Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [54]
Vimes lowered the creature and pointed an accusing finger.
“You’re Nobby Nobbs, right?”
The urchin backed away.
“Might be. So what? Is that a crime?” He turned to run but Vimes’s hand fell heavily on his shoulder.
“Some people might say so. You’re Nobby Nobbs, son of Maise Nobbs and Sconner Nobbs?”
“Prob’ly, prob’ly! But I ain’t done nothin’, mister!”
Vimes bent down to look into eyes that peered out at the world through a mask of grime.
“How about whizzing wipers, snitching tinklers, pulling wobblers, flogging tumblers, and running rumbles?”
Nobby’s brow creased in genuine puzzlement.
“What’s ‘pulling wobblers’ mean?” he said.
Vimes gave him a similar look. Street parly had changed a lot in thirty years.
“That’s stealing trifles…small items. Isn’t it?”
“Nah, nah, mister. That’s ‘tottering nevils,’” said Nobby, relaxing. “But you ain’t doin’ badly, for someone who’s new. What’s ‘oil of angels’?”
Memory flicked a card.
“A bribe,” said Vimes.
“And a dimber?” said Nobby, grinning.
“Easy. Could be a head beggar, could be just a handsome man.”
“Well done. Bet you don’t know how to fleague a jade, though.”
Once again, from a dusty recess, a memory unrolled. This one stuck in your mind.
“Dear me, do you know that? What a shame in one so young,” said Vimes. “That’s when you want to sell a broken-down horse and have to make it a bit frisky in front of the punters, and so you take some fresh, raw, hot ginger, lift up its tail, and push the ginger—”
“Cor,” said Nobby, suddenly impressed. “Everyone says you’re a real quick learner, and that’s true enough. You could’ve been born here.”
“Why’re you following me, Nobby Nobbs?” said Vimes.
The urchin held out a grubby hand. Some street language never changes.
Vimes pulled out sixpence. It shone in Nobby’s palm like a diamond in a chimney-sweep’s ear.
“One of ’em’s a lady,” he said and grinned. The hand stayed out.
“That was a bloody sixpence I just gave you, kid,” Vimes growled.
“Yeah, but I got to think of—”
Vimes grabbed the lapels of Nobby’s greasy coat and lifted him up, and was mildly shocked to realize that there was practically no weight there.
Street urchin, he thought. Urchin sounds about right…spiky, slimy, and smell slightly of rotting seaweed. But there’s hundreds of them round here, clawing a living off the very margins, and, as I recall, Nobby was one of the sharpest. And as trustworthy as a chocolate hammer. But that’s okay. There’s ways to deal with that.
“How much,” he said, “for you to work for me, all the time?”
“I got customers to think of—” Nobby began.
“Yeah, but I’m the one holding you up in one hand, right?” said Vimes.
With his oversized boots dangling a foot above the ground, Nobby considered his position.
“All the time?”
“Right!”
“Er…for something like that I’ve got to be looking at a lordship every day…”
“A dollar? Guess again!”
“Er…half a dollar?”
“Not a chance. A dollar a week, and I won’t make your life utter misery, which, Nobby, I assure you I can do in so many little ways.”
Still dangling, Nobby tried to work all this out.
“So…I’ll be kind of like a copper, right?” he said, grinning artfully.
“Kind of.”
“Number One Suspect says it’s a good life being a copper, ’cos you can pinch stuff without getting nicked.”
“He’s got that right,” said Vimes.
“An’ he says if anyone gives you lip, you can bop ’em one and chuck them in the Tanty,” Nobby went on. “I’d like to be a copper one day.”
“Who’s Number One Suspect?”
“That’s what our mam calls Sconner, our dad. Er…payment up front, yeah?” Nobby added, hopefully.
“What do you think?”
“Ah. Right. No, eh?”
“Correct. But I’ll tell you what…” He lowered Nobby to the ground. Light as a feather, he thought. “You come with me, kid.”
Ankh-Morpork was full of men living in lodgings. Anyone with a spare room rented it out. And, in addition to the darning and stitching that was turning Miss Battye into one of the highest-earning seamstresses in the city, they needed something else that women were best able to supply. They needed feeding.
There were plenty of hot-chair