Chapter Eleven: So Maybe Bastards United Can Be Ignited! So What!

In which the Fool capers through with a convenient catastrophe on hand, and the kidnappers misplace their kidnappee

"Which rights?" Downey said, sounding genteelly horrified as he turned to look at the prone, rocky, green-grey shape of Constable Bluejohn.

"Natural ones?" Vetinari murmured.

"Truth, Liberrrty, and Justice," said the woman rising over the skyline, with immense satisfaction. She touched down soon after, apparently content with the waves she had made, and joined her brethren at the base of the tower, standing shoulder to shoulder with Manly Man. They were well-matched, after all.

Her words lingered.

And there were other words were hanging unspoken and thick in the air, now. You could have cut apart hovering syllables, if you had a hacksaw handy. The idea was... familiar. No one was saying anything, even under their breath - too much concentrated terror; and many people not saying more or less the same thing makes a quiet and undeniable sound, or rather, makes a very loud silence.

It was History, see? People remembered. What goes around comes around. Even the Patrician tensed at that.

So Sam was the only one, lost in the confusion that followed this announcement, who saw his father's ghost hop from windowsill eight stories down as if it were a shallow step and barrel through the crowd toward him.

"Sam, you need to -"

"Are you Commander Vimes?" Marietta blurted, shocked. At least she kept her voice down, although the layered hush around their ears covered most of it anyway. Sam uttered something technically unspeakable(1) under his breath. He'd almost forgotten about his companion in this mess.

"Yes," said Vimes. "Who the hell are you? No, don't answer that. Look, Sam, can you create a distraction like the last one?"

"No," Sam whispered, unhappily. "The person who helped me ran off afterwards."

Vimes swore. "Well, we'll just have to think of something."

"Why? What do you want to do?"

"I'd like to get Vetinari out," Vimes said. "And there's a chance - a slim one, I grant - that the wizards might be able to do something in the way of damage control if the bastards don't end up deciding to just kill everyone here and now. But if I know some of those Council members they're not going to back down, because they're idiots, unless they have proof that their skins are in peril. Which they don't."

"They don't?" Sam said.

"That's rather hard on the Guild heads," Marietta said.

"Says you. You haven't spent twenty years of your life bickering with these people, so don't push it, whippersnapper. It makes everything easier if we just remove the man standing between them and those superheroes," Vimes said. He hadn't answered Sam's question, but Sam realized that, in a way, he didn't need to.

Who would believe that Vetinari could die? And no one had ever accused Downey and his ilk of being quick on the uptake. There would be a massacre before the Patrician had hit the ground. Besides, Sam didn't have any real objections to saving the man he'd grown up calling Uncle Havelock from bloody death, regardless of the obvious motive for it of Not Being Blackmailed With Pictures Involving Nappies. He just didn't know why his father didn't.

"Besides, a distraction will give my - will give Angua's men a chance to act," Vimes added.

"Well, I suppose that makes... sense..." Sam said, slowly. "Kind of. But I don't have any more explosive stuff."

"Then we'll just have to improvise," Vimes said.

As it turned out, though, they never got a chance to try their hand at the business of diversion, because a figure with emerald hair and a heavily made up face chose that moment to emerge from the crowd and offer Voose Brayne a smile that stretched from ear to ear.

"Jacko!" Sam called, forgetting himself. Marietta slammed a hand over his mouth, but the damage was done.

"Hellooo, Sam!" Jacko said, smacking his lips and grinning horribly. "Leave me to my fate, would you?"

"Er, would I?"

"I'll see you later. Hellooo, Mr. Brayne!" Jacko said, shimmering forward. Sam became aware, somewhat too late, that he was being trailed by six silent clown-faced, black-suited men, each of whom was carrying a ladder under one arm and a hose running back to a nearby building under the other; 'too late' in this case meaning 'not until he almost fell over several well-placed rungs'.

"Who are you?" said Voose. "What do you want?"

Jacko giggled. Sam stared at him and thought about how the only way to recognize a clown was by his mask. His dad had told him stories(2) of when the Watch was just starting, how a murderer had worn the nose and the caking of greasepaint and gone unrecognized until someone shot him down with a demon machine.

It was Jacko's voice, all right, but it wasn't his words and it wasn't his quite pleasant laugh.

"I just want to talk to you, Mr. Brayne." He fished into his suit, which was rather charred, Sam, saw, and produced a something small, white, and rectangular. "This is my card..."

Voose stared at what had been pressed into his thin hand. "A tarot card?" he said, holding it up to the light and probably in Marietta's range of vision.

"What's on it?" Sam hissed.

"The Fool," Marietta said, and even as she finished speaking Jacko echoed her.

"The Fool. Yes. You know where to find me."

"Subtle," Sam muttered.

