The Room From Which No One Can Escape

by DictionaryWrites

A new trend takes the city of Ankh-Morpork by storm, and leads to some strange revelations.

A/N: This fic is also on Ao3, and you may prefer to read it there, because the footnotes are actually hyperlinked, whereas here on FFN, they can't be. Hit me up on Dreamwidth or Ao3 at DictionaryWrites, and I also run a Dreamwidth comm for Discworld stuff called OnTheDisc.

On a normal Octeday afternoon, a new business opens up on Furtive Forth Street in the great city of Ankh-Morpork, several doors up from the Crumley's Department Store[1]. It is not an especially exciting-looking storefront: the front window contains naught more than velvet curtains that hide the rest of the business' innards from any curious passers-by, and the little stage is bare and slightly dusty.

The window, at six o'clock in the morning, is bare.

By seven o'clock, in golden letters that seemed to fade and peel even as they are applied[2], bold text is applied to the window's surface, and several individuals stop and peer at it, fascinated.

THE ROOM FROM WHICH NO ONE CAN ESCAPE!

On the door, in the same gold lettering, are opening hours, printed in the same peeling, golden letters:

· OPEN MORNINGS FROM NINE O'CLOCK TO TWELVE O'CLOCK MIDNIGHT

· THREE UNIQUE EXPERIENCES

· BOOKINGS AVAILABLE IN ADVANCE

· ARE YOU UP FOR THE CHALLENGE?

The people of Ankh-Morpork have select loves. They adore scandal, and live for strife; they engage very favourably with The Right Opinions, so long as those opinions are proffered in The Right Tone, and although they many of them are generally opposed to living under the rule of a Tyrant[3], most of them would freely admit that he keeps the city in relatively good shape. Ultimately, the average citizen of Ankh-Morpork loves drama, and they love street theatre.

Anything out of the ordinary soon travels fast on the wings of public opinion.

---

"It's a what?" William de Worde, editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times, asks, staring at his Chief Iconographer through the discomforting haze of a thick hangover. They had been out the night before, and, thoroughly enjoying a night off that was rarely afforded them, William had overindulged.

Otto Chriek, breeder of strange eels and iconographer extraordinaire, is not hungover. Vampires do not get hangovers unless they drink blood from drunk people, and Otto Chriek, as a Black Ribboner, drinks no blood at all. Otto Chriek is currently standing with his hands on his hips, a motion that William is dimly aware he has picked up from Sacharissa[4], and looking at William with a lot of expectation on his face, over the black lenses of his little spectacles.

"A room from vhich no one can escape," Otto repeats, with exaggerated patience. "Villiam, you should not have drunk so much last night. I had to be carryink you to bed!"

"You always carry me to bed," William says. His throat feels like he has been gargling glass, and it currently feels as if a team of dwarfs are hammering the inside of his skull, prospecting for gold there.

"Yes, but this time, I had to," Otto says plaintively. "It is very undignified for a young man to have to be carried to bed."

"You carried Sacharissa to bed," William points out.

"Ah, that is different," Otto says. "I alvays carry Sacharissa to bed."

William narrows his eyes slightly, and he squints at Otto for a few seconds. Through the extremely slow function of an overwrought mind, puzzle pieces settle into place, and then says, slowly, "I feel like you're making fun of me."

Otto smiles, showing some very sharp teeth. "Villiam, I am alvays makink fun of you. Unless I make the fun, vhere is the fun to be had?"

"In bed," William says, dryly, and Otto laughs.

"Come. Up, up, and toward zem."

"At them," William corrects. He does not move from where he is slumped at his desk.

"At who?"

"Whom."

"Get up!" Otto demands, and William winces at the noise when he claps his pale hands together.

"Why do I have to go?" he asks plaintively, not even making a scant effort to match Otto's fervour. Ordinarily, William sleeps little and wakes sometime before the rise of the sun, but a bottle of fine whiskey had been split between he and Sacharissa, and he is struggling to rise above the dry-mouthed, skull-splitting oblivion it has rendered. "Send another reporter."

"I vill not," Otto says, now crossing his arms over his chest[5] and looking down at William defiantly. "Ve vill go, and ve will investigate, please!"

"Take Sacharissa. Where is Sacharissa?" William, that morning, had been all but dragged out of bed by Otto, who had pulled William into a hot bath with him, and whilst William had enjoyed the hot water, he had been in a stupor much of the time, and had neglected to keep track of his wife. Once he and Otto had dressed, making their way across the street to the Times' office, he had just assumed she was also dressed, but…

Otto gives him a guilty look. "Sacharissa is in bed," he says.

"What!? Why is she in bed, and I'm awake? She wasn't as drunk as me!"

"She says it is not proper for a young lady to appear in public vithout her proper composure."

"Come on," William mutters, rubbing hard at his eye. "If I'm going, she's going."

"But—"

"No, no," William snaps, swaying a little at the top of the stairs and regaining his balance[6] before descending them entirely without grace. At the base of the landing, when he sways and nearly stumbles, Otto's strong hands catch him beneath his underarms, holding him up from the ground.

"Maybe you should go back to bed, hm?" Otto muses. "You feel sick?"

"No, I don't feel sick," William lies. "I feel like Sacharissa needs to get out of bed and come with us."

"She von't like that," Otto says grimly.

"In sickness or in health, Otto!"

They cross Gleam Street, and they move up the stairs and into the house that the three of them share together, and have shared for the past few years. In the beginning, William had expected eyebrows to be raised on the subject of his and Sacharissa's marriage, and certainly for eyebrows to be raised at the fact that Otto lives with them, but—

Well.

The three of them, as professionals, are rather adept at neatly side-stepping personal questions, and the few people that realise precisely what their living situation is don't care enough to comment upon it. It's curious, exactly how much one's personal life can go unnoticed if you keep the focus on other people's for a living.

William trips on the stairs, groaning as his head lurches uncomfortably, but then he manages to crawl up the rest of them and, with no small amount of panache, he shoves open the bedroom door. Sacharissa isn't there, and the bed has been neatly made. Frowning, William takes a step across the hall, and throws open the door to their home office, which adjoins Otto's personal dark room.

Fully-dressed, her back straight, Sacharissa is writing up some notes from yesterday evening, and she glances back at them. Unlike William, she does not look like she is dying a thousand deaths all at once: she looks positively radiant, her features aglow with morning enthusiasm, and William stares at her despondently.

"Ah, my love!" Otto says, leaning forward and cupping her cheek, and pretending not to be surprised. "You are avake!"

"Barely," Sacharissa says, delicately wiping over a beautifully made-up eye, the very image of—

Of—

Of something very nice. William can't quite think of something, in the moment.

"I love you," William says miserably.

"Thank you," Sacharissa says, reaching out and touching her fingers against William's sweating forehead. "I love you too. Are you alright?"

"He is very hungover," Otto says disapprovingly. "But I did not realize how much vhen I took him across the streetway, so ve should—"

"We are going," William says, emphatically, "to the room from which no one can escape!"

Sacharissa blinks. "The what?" she asks, and William grasps hold of a handful of Otto's tightly-tailored trousers, looking at him pleadingly to explain.

Otto gives him a sympathetic look, cupping the back of William's head with a very cold hand, and William lets his head drop against Otto's hip, his cheek resting against the vampire's side[7]. Otto's freezing fingers are very soothing where they comb through William's hair, and Sacharissa reaches out, interlinking her fingers with William's own.

"I vill explain," he murmurs. "But maybe you should go back to bed, hm?"

"Why did you get me up?"

"Vell," Otto says, arching one eyebrow. "Last night, you said to me, you said, Otto, zis is an order, and I said, oh, are you orderink me now? This is a turn-up for the bookinks—"

"It's books, Otto, it's just books, what is a turn-up for the bookings?"

"Vhat is a turn-up for the books, please? Turn-up is either on trousers or a root vegetable, I do not see—"

"Boys," Sacharissa says, squeezing William's hand. "I don't think it matters, and in the event it does, it's a gambling term, as in turning up a good card. A turn-up is something lucky happening, and "for the books" refers to the historical novelty of the luck itself. i.e. this is so lucky and unexpected it should be documented." Ah, Sacharissa. She's just so… sensible.

"Oh," William says.

"I knew zat," says Otto, who had not.

Sacharissa look between the two of them with the warm affection of a woman who is very, very tired, but loves her spouse(s) very, very much. "What did he say last night, Otto?"

"You said," Otto continues, playing his thumb delicately over the back of William's head, "zis is an order, and you must not vake up Mrs Sacharissa in the morning, and you must make sure I get out of bed, because, and I qvote, "de Vordes don't get hangovers"."

William searches the depths of his black memory, through which he can vaguely discern ordering a bottle of whiskey in the bar, after which he can recall absolutely nothing else. He feels like someone's poured ink into his skull, and his memory is a sea of black. "I don't remember that," he mutters.

"Oh, really? You surprise me, my darlink," Otto murmurs. "Anyvay, zere is… News. The Room From Vhich No Von Can Escape, hm? It is, ah, a game."

"A game?" Sacharissa repeats. "I don't understand. A board game?"

"I don't know!" Otto says excitedly, and then he smiles, and William stares up at his beatific expression, halfway between feeling in love and in the grave. "But I sure vould like to find out, hm?"

