Terry Pratchett - Men at Arms

“All right,” she said. “I can use a sheet off the bed. You shut your eyes.”

“Why?” said Gaspode.

“For decency's sake!”

Gaspode looked blank. Then he said, “Oh, I get it. Yes, I can see your point, def'nitely. Dear me, you can't have me looking at a naked woman, oh no. Oggling. Gettin' ideas. Deary deary me.”

“You know what I mean!”

“Can't say I do. Can't say I do. Clothing has never been what you might call a thingy of dog wossname.” Gaspode scratched his ear. “Two metasyntactic variables there. Sorry.”

“It's different with you. You know what I am. Anyway, dogs are naturally naked.”

“So're humans—”

Angua changed.

Gaspode's ear flattened against his head. Despite himself, he whimpered.

Angua stretched.

“You know the worst bit?” she said. “It's my hair. You can hardly get the tangles out. And my feet are covered in mud.”

She tugged a sheet off the bed and draped it around herself as a makeshift toga.

“There,” she said, “you see worse on the street every day. Gaspode?”

“What?”

“You can open your eyes now.”

Gaspode blinked. Angua in both shapes was OK to look at, but the second or two in between, as the morphic signal hunted between stations, was not a sight you wished to see on a full stomach.

“I thought you rolled around on the floor grunting and growing hair and stretching,” he whimpered.

Angua peered at her hair in the mirror while her night vision lasted.

“Whatever for?”

“Does… all that stuff… hurt?”

“It's a bit like a whole-body sneeze. You'd think he'd have a comb, wouldn't you? I mean, a comb? Everyone's got a comb…”

“A really… big… sneeze?”

“Even a clothes brush would be something.”

They froze as the door creaked open.

Carrot walked in. He didn't notice them in the gloom, but trudged to the table. There was a flare and a reek of sulphur as he lit first a match and then a candle.

He removed his helmet, and then sagged as if he'd finally allowed a weight to drop on his shoulders.

They heard him say: “It can't be right!”

“What can't?” said Angua.

Carrot spun around.

“What're you doing here?”

“Your uniform got stolen while you were spying in the Assassins' Guild,” Gaspode prompted.

“My uniform got stolen,” said Angua, “while I was in the Assassins' Guild. Spying.” Carrot was still staring at her. “There was some old bloke who kept muttering all the time,” she went on desperately.

“Buggrit? Millennium hand and shrimp?”

“Yes, that's right—”

“Foul Ole Ron.” Carrot sighed. “Probably sold it for a drink. I know where he lives, though. Remind me to go and have a word with him when I've got time.”

“You don't want to ask her what she was wearing when she was in the Guild,” said Gaspode, who had crept under the bed.

“Shut up!” said Angua.

“What?” said Carrot.

“I found out about the room,” said Angua quickly. “Someone called—”

“Edward d'Eath?” said Carrot, sitting down on the bed. The ancient springs went groing-groing-grink .

“How did you know that?”

“I think d'Eath stole the gonne. I think he killed Beano. But… Assassins killing without being paid? It's worse than dwarfs and tools. It's worse than clowns and faces. I hear Cruces is really upset. He's got Assassins looking for the boy all over the city.”

“Oh. Well. I'd hate to be in Edward's shoes when they find him.”

“I'd hate to be in his shoes now. And I know where they are, you see. They're on his poor feet. And they're dead.”

“The Assassins have found him, then?”

“No. Someone else did. And then Cuddy and Detritus did. If I'm any judge, he's been dead for several days. You see? That can't be right! But I rubbed the Beano make-up off and took off the red nose, and it was definitely him. And the wig's the right kind of red hair. He must have gone straight to Hammerhock.”

“But… someone shot at Detritus. And killed the beggar girl.”

“Yes.”

Angua sat down beside him.

“And it couldn't have been Edward…”

“Hah!” Carrot undid his breastplate and pulled off his mail shirt.

“So we're looking for someone else. A third man.”

“But there's no clues! There's just some man with a gonne! Somewhere in the city! Anywhere! And I'm tired!”

The springs went glink again as Carrot stood up and staggered over to the chair and table. He sat down, pulled a piece of paper towards him, inspected a pencil, sharpened it on his sword and, after a moment's thought, began to write.

Angua watched him in silence. Carrot had a short-sleeved leather vest under his mail. There was a birthmark at the top of his left arm. It was crown-shaped.

“Are you writing it all down, like Captain Vimes did?” she said, after a while.

“No.”

“What are you doing, then?”

“I'm writing to my mum and dad.”

“Really?”

“I always write to my mum and dad. I promised them. Anyway, it helps me think. I always write letters home when I'm thinking. My dad sends me lots of good advice, too.”

There was a wooden box in front of Carrot. Letters were stacked in it. Carrot's father had been in the habit of replying to Carrot on the back of Carrot's own letters, because paper was hard to come by at the bottom of a dwarf mine.

“What kind of good advice?”

“About mining, usually. Moving rocks. You know. Propping and shoring. You can't get things wrong in a mine. You have to do things right.”

His pencil scritched on the paper.

The door was still ajar, but there was a tentative tap on it which said, in a kind of metaphorical morse code, that the tapper could see very well that Carrot was in his room with a scantily clad woman and was trying to knock without actually being heard.

Sergeant Colon coughed. The cough had a leer in it.

“Yes, sergeant?” said Carrot, without looking around.

“What do you want me to do next, sir?”

“Send them out in squads, sergeant. At least one human, one dwarf and one troll in each.”

“Yessir. What'll they be doing, sir?”

“They'll be being visible, sergeant.”

“Right, sir. Sir? One of the volunteers just now… it's Mr Bleakley, sir. From Elm Street? He's a vampire, well. technic'ly, but he works up at the slaughterhouse so it's not really—”

“Thank him very much and send him home, sergeant.”

Colon glanced at Angua.

“Yessir. Right,” he said reluctantly. “But he's not a problem, it's just that he needs these extra homogoblins in his bio—”

“No!”

“Right. Fine. I'll, er, I'll tell him to go away, then.”

Colon shut the door. The hinge leered.

“They call you sir,” said Angua. “Do you notice that?”

“I know. It's not right. People ought to think for themselves, Captain Vimes says. The problem is, people only think for themselves if you tell them to. How do you spell ‘eventuality’?”

“I don't.”

“OK.” Carrot still didn't look around. “We'll hold the city together through the rest of the night, I think. Everyone's seen sense.”

No they haven't, said Angua in the privacy of her own head. They've seen you. It's like hypnotism.

People live your vision. You dream, just like Big Fido, only he dreamed a nightmare and you dream for everyone. You really think everyone is basically nice. Just for a moment, while they are near you, everyone else believes it too.

From somewhere outside came the sound of marching knuckles. Detritus' troop was making another circuit.

Oh, well. He's got to know sooner or later…