crossposting again from tumblr, where I commit sins constantly.
Vetinari had a vampire lady friend.
In the winter-chilled desert of the Patrician's office, Commander Sam Vimes was not doing a very good job of focusing. On the street this morning, as he patrolled the road up to the palace (every walk is a patrol, for a watchman), some sly older gentleman had tried to draw him into an argument that was unfolding between him, a slightly younger man, and Dibbler, who often had great success selling sausages to pedestrians too deep in debate to notice what they were eating. They had been talking about the Patrician.
"I reckon only a real spider of a woman could do it for his Lordship," the older gentleman announced, proving himself to be a lot less sly than he thought he was.
"Spider I'd believe," the younger man remarked, "but woman?"
"Here," the older gentleman had said, striking out conversationally at Vimes, who was just then passing the argumentative cluster, "you see a lot of the Patrician, Mister. Vetinari has a vampire lady friend, doesn't he?"
Vimes had paused despite himself, one boot suspended for a flash of a second over the cobles. "No comment," he had said at last, reverting to his Talking To Press autopilot. The question had unnerved him. Despite having met Margolotta in person, and despite knowing that they had made significant impressions on each other, he had somehow never stopped to consider what such an arrangement might imply. He had listened to the rest of the argument in dumb, fascinated horror. For the rest of the walk up to the palace, the suggestion had troubled him.
Vimes possessed a particularly honed strain of the skill known to all husbands, that is, to think his own thoughts simultaneously with the hearing, processing, and storing of whatever was said to him. Sam Vimes was an excellent parallel processor. He had even been known to contribute small additions to conversations held while he was, metaphorically, mapping not only another country but another continent entirely. The blue curtains in the drawing room owed their current existence to Vimes' parallel processing abilities. Of course, most husbands limit themselves to using this power on their wives.
"And with the Hogswatch rush you'll need a couple of your men on gate patrol to prevent any stampedes," Vetinari said, putting himself in the running for wildest understatement of year just before the competition closed. With the number of grannies' funerals claimed in the Watch this year alone, one might suspect there would be fewer citizen traveling to the ancestral village for the holiday. Such statistics could be deceiving.
"Yes sir," Vimes said.
Vetinari had a vampire lady friend. Vimes had met Margolotta, of course, and on the surface she wasn't much to write home about. She had looked to be in her early forties, kitted up in a cardigan and fluffy bits that would put a kindergarten teacher to shame. Not much to write home about. But that had all been dressing, hadn't it? Vimes had hardly gone a week without thinking of Uberwald since the return from, sometimes sweating and shaking in the middle of the night. Margolotta, fluffy bits and all, numbered among his more distressing memories.
"Do try to keep Sergeant Colon from stopping up the flow of traffic too much. There are only so many buns a single man can humbly accept from generous travelers."
"Sir," Vimes said.
When Vetinari had met her, he would have been—what, twenty? A smart young assassin, sly and quick and perhaps a little less dangerous but a little more daring. It wasn't hard for Vimes to imagine. He felt almost as if he'd seen it in the flesh, at some point, and lost the specifics to the dim of age and drink somewhere in the middle. Vetinari standing on the doorstep of Lady Margolotta, a dashing, weary traveler—
His mind filled in the details without prompting. There's a way these stories go. The land itself in Uberwald knows how these stories go, where the lightning ought to flash and when the rain should fall. The candles know how long to burn in the windows. The night knows when to test the limits of its welcome. Vetinari stands on the doorstep of Lady Margolotta who is as beautiful as the edge of a fine sword. His mind supplied the red velvet with the promising neckline, the swooping skirts. She says, do come in, my dear, and there is nothing matronly about it.
Two beautiful, deadly people, his mind supplied. Terrible, monstrous charm.
Vimes looked at the Patrician, which was not something he normally did during these meetings. It was hard to see a man inside that razor blade of a body who would allow himself to be drawn into a spider's den. Logically, there might have been a time when Vetinari was naïve. Should have been. Everyone else had to be, at some point. But in his bones Vimes was certain that Vetinari had never once walked into a web he wasn't sure he could cut his way back out of.
Vimes' mind tripped into a rut every time he got this far. What did the young nobleman do in that beautiful deadly old house? Everyone in the city is sure they did lots of unspeakable things with leather and whips. Supposedly, he had been told, there was a very expensive woodcut depicting some suicidal craftsman's idea of what occurred that year. It had made a couple rounds and then promptly disappeared off the market without a trace. Vimes wondered if it hadn't come to rest somewhere in the palace at the end.
For himself, he wasn't sure what to think. Vetinari had made quite the impression on Margolotta, if you could take her own word for it. Vetinari has always been one to know exactly where to sidestep to avoid narrative pitfalls. It wouldn't be much surprise to find that Vetinari had taken one look at her lovely glinting teeth and promptly offered to fix them both a cup of tea.
Vimes, somehow, almost didn't want to believe the rumors. There was a strong part of him that reared back from the whole idea like a mad horse. To think that Vetinari had ever laid himself open to another creature, had ever tipped back that pale neck in another person's presence, was intolerable. Vimes' mind, helpful as ever, supplied an image of the man some decades younger, artfully splayed across sumptuous satin sheets. His mind was very specific about the particular, inviting angle of the chin.