Curiosity distantly thrums in William's stomach, and more so flickers the desperate knowledge that if this is a story, they need to get there before one of the other papers… He looks longingly across the hallway, to the empty bedroom, and then stands messily to his feet.

"Aren't you hungover?" he asks Sacharissa.

"Yes," she says, blinking at him. "Can't you tell? I look dreadful."

He stares at her disbelievingly.

"Let's go, then," he says woodenly. "Up and toward them."

---

The crowd is very small, thus far, because not much can actually be seen. Sacharissa leads the way through the little group of people[8], and William can see that a man is coming out from the door, his hands up above his head.

He is a gigantic man.

Six feet tall, with shoulders like a cart horse and his muscles rippling under the tight fabric of his suit, which seems to have been made for a man a good deal smaller than him, he is also… grizzled. His hair is made up of thick, messy curls on top, with a short beard: the hair on top is a dirty steel grey, and his beard is a palette of blacks and greys. Scars litter his face, a rough scar splitting one of his eyebrows and leaving a mess of shiny skin around the eye; more marks and cuts are all over his face, including a rough split in his lip that leaves a strange gap in his beard, yielding the white skin underneath it, a lot paler than the tanned skin of the rest of his face.

"Oh, vow!" he hears Otto say enthusiastically, and he steps to the side to allow him to set up his iconograph.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" the gigantic man rumbles, and William feels himself lean back slightly at the way his voice splits the air like a shot from a cannon, easily heard over the hundred or so people gathered about Furtive Forth Street. "The Room From Which No One Can Escape is an experience the likes of which you have never known!"

"What's your name, sir?" William calls, and the old man glances, and his blood-shot eyes flit over William, Sacharissa, and Otto, standing in a trio together, and then he smiles. His teeth are a uniform grey not dissimilar to the paler patches of grey in his hair, and they are messy and uneven, like tiles on a roof after a hurricane.

Puffing out his chest, the man says, "Me, madam? I am Peter Entrappe, with thirty years' experience as a prison officer in Genua!" he declares, his voice booming over the crowd. "And myself and my team have an experience the likes of which you have never known!"

William and Sacharissa share a glance[9]. It is the sort of look that comes from certain kinds of relationships – relationships where the members are on equal footing, where they share a sort of mutual energy. A lot can be communicated with a look like that. This one communicated a few things at once: let's come at him from both sides; he's working to a script, and once he comes off-script, many things will be revealed; and Gods, are you really hungover? Honestly, you look fine.[10]

"Behind me," declares Peter Entrappe, "are The Rooms From Which No One Can Escape! There are three separate experiences, each with their own attached little story, and the challenge is simple. Yourself and any members of your team – your loved ones, your friends – for a small fee, will be locked in one of our rooms. Within, there are a great many clues, puzzles, riddles, and challenges. A timer will be set for an hour, and your goal is to escape before the timer runs out!"

There is a stunned silence.

"Just to clarify, Mr Entrappe," Sacharissa says, her notebook out, her pencil poised. "You want people to pay you to be kept captive?"

Entrappe grins, spreading out two arms like great tree trunks, and William blinks as the iconograph flashes brightly beside them, taking in an etching of Entrappe just before the window of the storefront. "If they're up to the challenge," he says, with a terrifying wink, and William can't help the way his lip twitches as the crowd suddenly roars its approval.

The people of Ankh-Morpork love a spectacle.

---

"Alright, alright, I've got it," Sacharissa says, all but falling over as she rushes toward the door with Otto and William quick on her heels, and she turns the key in the lock. Finally, finally, the key turns, and they push the door open to be face-to-face with Mr Entrappe and his assistant, Max Canton, waiting at the door.

Breathing heavily, William glances to Otto, who laughs, and claps his hands together.

"Ve did it, yes?" he asks. Sacharissa's hand is against her breast, and William can see the way she is breathing heavily, a beautiful smile on her face.

"You did it!" Canton says brightly. "With seconds to spare!"

"Ah, well," Sacharissa says. "We'd usually have done it much faster. Wouldn't we, William?" Her competitive streak is lilting out of her a little bit, and William hesitates, glancing to Otto, who holds up his hands in the universal gesture of, "No, I am not touching that vith the longest pole imaginable."

"Thank you, Mr Entrappe," he says instead of either agreeing or disagreeing, and he beams brightly. "Well done!"

"Could we take an iconograph of you?" Canton asks eagerly. "To put on our wall?"

"On your wall?" Sacharissa repeats, and she follows him downstairs, where he has set up three blackboards against one of the walls in the office, where a waiting room has been hastily made.

"We're going to write up the times people did the rooms in," the young man says eagerly, and William takes him in. He's a good deal younger than Mr Entrappe, and seems to be his right hand. It had been Canton who'd explained the rules of the game as he'd brought them up the stairs. "So people can try to lead the board, you see? And the current leaders will be in an iconograph at the top, holding a board that says what time they did it in!"

"You could even sell these," Otto says approvingly, grinning brightly in a way that seems to make Canton and the receptionist, a young woman named Penelope, a little bit nervous, perhaps because of the way it bares his teeth. "People vould buy these, no, for a frame, Sacharissa?"

"Yes," Sacharissa says brightly. "We certainly will[11]."

William smiles.

This had been…

He hadn't known what to expect, before the game had begun, but it had been enjoyable. It had been fun. Even hungover, and exhausted, the three of them had had fun.

Locked into the room, the three of them had had to look about the room, to find puzzles and keys. There had been all manner of keys, and none of them, to begin with, had fit into the actual door – they'd fit into little boxes or into secreted compartments about the room, and there had been riddles…

It had been fun.

William steps to the left, allowing Sacharissa to step between him and Otto, and Sacharissa holds up the board that says, in neatly printed chalk letters,

WE ESCAPED!

59:12

The iconograph flashes, and Otto barely flinches at the bright flash, although his grip momentarily tightens on the back of William's coat, and William thinks the vampire is steaming slightly. "Now," Otto says nonetheless, with enthusiasm. "Let me take a picture of you!"

---

NEW PARLOUR GAME TAKES CITY BY STORM

WE ESCAPED THE ROOM FROM WHICH NO ONE CAN ESCAPE!

The Ankh-Morpork Times is delighted to give our readers the inside scoop on the new experience to be found at 32 Furtive Forth Street. From the outside, The Room From Which No One Can Escape doesn't look like much – golden letters on an empty, dusty shop front, and a door that creaks ominously as one pushes it inward…

But inside is a novel and exciting experience for any fan of puzzles, riddles, or adventure!

"Don't chew on Dribble, Sam, he doesn't like it," Sybil says distractedly, while trying unsuccessfully to darn a sock[12]. Vimes glances up from the paper, and at Young Sam and Dribble. Both boy and dragon look equally perplexed, and all three of them turn back to Sybil, who takes a second to twig before she says, "I meant— Dribble, don't chew on Sam!"[13]

Guiltily, the dragon takes his blunt teeth from Sam's toes, but Sam, not to be deterred by such a thing as a swamp dragon's teeth, just laughs and throws his arms around Dribble's neck, leaning into the old dragon.

Dribble rumbles out a noise not dissimilar to a purr, and Vimes feels himself smile.

"Is there much news about the railway?" Sybil asks, setting the scornful sock aside and buttering a piece of toast like she's trying to punish it for a crime. Vimes shakes his head.

"No… There's this new thing on in Furtive Forth Street... Seems stupid enough to me. You pay them, and they lock you in this room, and then you try to get out." It's early in the morning, and neither of them had gotten much sleep last night – one of the swamp dragons has a terrible case of grotejossom[14], and had needed a lot of convincing to settle down for the night; Young Sam has no such illness, but had been grizzling due to a funny dream, and the screams from the dragon pens (both from the ill dragon and the healthy dragons he was keeping awake) that woke him up every time he finally settled down weren't much helping.

"Seamstress' Guild, is it?" Sybil asks, frowning and leaning forward to read the article as best she can, upside down.

"No, it's just… Like those young lads at the Historians' Guild who dress up as soldiers so they can play at dying gloriously all day," Vimes mutters. "Playing roles… You're locked in one of these rooms, and you need to escape before the worst happens. Seems like nonsense to me."

"Oh, I don't know," Sybil murmurs, giving him a warm smile. It's the sort of smile that still makes Vimes' heart beat a little faster in his chest. "I rather like the idea of you making a dashing escape from a prison cell."

"You like the idea of me locked up, you mean?" Vimes replies, and Sybil gives a teasing shrug of her shoulders. As Vimes drops down onto the floor and sweeps both his son and his son's favourite dragon into his lap, Sybil takes up the article, and reads the article aloud – this time from the interview with the business' proprietor, Mr Peter Entrappe, and his assistant, Max Canton. She likes to read from the newspaper in the mornings – she says that it's good for Young Sam's development to hear a lot of new language, and Vimes would guess she's right. So long as Young Sam doesn't grow up with a predilection for interesting-looking vegetables, of course.

What gave you the idea to start the business?

E: Well, I'd say it's just as being part of the prison guard back in Genua. We'd have to be creative to keep the inmates from getting out of their cells, but we had hundreds of inmates at any one time, each of them trying to come up with his own way to escape.

