The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett [84]
“Did you think it came to him in dreams, dear?”
“But there’s loads of details here…notes about people, lots of figures about dwarf mining production, political rumors…I didn’t know we did this sort of thing!”
“You use spies all the time, dear,” said Sybil.
“I do not!”
“Well, what about people like Foul Ole Ron and No Way José and Cumbling Michael?”
“That is not spying, that is not spying! That’s just ‘information received.’ We couldn’t do the job if we didn’t know what’s happening on the street!”
“Well…perhaps Havelock just thinks in terms of…a bigger street, dear.”
“There’s loads more of this muck, look. Sketches, more bits of ore…what the hell’s this?”
It was oblong, and about the size of a cigarette packet. There was a round glass disk on one face, and a couple of levers on one side.
Vimes pushed one of them. A tiny hatch opened on one side, and the smallest head that he’d ever seen that could speak said “’s?”
“I know dat!” said Detritus. “Dat’s a nano-imp! Dey cost over a hundred dollars! Dey’re really small!”
“No one’s bloody fed me for a fortnight!” the imp squeaked.
“It’s an iconograph small enough to fit in a pocket,” said Vimes. “Something for a spy…it’s as bad as Inigo’s damn one-shot crossbow. And look…”
Steps led downward. He took them carefully, and swung open the little door at the end.
Wet heat slapped into him.
“Pass me down a candle, will you, dear?” he said. And by its light he looked out into a long dank tunnel. Crusted pipes, leaking steam at every joint, lined the far wall.
“A way in and out where no one will see him, too,” he said. “What a dirty world we live in…”
The clouds had covered the sky and the wind was whipping thick snowflakes around the tower when Inigo finished setting up the red mortar on the platform below the big square shutters.
He lit a couple of matches but the wind streamed them out before he could even cup his hands around them.
“Damn. Mmm, mmm.”
He slid down the ladder and into the warmth of the tower. It’d be better to spend the night here, he thought, as he rummaged in drawers. The night didn’t hold many terrors for him, but this storm had the feel of another big snow and the mountain roads would soon be treacherous.
Finally an idea struck him, and he opened the door of the stove and pulled out a smoldering log on the tongs.
It burst into flame when he carried it out at the top of the tower, and he directed them into the touch hole at the base of the tube.
The mortar fired with a phut that was lost in the wind. The flare itself tumbled invisibly up into the snow and then, a few seconds later, exploded a hundred feet overhead, casting a brief red glare over the forests.
Inigo had just gotten back into the room when there was a knock at the door, down at ground level.
He paused. There was a window and hatch at this level; the designers of the tower had at least realized that it would be a good idea to be able to look down and see who was a-knocking.
There was no one there.
When he’d climbed back into the room, the knock came again.
He hadn’t locked the door after Vimes went. A bit late to regret that now, he realized. But Inigo Skimmer had trained in an academy that made the School of Hard Knocks look like a sandpit.
He lit a candle and crept down the ladder in the darkness, shadows fleeing and dancing among the stacks of provisions.
With the candle set down on a box, he pulled the one-shot crossbow from inside his coat and, with an effort, cocked it against the wall. Then he flexed his left arm and felt the palm dagger ease itself into position.
He clicked his heels in a certain way and sensed the tiny blades slide out from the toes.
And Inigo settled down to wait.
Behind him, something blew the candle out.
As he turned, and the crossbow’s one bolt whirred into darkness, and the palm dagger scythed at nothing, it occurred to Inigo Skimmer that you could knock on either side