Vivat Rex
Disclaimer: I am not wearing a glorious hat, nor do I have a beard, a knighthood or any bestselling novels therefore I am not Terry Pratchett and as such have no claim on any of his creations. I do however have full possession of Alexander, Nikolai and Ana. And probably some other people eventually.
AN: Now with 60% more Vetinari and Death, along with slightly less big-unreadable-black-block-of-text formatting.
Chapter 1
A tailoring nightmare – The disappointments of progeny – A lack of trousers - When you've gotta go
*
Any student of history will be able to tell you of the fabled trousers of time.
The trousers of time are not so much trousers as… well, gloves might be a closer analogy, but even they do not have anything like enough appendages. No garment belonging to any normal being would. They may have begun life as a perfectly normal member of the wardrobe, but with each mad bifurcation, and multiplication(a), they resemble less and less a pair of trousers and more one of those spidery tendril filled images of the nervous system, if it was the combined nervous systems of an entire universe. Any claim they may have had to trouserdom has long since been left behind. Time is, in fact, a tailoring nightmare. No-one could ever keep up with the alterations and there just isn't enough cotton in the universe.
But the point is that choices change things, from the simplest morning decision between toast and oatmeal through to deliberations on whether or not ones plans for the day should include genocide. Every single jiggling atom sparks off a cascade of new directions for existence to flow down.
The thing that choices mostly change is the future. And there are infinite futures belonging to infinite universes, where anything, everything, can and will happen.
This is one of those futures. It cannot be labelled The Future, unless one can pinpoint which of the constantly changing nows spawned it. And this is a difficult distinction. There are a million others like it: similar on the surface but different in tiny details, because of the smallest choices that were made. Some of the differences are bigger.
Much bigger.
(a) Because choice is rarely as simple as one or the other. That would be far too easy and, most importantly, boring. The gods have to have something to watch on wet sunday afternoons.
***
At the age of eighteen, Alexander Ironfoundersson was nearly as tall as his father and every bit as handsome, charming and charismatic. Like his father, he also spent a lot of time in watch houses.
Generally in the cells, snoring. He had bedding and a mug of his own at most stations.
It was in this condition that his father found him that morning.
Carrot drank his coffee, and flicked through a copy of the night's incident reports. After a minute's reading he sighed and headed out of the main office and down to the cells. He bid a good morning to Igor and carried on down to the cell at the end of the row.
It was not locked, and the door hung ajar. He stood in the doorway and knocked on a bar, extracting a resounding cloooiing.
The youth within removed the blanket from over his head and peered blearily out.
"You are very lucky that I got in before your mother did," said Carrot.
"Morning, Dad," said Alexander, through a huge yawn. "It… is morning, right?" he added, uncertainly.
"Yes." Carrot's face was unreadable, even to his son. Had Angua found him, there would have been Words. Shouted Words, because Alex infuriated his mother in ways no other could and was discovering new ways every day. His father, on the other hand, was hard to work up and, in any case, had a very quiet way of being angry, or worse, disappointed. Even with his mostly werewolf talents it was hard to tell which was which. Carrot glanced at the clipboard of reports and then back at his son.
"Says here you were brought in on a 31(b(ii))."
"A what bye-eye?"
"Being Naughtily Drunk and Causing Affray. There's something here about Public Indecency too, which I don't think I want the details of. Anything sounding familiar?"
Alex shrugged. "It's not a good night out if there aren't bits you have to hear about from someone else."
There was the steady stare again, and then Carrot sighed. "Alex, I really wish you'd be a little more-"
Here it comes, Alex thought, it's the 'Why can't you be more like Nikolai' speech. Nikolai was a good example. Nikolai was mature and sensible. Nikolai was about as different from his twin as he could be. Nikolai was a bore. He'd gone and got a respectable job with the Historian's guild as some sort of archivist. It sounded godawful. He spent all day indoors with dry old books and artefacts and no alcohol and no girls. None that were worth it anyway. He was going to start wearing tweed any day now. With leather elbow patches.
"Like Nikolai, yes, I know," said Alex.
"I was going to say 'more responsible', but your brother wouldn't be a bad role model. For that matter, neither would your sister, and she's 10."
Alex was sitting up on the plank bed now, rearranging the tangles in his unruly blonde hair. "Right, yes, I know. I'm an irresponsible disappointment of a son. Sorry I'm not as wonderful as you'd hoped. Everyone else likes me much better, you know. Is there any more coffee?"
Carrot ignored the question and detached a smaller slip of paper from the clipboard. He handed it to Alex, who stared at it blankly.
"Your fine," said Carrot, helpfully, and headed back up to the office.
