Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett [130]
“There was another thing, your reverence,” he said.
“Ah.” The Patrician smiled knowingly.
“There’s the kettle. It wasn’t much good anyway, and then Errol et it. It was nearly two dollars.” He swallowed. “We could do with a new kettle, if it’s all the same, your lordship.”
The Patrician leaned forward, gripping the arms of his chair.
“I want to be clear about this,” he said coldly. “Are we to believe that you are asking for a petty wage increase and a domestic utensil?”
Carrot whispered in Colon’s other ear.
Colon turned two bulging, watery-rimmed eyes to the dignitaries. The rim of his helmet was passing through his fingers like a millwheel.
“Well,” he began, “sometimes, we thought, you know, when we has our dinner break, or when it’s quiet, like, at the end of a watch as it may be, and we want to relax a bit, you know, wind down…” His voice trailed away.
“Yes?”
Colon took a deep breath.
“I suppose a dartboard would be out of the question—?”
The thunderous silence that followed was broken by an erratic snorting.
Vimes’s helmet dropped out of his shaking hand. His breastplate wobbled as the suppressed laughter of the years burst out in great uncontrollable eruptions. He turned his face to the row of councillors and laughed and laughed until the tears came.
Laughed at the way they got up, all confusion and outraged dignity.
Laughed at the Patrician’s carefully immobile expression.
Laughed for the world and the saving of souls.
Laughed and laughed, and laughed until the tears came.
Nobby craned up to reach Colon’s ear.
“I told you,” he hissed. “I said they’d never wear it. I knew a dartboard’d be pushing our luck. You’ve upset ’em all now.”
Dear Mother and Father [wrote Carrot] You will never guess, I have been in the Watch only a few weeks and, already I am to be a full Constable. Captain Vimes said, the Patrician himself said I was to be One, and that also he hoped I should have a long and successful career in the Watch as well and, he would follow it with special interest. Also my wages are to go up by ten dollars and we had a special bonus of twenty dollars that Captain Vimes paid for out of his own pocket, Sgt. Colon said. Please find money enclosed. I am keeping a little bit by though because I went to see Reet and Mrs. Palm said all the girls had been following my career with Great Interest as well and I am to come to dinner on my night off. Sgt. Colon has been telling me about how to start courting, which is very interesting and not at all complicated it appears. I arrested a dragon but it got away. I hope Mr. Varneshi is well.
I am as happy as anyone can be in the whole world.
Your son, Carrot.
Vimes knocked on the door.
An effort had been made to spruce up the Ramkin mansion, he noticed. The encroaching shrubbery had been pitilessly hacked back. An elderly workman atop a ladder was nailing the stucco back on the walls while another, with a spade, was rather arbitrarily defining the line where the lawn ended and the old flower beds had begun.
Vimes stuck his helmet under his arm, smoothed back his hair, and knocked. He’d considered asking Sergeant Colon to accompany him, but had brushed the idea aside quickly. He couldn’t have tolerated the sniggering. Anyway, what was there to be afraid of? He’d stared into the jaws of death three times; four, if you included telling Lord Vetinari to shut up.
To his amazement the door was eventually opened by a butler so elderly that he might have been resurrected by the knocking.
“Yerss?” he said.
“Captain Vimes, City Watch,” said Vimes.
The man looked him up and down.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Her ladyship did say. I believe her ladyship is with her dragons,” he said. “If you like to wait in ’ere, I will—”
“I know the way,” said Vimes, and set off around the overgrown path.
The kennels were a ruin. An assortment of battered wooden boxes were lying around under an oilcloth awning. From their depths a few sad swamp dragons whiffled a greeting