C: They'd get very creative about it! It was incredible, the way some prisoners could hide things in their cells, things you'd never even begin to know how to look for, to begin with, but once you'd been a guard for any length of time, you learned how to look for the clues, the secreted items here and there.

E: And watching Max here start to enjoy looking through the cells for one clue or other, it got the mind turning, you see!

"Entrappe," Sybil repeats as Vimes drops back onto the floor. Young Sam laughs, dropping on his belly against Vimes' chest; Dribble, ungracefully and seemingly without the will to right himself, slides uselessly to the tile beside them, and Vimes and Young Sam each give the elderly dragon a critical look. "That's a very good name for his line of work, isn't it?"

"He probably picked it himself," Vimes mutters.

"Oh, Sam, don't be uncharitable," Sybil says.

"Yes, dear."

A beat passes. "He absolutely did, though."

Vimes laughs, and Young Sam bobs with the rise and fall of his chest, giggling himself.

"The thing I don't understand," Sybil murmurs, paging through the two pages of the interview. "Surely they didn't have all the skill to put this together? All these little puzzled away boxes, and all these locks and such? If they were prison guards, I mean."

"Dad," Young Sam says urgently, and when Vimes looks at him expectantly, Young Sam squeezes his nose with one pudgy hand.

"Cheers for that, lad," Vimes says, and Young Sam beams a smile of bright, still-new teeth. Still looking at Young Sam, and affectionately petting through his curling hair, which is beginning to get longer, he adds to Sybil, "They probably hire someone in for it. A group of lads into that sort of thing, but not so much into the public attention. You know what engineers are like. Young Dick Simnel will never stand still for an interview with anyone – they only ever send the reporters that can keep up with him, and half of them have to jog. I expect they're all a bit like that, men focused on their work, not really able to take a moment to—"

Sybil is looking at him in a sort of wry way, and Vimes scowls.

"Well," he says, bouncing Young Sam in his place and making the boy giggle. "I'm not an engineer, Sybil."

"No, dear," she agrees faux-seriously. "There's no mention here of a team, though. Mr Entrappe seems quite keen to take credit for everything."

Vimes shrugs his shoulders, and he sits up, letting Sam settle on his lap instead. Dribble wails mournfully, and Sybil reaches out with her boot, scratching his belly with the rubber sole. Dribble's dirge comes to a burbled stop.

---

Novelty in Ankh-Morpork is much like a comet entering the atmosphere. Assuming the break through the stratosphere is successful, on the dive downward, they do not slow down – instead, they become faster and faster, the burning heat of ingenuity coiling and gathering in the very core of that idea so that when it really hits, it can explode outward.

Within a month, there are escape rooms popping up all over the city of Ankh-Morpork.

Some of them focus more on the narrative – members of various thespian guilds focus on the pageantry of it all, and create rooms where one plays the role of one terrified of their kidnapper; where one is a desperate patient attempting to escape their quarantine; where one has the unlikely knowledge that will help them save the Disc, but only if they escape this room before the hourglass runs out. Some of them focus more on the puzzles themselves – there are rooms full to the brim with keys, and only five locks that need them; there are rooms that focus on wordplay and riddles; there are rooms that seem empty when you go in, and by the time you escape, they seem cluttered.

There are even escape rooms especially made for trolls, which are refrigerated[15] and take into account the natural strength of the troll customer: keys and other clues are hidden in rocks and heavy implements that need to be smashed. These escape rooms are expensive to get off the ground, but highly lucrative.

The fact that most attempts at escape from these games are met with failure doesn't seem to deter anybody. In fact, the lower the completion rate of the game, and the higher the average time it takes to complete, the more interesting and appealing the game is to the consumer.

In the Oblong Office, the seat of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Havelock Vetinari looks out over the city through his favourite window, his hands loosely held behind his back. It is a sunny day, and the streets are bustling with people – no doubt many of them are going off to appointments with escape rooms, and Vetinari is quietly thoughtful.

"Drumknott?" he asks. The clerk, who had been sitting at the small desk he has in the corner of Lord Vetinari's office, ordinarily for taking dictation, but in this moment poring over a complicated cipher, glances up.

"My lord?"

"Vincent Wilkinson," he says, musingly, in the voice his clerk is used to listening to very carefully. This musing tone, full to the brim with pensive thought, is usually the sign of something complicated on the horizon, and possibly, something dangerous[16]. "Has he made the acquaintance of our friend, Mr Faigle?"

"Howard Faigle, my lord?" Drumknott asks. "No, I don't believe so. Mr Wilkinson is a smuggler; Mr Faigle is a gambler and a poet. There's never been a reason for them to cross paths."

"They should," Vetinari decides. "They would work well to a common goal." No further explanation is made: no further explanation is necessary. The cogitation of the master's mind and the clerk's are uncomfortably well-synchronised – this works very well for Vetinari and Drumknott, and usually rather ill for most of those in the city.

At his desk, Drumknott smiles slightly[17], and gives an inclination of his head. "Very well, sir," he says, taking a note in a diary that would be impossible for anyone bar Vetinari himself to decipher. "I will set the wheels in motion."

"Very good," Vetinari murmurs.

---

"Peter," Max Canton says desperately, and although they've had this conversation a hundred times before, he still feels the needs to bring it up, because it's just… It's right. It's not fair, the way that the team are shoved aside again and again and again. "We should let them take credit for it. The actual engineering is all down to them, and it's so impressive—"

Peter Entrappe lets out a growl of noise, waving his hand.

"They wouldn't be anything without us," Entrappe says, in the self-important tone of one saying "us" when he means "me". "You remember that!"

"But I—"

Entrappe is already walking away, down the street, and Canton watches after him, sighing softly.

"It isn't fair," he mutters to himself, and he descends the basement, back into the workshop.

---

William takes a step into the offices of The Room From Which No One Can Escape. There is no one as yet in the waiting room, and sitting at the desk in the corner of the room is Penelope, who stands to her feet and gives William a small smile.

"I got a tip," William says with a bright smile, and he turns to look at the blackboards that declare the top times of each of their escape rooms. On the leaderboards for the Black Room and the Blue Room, the times are as one would expect – the quickest are closer to fifty minutes than to forty, and both have iconographs of big groups.

The Black Room has a smiling line-up of people William recognises – Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson of the City Watch holds the board, and around him are some others of the Watch. He recognises Angua, Cheri Littlebottom, and the Igor that works downstairs in Pseudopolis Yard, but there are two other officers with them too…

The Blue Room has a mix of young people, none of them older, William doesn't think, than 17.

The Red Room, however[18], lacks an iconograph. In the blank square where the iconograph would be placed, there is instead merely text that reads VINCENT WILKINSON & HOWARD FAIGLE – 14:14.

Fourteen minutes. Fourteen minutes.

The next-highest time reads forty-eight, and these two men – Wilkinson and Faigle – did it in less than twenty. Staring at the leaderboard for a long few moments, William recalls they'd had to follow – they'd searched the entire room, but there had been multiple clues that could have fitted different puzzles within the room, and there were red herrings, and distracting implements…

Fourteen minutes.

Turning slowly, he looks back at Penelope.

"Isn't it incredible?" she asks softly. "Max and his team were up all night trying to figure out how they did it."

"His team?" William repeats, and Penelope takes on the wide-eyed look of a girl who's mistakenly revealed too much, and immediately she stiffens, coughing a little and straightening up some papers on her desk. "Uh, Penelope, where's their iconograph? Did they refuse to take one?"

"Oh, no, no, they did," Penelope says quietly. "Er— Well, we, um, we couldn't put it up."

"Didn't it develop properly?" William asks, raising his eyebrows slightly, and Penelope risks glancing up to meet his gaze. She's biting down on her lip in a slightly anxious fashion, and there's an uncertain flush on her cheeks.

"Oh, it developed just fine, I think," she says. "But we can't put it up."

William frowns. It developed just fine, but they can't put it up… Well, perhaps one of them made some sort of lewd gesture, or flashed the camera – certainly, there are people who would do that sort of thing here in Ankh-Morpork. Otto certainly means enough individuals eager to show him the funny-looking vegetables they have in their trousers, and seem to take the presence of an iconograph as a cue to spontaneously undress.

"May I see the photograph?" William asks, and Penelope hesitates.

"Er," she says. "Will you publish it in your newspaper?" she asks.

"I don't know," William replies, with a friendly, teasing smile[19]. "Is it newsworthy?"

"Well— It's not that we have anything against this sort of thing, you know. But Mr Entrappe was right upset, and Mr Canton and his t— Mr Canton doesn't have anything against it, and nor do I. It's just that if we put it up, people would complain, Mr Entrappe said, and especially because we're here on Furtive Forth Street, we want to be family-friendly, you know? We don't want anyone to complain about our values as a business."

"I understand," William says, his mind working overtime. What did these men do? "May I?"

Penelope leans back, and she opens up a filing cabinet, rifling through before taking out an iconograph, and she holds it out to William. He reaches out, taking the iconograph, and for just a moment, he takes it in.

The iconograph is in full-colour, and has been artfully rendered by the imp in their iconograph. In the photograph, he sees two gentlemen. One is an older man, tall and square with stout shoulders. He has a crop of dark brown hair that is straight and long, combed back from his face, and he has a thick beard that is turning silver in places, the grey showing through. He's in his fifties, perhaps, and although it's difficult to tell exactly, it looks as if he has brown eyes. The other is younger, in his twenties or thirties, and he has a crop of very fashionably-cut black hair that hangs down a little over his forehead, and his skin is very pale, and he's much smaller than the older man.

