‘I’m bought and sold, aren’t I?’ said Vimes, shaking his head. ‘Bought and sold.’
‘Not at all,’ said Vetinari.
‘Yes, I am. We all are. Even Rust. And all those poor buggers who went off to get slaughtered. We’re not part of the big picture, right? We’re just bought and sold.’
Vetinari was suddenly in front of Vimes, his chair hitting the floor behind his desk.
‘Really? Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!’ He hesitated, and then shrugged. ‘And you say bought and sold? All right. But not, I think, needlessly spent.’ The Patrician flashed one of those sharp, fleeting little smiles to say that something that wasn’t very funny had nevertheless amused him. ‘Veni, vici… Vetinari.’
Seaweed floated away on aimless currents. Apart from the driftwood, there was nothing to show that Leshp had ever been.
Seabirds wheeled. But their cries were more or less drowned out by the argument going on just above sea level.
‘It is entirely our wood, you nodding acquaintance of a dog!’
‘Oh? Really? On your side of the island, is it? I don’t think so!’
‘It floated up!’
‘How do you know we didn’t have some driftwood on our side of the island? Anyway, we’ve still got a barrel of fresh water, camel breath!’
‘All right! We’ll share! You can have half the raft!’
‘Aha! Aha! Want to negotiate, eh, now we’ve got you over a barrel?’
‘Can we just say yes, Dad? I’m fed up with treading water!’
‘And you’ll have to do your share of the paddling.’
‘Of course.’
The birds glided and turned, white scribbles against the clear blue sky.
‘To Ankh-Morpork!’
‘To Klatch!’
Down below, as the sunken mountain of Leshp settled further onto the sea bed, the Curious Squid jetted back along its curious streets. They had no idea why, at enormous intervals, their city disappeared up into the sky, but it never went away for very long. It was just one of those things. Things happened, or sometimes they didn’t. The Curious Squid just assumed that it all worked out, sooner or later.
A shark swam by. If anyone had risked placing an ear to its side, they would have heard: ‘Bingeley-bingeley beep! Three pee em… Eat, Hunger, Swim. Things To Do Today: Swim, Hunger, Eat. Three oh five pee em: Feeding Frenzy…’
It wasn’t the most interesting of schedules, but it was very easy to organize.
Unusually, Sergeant Colon had put himself on the patrol roster. It was good to get out in the cool air. And also, for some reason, the news had got around that the Watch were somehow bound up with what seemed, in some indefinable way, to have been a victory, which meant that a Watch uniform was probably good for the odd free pint at the back door of the occasional pub.
He patrolled with Corporal Nobbs. They walked with the confident tread of men who had been places and seen things.
With a true copper’s instinct, the tread took them past Mundane Meals. Mr Goriff was cleaning the windows. He stopped when he saw them and darted inside.
‘Call that gratitude?’ sniffed Colon.
The man reappeared carrying two large packages.
‘My wife made this specially for you,’ he said. He added, ‘She said she knew you’d be along.’
Colon pulled aside the waxed paper.
‘My word,’ he said.
‘Special Ankh-Morpork curry,’ said Mr Goriff. ‘Containing yellow curry powder, big lumps of swede, green peas and soggy sultanas the—’
‘—size of eggs!’ said Nobby.
‘Thank you very much,’ said Colon. ‘How’s your lad, then, Mr Goriff?’
‘He says you have set him an example and now he will be a watchman when he grows up.’
‘Ah, right,’ said Colon happily. ‘That’ll please Mr Vimes. You just tell him—’
‘In Al-Khali,’ said Goriff. ‘He is staying with my brother.’
‘Oh. Well… fair enough, then. Er… thanks for the curry, anyway.’
‘What sort of example do you think he meant?’ said Nobby, as they strolled away.
‘The good sort, obviously,’ said Colon, through a mouthful of mildly spiced swede.
‘Yeah, right.’
Chewing slowly and walking even slower, they headed towards the docks.
‘I was gonna write Bana a letter,’ said Nobby, after a while.
‘Yeah, but… she thought you was a woman, Nobby.’
‘Right. So she saw, like, my inner self, shorn of…’ Nobby’s lips moved as he concentrated, ‘shorn of surface thingy. That’s what Angua said. Anyway, then I thought, well, her boyfriend’ll be coming back, so I thought I’d be noble about it and give her up.’
‘’cos he might be a big stroppy bloke, too,’ said Sergeant Colon.
‘I never thought about that, sarge.’
They paced for a while.
‘It’s a far, far better thing I do now than I have ever done before,’{95} said Nobby.
‘Right,’ said Sergeant Colon. They walked on in silence for a while and he added: ‘O’course, that’s not difficult.’
‘I still got the hanky she gave me, look.’
‘Very nice, Nobby.’
‘That’s genuine Klatchian silk, that is.’
‘Yeah, it looks very nice.’
‘I’m never going to wash it, sarge.’
‘You soppy old thing, Nobby,’ said Fred Colon.
He watched Corporal Nobbs blow his nose.
‘So… you’re going to stop using it, are you?’ he said, doubtfully.
‘It still bends, sarge. See?’ Nobby demonstrated.
‘Yeah, right. Silly of me to ask, really.’
Overhead, the weathervanes started to creak round.
‘Made me a lot more understanding about women, that experience,’ said Nobby.
Colon, a much-married man, said nothing.
‘I met Verity Pushpram this afternoon,’ Nobby went on, ‘and I said how about coming out with me tonight and I don’t mind about the squint at all and I’ve got this expensive exotic perfume which’ll totally disguise your smell, and she said bugger off and threw an eel at me.’
‘Not good, then,’ said Colon.
‘Oh, yeah, sarge, ’cos she used to just cuss when she saw me. And I’ve still got the eel, and there’s a good feed off it, so I look upon it as a very positive step.’
‘Could be. Could be. Just so long as you give someone that scent soon, eh? Only even the people across the street are starting to complain.’
Their feet, moving like bees towards a flower, had found their way to the waterfront. They looked up at the Klatchian’s Head, on its spike.
‘It’s only wooden,’ said Colon.
Nobby said nothing.
‘And it’s, like, part of our traditional heritage an’ that,’ Colon went on, but hesitantly, as if he didn’t believe his own voice.
Nobby blew his nose again, an exercise which, with all its little arpeggios and flourishes, went on for some time.
The sergeant gave in. Some things didn’t seem quite the same any more, he had to admit. ‘I’ve never really liked the place. Let’s go to the Bunch of Grapes then, all right?’
Nobby nodded.
‘Anyway, the beer here is frankly piss,’ said Colon.
Lady Sybil held her handkerchief in front of her husband.
‘Spit!’ she commanded.
Then she carefully cleaned a smut off his cheek.
‘There. Now you look very—’
‘—ducal,’ said Vimes gloomily. ‘I thought I’d done this once already…’