There was another snigger. Vimes turned and looked at the leering bearded face again. And was aware of a smell, no, a stench of cloves.
Good grief, he chews the stinking things…
‘Ah,’ said the Prince, ‘you haven’t met 71-hour Ahmed?’
Ahmed grinned again and bowed. ‘Offendi,’ he said, in a voice like a gravel path.
And that seemed to be it. Not ‘This is 71-hour Ahmed, Cultural Attaché’ or ‘71-hour Ahmed, my bodyguard’ or even ‘71-hour Ahmed, walking strongroom and moth killer’. It was clear that the next move was up to Vimes.
‘That’s… er… that’s an unusual name,’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ said the Prince smoothly. ‘Ahmed is a very common name in my country.’
He leaned forward again. Vimes recognized this as the prelude to a confidential aside. ‘Incidentally, was that beautiful lady I saw just now your first wife?’
‘Er… all my wives,’ said Vimes. ‘That is—’
‘Could I offer you twenty camels for her?’
Vimes looked back into the dark eyes for a moment, glanced at 71-hour Ahmed’s 24-carat grin, and said:
‘This is another test, isn’t it…?’
The Prince straightened up, looking pleased.
‘Well done, Sir Samuel. You’re good at this. Do you know, Mr Boggis of the Thieves’ Guild was prepared to accept fifteen?’
‘For Mrs Boggis?’ Vimes waggled a hand dismissively. ‘Nah… four camels, maybe four camels and a goat in a good light. And when she’s had a shave.’
The milling guests turned at the sound of the Prince’s explosion of laughter.
‘Very good! Very good! I am afraid, commander, that some of your fellow citizens feel that just because my people invented advanced mathematics and all-day camping we are complete barbarians who’d try to buy their wives at the drop of, shall we say, a turban. I am surprised they’re giving me an honorary degree, considering how incredibly backward I am.’
‘Oh? What degree is that?’ said Vimes. No wonder this man was a diplomat. You couldn’t trust him an inch, he thought in loops, and you couldn’t help liking him despite it.
The Prince pulled a letter out of his robe.
‘Apparently it’s a Doctorum Adamus cum Flabello Dulci — Is there something wrong, Sir Samuel?’
Vimes managed to turn the treacherous laugh into a coughing fit. ‘No, no, nothing,’ he said. ‘No.’
He desperately wanted to change the subject. And fortunately there was something here to provide just the opportunity.
‘Why has Mr Ahmed got such a big curved sword slung on his back?’ he said.
‘Ah, you are a policeman, you notice such things—’
‘It’s hardly a concealed weapon, is it? It’s nearly bigger than him. He’s practically a concealed owner!’
‘It’s ceremonial,’ said the Prince. ‘And he does fret so if he has to leave it behind.’
‘And what exactly is his—’
‘Ah, there you are,’ said Ridcully. ‘I think we’re just about ready. You know you go right at the front, Sam—’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Vimes. ‘I was just asking His Highness what—’
‘—and if you, Your Highness, and you, Mr… my word, what a big sword, and you come back here and take your place among the honoured guests, and we’ll be ready in a brace of sheikhs…’
What a thing it is to have a copper’s mind, Vimes thought, as the great file of wizards and guests tried to form a dignified and orderly line behind him. Just because someone makes himself pleasant and likeable you start to be suspicious of him, for no other reason than the fact that anyone who goes out of their way to be nice to a copper has got something on their mind. Of course, he’s a diplomat, but still… I just hope he never studied ancient languages, and that’s a fact.
Someone tapped Vimes on the shoulder. He turned and looked right into the grin of 71-hour Ahmed.
‘If hyou changing your mind, offendi, I give hyou twenty-five camels, no problem,’ he said, pulling a clove from his teeth. ‘May your hloins be full of fruit.’
He winked. It was the most suggestive gesture Vimes had ever seen. ‘Is this another—’ he began, but the man had vanished into the crowd.
‘My loins be full of fruit?’ he repeated to himself. ‘Good grief!’
71-hour Ahmed reappeared at his other elbow in a gust of cloves. ‘I go, I hcome back,’{25} he growled happily. ‘The Prince hsays the degree is Doctor of Sweet Fanny Adams.{26} A hwizard wheeze, yes? Oh, how we are laughing.’
And then he was gone.
The Convivium was Unseen University’s Big Day.{27} Originally it had just been the degree ceremony, but over the years it had developed into a kind of celebration of the amicable relationship between the University and the city, in particular celebrating the fact that people were hardly ever turned to clams any more. In the absence of anything resembling a Lord Mayor’s Show or a state opening of Parliament, it was one of the few formal opportunities the citizens had of jeering at their social superiors, or at least at people wearing tights and ridiculous costumes.
It had grown so big that it was now held in the city’s Opera House. Distrustful people — that is to say, people like Vimes — considered that this was so there could be a procession. There was nothing like the massed ranks of wizardry walking sedately through the city in a spirit of civic amicability to subtly remind the more thoughtful kind of person that it hadn’t always been this way. Look at us, the wizards seemed to be saying. We used to rule this city. Look at our big staffs with the knobs on the end. Any one of these could do some very serious damage in the wrong hands so it’s a good thing, isn’t it, that they’re in the right hands at the moment? Isn’t it nice that we all get along so well?
And someone, once, had decided that the Commander of the Watch should walk in front, for symbolic reasons. That hadn’t mattered for years because there hadn’t been a Commander of the Watch, but now there was, and he was Sam Vimes. In a red shirt with silly baggy sleeves, red tights, some kind of puffed shorts in a style that went out of fashion, by the look of it, at the time when flint was at the cutting edge of cutting-edge technology, a tiny shiny breastplate and a helmet with feathers in it.
And he really did need some sleep.
And he had to carry the truncheon.
He kept his eyes fixed on the damn thing as he walked out of the University’s main gate. Last night’s rain had cleaned the sky. The city steamed.
If he stared at the truncheon he didn’t have to see who was giggling at him.
The downside was that he had to keep staring at the thing.
It said, on a little tarnished shield that he’d had to clean before reading it, Protecter of thee Kinge’s Piece.
That had brightened the occasion slightly.
Feathers and antiques, gold braid and fur…
Perhaps it was because he was tired, or just because he was trying to shut out the world, but Vimes found himself slowing down into the traditional watchman’s walk and the traditional idling thought process.
It was an almost Pavlovian{28} response.[4] The legs swung, the feet moved, the mind began to work in a certain way. It wasn’t a dream state, exactly. It was just that the ears, nose and eyeballs wired themselves straight into the ancient ‘suspicious bastard’ node of his brain, leaving his higher brain centre free to freewheel.
4
A term invented by the wizard Denephew Boot[*], who had found that by a system of rewards and punishments he could train a dog, at the ringing of a bell, to immediately eat a strawberry meringue.
* His parents, who were uncomplicated country people, had wanted a girl. They were expecting to call her Denise.