He thinks there must be a significant height difference, but it's not easy to tell exactly how significant that height difference might be.

This is because the younger man is wrapped bodily around the elder, his arms thrown around his neck, his legs wrapped around his waist and locked behind him, the elder's hands on his waist as they embrace, kissing passionately for the iconograph.

William doesn't allow his expression to change as he stares down at the iconograph.

There is no law against men lying with men in Ankh-Morpork, nor against women lying with women. Certainly, there are men who are even somewhat public about their engagement with one another, despite disapproval from various (non-vampiric) temperance leagues or commentators on morality, and indeed from a handful of priests and religious leaders. With that said, it is…

It is not something that is spoken about.

In the Ankh-Morpork Times, they're usually careful about how they speak about some sorts of people, and those who are attracted to those of the same gender come under that umbrella, not just to protect the Times – although this is a concern, as they want to avoid any very big attempts at boycotts or the like in favour of other newspapers – but to protect the people. There is a concern, after all, about appearing with one's name, age, and address when there are those out in the city who might seek them out with thoughts of violence or humiliation.

William wishes, on some level, that it was different.

He and Sacharissa both love Otto dearly, and although the vampire doesn't seem to care much about not being able to acknowledge the facts of their relationship in public, he wishes he could. He and Sacharissa may not be flagrant about their personal connection, but they can still wear their wedding rings, can still acknowledge that they have a wife, a husband. They can't include Otto in that. Even if they weren't the sort of people they are, private and careful about their personal lives, they still couldn't…

But these two men, kissing, and, William would guess, having caught the iconographer by surprise…

"Which one's which?" he asks.

"Oh, the big one, that's Wilkinson, and, uh, and the smaller one, um, he's… That's Faigle."

That's…

There's a story here.

Either way, there's a story in the actual fact of it – fourteen minutes is an insane amount of time to complete one of these games in it, but there's something about the two of them, in the iconograph, that speak to him. There's a certain instinct you get, for a story that's really going to take you, and these men…

He wants an interview.

"What do you remember about them?" he asks, and Penelope glances up at him, thoughtful.

"Er, well— Mr Wilkinson, he was sort of in charge, I suppose. Mr Faigle didn't actually want to go into the room, at first – he said that they were here because Mr Wilkinson wanted to do it, and that he didn't want to get in the way, and Mr Wilkinson argued with him and said that the whole point of it was that he wanted to do it together.

"I didn't realize, that they were… You know, they've got very different accents, so I didn't think they were father and son, but I just thought that they were friends, or maybe that they worked together somewhere. Mr Faigle has a very posh voice, like you—"

William smiles, and Penelope flushes slightly.

"Sorry, is that rude?"

"No," William says. "No, I don't think so. I know what I sound like."

"Well, he has a voice like yours. Not Mr Wilkinson, though – I think he's from further north, like he's from Octarine Grass Country, you know? That sort of area."

"Right," William says, making a few quick notes. "So Mr Wilkinson had to convince Mr Faigle to come and do the room with him?"

"Yes," Penelope says. "But they did so well, you know, we were shocked to see them again so quickly, and then… And you know, Max asked if they wanted to take an iconograph, and Mr Faigle said no, until Mr Wilkinson whispered in his ear, but we thought he was just trying to convince him, and— Well."

"Well?" William asks, seeing the way she trails off and latching onto it.

"Well, just that… I think that maybe Mr Wilkinson just said he was going to pick Mr Faigle up. I don't think Mr Faigle expected to be kissed, especially not while being lifted off the ground like that. He came over very faint afterwards, and Wilkinson just wouldn't stop laughing." Penelope's lips quirk slightly up, and William sees the way that her eyes shift as she looks back on the memory, as she thinks about it. "It was nice, Mr de Worde. I suppose I just felt bad that we couldn't put their picture up, when they were such a nice couple."

"They live here in Ankh-Morpork?"

"Oh, yes, I think so," Penelope says. "Mr Canton already knew them from one pub or other, out on Legitimate Lane, The Marquis of something, I think? They have a boxing gymnasium, and a lot of the men are very fond of fisticuffs, but Mr Faigle drinks in there quite a lot."

"The Marquis, on Legitimate Lane," William says, taking that note down. "Thank you, Penelope. If they come in again for something, would you tell them I'd be interested in an interview?"

"Of course," Penelope says, taking the iconograph back and putting it carefully back into the filing cabinet. "You won't do anything nasty, will you, Mr de Worde? Just because they're…?"

"Oh no," William assures her. "No, I promise you, I wouldn't."

And why would he?

But there are some people, he knows, who would… And that, he supposes, is neither here nor there.

---

"I saw Rufus on the way to the Sanctuary yesterday afternoon," Sybil says conversationally, over dinner. The dinner in question is an extremely tough piece of meat that Vimes believes was once beef, and is picking at idly. This is not because he doesn't like it – Vimes is merely not one with a great appetite, and he tends to eat slowly, bit by bit.

"Rufus?" he echoes. "Who's that?"

"Rufus Drumknott, Sam," Sybil says patiently, in the patient voice of spouses everywhere when speaking with their beloved partner, who has apparently never remembered anyone's name in the history of their lifetime, and likely never will[20].

"Oh," Vimes says, and his nose wrinkles at the idea of the Patrician's clerk being referred to as Rufus. "What was he doing there?"

"He likes dragons, you know," Sybil says, as if this is the sort of thing that should immediately assure one that the person in question is a good sort. Of course, she's right – anyone who could look at a swamp dragon, sickly, ugly, strange, and often bad-tempered, and still treat it with the benefit of the doubt, let alone affection, is likely to be an understanding person in general. More likely, of course, is that they're utterly mad.[21] "But no, he was just out for a walk, and thought he'd come and say hello. He'd been in the Wizard's Quarter all day."

"The Wizard's Quarter? Why?"

"Oh, I don't know, it was his day off," Sybil says. "He's got all sorts of hobbies, that young man – the stationery, the trains… He usually comes around when Havelock does, you know."

Vimes considers this for a moment. He is aware, of course, that "Havelock" and Sybil occasionally take tea together. The Patrician's pure black coach will be parked alongside Sybil's battered and slightly charred one, and Vimes is dimly aware that while Sybil always sends him a card at Hogswatch[22] amidst the flurry of other cards she sends out, she also receives a card addressed to Sybil and her family, always signed with a neat H. The nature of this friendship is not one that Vimes likes to consider too critically, as the idea of Lord Vetinari drinking tea with his wife is sometimes too abstract to devote one's full attention to.

What he had never considered, of course, is Vetinari bringing his clerk.

"Why?" he asks. "What does Drumknott do, take minutes?"

Sybil, for a moment, looks very thoughtful. "You know," she says finally, "I don't think Havelock really likes having him far out of sight, necessity notwithstanding. He was very worried about him, what with that incident a few years back, when those men attacked him in the Oblong Office."

"Vetinari was worried about Drumknott?" Vimes asks sceptically.

"Well, Sam," Sybil murmurs, furrowing two very singed eyebrows and giving Vimes a critical look. "You know, it isn't— I don't think that Rufus is just his clerk."

Vimes stares at his wife, blankly, for a second. "He's also his…?" Sybil keeps his gaze, and the slow dawning of understanding is one Vimes would rather have done without. "Oh," he says. "Oh, Gods. But he's— Sybil, Vetinari's so old!"

"He's only a few years older than us, Sam, he's not exactly antediluvian."

"I meant for the boy."

"Boy? Sam, Rufus is 32."

"Is he?"

"Yes, Sam."

"Oh." Vimes frowns. "He looks… younger. But still, Sybil, that's his personal clerk, it's— It's unethical, is what it is. They don't seem like they— They don't…" Vimes' mind is doing its best to untangle this particular idea, and it is not having the easiest time of it. The concept of Vetinari in any sort of personal or domestic situation is not one his brain is especially equipped for – the concept of Vetinari in a romantic entanglement is too much.

"Yes," Sybil murmurs, and she looks, for a moment, thoughtfully sad. "It's not as if they can ever really relax, is it? Even when Havelock is here for tea, Rufus ordinarily sits in the anteroom with Dewdrop – he's very concerned with propriety. More so than Havelock is himself, but then, he does have a very stout image he needs to portray, doesn't he?"

"I never thought about it," Vimes murmurs. It's true, of course – Lord Vetinari is not the sort of person who would be well-pressed to have much of a personal life. Even if he had the time, between running the city at all hours of the day, he has to appear a certain way. "Gods."

"Oh, don't say anything," Sybil murmurs. "He's never even told me. Never actually said outright, I mean. It's just been… Well, implied, I suppose. And he does care about him. I just don't imagine they can relax the same way we can, you know? We can walk out together, arm in arm, or have Sam with us, and they…"

Sybil shrugs her shoulders. "I don't know, Sam," she says. "I just think of how I didn't think much about it all, before you, and now I feel frightfully lucky with what I have here, you know?" She reaches out for his hand over the table, and Vimes feels a slight pang in his chest, interlinking their fingers. In his lap, Dewdrop grumbles at the shift in position, and tries to climb up and under Vimes' shirt.