Vimes snapped his eyes away from the Patrician to stare safely, mercifully, at the wall four inches away from his head. He felt his face losing blood.
Of course once you successfully imagine the chin, and the ivory column of the waiting neck, you must imagine the teeth. Sharp, white, resting gently against the skin—so gently that only the wicked tip of one incisor pricks the surface. Breath across skin panting out from between those sharp teeth, paused for a moment before their bloody work, and why—why was he imagining breath?
"Commander," Vetinari said, "are you quite well?"
The jaw sliding just closed, trailing its sharp peaks upward, the moment of anticipation before—
"Yes sir," Vimes said.
—the bite.
"You don't look well, Commander," Vetinari said, with somewhat disarming frankness.
He could imagine the bite so well, the sharp pop of the skin giving way, the wet tear of delicate veins beneath the skin, the sudden heat—
"Reckon it's a bit cold in here," Vimes explained, and belatedly added, "sir."
The way the body would arch up—yes, up—into the bite, the gasp and rise of the chest, and if you were to rip, to tear the soft whiteness of the skin and the red tangle of tubes beneath it, Vimes has bitten men before in self defense but never realized how much the sensation had remained with him, relegated away into the part of him that is the Beast.
Didn't know you had it in you sir, he had said years ago, as the Patrician lay bleeding out beside him from a wrecked leg. He certainly knew now, didn't he. He had touched it, felt it tacky on the pads of his fingers. The memories merged.
Vetinari unfolded himself from the high backed seat behind the desk, a reserved curiosity on his features. He pushed away the seat with a quiet grace, effortlessly avoiding the push and stumble and squeak that most people would have encountered.
"Sir?" Vimes said.
Vetinari paused in front of him and lifted one precise hand to the hollow of his own throat, drawing it away with some interest as if he expected to find the whole thing stained with ink. His fingers remained as colorless as ever. The harsh column of his neck as unblemished as ever. Surely, Vimes thought with some desperation, if she had ever bitten him there would be a scar.
"Are you thinking of beheading me?" Vetinari asked, quirking one brow by a fraction of an angle.
"Sir?" Vimes replied.
"Your focus has been on my neck for an entire minute now. Perhaps there is something I ought to know?"
"You don't have any scars," Vimes said, before his mouth could catch up with his better sense.
Vetinari paused. If you knew him well enough, and Vimes supposed that he must, it was apparent that he'd been caught off guard. Carefully, he raised the same hand back to his neck. His long fingers brushed the nearly translucent skin there.
"You expect there to be, Commander?"
Vimes said nothing. Denial would just be digging himself in deeper.
Vetinari contemplated the scene between them for a long moment, his fingers tracing slow, small lines up and down the length of his throat. Vimes found it impossible to look away.
"Ah," the Patrician said at last, stilling his hand. "That old rumor, is it then?"
"Sir," Vimes said, as noncommittally as possible.
The subtle alteration of Vetinari's expression conveyed with no little eloquence his surprise at finding Vimes to be the type of man who took a personal interest in his boss's alleged love life. Vimes endeavored to give nothing away.
"I'm sure there are any number of people who would have been glad to hear of teeth in my throat," Vetinari said, which was no kind of explanation at all.
"Sir."
"Perhaps you would be one of them," Vetinari said, assessing Vimes with a polish-stripping glance.
"No sir," Vimes said, a little desperately now.
"No?" Vetinari said. "You wouldn't like to know who has their teeth in me, Commander?"
Vimes locked his jaw around another tortured "No sir." Politics, he thought. The man thinks this is about politics. Maybe he thinks I picked up a taste for the damn things when I was abroad.
He had little desire to know who had their political teeth buried in his boss, although he would be surprised enough if that list had even one name on it. The question though—a sharp flare had surged up the back of his neck at the very sound of the question. Would you like to know who has their teeth in me. Would you like to know. Their teeth. In me.
In Vimes' confused thoughts the awful offspring of those two memories rose up, remembering the taste of his teeth in a neck he had never touched. The last of the blood in his face drained away. He had never wanted to murder the man. Hated him, yes, sometimes on multiple instances per day. Wished for a better ruler, certainly, for quite a few years there. But never wanted to kill him, not then or even now. And still, there were the teeth.
"I wonder if you aren't thinking about taking off my head," Vetinari said, leaning just a shade closer.
"I wonder if anyone could," Vimes said, his mouth yet again outpacing his better sense.
Vetinari smiled, abruptly. It was a small smile. It was a smile that told Vimes he had been fixating on the wrong set of teeth this entire time. The watchman swallowed a mouthful of dry air.
"Well if you must know," Vetinari said, drawing back, "Lady Margolotta was much too old for me at the time when we were acquainted."
"Sir."
Vetinari returned to his desk, waving Vimes away with a businesslike disinterest. "Carry on, Commander," he said, returning promptly to the paperwork he had been working on when Vimes arrived.
Vimes blinked a few times, trying to get reality back in focus. He took a step back. Another. He left.
As he glided, barely seeing, down the vaulted halls, his mind was still racing with the terrible, gentle sensation of teeth tearing into throat. Most troubling, now, was the dim understanding that the throat and teeth were no longer the same.
Most troubling, now, was the memory of that little smile.