The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett [91]
Vimes stared. He got lost in any song more complex than the sort with titles like “Where Has All the Custard Gone (Jelly’s Just Not the Same).”
“Bloodaxe and Ironhammer,” he muttered, aware that dwarfs around them were giving him annoyed looks, “which one was—”
“Cheery told you. They were both dwarfs,” said Sybil, sharply.
“Ah,” said Vimes glumly.
He was always a little out of his depth in these matters. There were men, and there were women. He was clear on that. Sam Vimes was an uncomplicated man when it came to what poets called “the lists of love.”* In some parts of the Shades, he knew, people adopted a more pick-and-mix approach. Vimes looked upon this as he looked upon a distant country; he’d never been there, and it wasn’t his problem. It just amazed him what people got up to when they had time on their hands.
He just found it hard to imagine a world without a map. It wasn’t that the dwarfs ignored sex, it really didn’t seem important to them. If humans thought the same way, his job would be a lot simpler.
There seemed to be a deathbed scene now. It was a little hard for Vimes, with his shaky command of Ankh-Morpork street Dwarfish, to follow what was going on. Someone was dying, and someone else was very sorry about it. Both the main singers had beards you could hide a chicken in. They weren’t bothering to act, apart from infrequently waving an arm in the direction of the other singer.
But there were sobs all around him, and occasionally the trumpeting of a blown nose. Even Sybil’s lower lip was trembling.
It’s just a song, he wanted to say. It’s not real. Crime and streets and chases…they’re real. A song won’t get you out of a tight corner. Try waving a large bun at an armed guard in Ankh-Morpork and see how far it gets you…
He shouldered his way through the throng after the performance, which from the humans present had received the usual warm reception that such things always got from people who hadn’t really understood what was going on but rather felt that they should have.
Dee was talking to a black-clad, heavily built young man who looked vaguely familiar to Vimes. Vimes must have looked familiar to him as well, because he gave him a nod just short of offensiveness.
“Ah, Your Grace Vimes,” he said. “And did you enjoy the opera?”
“Especially the bit about the gold,” said Vimes. “And you are—?”
The man clicked his heels. “Wolf von Uberwald!”
Something went bing in Vimes’s head. And his eyes picked up details—the slight lengthening of the incisors, the way the blond hair was so thick around the collar—
“Angua’s brother?” he said.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Wolf the wolf, eh?”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” said Wolf solemnly, “That is very funny. Indeed, yes! It is quite some time since I heard that one! Your Ankh-Morpork sense of humor!”
“But you’re wearing silver on your…uniform. Those…insignias. Wolf heads biting the lightning…”
Wolf shrugged. “Ah, the kind of thing a policeman would notice. But they are nickel!”
“I don’t recognize the regiment.”
“We are more of a…movement,” said Wolf.
The stance was Angua’s, too. It was the poised, fight-or-flight look, as if the whole body was a spring eager to unwind and “flight” wasn’t an option. People in the presence of Angua when she was in a bad mood tended to turn up their collars without quite knowing why. But the eyes were different. They weren’t like Angua’s. They weren’t even like the eyes of a wolf.
No animal had eyes like that, but Vimes saw them occasionally in some of Ankh-Morpork’s less salubrious drinking establishments, where if you were lucky you’d get out the door before the drink turned you blind.
Colon called that sort of person a “bottle covey,” Nobby