The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett [130]
“In Ankh-Morpork, marthter? My word. Everyone wanth to go to Ankh-Morpork, marthter. It’th a very tempting offer. But I know where my duty lieth, Your Exthelenthy. I must get the plathe ready for the next exthelenthy.”
“Oh, surely—”
“However, fortuitouthly my nephew Igor ith looking for a pothition, marthter. He thould do well in Ankh-Morpork. He’th rather too modern for Uberwald, to tell you the truth.”
“Good lad, is he?”
“Hith heart’th in the right place. I know that for thertain, thir.”
“Er…good. Well, get a message to him, then. We’re leaving as soon as we can.”
“He will be tho exthited, thir! I’ve heard that in Ankh-Morpork bodieth just lie around in the thtreeth for anyone to take away!”
“It’s not quite as bad as that, Igor.”
“Ithn’t it? Oh well, you can’t have everything. I’ll tell him directly.”
Igor lurched off in a sort of high-speed totter.
I wonder why they all walk like that, thought Vimes. They must have one leg shorter than the other. Either that or they’re not good at choosing boots.
He sat down on the steps to the house, and fished out a cigar.
So that was it, then. Bloody politics again. It was always bloody politics, or bloody diplomatics. Bloody lies in smart clothing. Once you got off the streets criminals just flowed through your fingers. The king and Lady Margolotta and Vetinari…they always looked at some sort of big picture. Vimes knew he was, and always would be, a little picture man. Big picture people ran the world, and they said what was a crime and what wasn’t. And Dee was useful, so she’d probably get, oh, a few days breaking bread or whatever it was they gave you here for being naughty. After all, all she’d destroyed was a fake, wasn’t it?
Was it?
But she’d thought she was committing a much bigger crime. That ought to mean something, in Sam Vimes’s personal gallery of little pictures.
And the baroness was as guilty as hell. People had died. As for Wolfgang…well, some people were just built guilty. It was as simple as that. Anything they did became a crime, simply because it was them doing it.
He blew out a stream of smoke.
People like that shouldn’t be allowed to simply die their way out of things.
But…he hadn’t, had he.
The wolves had gone a long way down the river, Sybil had said, on both banks. There wasn’t a sniff of him. Farther down was a mass of rapids and falls, miles of them…
If he’d gone downstream…
But upstream there was nothing but wild water, too, right up to the town…
No, he couldn’t…surely no one could swim up a waterfall…
A chilly little feeling began at the back of Vimes’s neck. Ice formed in his muscles.
Any sensible person would get right out of the country, wouldn’t they? He tried hard to believe this. The wolves were out hunting, Tantony wouldn’t remember Wolfgang fondly and if Vimes judged the king correctly then the dwarfs would have some dark little revenge in store, too.
The trouble was that, if you formed a picture in your mind of a sensible person, and tried to superimpose it on a picture of Wolfgang, you couldn’t get them to meet anywhere.
There was an old saying, wasn’t there? As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. Well, that got Wolfgang coming and going.
Vimes stood up, and turned around carefully. There was no one there. Sounds came in from the street gateway—people laughing, the sound of harness, the clank of a shovel clearing up last night’s snow.
He sidled into the embassy, keeping his back to the wall. He groped his way toward the stairs, peering into every doorway. He ran across the expanse of the hallway, did a tumbling roll, and ended up against the far wall.
“Is there anything wrong, sir?” said Cheery. She was watching him from the top of the stairs.
“Er…have you seen anything odd?” said Vimes, dusting himself off self-consciously, “And I do realize that we’re talking about a house with Igor in it.”
“Could you give me a hint, sir?”
“Wolfgang, godsdammit!”
“But he’s dead, sir. Isn’t he?”
“Not dead enough!”
“Er…what do you want me to do?”
“Where’s Detritus?”
“Polishing his