"They probably figure something out, dear," he says, more to be comforting than because the idea comforts him.

---

In the Marquis of Fantailer, the proprietor is eager to speak with William. They're apparently very curious about Mr Faigle themselves in the Marquis, and they lean in to speak with him as he comes in.

Old Tom, an extremely battered-looking man with a permanently bent left ear[23], says, "Aye, yeah, Howard's been coming here for two or three years now. He's a wee posh lad, so he is, little man. Writes poems, reads a lot of books – you know the sort."

"What brings him here?" William asks, glancing curiously around the weatherbeaten furniture, the scuff marks on the floor, and the few tables that don't have bloodstains. "Does he fight?"

"Oh, no, sir," says Old Tom, shaking his head, and then he grins with a veritable mess of uneven teeth, some of which are missing as a result of punches to the jaw. "No, Howard, he likes a bit of a flutter, y'see? He bets on some of the fights."

"Ah," William says, giving a nod of his head. These things aren't necessarily helpful, in the scheme of things, but the fact of investigation, as a journalist, is that one wants to skirt the line between professionalism and friendliness. People aren't obligated to speak to you, so you encourage them to chat. "And do you know his friend, Vincent Wilkinson?"

"Never used to," Old Tom says, polishing a glass idly. The glass is brown with dirt, and the movements of the cloth serve only to move this dirt in rhythmic circles. "Vince is a dockworker, and he came in a few weeks back, fought a fella in the ring, but Howard'd bet on the other fella. Vince said he'd pay Howard the money he lost if Howard'd fight any man Vince picked out of the room."

"Oh, wow," William says, thinking of the little man in Wilkinson's arms. "Did he win?"

"Oh, no, absolutely not," Old Tom says. "Vince picked out Giddo Jont, who's nearly seven feet. He laid Howard out."

"Oh," William says. "What did Wilkinson say?"

"Well, he was laughing, and then Howard punched him in the jaw. I think that took him by surprise." William blinks. "But Vince grabbed him before Howard could do anything else, and pinned him 'til he calmed down. Then, Vince bought him a drink, and they were fast friends after that. They're all but inseparable now."

"That's… unorthodox," he says.

"Chalk and cheese," Old Tom agrees. "But they get on well, now. When we see Howard these past few weeks, it's usually with Vince in tow."

"When does he come in?" William asks.

"Well, there's not a particular arrangement," Old Tom says, with a shrug of two shoulders that look like they have bones sticking out in the wrong places, like bricks in a bag of flour. "They just come in when they come in."

"Do they go anywhere else?" William asks. "Is there anywhere else where Howard gambles, or where he and Vincent spend time together?"

"Well, I think Howard goes into the Quill and Comfort on the corner of Smythe's Cut and Whopping Street – there's a lot of writers who drink in there, and he goes to their poetry nights sometimes, but they're very disorganised, so they only happen now and then."

"Right," William says. "Thanks! If you see either of them, would you let them know I'm on the look-out for them? I just want to do a casual interview."

"Righto," Old Tom says.

---

"Fucking vermin," Peter Entrappe mutters to himself as he checks through the new puzzles in the Yellow Room, the newest addition to the Room From Which No One Can Escape. Max Canton, who's been "busy" today, hadn't been able yet to edit the guide to the room that his engineering team had written, and it's scrawled in stunted Morporkian, and the language is funny in places.

It has to be done, though, and this is just the right time – a pair of homos from the city had managed to do one of the rooms in fourteen damned minutes, and it's just the right time to add a new room to the line-up, even with this shite in mind.

It's distasteful, what they have to work with, but this is the right kind of divide: him and Canton upstairs, doing the writing, the management, the real part of the business, and making up the little boxes and mechanisms and that, down in the basement…

Ugh.

This being done, the compartiment in the sixth floorboard will be folding out, and on the tip top of the stick is the Dagger! This Dagger will go into the secret hole in the chest, and make it give the Big Key!

This should be the last part of the room, then. Dropping to his knees, Entrappe reaches out, and he flicks the switch on the floorboard.

The dagger all but flies through the air, the spring on the folding stick having been coiled far too tightly, and Entrappe chokes as it drives itself into his neck.

---

"Oh, sure, I know Howard Faigle," says the old man behind the bar – Eddie Jackson. He used to run the Quarton Publishing House, but retired from the business, and now runs the Quill and Comfort.

The Quill and Comfort is a warm little spot, and a fire crackles merrily in the hearth. Around the room are very comfortable armchairs with thick, soft stuffing, and neatly organised on the shelves behind the bar is a wide selection of whiskeys. The Quill and Comfort is a haunt of many writers – one or two of the junior reporters from the Times come here instead of The Devil Amongst Lawyers, but it's mostly poets and various authors doing their best to get published and failing.

"Do you know where he works?" William asks, and the old man laughs.

"Uh, Howard doesn't work, Mr de Worde," Jackson murmurs, his lips twitching in amusement beneath the gingery grey of his short beard. "He's the rich sort, you know? Gentleman at leisure. He writes a lot of poetry, but I've never actually read any of it. Half the time when he comes in here he just sips at his ginger ale and listens to other people talk. Good listener."

"Ginger ale?" William repeats. "Doesn't he drink?"

"Oh, no, almost never," Jackson says. "He said for the past few years he's had a drink with his, uh…" Jackson clears his throat, glancing at a few of the dejected patrons in the corner who, judging by the bottle of cheap whiskey between them, have just been rejected once more. He leans in slightly, and continues, "his boyfriend, you know, at Hogswatch."

"Vincent?" William asks, and Jackson shakes his head.

"Ah, no, Vincent's new," Jackson says, shrugging his shoulders. "He isn't a big drinker, though – just takes a sipping whiskey and drinks a little at a time. I've only seen him twice, though: they've only known each other a few weeks. Vincent has that man wrapped around his finger, and Howard seems pretty happy about it."

"Do you know where he works?" William asks.

"By the Linnet Dock, er… He mentioned a lad named Entwhistle, once, who he works with. He might know where one of them lives."

---

"I've met Howard Faigle a few times," Carrot says brightly. "Very nice man, but he gambles quite a bit. I've had to have words with him about making sure it's all above board, you know."

"What about Wilkinson?" Angua asks, reading the newspaper over his shoulder – apparently, these two men had done one of the original escape rooms in under twenty minutes, although there's no iconograph in the paper. Vimes understands that – if these two men have the sort of skills to break out that fast, it makes a lot of sense that they wouldn't want their photographs out. "The name rings a bell. He's a smuggler, isn't he? I remember that thing last year – half of those smugglers disappeared, and most of them, we arrested. We couldn't prove anything on Wilkinson."

"Well," Carrot says. "He does pay his taxes, and smugglers don't usually do that." He says this with some approval, but then adds, in a hopeful tone that is not especially convincing, "I'm sure he's a perfectly law-abiding citizen."

"We did one of them rooms ourselves, sir," Nobby says proudly, his arms crossed over his chest, and Carrot glances up from his copy of the Times. Vimes takes a sip of his coffee, watching as they all look sceptically at Nobby.

"And we," Angua says, "is…?"

"Me and Shine of the Rainbow," Nobby says. "I barely did anything, o'course," he adds proudly, and Vimes sighs with satisfaction. There's no one in Ankh-Morpork quite like Nobby Nobbs. Shine of the Rainbow, Nobby's new girlfriend, is a goblin, and the two of them seem to be revoltingly well-matched[24]. "Fifty minutes!"

"That's really good," Carrot says encouragingly. "But I'm sure you did something, right, Nobby?"

"Well," Nobby says. "I took a few keepsakes, like." Carrot looks at Nobby very sternly, and Nobby gives him a disarming smile[25].

"How did the group do?" Vimes asks. "A few of you did one altogether, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes," Carrot enthuses. "We set the record for the Black Room!"

"It was mostly Carrot and Cheri," Angua says. "But we all enjoyed it. You should have a go at one, Commander."

"I don't think so," Vimes mutters. "I've been enough cells without a way out. Last time, it was the Librarian who broke me out." Angua laughs a little, and they break up in the room to return to their respective paperwork, of which there seems to be more by the day.

Max Canton runs into the room, breathing heavily and with a stricken look on his face, at ten o'clock.

---

Vimes looks over the scene as Cheri Littlebottom looks over it, and one of the other officers takes an iconograph of the scene. Peter Entrappe is sprawled on the floor, his corpse still in a puddle of blood. Apparently, the wrong dagger had been put into the mechanism – instead of a blunt, ceremonial thing to be slotted into a secreted slot in the back of a chest, this was a real knife that cut right into him.

Locked into the room, where he had been completing it section by section to ensure everything was working correctly, he hadn't been discovered by Penelope, the receptionist, until another half an hour had been passed.

In the basement, a laboratory is set up, where a team of engineers have been working on the various mechanisms in the rooms, continuously creating new designs to keep the rooms fresh, as well as to replace damaged[26] parts of one game or another. The engineers are all goblins, a team of five, and all of them are very quiet now, sitting sombrely as Sergeant Angua talks with them.

All five of them deny any involvement with the murder, and, well, Vimes is fairly certain they're all being truthful.

"Was Mr Entrappe a good employer?" Angua asks.

