I don't own anything. I wish I owned Nobby though. Just because.

How Nobby acquired his dress

'Many of the carters say that they were not in fact parked but had merely halted while an extremely old and extremely ugly lady crossed the road extremely slowly.' [Vetinari, pg. 12, The Fifth Elephant]

However much you looked at it, you couldn't look past the…muchness of it.

Cheery had tried, Angua knew she had. The dwarf had consulted an actual seam – no, dressmaker – instead of going to the usual dwarf she usually bought her clothes from. But despite Cheery's – and possibly the dressmaker's – best efforts, a definite dwarfishness permeated the entire dress.

Where to start, where to start…well the lace would have been nice, in a more moderate amount. And when it wasn't paired with…oh dear…

Angua tapped a nail against the bust area of the dress. There was a clong, confirming her suspicions about the – er – plates. Or what looked like plates, except that they had been beaten into a concave shape. No wonder Cheery had been so anxious to get the measurements for her bust size.

Beneath the bust…was the bodice. It was a pretty blue, chosen specially to set off her complexion and eyes. And it fitted nicely, showing off her figure to the best advantage. Well that wasn't too bad – until you reached the skirt.

Angua had had some doubts about the skirt before this. 'Not too short,' she had told Cheery.

'Why not? You have nice legs.'

'Just…no.' And Cheery had seen the look on Angua's face and had decided not to argue. Besides, Angua aimed to blend in, where she was going to, not to stand out. Or to cause a riot. Possibly.

The skirt was a decent length. It reached below her knees, and it would have been nice, thought Angua, if the entire skirt was not covered in lace. She turned in a slow circle before the mirror, looking at it from every angle. Lace cascaded in frothy terraces to the bottom of the skirt, ran in several vertical panels along her hips, edged the leather sash around her waist – Angua had a feeling that Cheery's decision had not played a part when it came to the skirt. Or, knowing Cheery, maybe it had played too much of a part.

She wished she hadn't told Cheery about the date.

She wished Carrot didn't have to be so damn nice about it all.

'There's a travelling dwarf opera coming this week,' Carrot said cheerfully, as they proceeded along their Shades route last week. 'They're performing in The Dysk soon. It would be interesting to watch the performance. I've heard they're doing Das Meingold – it's considered as one of the most popular epics in dwarf operas.'

And she nodded and said, 'Interesting.' And waited for Carrot to continue.

'Do you want to go watch it?' he said. 'I've heard it'll be cheaper to get tickets earlier…'

She had asked Cheery about it after that. About dwarf operas, the standard of etiquette expected of the audience, the dress, the customs…everything. Asking Carrot would be pretty much pointless – he didn't have to worry about unintentionally causing offence, having been brought up as a dwarf(1). As for asking him about dress – the thought had made Angua smile grimly before she suppressed it. She knew Carrot wouldn't mind her in whatever dress she wore, but the dwarfs would mind. Although a dwarf opera performed above ground was, according to Cheery, something new, especially when it was a travelling opera, Angua knew she would be one of the very few non-dwarfs attending it. Say what you liked about dwarfs embracing change in Ankh-Morpork and being more permissible with the younger generation…she knew she would be an outsider in The Dysk when Carrot brought her there. And she was determined not to stand out more than she knew she would; hence the fashion advice from Cheery.

Carrot would be nice about whatever happened, she knew. And that made her even more anxious that nothing untoward would happen. But she couldn't wear this dress…gods no. Angua ran through the dresses she had in her mind. Well she supposed something sober would work, something ankle-length and black, perhaps. She was definitely not going to include leather in whatever outfit she would wear that day.

She wished –

She stopped and sniffed the air. There was a very familiar scent coming from outside the window of the room where she had retreated to try on the dress. The room was at the back of the Watch house, hardly used except for officers to stop by for a quick nap before shifts, but it was the only room where she could find a mirror at this time. The scent was heading to the front entrance of the Watch house. Well it was now or never – Angua pulled the dress over her head and quickly dressed herself in her uniform. Then she bundled the dress back into the brown paper it had arrived in, before she hurried downstairs.

Her nose told her where to go, as did the cloud of foul-smelling smoke leading to the canteen. She paused before she reached the doorway to the canteen, checking for any conversation or smells other than the one she was looking for. All clear.

The small figure was presently on one of the tables in the canteen – Angua made a mental note to check before she ate there next time – and was busy emptying the contents of a sugar-bowl into a brown packet. He didn't look up until Angua was standing at the other end of the table; when he did look up, it was to grin at her and place the bowl back on the table.

'How you're doin', Sarge,' Nobby said, jumping off the table. 'I thought you were on your shift. You keep quiet about this, and I'll keep quiet about you and that doggie in Sator Square yesterday.'

Angua waved a hand dismissively. 'Everyone knows you're stealing the sugar. But I'll bet Vimes would be interested to know where you sell it.'

