"Bloody hell."
His Grace Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh and Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch thought he had seen everything. He'd investigated more crime scenes in thirty plus years than he could count. He'd journeyed to strange and exotic lands and nearly been killed in them. He'd battled werewolves barehanded – bare everything – and won. He'd travelled back in time, taught his teenage self a thing or two about being a good copper and returned to the present after changing and preserving the course of history. He'd foiled plots by dark dwarves, freed goblins from slavers and been given the gift of night sight by an ancient supernatural entity. And then there were his proudest accomplishments of all – becoming a husband to the most wonderful woman in all of creation and a father to the most wonderful boy in all of creation. But none of that experience could help him right now.
"So has he been murdered or not?"
"Difficult to say, Sir," Sergeant Cheery Littlebottom bagged another piece of potential evidence and labeled it. "There's definitely something in the coffee mug and on his lips other than coffee. It could be the cause of death, but only if he turns out to be dead."
And that was the stick of the thing, wasn't it just?
Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, lay sprawled on the rug of the Oblong Office not breathing, not displaying any signs of life, fair enough. But the body wasn't showing any of the usual features of death either. No rigor mortis, no change in temperature, no pooling of blood or signs of decay. Even the undeads who now made up a small but significant portion of the city's population usually had to go through one stage or another on their way to the next. Despite the occasional rumor that ran through the city, Vimes didn't believe for one minute that Lord Vetinari was a vampire.
Damn and blast! The man had figured out a way to annoy Vimes without even being alive!
"Are we sure it is his body and not just some clever look-alike?" Vimes snorted in the direction of someone who ought to be able to answer that question.
"Very sure." Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University and most widely respected wizard on the Disc nodded. "The karmic signature is his, without a doubt. This is Havelock Vetinari."
"But you can't tell me if he's alive or dead?"
The City Watch's Igor, Igor, the other half of its forensic investigation team, had already been escorted out of the Palace at Drumknott's insistence for suggesting several novel – and perhaps permanent – methods for testing the Patrician's body to gain an answer. In Vimes' opinion, trusting a wizard's magical methods was no less precarious, but Drumknott had summoned the Archchancellor at the same time as the City Watch when he'd made his shocking discovery. And the result? Still no answers.
"The situation is unique," Ridcully sighed. "Unprecedented, even. I have heard of the condition known as 'stasis', but I have never seen it demonstrated thus on a person before, living or dead."
"You're not helping me any."
"You're not the one who needs help here, Your Grace." The Archchancellor leaned down and placed a hand on the Patrician's head. "Or at least not the only one. We may all be needing assistance soon."
"Hmm? How so? This isn't capable of spreading, is it?"
"Until we can determine the cause, we have no way of knowing that. But," the wizard tugged at his beard, "if Havelock Vetinari is not among the living any longer, that poses a problem, doesn't it? Who is in charge of the city?"1
"It hasn't been established that he's not still alive and that this isn't temporary," Vimes rumbled, "so if you're asking me, he's still the guy, at least until the Guilds decide otherwise." Which brought up another nasty possibility – did the Guild leaders know about this yet? Did any of them have eyes and ears in the Palace, and if so who? How many people had Drumknott told? The Watch needed to know before things got out of hand. Half of Vimes' best officers were on assignment outside the city gates, spread from Uberwald to Quirm to the Sto Plains on special details and diplomatic missions. Too much of Ankh-Morpork's fortunes had been riding on shaky foreign relations lately. Vimes didn't mind having resources he could call on in the various kingdoms, queendoms and republics of the Disc, but right now the Watch was spread too damn thin. Even if he made the call to get some of those officers back, their return would take time and the railway bridges destroyed by the grags hadn't been fully rebuilt yet.
Time – how much time did they all have?
[* * * *]
1 By which, of course, the Archchancellor means the non-magical people, parts and aspects of Ankh-Morpork since the Wizards of Unseen University are perfectly aware of who is in charge of the magical bits as defined by those same Wizards. Mustrum Ridcully has proved remarkably effective at reminding the Wizards of Unseen University just who is in charge of them!