The five goblins are very quiet, and then the leader, an elderly female goblin named Steel in the Fire, says, "It's Mr Canton who employs us, not him. He was… not nice, to goblins. Didn't want our working here, no, sir, wanted us somewhere else. Wouldn't even let Mr Canton say to reporters we make the rooms."

"Very concerned with appearances, was he?" Vimes asks, and Steel in the Fire nods miserably. He's heard the story Canton is spinning, that he lost his keys to the Room From Which No One Can Escape last night, that various people in the city would love to see this business go down so that its competitors can do better…

Canton, of course, is trembling and soaked with sweat. It's obvious enough what's happened here, and Vimes sighs. As Angua goes on with the interview, Vimes walks back up the stairs, and his gaze is drawn to the chalk leaderboard, to the photo of the smiling Watchmen who'd completed the escape room in record time.

His gaze flits over the gap, where Wilkinson and Faigle's names are, and curiosity makes itself known.

He turns back to Penelope, the receptionist, who is teary-eyed, and he asks gently, "Did you actually take an iconograph of Wilkinson and Faigle?"

"Oh," she says. "I couldn't put it up…"

"Could I see it?"

"Um—"

---

"Are you insane!?" Vimes snaps as he storms into the Oblong Office, and Lord Vetinari, as ever, utterly unflappable, glances up from the document on his desk. At his shoulder stands Drumknott, his expression focused on the page of printed text.

Vetinari exhales, his expression pensive. "It occurs to me, Commander Vimes, that I would be a somewhat biased individual to ask on the subject. Am I insane, Drumknott?"

"I don't think so, sir," Drumknott says loyally.

"Drumknott doesn't think so, Vimes."

"Drumknott is as biased as you are," Vimes retorts, and he looks between the two of them with a scowl on his face before bringing up the iconograph and showing it to them. "What in the name of Blind bloody Io is this?"

"It's a colour iconograph," Drumknott says.

"Drumknott, I swear to you, I will—"

"Your grace," Vetinari says placatingly, holding up one hand to cut Vimes' threat off as it begins[27], and Vimes grits his teeth together to keep from screaming. "I am sure both myself and my clerk are quite ignorant as to whatever has sent you into this blinding rage. Pray, enlighten us."

"Really?" Vimes asks. "You don't know who these two men are?" He glances between Vetinari and Drumknott, who are looking at him with equally blank expressions, each of them expectant. There is a subtle art to appearing entirely expressionless, and Drumknott was probably good at it before he entered Vetinari's service – now, the man is just as good as Vetinari himself, and Vimes loathes it. It all makes sense, now – it all makes sense, and he wishes it bloody didn't. "You don't know who Vincent Wilkinson and Howard Faigle are?"

"Did they play the Escape Room?" Vetinari asks.

"It's you!" Vimes growls. "It's you two, with a damned beard on your face and both of you wearing wigs, but it's obviously you. Are you mad? Are the both of you certifiable? The Patrician and his personal bloody clerk, wandering around the city in these ridiculous disguises, kissing for an iconograph—"

"I don't see the resemblance," Vetinari says innocently. Innocence doesn't well-suit the Patrician. "Drumknott?"

Drumknott gets a pinched look on his face, as if he's reluctant to speak ill, and then he says, "Your grace, without meaning to imply his lordship is— Some manner of invalid, he does require his cane to walk. He certainly couldn't lift a person and support them against his waist like that, and moreover, I—" Drumknott coughs politely, and then he says, "And, your grace, I can't really see without my glasses. I couldn't take on a disguise like that without some sort of lens over my eye."

The matter of Lord Vetinari's cane has long-since been one of thought for Vimes – the cane itself is one he ostensibly relies upon to walk, as Drumknott says, but Vimes is also aware that Vetinari retains a near-inhuman speed in conducting himself in crisis situations, a speed that would be difficult to attain with a limp. And as for Drumknott's glasses, well. If Drumknott really needs those glasses, then Vimes is a card-carrying Omnian missionary with a fish on his head.

Of course, these aren't the sorts of accusations you lay at the feet of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, nor indeed at those of his personal clerk. Well. They are. But not without Repercussions[28].

"How charitable, Drumknott, that you don't think me entirely convalescent," Vetinari says dryly, and Drumknott gives a neat inclination of his head. "Nonetheless, he is quite right."

"Is he?" Vimes asks. "You're saying this isn't you, then?"

Vetinari gives him an icy look, and Vimes' mouth dries out a little. He really did hope, as time went on, that he'd become more immune to that look, but it doesn't seem to be happening – that look is part of the reason Vimes usually concentrates on a spare patch of wall instead of Vetinari's face.

"So you didn't know, then," Vimes continues sharply, "that there'd be a murder?"

Drumknott and Vetinari do not share a glance. There are a great many couples that would share a glance in order to communicate things, but Drumknott and Vetinari do not. They don't need to. Vetinari arches a single eyebrow, and Drumknott's face doesn't alter.

"Gods, I hate you two," Vimes says. Vetinari's expression does not change this time, but Drumknott gives a small, secretarial smile, glancing down toward the carpet.

"Always such a pleasure to see you, Commander," Drumknott says, as if Vimes has just made some great compliment as to his skill and devotion. "Shall I bring the two of you some tea, my lord?"

"If you would, Drumknott," Vetinari says in a light tone, and as Drumknott flits silently from the room, Vetinari gestures to the seat before his desk. "Please, Vimes, do sit down, and tell me all about this unfortunate incident."

As if he doesn't already know.

---

"Sorry, fella," says Grant Entwhistle, a strapping young man whose body ripples with thick muscle under his overalls. "No idea where Vincie lives now. He used to live out by the Rimward Gate, in this old flat, but he's moved out of there."

William sighs. It's not surprising, he supposes – with neither of them having an official employer, neither Faigle nor Wilkinson seem to actually have an address on record anywhere, and it seems like he's not gonna be able to actually find one of them he's gonna have to hope one of them just…

Comes to him.

Not exactly likely, he supposes, but one could live in hope.

"Well," says another dockworker by way of greeting, and Entwhistle claps him on the shoulder. "Hi there."

"Hi," William says, with a small smile.

"This guy's just asking after Vincie Wilkinson," Entwhistle supplies. "Trying to see where he lives."

"Oh, no idea," the second man says. "Probably with that bit of alright he has. You should hear some of the things he says about this girl – posh lass, apparently, but dirty."

"I see," William says, trying not to fluster over the particular inflection the man puts on the word. He wonders if he'd take quite such pleasure in saying it like that if he knew Wilkinson's bit of alright was a man. Probably not as much. "Well, thank you, gentlemen. If you see him, would you let him know I'd love to talk to him?"

"'Course," Entwhistle says, and William sighs as he trudges away and up the street.

---

Canton looks very small where he sits in the holding cell, his arms wrapped around his chest, his knees drawn up toward it. He's only in his mid-twenties, and Vimes can only hope that Vetinari decides to pull one of the strings he sometimes does, and put him to work somewhere else, rather than wasting him in the Tanty, and then… Elsewhere.

"All the papers were in his name," Canton had said, after bawling out his confession upon being brought into Pseudopolis Yard. "I didn't know what else to do, because I tried talking to him, hundreds of times I tried talking to him, but he just wouldn't have it! And it was just… It was just so unfair, because Steel in the Fire and her girls are just… We couldn't do any of it without them!"

And Vimes feels for him, he does.

Entrappe had, apparently, been planning to cut the engineering team loose after the Yellow Room was open to the public, and he and Canton had almost come to blows. Steel in the Fire is now the managing director of the company, so maybe…

Vimes doesn't know.

All he knows is that it leaves a bad taste in his mouth, and he thinks on it as he walks home.

"Oh, hello, Sam, I—"

"Don't get up," Sam murmurs, and he drops down onto the sofa beside Sybil, landing heavily onto the couch and slightly dislodging the sleeping form of Dewdrop, who hisses impotently in Vimes' direction, but doesn't actually move. "Young Sam upstairs?"

"Purity took him on a walk," Sybil answers, putting one of her big, muscular arms around Vimes' shoulder, and her fingers stroke against his upper arm as he leans against her chest. She's much bigger than Vimes is himself – she's a good six inches taller than him, but that aside, she's just big. The Ramkins are a big-boned lot, and Sybil is built with no small amount of muscle and fat, standing like a warrior woman where Vimes is… not so much. "You alright?"

"Just a bad old world, love," he says. "That's all."

"Bad case?"

"Open and shut."

He doesn't want to talk about it, and she knows this, he thinks: she roughly ruffles his hair with too-strong fingers, and he reaches up, holding her hand. He feels the myriad callouses, burns, and scars on her broad palms, and he relaxes slightly.

"You know how you told me, about Vetinari and Drumknott," Vimes says, "and then told me not to tell anybody?"

"Sam," Sybil says. "You didn't?"

"No, I didn't," Vimes says. "But you've got to return the favour." Sybil leans forward slightly, looking at him with her eyebrows raised in expectation, and Vimes tells her, in a quiet whisper. He sees the slow change in her face as she listens, the way her eyes widen slightly, the way her strong jaw slackens, the way her big, burnt lips part in utter astonishment and delight. He loves it when she's surprised – he loves how expressive her face is, loves… Sybil.