Nobby shrugged and chewed on his cigarette-end. 'Well it's better than Slab, Detritus said.'

Angua chose not to comment on Nobby's confession(2). 'Anyway, here's something for you to keep quiet about.' She deposited the dress into Nobby's eager hands.

'Here,' said Nobby, as he took out the dress, 'where – I can't be having this, sarge. It's a woman's dress, it is.'

'Yes, I know it is,' said Angua testily. 'And I want you to have it.'

'Hmm.' Nobby gave her what he thought was an appraising look, but it made him look constipated instead. 'Any answers given for why you want me to have this?'

'No.'

Nobby whistled as he tapped a dirty fingernail against the bust of the dress. 'Hey I can get thirty dollars for these. Why're they bowl-shaped?'

'Never mind what shape they are, just don't bring it back to the Watch house, Nobby.'

'Don't worry about that,' said Nobby, trotting out of the canteen with the dress.

'What you've got there, Nobby?' said Sergeant Colon and Head of Traffic of the City Watch.

Nobby held up the dress, from which he had – mercifully – stripped off the plates to be sold. 'Found this in some gutter somewhere, sarge.'

'Looks like some poor girl's lost her dress. Are you sure you're not going to put it back where you found it?' Fred Colon said in what he thought was a severe tone.

'Nobody was around, sarge.'

'Oh that's all right then,' said Colon, losing interest in the dress. He turned back to look at the traffic along Broadway, one of the busiest roads in Ankh-Morpork. It was currently full of carts and impatient drivers, as usual, with the occasional Watch officer lumbering past to clamp some unfortunate cart.

'Say, sarge, I've got an idea,' said Nobby, still holding up the dress before him.

'What is it, Nobby?'

'People'll stop for old ladies, right?'

'Of course they do. They get fined if they run over people.'

'Even when old ladies take some time to cross the road, right, sarge?'

'Yes, on account of their knees,' said Colon.

'How would anyone know they're old ladies then?' Nobby demanded.

'We-ell, they tend to complain a lot about their knees,' said Colon. He screwed up his face in the effort of thinking. 'And they tend to say things like 'oh deary me, my old feet', and 'oh how do my elbows ache'. They tend to ache all over the place, your basic old lady. That's why they have to go slow. What are you doing, Nobby?'

Nobby's head emerged from the recesses of the dress. He ripped off the bottom half of the skirt, where it was trailing in the dirt, and pulled it over his head and ears. Colon watched in increasing bemusement as Nobby pulled and secured the sleeves over his skinny arms with safety pins he produced from somewhere.

'It never says how long we should wait before we clamp carts right, sarge?' Nobby said innocently. 'Or why they should be clamped, on account for not moving.'

'Nobby – '

'You wait here, sarge, for the look of the thing. I'll just cross Broadway and head up that alley there – and I'll be back in a jiff, don't you worry.'

A slow grin spread over Colon's face. 'Right you are, Nobby.'

When Vimes finally caught on to the traffic hoax sometime later, it was Angua who persuaded a sulky Nobby to get rid of the dress.

'I like the dress,' said Nobby, glaring at her as he held on tightly to the mass of lace. 'And Vimes just wants me to stop holding up traffic because Vetinari made him look stupid.'

'Yes, we all know that, but he wants you to get rid of it.'

'He just said the wig,' said Nobby stubbornly.

'And the dress.'

'Who's going to be the decoy when we do the Shades shift then?'

'I could do it next time.'

'But I like – '

'Corporal Nobbs, give me the dress right now.' There was a hint of a snarl in Angua's voice this time.

Nobby handed the dress over without another word. 'Cheery said the dress looked familiar.'

Angua kept her face carefully blank as she bundled what was left of the dress into her locker. 'Did she?'

'Yeah, and I heard her asking why you didn't wear the dress she made for you to the opera.'

Damn the Times and their stupid iconographs! 'Really,' said Angua.

Nobby took the cigarette end from behind his ear and began sucking on it. 'I'm not lending you my handbag for the shift.'

Angua sighed. 'All right, I'll get you another one of my dresses. Deal?'

Nobby held out a hand to her. 'Deal.' Angua didn't take his hand.

'Get rid of this for me,' she said, taking the dress out of the locker and dropping it into Nobby's arms. 'Throw it into the Ankh – no, bad idea – burn it, do anything. Just get rid of it. And don't talk about it to Cheery.'

'Will do, sarge.' Nobby left the locker room, leaving a cloud of smoke in his wake.

'Oh, and Nobby?' Angua called before he was out of earshot.

'Yeah?'

'If Vimes catches you in another dress, it's your problem.'

'Okay, sarge.'

(1) Of course there were several things that she knew she shouldn't do, i.e. asking questions such as "How short is this opera going to be, hur hur?" or "So this is all about gold?" would be guaranteed suicide.

(2) There had been no reports of trolls getting high on sugar, after all, and the Watch petty cash box had been noticeably heavier for the past weeks.