table. There was barely room for the table.

A clock ticked in the shadows.

The heavy velvet curtains were drawn, even though there was still plenty of daylight left in the sky. The air was stifling, both from the heat of the day and the candles in the magic lantern.

The only illumination was from the screen which, at that moment, was portraying a very good profile of Corporal Carrot Ironfoundersson.

The small but very select audience watched it with the carefully blank expressions of people who are half convinced that their host is several cards short of a full deck but are putting up with it because they've just eaten a meal and it would be rude to leave too soon.

“Well?” said one of them. “I think I've seen him walking around the city. So? He's just a watchman, Edward.”

“Of course. It is essential that he should be. A humble station in life. It all fits the classic p-attern.” Edward d'Eath gave a signal. There was a click as another glass slide was slotted in. “ This one was not p-ainted from life. King P-paragore. Taken from an old p-ainting. This one”— click!— “is King Veltrick III. From another p-portrait. This one is Queen Alguinna IV… note the line of the chin? This one”— click! –“is a sevenpenny p-iece from the reign of Webblethorpe the Unconscious, note again the detail of the chin and general b-bone structure, and this”— click!— “is… an upside d-own picture of a vase of flowers. D-elphiniums, I believe. Why is this?”

“Er, sorry, Mr Edward, I 'ad a few glass plates left and the demons weren't tired and—”

“Next slide, please. And then you may leave us.”

“Yes, Mr Edward.”

“Report to the d-uty torturer.”

“Yes, Mr Edward.”

Click!

“And this is a rather good—well done, Bl-enkin—image of the bust of Queen Coanna.”

“Thank you, Mr Edward.”

“More of her face would have enabled us to be certain of the likeness, however. There is sufficient, I believe. You may go, Bl-enkin.”

“Yes, Mr Edward.”

“A little something off the ears, I th-ink.”

“Yes, Mr Edward.”

The servant respectfully shut the door behind him, and then went down to the kitchen shaking his head sadly. The d'Eaths hadn't been able to afford a family torturer for years. For the boy's sake he'd just have to do the best he could with a kitchen knife.

The visitors waited for the host to speak, but he didn't seem about to do so, although it was sometimes hard to tell with Edward. When he was excited, he suffered not so much from a speech impediment as from misplaced pauses, as if his brain were temporarily putting his mouth on hold.

Eventually, one of the audience said: “Very well. So what is your point?”

“You've seen the likeness. Isn't it ob-vious?”

“Oh, come now—”

Edward d'Eath pulled a leather case towards him and began undoing the thongs.

“But, but the boy was adopted by Discworld dwarfs. They found him as a baby in the forests of the Ramtop mountains. There were some b-urning wagons, corpses, that sort of thing. B-andit attack, apparently. The dwarfs found a sword in the wreckage. He has it now. A very old sword. And it's always sharp.”

“So? The world is full of old swords. And grindstones.”

“This one had been very well hidden in one of the carts, which had broken up. Strange. One would expect it to be ready to hand, yes? To be used? In b-andit country? And then the boy grows up and, and… Fate… conspires that he and his sword come to Ankh-Morpork, where he is currently a watchman in the Night Watch. I couldn't believe it!”

“That's still not—”

Edward raised his hand a moment, and then pulled out a package from the case.

“I made careful enq-uiries, you know, and was able to find the place where the attack occurred. A most careful search of the ground revealed old cart n-ails, a few copper coins and, in some charcoal… this.”

They craned to see.

“Looks like a ring.”

“Yes. It's, it's, it's superficially d-iscoloured, of course, otherwise someone would have spot-ted it. Probably secreted somewhere on a cart. I've had it p-artly cleaned. You can just read the inscription. Now, here is an ill-ustrated inventory of the royal jewellery of Ankh done in AM 907, in the reign of King Tyrril. May I, please, may I draw your a-ttention to the small wedding ring in the b-ottom left-hand corner of the page? You will see that the artist has hel-pfully drawn the inscription.”

It took several minutes for everyone to examine it. They were naturally suspicious people. They were all descendants of people for whom suspicion and paranoia had been prime survival traits.

Because they were all aristocrats. Not one among them did not know the name of his or her great-great-greatgrandfather and what embarrassing disease he'd died of.

They had just eaten a not-very-good meal which had, however, included some ancient and worthwhile wines. They'd attended because they'd all known Edward's father, and the d'Eaths were a fine old family, if now in very reduced circumstances.

“So you see,” said Edward proudly, “the evidence is overwhelming. We have a king!”

His audience tried to avoid looking at one another's faces.