"What did you expect? They're heroes," she replied without turning to look at him, intent on the tower.

"He's not!"

"No, but at this rate he's going to shape up to be a villain," Marietta said.

"What the hell -"

"Why would I want to find a fool?" Voose demanded, having finished his examination of the card.

"The Fool," Jacko corrected.

The Manly Man started to rumble. There was something subtly pleased in his wide-legged stance. "Are you challenging his rule?"

"Hold on," Downey said, having apparently recovered from the surprise of seeing a troll's brain temporarily fried by someone's little finger, "have we agreed on his, you know, ruling, then?"

"I wouldn't dream of it in any case," said Jacko, raising his hands. "No, indeed. I'm challenging you, Mr. Brayne. You deserve a challenger. A real challenger. Not like these weak-minded sheep, ahaha!"

"I don't know what you mean," Voose said. "These are my people -"

"Oh, Mr. Brayne, I don't mean all this ambitious city governance you have going," Jacko said. "You'll see what I mean... soon enough. Though you haven't made it easy, you know. The reek of corruption is coming if you aren't careful, Mr. Brayne!" He somersaulted forward, limbs flying like the blades of a windmill just before the shit hit, and landed at the bottom of the stairs.

He bowed.

"Sorry to interrupt your little political negotiations," he said, "but I find it is sometimes necessary to make, you know, a statement properly, without reservations. At 'em, boys!"

There was a slick, oily noise, as six caps were simultaneously unhooked and six streams of diamond-clear liquid bubbled across the cobblestones. It looked like... vodka?

Sam got down on one knee and, true to breeding, stuck a finger in the sticky mess and licked it before making a face.

"Alcohol. Look," he said to his father, who had been observing events with interest, "I think it's now or never if we want to get Vetinari out in one piece."

"I don't think liquor fumes will kill him," Vimes said.

"Ja-the Fool likes burning things," Sam snapped.

"Oh, gods. I was going to ask - this is the one who helped you arrange the explosion earlier? You know him?"

"Yes."

"Good as we're going to get, I suppose," Vimes said, as Voose descended until he was face to face with the Fool. He moved off through the gathering. Sam made as if to follow him, and Marietta put a very firm hand on his shoulder.

"These people are going to need are help more than the Patrician in a moment."

"You must be joking," Sam said. "He's your boss!"

"And?"

"What do you want?" Voose said, from the front. He seemed lost, though Manly Man was confident, cheery, in all his posing anger. "Why are you challenging me? What is this -"

"This," the Fool interrupted, soft and sweet, "is fire."

He held a match up and struck it on his bare hand, which was implausible but ranked low in comparison to the rest of the day, before holding it under Voose's astonished nose.

Then he dropped it on the alcohol that was starting to pool around his massive shoes, and cartwheeled with considerable grace across the one dry line of pavement spreading fluid had left him. Voose became a sudden dark blur; his compatriots mobilized into streaks of pink and blue behind him.

The match fell impossibly slow, spinning through the air like a feather floating down or a spoon sinking through custard, and landed with a tiny splash.

The fires that sprang up a panicked heartbeat after were a flickering, eerie pale blue that shaded to violet and unwholesome orange at the peaks. Bluebell flames, the journalist in Sam thought dizzily. That was the term. Sky-colored(3) fire, blossoming across the slick surface of spilled spirits, licking the air, sudden sheets of flame springing up without warning but a soft implosion of air as the surrounding oxygen was consumed.

"Bloody hell," said Sam. No one heard him: the crowd clogging the plaza had just found its tongues at last. Men, women, trolls, dwarves, vampires, werewolves, zombies, gargoyles, gnomes, gnolls, watchmen(4), and Others who had been transfixed with horror found themselves able to move, and squandered their opportunity in classical fashion by running around like the well known example of rutabagas(5) with the heads cut off.

"The Watch is evacuating and starting bucket chains," Marietta shouted at him over the wave of solid noise, as hot whipped around them and Sam danced back wildly, trying to avoid burning his boots or other important accoutrements, like his legs, right off.

"Should we join them?" Sam bellowed back.

"Can you think of anything more useful to do?" she screamed. She was very good at projection. Healthy set of lungs on her, all right.

He glanced at the steps of the Tower. Vetinari had disappeared.

"Unfortunately, no!"

"Right then!"

They elbowed their way through to where Constable Bluejohn was lumbering to his feet and had just been turned, with spare consideration for his fragile condition, into a riot shield for the second time that day.

(1) Not that that had ever stopped anyone. It was the planet where Dwarfish, language of apostrophes and dashes where lesser tongues used vowels, was invented. What do you expect?

(2) Heavily edited, after Sybil had walked in during a particularly colorful rendition of the Time A Great Bloody Fire-Breathing Lizard Tried To Eat Your Mum.