"Course I am," said Alex to his retreating back. He stared at the slip again until words began to form out of the hangover haze. "Oh. Fine. Hey, wait! No one else makes me pay a fine!" he shouted after his father.
"Bugger," he added, more quietly, and wondered if anyone had thought to bring his trousers with them when they arrested him.
***
At the other end of Broadway, the ruler of the city was dying.
This was unusual in that Lord Vetinari was the first patrician in some hundred or more years to die of entirely natural causes. The man had survived accusations of murder and treachery, shootings and poisoning, not to mention the every day perils of simply living in Ankh-Morpork, and had eventually been taken off the Assassin's register out of sheer exasperation. The man had turned out to be too damned hard to kill.
But Death calls on everyone in the end.
The grey toned shade of Vetinari looked down at his body. In truth, it would be hard for an observer to tell which was the body and which the spirit; among the living Vetinari had always favoured a monotone wardrobe and had never been what you could call tanned.
"The timing really is most inconvenient," he said, apparently to himself.
Behind him, Death's hooded skull nodded.
YES. IT USUALLY IS. AN APPOINTMENT SYSTEM HAS BEEN SUGGESTED BUT I'M NOT SURE IT WOULD WORK.
"It's going to be quite a mess."
I THOUGHT IT WAS A RATHER NEAT DEATH, CONSIDERING YOUR LINE OF WORK. NO BLOOD, AT LEAST.
"Oh. Yes, I suppose so," said Vetinari, waving a spectral hand, as one acknowledging an insignificant detail. "I was speaking of the city. I had hoped to have a little more time to arrange matters."
YOU MADE NO PLANS? Death sounded surprised.
"Of course I did. So much harder to set them in motion from the grave, however."
IF YOU ARE ASKING FOR MORE TIME-
"Oh, no, not at all. You have your duty. I would not presume to ask you to shirk your responsibilities."
NO...? Now Death seemed uncertain.
"Indeed not. The city will look after itself. It always has done. I have merely… greased the wheels over the years, kept them turning without incident." The now ex-ruler paused in thought. "It would perhaps be amusing to see how things turn out…" mused Vetinari. "Vimes will undoubtedly be incensed. I believe he has always wanted to kill me himself."
THE ANGRY MAN WITH THE BADGE?
"You know him?"
HE HAS A HABIT OF FALLING OFF OF THINGS AND GETTING INTO FIGHTS HE SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO WIN. HE ALSO RUNS FAR TOO MUCH FOR A MAN OF HIS AGE. I AM FRANKLY AMAZED HE'S NOT DEAD ALREADY.
"He has made something of a talent of it, hasn't he? And yet it seems he will be outliving me. Yes, he will be furious. Even more so when he discovers there is no-one to blame."
BUT YOU ARE NOT.
"I was trained at the Assassin's Guild. The first lesson they teach is that everyone dies sooner or later. Of course, they go on to say that it is an Assassin's job to make it sooner rather than later, as long as there is at least a four figure banker's note in return. To borrow the Guild of Night Soil Operatives and Associated Sanitary Workers rather more pithy motto: Ut vos vado, vos vado(b)."
INDEED.
"Now, I think we had better be moving along. I'm sure you have other people to see."
YES. Death paused. IF YOU WISH TO STAY...
"Oh no, no. I would not wish to impose. In any case, I don't think all that rattling chains and moaning business is quite my sort of thing. No, I believe it is best that we depart with all alacrity."
VERY WELL, YOUR LORDSHIP.
With that Death swung his scythe and severed the thin blue strand that anchored the patrician to his mortal remains.
As the office he had ruled from for so many years faded away, Havelock Vetinari stepped out into the black desert. After ruling Ankh-Morpork, death held no terrors.
*
Twenty minutes later, Drumknott entered with a stack of the mornings clacks reports.
It was quite usual for the patrician to remain bent over his work while the clerks came and went, without so much as a glance up. This was, however, usually accompanied by the scritch-scratch of a busy pen on paper. The room was silent, and his lordship's stillness was definitely not usual.
The head clerk did not allow himself to become flustered. He calmly felt the lack of heat from his lordship's body, then searched for a pulse, which he did not find. Then he did not shout and he did not panic. He stood still for a moment in silent thought.
Thoughts collected and composed, Drumknott left the office.
"Something the matter, sir," asked a junior clerk, seeing his face. "You look a little pale."
"Do I? Really. Goodness. Please send a clacks to the Lady Sybil and ask for a doctor. Commander Vimes too," said Drumknott. "I believe Lord Vetinari is dead."
(b) "When you gotta go, you gotta go."
To be continued....