"Those rascals," she says, and Vimes feels himself smile. "That's exactly like Havelock, you know. He would probably say it's the simplest solution."

"Maybe so," Vimes says. "But I shudder to think what either of them do with these fake identities when they're not just taking dates to escape rooms. A lot of the smugglers disappeared in that debacle last year, you know, and Wilkinson was one of the survivors – and for that matter, I'm pretty sure that there's been a lot of strides in registering betting rings to the city, so if Faigle's involved…"

Sybil smiles.

"Gods," she murmurs. "All this playing roles. Sounds fun."

"Why do I think this is about you locking me up again?"

Sybil gives him a wicked grin that makes Vimes' stomach give an excited lurch. "Oh, I don't know, Sam," she murmurs with an expression of the least convincing innocence he has ever seen, and then she kisses him.

---

It's useless, William muses to himself, mournfully.

He'd gone back around the haunts that he'd looked at the past few days, just for an hour, and he'd had no luck at all. In this time, Gods, Sacharissa and Otto have broken the whole story of the murder, and he's been having to juggle things with doing the editing at the paper and going out.

He's talked to half the bloody people in the city, and it just… It just isn't coming together. He's followed one thread of information and then the next; he's talked to every informant he knows; he's talked to people who know them, and—

Nothing.

Nothing.

Dejected, William sighs as he keeps walking back toward Gleam Street, shaking his head. It's ridiculous – it was just for a little human interest story! These men shouldn't have been so damned hard to find, and that's exactly why there must be something else up here, why there must be something suspicious going on…

"Mr de Worde?" says a prim, polite voice, and he looks, his jaw slack, to the figure of Howard Faigle. He's bundled up in a coat that's a little too big for him, and at his shoulder, taller than him by about a foot, is Vincent Wilkinson. William can't help the way he stares at the two of them.

For a week, he's been looking for them. For a week, he's been—

"You've been asking after us," Wilkinson says, his bushy eyebrows raising. The accent is stronger than William had expected. "All 'round the city, by all accounts."

"Yes," William says, feeling his slowed engine ticker back to excitement. "Yes, yes, I had— I had some questions I wanted to ask you, I… Where do you two live?"

"We live in the Wizard's Quarter," Faigle says, seeming a mix of baffled and amused at the question. We. So the men at the docks had been right – they do live together, now. "Just off Sator Square, above Mr Harrington's Hats for One Occasion[29]."

"I'm 52," Wilkinson adds, in the eager voice of one who's always wanted to be in the newspaper. "He's 27. And there's an I in his name. F-A-I-G-L-E."

"Or G-E-L-E, if you're feeling nasty," Faigle adds, with a small smile. "We take your newspaper, Mr de Worde, but we never thought we were noteworthy enough to be included." There is a certain wryness in the way that he says it, and William glances from Faigle to Wilkinson, but he doesn't see…

Hm.

"Oh, well, fourteen minutes, Mr Faigle," William says, "on your timer. That's incredible! How did the two of you manage it?"

"My time in prison," Wilkinson says conversationally.

"Boarding school," Faigle says, in the same tone. Boarding school. He hadn't gone to Hugglestones, though – William would have known him if he had, and there's a certain… There's something niggling at him. He's finally got Faigle and Wilkinson in front of him, and something about them seems subtly off, seems…

Seems wrong. His brain is trying to tell him something, that something doesn't add up, and for the life of him he doesn't know what it is. It's been lingering all through this little investigation, but this is something different. This is a little alarm that's only begun ringing in his skull since he came face-to-face with Wilkinson and Faigle.

"Oh?" William asks. "Where did you go?"

"Thrasher's," Faigle answers. "In Pseudopolis."

"Oh, really? I used to know some boys who went there!" William says, with uncharacteristic brightness, and instead of dodging back or avoiding the question, Faigle smiles.

"Really, who?" Faigle asks.

"Oh, Kit Jaspers, Richard Havers…"

"Richard Havers, his family keeps greyhounds for racing, don't they?"

"Yes, that's right," William says, with a sinking feeling. Faigle looks… familiar. Wilkinson, less so – he doesn't think he knows anyone with a beard that vibrant – but Faigle's face is ringing a bell, albeit an incredibly distant, quiet one.

Faigle turns slightly to Wilkinson as he says, "He snuck two of them into the dormitories once. The prefects tried their best to catch them, but… Well, they were racing dogs. I didn't know they could move that fast until I saw them go. We ended up betting on them—" It feels real. It feels real, convincing – Faigle even has a little grin on his face, and he looks like he's remembering… But there's something.

Something.

"Listen," William says, leaning forward slightly. "Would you come into the office, and just take a quick iconograph? I'd love to talk to you—"

"There's a nice iconograph of us back on Furtive Forth Street," Wilkinson says slowly, with a quiet note of challenge. "I'm sure they'd be right happy to give you a copy." William thinks of the iconograph, of Faigle wrapped around Wilkinson's waist, their arms thrown around one another, their mouths pressed in a tight embrace…

Something must show in his face, because Faigle gives him a wan smile, and behind him, Wilkinson is scowling. "Yes, we thought that might be it," he says quietly. "I expect that you'll call us unlikely friends in your newspaper copy, or some similar genteelism?"

Genteelism, William thinks. That was in the crossword yesterday, and I'm sure that's important. It must be. But—

"We don't change the world, gentlemen," William says helplessly. He knows it's a platitude, but he can just imagine the overnight horror if he printed a picture of two men kissing like that, with such passion, if he called them partners – the number of letters they'd receive at The Times, the amount of protest… "We just report on it."

"That's alright, Mr de Worde," Faigle replies quietly. He doesn't seem angry – there's a resignation in the way he holds his shoulders, and a slight frown that weighs down the corners of his lips. "We didn't expect anything different."

William thinks of the men at the docks, thinking Faigle was a woman; he thinks of the way Eddie Jackson had spoken about Wilkinson and Faigle's involvement in hushed tones; even Faigle's little quip, a second ago…

Ouch.

"We don't want our pictures in't paper," Wilkinson mutters. "Not if it's not us. D'you get my drift?"

"Yes," William says, and he just feels—

Not just shame. The shame is there, the sense that he's being weak in not wanting to put this in the paper, as he thinks of all he's learned about these two, about how well-viewed they are, in one circle or another… And in love, he supposes. They look like a couple in love. But it's a wider thing, the sort of emotion he feels that makes Otto cheer him on, and Sacharissa say, "You oughtn't," as her eyes say, "You should!"

A sense of responsibility, he supposes – a sense of justice.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen," he says. "Thank you, for coming to see me. I'll still print the article, even without the iconograph, if it's all the same to you. Fourteen minutes, that's… That's still something to read about."

Wilkinson shrugs, and he walks past them both, a little ahead, but Faigle lingers, looking at William for a moment as he pulls Wilkinson's coat more tightly around his body. The both of them smell like they live in the Wizard's Quarter – a subtle ozone tang sticks to the air around them, and William doesn't think that's the sort of thing that can be faked, if these men are somehow faking their identities…

And why would they?

What's special about Faigle and Wilkinson?

Not all that much. Logically, nothing.

But…

"Thank you, Mr de Worde," Faigle says quietly.

"What for?" William asks, unable to stop himself. "I just told you I wasn't going to change anything."

"No," Faigle agrees, and then he smiles again: it's a warm smile, kind, soft. It makes him look older than his years. "But I can see that it grates on you, that you don't feel you can. Sometimes, Mr de Worde, propriety eclipses what we might call justice, but never for long. Ankh-Morpork changes with every passing moment, and she grows more vivid, more vibrant, with the moment."

"How did a boy educated in Pseudopolis end up as such a patriot?" William asks, his tongue moving entirely of its own accord, and Faigle laughs.

"I learned to love in Ankh-Morpork, Mr de Worde. I owe her everything," Faigle answers, with a shrug of his shoulders, and William watches him as he begins to walk away. Gods, William thinks. He really is a poet. No one else would be that sentimental about a city as filthy as this one. "Good night!"

"Good night," William echoes flatly, and he watches Faigle and Wilkinson stroll up Gleam Street together, arm-in-arm. As he watches, Faigle drops his head down to Wilkinson's shoulder, leaning on him in the cool of the night.

His heart pangs, and he turns back toward the office.

---

Max Canton, the murderer of Mr Peter Entrappe, it says on the front page of the Ankh-Morpork Times, has escaped. Whilst being transported to the Tanty, he managed to get out of the coach, eluding officers, and suspicions say that he has now fled the city. Vimes thinks of Canton, declaring that he's never been able to make head nor tail of the way people actually escape, and he feels himself smile, taking a drag of his cigar.

And to make matters better…

Vimes sees the figures of Vincent Wilkinson and Howard Faigle outside of the Post Office. Wilkinson, wearing a flat cap, has his shoulders back against the wall, one of his legs casually resting against the flat brick: in contrast, Faigle looks very stiff, standing straight and looking up at Wilkinson with his brow heavily furrowed.

"What d'you mean," Wilkinson is saying, his Sheepridge accent full of good humour, "that you've never had one?"

"I've never had one," Faigle replies dutifully.

"You have."

"How long have we known one another, Vincent?"