(3) A romanticization on Sam's part. The sky was in fact a mournful purple-grey with a slight resemblance to nine-day-old Distressed Pudding. But since Lord Olaf Quimby, with all his fondness for literal honesty, was centuries in the grave and the young journalist wisely did not make the observation allowed, such a lapse can perhaps be forgiven in light of other considerations and so forth.

(4) Coppers is different, as Detritus so eloquently put it. Commander Vimes' total failure to recognize political correctness or, indeed, political anything and anything correctness was an amazingly effective equalizer, a fact that warmed the Patrician inside, just another happy little addition to the overwhelming evidence for his opinion of Humanity and Associated Sapient Thingamajiggs.

(5) Bet you were expecting chickens, huh? Huh? Hah! Chickens! I ask you! When there's the well known case of the animated rutabaga, that most wholesome of vegetables, which flails admirably with the head off. And with the head on, for that matter. Probably because rutabagas don't really have heads. In any case...

*

Retrace the narrative's imaginary steps to the split second when the ghost of Sam Vimes Sr. darted into the clamor.

He ran. Vimes liked running, although it lacked a certain corporal satisfaction in death, it was still better than anything else. It wasn't as if he had to worry about people getting in his way.

He stopped at the periphery of the empty space around the Tower where Ankh-Morpork citizens' natural inquisitiveness had met and been crushed by a healthy sense of terror. Marvel Maid and Manly Man were still supervising Vetinari...

Whoomph, went the alcohol so casually spilled a moment earlier.

Ah.

The superheroes gave chase. He might almost have approved of the terrier-like idiocy such behavior exhibited, had he not been so bloody infuriated with them already.

He went to the foot of the stairs and said, "Oi! Your Lordship!"

There was no way that bastard wouldn't be able to see him.

"Ah, Sir Samuel," said Vetinari, courteously. "Did you want something?"

"Yes! Get down from there!"

Vetinari considered this. "Why, may I ask?"

Vimes did a passable splutter. "Because you've got quite a good chance of dying if you stay here?"

"It doesn't seem to have slowed you down. How are you finding the afterlife? Busy?"

"You -"

"Refrain, please," Vetinari said, lifting a delicate hand. "I'm not sure I could take the strain. In any case, Your Grace, I wouldn't dream of missing out on the fun."

"Fun?!" Vimes didn't, generally speaking, approve of interrobangs and multiple exclamation points all in a row and so forth, but he was willing to make exceptions for exceptional circumstances. Like Havelock sodding Vetinari finally going senile.

"Oh, indeed," Vetinari said easily. "They are doing quite well, all things taken into account. I imagine I'll enjoy seeing how they fare once they've moved on to a larger scale."

Or, worse, not going senile. Vimes glared at his former employer. "You can mock them in the Library," he snapped. "From a safe distance. I'm sure the wizards have an omniscope you can use."

"What a lot of bother," said Vetinari. "I believe it quite probable that they won't kill me. Why so urgent, then?"

"Angua and her lot won't do anything while they're holding you hostage," Vimes growled. "Happy?"

"Very well," said Vetinari, in the tones of one much put-upon. "If you insist."

"I do."

He eased himself off the side of the crumbling stone stairs, and was staring expectantly at him sooner than Vimes had expected.

"Shall we?"

"Er," Vimes said, glancing over his shoulder.

"Yes, which way were you planning on taking?" he inquired, admiring the flames that now ringed the Tower and were oozing slowly closer.

Vimes glared harder.

"Don't let me discourage you," he added, ever helpful.

"Underground," Vimes managed at last, once he'd finished squelching the urge to try and strangle his former employer, ectoplasm or no ectoplasm. "There'll be a way through the cellars, since your Undertaking doesn't go past University limits(1), and the Library's only a hundred yards from here."

"Ah, but of course," Vetinari said. "Lead on."

Vimes tramped into the Tower, straight through the oak door. Fortunately the locks on it had crumbled long ago, and Vetinari followed.

There was a hole in the floorboards.

"Thought so," Vimes said. "Thirteen dwarfs with identity problems came up through that a few weeks ago, and no one gets around to fixing things before the paperwork had been lost at least five times around here. C'mon."

They descended, an asymmetric pair, into the gloom.

(1) A sensible precaution when dealing with so much geography in so little mileage. Trains, even underground, mystic-driven ones, just aren't built to deal with that sort of thing. The routes circumvented the Empirical Crescent for a similar reason, although in the case of the Empirical Crescent the trains came out not only much later than expected but also in entirely different configurations, often bloody with the gore of passengers who foolishly stuck their hands and other extremities outside the car, totally failing to note the warning signs plastered on their faces by a helpful watchman.

A/N: I'm sorry for the repetitiveness, but I'm told one can never have too many explosions, and this one is important! Really! Anyhow, it's not a proper explosion. Right?