Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [80]
“You don’t want anything?”
“I want lots of things, my lady. But you can’t give them to me.”
“How would you like to be back in command?”
The question hit him like a hammer. This was history. She couldn’t know! How could she know?
“Ah,” said Madam, who had watched his expression. “Rosemary did say thieves took some very expensive armor off you. Fit for a general, I hear.”
She glanced at Vimes as she opened another bottle. Properly, too, Vimes noticed through the shock. None of that amateur business with rocketing corks and wasted bubbles.
“Wouldn’t that be strange if it was true,” Madam mused. “A street-fighting man with the manner of a commander and the breastplate of a leader.”
Vimes stared straight ahead.
“And who needs to know how he got here?” said Madam to the air in general. “We could take the view that here at last is a man who could truly take command of the City Watch.”
The first thought that fizzed in Vimes’s head like champagne was: bloody hell, I could do it! Chuck Swing out on his arse, promote some decent sergeants—
The second thought was: in this city? Under Snapcase? Now? We’d just be another gang. The third thought was: this is insane. It can’t happen. It never did happen. You want to go home to Sybil.
Thoughts one and two shuffled out of the way, feeling ashamed of themselves and mumbling yeah, right…Sybil…yeah, obviously…right…sorry… until they faded into silence.
“I’ve always had a talent for seeing promise,” said Madam while he still stared at nothing.
The fourth thought rose in the darkness like some ugly creature from the abyss.
You didn’t think about Sybil until thought three, it whispered.
He blinked.
“You know the city needs—” Madam began.
“I want to go home,” said Vimes. “I’m going to finish the job that’s in front of me, and then I’m going home. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“There are those that would say that if you are not for us, you’re against us,” said Madam.
“For you? For what? For anything? No! But I’m not for Winder, either. I’m not supposed to be ‘for’ people. And I don’t take bribes. Not even if Sandra threatens me with a toadstool!”
“I believe it was a mushroom. Oh dear.” The lady gave him a smile. “You are incorruptible?”
Oh dear, here were go again, thought Vimes. Why did I wait until I was married to become strangely attractive to powerful women? Why didn’t it happen to me when I was sixteen? I could have done with it then.
He tried to glare, but that probably only made it worse.
“I’ve met a few incorruptible men,” said Madam Meserole. “They tend to die horrible deaths. The world balances out, you see. A corrupt man in a good world, or a good man in a corrupt one…the equation comes out the same way. The world does not deal well with those who don’t pick a side.”
“I like the middle,” said Vimes.
“That gives you two enemies. I’m amazed that you can afford so many, on a sergeant’s pay. Please think of what you could be giving up.”
“I am. And I’m not going to help people to die just to replace one fool with another.”
“Then there is your door behind you, Sergeant. I am very sorry we could not—”
“—do business?” said Vimes.
“I was going to say ‘reach a mutually beneficial agreement.’ We are not very far from your Watch House. I wish you…luck.”
She nodded toward the door.
“Such a shame,” she said and sighed.
Vimes stepped out into the rainy night and shifted his weight from foot to foot, and then took a few experimental steps.
Corner of Easy and Treacle Mine. A mix of flat-top cobbles and old bricks. Yeah.
He went home.
Madam stared at the closed door for a while, and then turned as the candles flickered slightly.
“You really are very good,” she said. “How long have you been here?”
Havelock Vetinari stepped out of the shadow in the corner. He wasn’t wearing official Assassin’s black but loose clothes that were…not real color at all, just nondescript shades of gray.
“I’d been here quite long enough,” he said, sprawling in the chair that Vimes had vacated.
“Not even the Aunts noticed you?”
“People look but don’t see. The