The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett [85]
They really were very clever…
“Mhm, m—”
Cheery twirled, or at least attempted to. It was not a movement that came naturally to dwarfs.
“You look very…nice,” said Lady Sybil. “It goes all the way to the ground, too. I don’t think anyone could possibly complain.”
Unless they were remotely fashion conscious, she had to admit.
The problem was that the…well, she had to think of them as the new dwarf women—hadn’t quite settled on a look.
Lady Sybil herself usually wore ball gowns of a light blue, a color often chosen by ladies of a certain age and girth to combine the maximum of quiet style with the minimum of visibility. But dwarf girls had heard about sequins. They seemed to have decided in their bones that, if they were going to overturn thousands of years of subterranean tradition, they weren’t going to go all through that for no damn twin-set and pearls.
“And red is good,” said Lady Sybil sincerely. “Red is a very nice color. It’s a nice red dress. Er. And the feathers. Er. The bag to carry your ax, er—”
“Not glittery enough?” said Cheery.
“No! No…if I was going to carry a large ax on my back to a diplomatic function, I think I’d want it glittery, too. Er. It is such a very large ax, of course,” she finished lamely.
“You think perhaps a smaller one might be better? For evening wear?”
“That would be a start, yes.”
“Perhaps with a few rubies set in the handle?”
“Yes,” said Lady Sybil weakly. “Why not, after all?”
“What about me, Ladyship?” Detritus rumbled.
Igor had certainly risen to the occasion, applying to a number of suits found in the embassy wardrobes the same pioneering surgical skills that he used on unfortunate loggers and other people who may have strayed too close to a band saw. It had taken him just ninety minutes to construct something around Detritus. It was definitely evening dress. You couldn’t get away with it in daylight. The troll looked like a wall with a bow tie.
“How does all it feel?” said Lady Sybil, playing for safety.
“It are rather tight around der—what’s this bit called?”
“I really have no idea,” said Lady Sybil.
“It makes me lurch a bit,” said Detritus. “But I feel very diplomatic.”
“Not the crossbow, however,” said Lady Sybil.
“She got her ax,” said Detritus accusingly.
“Dwarf axes are accepted as a cultural weapon,” said Lady Sybil. “I don’t know the etiquette here, but I suppose you could get away with a club.” After all, she added to herself, it’s not as though anyone would try to take it off you.
“Der crossbow ain’t cultural?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“I could put, like, glitter on it.”
“Not enough, I’m afraid—Oh, Sam…”
“Yes, dear?” said Vimes, coming down the stairs.
“That’s just your Watch dress uniform! What about your ducal regalia?”
“Can’t find it anywhere,” said Vimes innocently. “I think the bag must have fallen off the coach in the pass, dear. But I’ve got a helmet with feathers in it and Igor’s buffed up the breastplate until he could see his face in it, although I’m not sure why.” He quailed at her expression. “Duke is a military term, dear. No soldier would ever go to war in tights. Not if he thought he might be taken prisoner.”
“I find this highly suspicious, Sam.”
“Detritus will back me up on this,” said Vimes.
“Dat’s right, sir,” the troll rumbled. “You distinctly said to say dat—”
“Anyway, we’d better be goi—Good grief, is that Cheery?”
“Yes, sir,” said Cheery nervously.
Well, thought Vimes, she comes from a family where people go off in strange clothes to face explosions far away from the sun.
“Very nice,” he said.
Lamps were lit all along the tunnel to what Vimes had come to think of as Downtown Bonk. Dwarf guards waved the coach through after mere glances at the Ankh-Morpork crest. The ones around the giant elevator were more uncertain. But Sam Vimes had learned a lot from watching Lady Sybil. She didn’t mean to act like that, but she’d been born to it, into a class which had always behaved this way: You went through the world as if there was no possibility that anyone would stop you or question you, and most of the time that