"Twelve years, but—"

"And I have never had a cigarette," Faigle says steadfastly. His accent's… Perfect, Vimes has to admit. It's not quite as well-bred as Sybil's, but he's heard that accent on some of her friends' children, modern, but clipped and delicately-pruned, as if every word should sound like it's come out of a rosebush. He wonders how much practice needed to be sunk into it, to make it sound like that…

Maybe not all that much.

"You surprise me!" Wilkinson exclaims.

"I shouldn't." Faigle's eyes grow wide as Wilkinson pulls a case out of his pocket, and immediately he takes a step back. "No, Vincent, those things will kill you!"

"Here's hoping," Wilkinson replies with a wink that makes Faigle make some wordless complaint, and Vimes watches at the well-practised way one of his thumbs flicks over the back of a match, lighting it with nothing more than a quick shift of the nail. Faigle watches, spellbound, as Wilkinson lights the cigarette, and takes a long, smooth drag. Its head brightens for just a moment as he inhales, burning that bit faster, but Faigle's gaze is fixated on the shift of Wilkinson's throat beneath his high-necked jumper, and when Wilkinson exhales a cloud of smoke that rises into the air, Faigle actually sways. "How's that?"

"Oh," Faigle says, in the voice of one having something of a revelation.

"You want to try?" Wilkinson asks, the question curiously seductive.

"I don't… think that I should…"

"Sure you should, chuck," Wilkinson replies, all teeth, and Faigle puts up a weak hand, but Wilkinson doesn't pass him the cigarette: he brings it delicately up to Faigle's mouth, and Faigle hesitates before he closes his lips around the cigarette's butt, taking a slow drag.

Faigle splutters, coughing hard with his eyes watering, and Wilkinson doesn't hold back in laughing at him, his head tipped back. He looks much younger than he should, when he laughs – Vetinari rarely smiles in public, but Wilkinson laughs openly, patting Faigle on the back, and when Faigle shoots a glare up at him, his laugh is distilled into a quiet chuckle. His hand drags through Faigle's hair, pulling him to lean against his chest, and Vimes watches, stunned in a sort of distant way, to see Wilkinson's lips brush against Faigle's temple.

"Sorry, chuck," he says. "You want to try again?"

"No," Faigle mutters, but Vimes can see him smile. Faigle's gaze flits to Vimes, and Wilkinson follows it. Both of the men stand for a moment, looking at Vimes with the appraising, slightly distrustful expressions any Ankh-Morporkian citizen would wear, upon realising they were being watched by a copper.

"Y'alright there, sir?" Wilkinson drawls. His arm is still hooked loosely about Faigle's shoulders, and Faigle's hand rests on his hip to keep himself from falling down.

"Don't loiter, Wilkinson," Vimes retorts. "If you've got somewhere to be, get to it."

"Our apologies, Officer," Faigle says snidely. "And there we were, thinking oh-so-foolishly that this was a public square!"

"Go be public somewhere else," Vimes says, and Faigle smiles as he takes a step to the side, his fingers interlinking with the hand that had been loosely resting on one shoulder, drawing Wilkinson with him.

"Shame to see you like this, Commander Vimes, in just armour," Wilkinson says as they pass him by, his lip curled up at one corner, the cigarette held loosely in his free hand. "Me'n Howard love them red tights of yours."

He hears Faigle laugh, and despite the slight burn of embarrassed blood in his cheeks, he raises one of his hands as if to strike, but Wilkinson and Faigle have already picked up their pace, and he watches after them as they jog along the cobbles of Widdershins Broadway, in the vague direction of the back entrance of the Palace. Their laughter echoes behind them.

Despite himself, Vimes grins.

Sybil is right, he thinks. It's good, that they have… that.

"Bastards," he mutters, and continues his walk toward Pseudopolis Yard, feeling the cobbles beneath the soles of his cardboard boots.

---

The three of them stand in front of the draft of page 5, looking down at it. Otto is all but bouncing on his heels, and when he slings an arm around William, William lets himself lean into it, lets himself feel the cool of Otto's body. His other hand is loosely entangled with Sacharissa's, and her hand is drawn right up against his mouth, where his lips hover against the back of her knuckles.

"Ve should do it," Otto says firmly. "It is right."

"Perhaps we shouldn't," Sacharissa says, and then she looks at William and Otto. A lot can be communicated in a look like this one. "We shouldn't," Sacharissa says again, softly: a token protest[30].

Her eyes say, in the heavy font they use for their most important headlines: LET'S!

---

On a normal Octeday morning, a little past dawn, Rufus Drumknott, personal clerk to the Patrician, lingers at his master's shoulder. One might note, with some surprise, the way his fingers brush that shoulder – not so close as to be a grip or a grasp, which would be far beyond the pale in what is accepted between clerk and his lordship, but certainly touching, which is already skirting the line.

"Oh, Gods," he says softly, for the third time, despite not usually being prone to such (or indeed, any) exclamations. By habit, he looks over the lenses of his spectacles, which are plain glass, and that he can easily see without.

"Well," Lord Vetinari murmurs, his voice rumbling with undisguised amusement. "It was your gambit, Drumknott."

"I thought him more sensible than this, my lord," Drumknott says. The hand which is not brushing Lord Vetinari's shoulder is lingering over his mouth, as if to hide the natural O of surprise his mouth keeps falling into. "Oh, no."

"Oh, yes," Vetinari says, with a low chuckle, and he straightens out an imaginary crease in page 5 of the Ankh-Morpork Times, that the iconograph should settle more flatly upon the desk.

"His excellency is going to go spare," Drumknott says despondently.

Vetinari sighs in satisfaction: this is often his response in the face of Commander Vimes' hardship. "Yes," he agrees, delightedly. "Mr de Worde, as ever, has outdone himself."

Beneath an iconograph of Vincent Wilkinson and Howard Faigle, embracing with passion before the leaderboard at the offices of The Room From Which No One Can Escape is the cheerful headline, BOLD LOVERS ESCAPE THE INESCAPABLE IN RECORD TIME!

Across the city, Sam Vimes sits bolt upright in his bed, and knows in his bones, without knowing why, that something is afoot.

FIN.

---

[1] Crumley's had previously been located on the Maul, but due to an unexpected dispute with their landlords over hog urine, they had been required to relocate to alternative premises.

[2] Whether this was artifice, or merely the result of unfortunate contact with an updraft from the river Ankh that morning, it is difficult to say.

[3] One Havelock Vetinari, who rules not so much with an iron fist as an iron resolve.

[4] Sacharissa Cripslock, Head Reporter for the Ankh-Morpork Times, and the wife of the aforementioned William de Worde.

[5] Reluctantly, William is aware that Otto has picked this up from him, and not from Sacharissa.

[6] He does this mainly because Otto's hand steadies him by the hips.

[7] This is no mean feat, as Otto's black silk vest has more pockets on it than on all the vests on any given street in Ankh-Morpork, and his cheek is pressed uncomfortably against, he thinks, some vials of developing fluid and a glass thermometer, as well as what he thinks are pencil erasers.

[8] "Little" for Ankh-Morpork is "just under one hundred".

[9] Otto would have been included in this shared look, were his head not under the small curtain he had begun employing in his iconograph to protect himself from the painful flash that would occasionally reduce his body to dust.

[10] This latter was more truthful on the part of William's silent communication than on the part of Sacharissa's.

[11] They do. The iconograph of Sacharissa, William, and Otto is neatly framed, and hangs in their hall to greet visitors to their home, of which they have almost none.

[12] An impressive task, as this particular sock is more darn than anything else, at this point.

[13] This should not be taken to mean that Young Sam doesn't chew on Dribble – certainly, Sam is not a boy frightened of putting his teeth on much. Merely that in the moment, it seemed an unfair admonishment.

[14] This is precisely as disgusting as the onomatopoeia of the word suggests, and does not bear further description.

[15] The colder the temperature, the more dangerously sharp a troll's intellect gets.

[16] "Complicated" and "dangerous", of course, are the two crucial components that Vetinari and, by extension, Drumknott, search for in something "fun".

[17] Drumknott rarely smiles in public, but he often smiles in the privacy of the Oblong Office.

[18] This was the game that William, Otto, and Sacharissa had done.

[19] And an artful dodge of the question asked.

[20] Inevitably, all of us are this person, at one time or another.

[21] Vimes had these thoughts while hosting the elderly Dewdrop Mabelline Talonthrust the First, snoring quietly, in his lap. The irony did not, and likely never will, occur.

[22] This, in itself, is not remarkable, as it seems to Vimes that Sybil sends a Hogswatch card to have the people on the Disc.

[23] The Marquis of the Fantailer believes in using fisticuffs to settle disagreements, as well as for fun, and it shows in the faces of many of the patrons.

[24] Nobby, of course, being the more revolting of the two.

[25] Nobby's smiles are very good for disarming, disrobing, and generally disabusing one's pockets of the notion of having things in them.

[26] Or in the cases of enterprising players like Nobby, stolen.

[27] And, the keen-eyed viewer might note, slightly cutting off the line of vision between Vimes and Drumknott himself.

[28] Quite different from repercussions, which are serious, but not so final.

[29] Funerals.

[30] Sacharissa often felt, as a sensible young lady, that she ought be the Voice Of Reason. The problem with this, of course, is that being the Voice Of Reason isn't nearly as exciting as being The Hand Of Justice.