‘Well, yes… the Seriph needs them to pacify the outlying regions…’
The Patrician held up his hand. Drumknott, his clerk, gave him a piece of paper.
‘The “Great Leveller” Cart-Mounted Ten-Bank 500-pound Crossbow?’ he said. ‘And, let me see… the “Meteor” Automated Throwing Star Hurler, Decapitates at Twenty Paces, Money Back If Not Completely Decapitated?’
‘Have you ever heard of the D’regs, my lord?’{7} said Burleigh. ‘They say the only way to pacify one of them is to hit him repeatedly with an axe and bury what’s left under a rock. And, even then, choose a heavy rock.’
The Patrician seemed to be staring at a large drawing of the ‘Dervish’ Mk III Razor-Wire Bolas. There was a painful silence. Burleigh tried to fill it up, always a bad mistake.
‘Besides, we provide much-needed jobs in Ankh-Morpork,’ he murmured.
‘Exporting these weapons to other countries,’ said Lord Vetinari. He handed the paper back and fixed Burleigh with a friendly smile.
‘I’m very pleased to see that the industry has done so well,’ he said. ‘I will bear this particularly in mind.’
He placed his hands together carefully. ‘The situation is grave, gentlemen.’
‘Whose?’ said Mr Burleigh.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘What? Oh… I was thinking about something else, my lord…’
‘I was referring to the fact that a number of our citizens have gone out to this wretched island. As have, I understand, a number of Klatchians.’
‘Why are our people going out there?’ said Mr Boggis of the Thieves’ Guild.
‘Because they are showing a brisk pioneering spirit and seeking wealth and… additional wealth in a new land,’ said Lord Vetinari.
‘What’s in it for the Klatchians?’ said Lord Downey.
‘Oh, they’ve gone out there because they are a bunch of unprincipled opportunists always ready to grab something for nothing,’ said Lord Vetinari.
‘A masterly summation, if I may say so, my lord,’ said Mr Burleigh, who felt he had some ground to make up.
The Patrician looked down again at his notes. ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘I seem to have read those last two sentences in the wrong order… Mr Slant, I believe you have something to say here?’
The president of the Guild of Lawyers cleared his throat. The sound was like a death rattle and technically it was, since the man had been a zombie for several hundred years although historical accounts suggested that the only difference dying had made to Mr Slant was that he’d started to work through his lunch break.
‘Yes, indeed,’ he said, opening a large legal tome. ‘The history of the city of Leshp and its surrounding country is a little obscure. It is known to have been above the sea almost a thousand years ago, however, when records suggest that it was considered part of the Ankh-Morpork empire—’
‘What is the nature of these records and do they tell us who was doing the considering?’ said the Patrician. The door opened and Vimes stepped in. ‘Ah, commander, do take a seat. Continue, Mr Slant.’
The zombie did not like interruptions. He coughed again. ‘The records relating to the lost country date back several hundred years, my lord. And they are of course our records.’
‘Only ours?’
‘I hardly see how any others could apply,’ said Mr Slant severely.
‘Klatchian ones, for example?’ said Vimes, from the far end of the table.
‘Sir Samuel, the Klatchian language does not even have a word for lawyer,’ said Mr Slant.
‘Doesn’t it?’ said Vimes. ‘Good for them.’
‘It is our view’, said Slant, turning his chair slightly so that he did not have to look at Vimes, ‘that the new land is ours by Eminent Domain, Extra-Territoriality and, most importantly, Acquiris Quodcumque Rapis. I am given to understand that it was one of our fishermen who first set foot on it this time.’
‘I hear the Klatchians claim that it was one of their fishermen,’ said Vetinari.
At the end of the table Vimes’s lips were moving. Let’s see, Acquiris… ‘“You get what you grab”?’ he said aloud.
‘We’re not going to take their word for it, are we?’ said Slant, pointedly ignoring him. ‘Excuse me, my lord, but I don’t believe that proud Ankh-Morpork is told what to do by a bunch of thieves with towels on their heads.’
‘No, indeed! It’s about time Johnny Klatchian{8} was taught a lesson,’ said Lord Selachii. ‘Remember all that business last year with the cabbages? Ten damn boatloads they wouldn’t accept!’
‘And everyone knows caterpillars add to the flavour,’ said Vimes, more or less to himself.
The Patrician shot him a glance.
‘That’s right!’ said Selachii. ‘Good honest protein! And you remember all that trouble Captain Jenkins had over that cargo of mutton? They were going to imprison him! In a Klatchian jail!’
‘Surely not? Meat is at its best when it’s going green,’ said Vimes.
‘It’s not as if it’d taste any different under all that curry,’ said Burleigh. ‘I was at a dinner in their embassy once, and do you know what they made me eat? It was a sheep’s—’
‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ said Vimes, standing up. ‘There are some urgent matters I must deal with.’
He nodded to the Patrician and hurried out of the room. He shut the door behind him and took a breath of fresh air, although right now he’d have happily inhaled deeply in a tannery.
Corporal Littlebottom stood up and looked at him expectantly. She had been sitting next to a box, which cooed peacefully.
‘Something’s up. Run down to… I mean, send a pigeon down to the Yard,’ said Vimes.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘All leave is cancelled as of now and I want to see every officer, and I mean every officer, at the Yard at, oh, let’s say six o’clock.’
‘Right, sir. That might mean an extra pigeon unless I can write small enough.’
Littlebottom hurried off.
Vimes glanced out of the window. There was always a certain amount of activity outside the palace but today there was… not so much a crowd as, just, rather more people than you normally saw, hanging around. As if they were waiting for something.
Klatch!
Everyone knows it.
Old Detritus was right. You could hear the little pebbles bouncing. It’s not just a few fishermen having a scrap, it’s a hundred years of… well, like two big men trying to fit in one small room, trying to be polite about it, and then one day one of them just has to stretch and pretty soon they’re both smashing the furniture.
But it couldn’t really happen, could it? From what he’d heard, the present Seriph was a competent man who was mostly concerned with pacifying the rowdy edges of his empire. And there were Klatchians living in Ankh-Morpork, for heaven’s sake! There were Klatchians born in Ankh-Morpork. You saw some lad with a face that’d got camels written all over it, and when he opened his mouth it’d turn out he had an Ankhian accent so thick you could float rocks. Oh, there’s all the jokes about funny food and foreigners, but surely…
Not very funny jokes, come to think of it.
When you hear the bang, there’s no time to wonder how long the little fuse has been fizzing.
There were raised voices when he went back into the Rats Chamber.
‘Because, Lord Selachii,’ the Patrician was saying, ‘these are not the old days. It is no longer considered… nice… to send a warship over there to, as you put it, show Johnny Foreigner the error of his ways. For one thing, we haven’t had any warships since the Mary-Jane sank four hundred years ago.{9} And times have changed. These days, the whole world watches. And, my lord, you are no longer allowed to say “What’re you lookin’ at?” and black their eyes.’ He leaned back. ‘There’s Chimeria, and Khanli, and Ephebe, and Tsort. And Muntab, these days, too. And Omnia. Some of these are powerful nations, gentlemen. Many of them don’t like Klatch’s current expansionist outlook, but they don’t like us much, either.’