Disclaimer: I don't own Discword or any of its character. No copyright infringement intended, no money made with this.
Like Falling Through Feathers
He grabbed the Patrician's robes.
Everything froze.
The cold, distant part of his mind noted with interest how the other occupants of the room seemed to subtly shrink away from him even while no-one was moving. And it made even less sense on a metaphorical level, because most probably none of them had been on his side to begin with.
Vetinari glanced down at his hands; but Vimes was angry enough to go through that one moment where he could have backed off in shock like an arrow, and then he wasn't sure he wanted to let go.
Vetinari was completely still. Then, slowly, without moving his head, he looked up at him.
Vimes had heard about people looking at you in a way that would freeze you, and render you unable to think: in his experience, that was just a slightly exaggerated version of the situation in which, when, for example, armed with a heavy weapon, you could look at a person in a way that would make all their thoughts focus on one single, precise thing, like "having a sword run through your body hurts" or "this man has dungeons in his basement". He had been on the giving and on the receiving end of glares of that sort many times himself.
Vetinari wasn't glaring at all. He was looking at him, in the cold, patient, distantly interested way of one who is waiting for you to figure things out for yourself, and who knows you won't like them; and the thoughts dashed through his head like little imps in a very precise clock.
Not so long ago, the Patrician had been guarded only by highly trained palace guards, who were not asked to do much thinking, and were fiercely loyal to the man who paid their ridiculously huge wages. Now, with the palace guard reduced to a minimum and the Watch's rise, all he had was a somewhat chaotic, overall efficient, and, in Vimes opinion, highly underpaid police force, lead by a man whose allegiance was to the law and to the city and...
... And it worked, didn't it? For all his complaining about the costs, he was probably even saving money, the bastard.
Vetinari couldn't do anything – he was willing to bet he wasn't even armed right now, unless the cane really hid a sword (1), and that couldn't be drawn fast enough: Vimes could probably crush him under his hands right now. There were no guards nearby enough to stop him – he should know – and the only other person present who might be fast enough to stop him was Lord Downey, and he hadn't been paid for it. And Vimes knew how to evade assassins.
And then what? That was the question the cold blue eyes were asking him, without mockery even, quite calmly. The city council would be delighted to be able to arrest him for something as legitimate and evident as a murder. Hell, he wouldn't tell any watchman not to arrest him. Or maybe he could get away. And the city would be left to them. And Vetinari had carefully designed its system to collapse with him.
There was Carrot. Everybody knew about – you didn't even have to think that far. Carrot could become Patrician. But Carrot's spell didn't work long term and on distance, and Ankh-Morpork was huge and full of people who had no interest in seeing someone like him rise to power. And the thought of Carrot, with his charisma and his heritage given that legitimacy was scaring enough to him that, for the first time, Vimes was certain he would never accept it.
He could probably hold together Ankh-Morpork for a little while, the guild leaders be damned. And then what? Make the law and keep it as well? Put yourself above it? He'd mean well, of course, but so did people like Lord Rust. If you do it once for a good reason, you'll end up doing it for a bad one.
He knew why he'd never gone that far, why, probably, the Patrician had been careful not to provoke him that far, though he couldn't say he had noticed any effort there.
The question, he thought, was whether the city would collapse together with its current power system: was Vetinari caring for the city to stay in power, or was he staying in power to care for the city?
He'd never know.
Very slowly, he unclenched his fists, and let his arms drop to his sides.
(1) Most certainly not one made of the blood of a thousand men, however. After all, Vimes reasoned, if Vetinari owed such a sword, why the hell would anyone know?
Note: I hope this doesn't hang in the air too much; I tried adding more context, but it seemed to water it down rather than adding anything. I'm not always good at judging the effect of my own writing though. I hope I haven't forgotten something in canon that makes this virtually impossible to happen.