Of Leashes and Randomness
By: Twist
A/n: I am ill now as I write this. The tragedy. And this is one of those bloody annoying ideas that won't leave you alone. So I hauled my fevered butt out of bed and got down to typing. Now that I am finished I must sleep . . . . Sleep . . .
Disclaimer: Nothing you read in this story will be property of the author. Twist is not affiliated in anyway with Terry Pratchett, Paul Kidby, or Pyrotechnics Anonymous.
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It was two o'clock in the morning. Had anyone been wandering through the Patrician's Palace of Ankh-Morpork at this ungodsly hour, they would've been possibly at peace knowing that everyone in the Palace was asleep. Everyone, of course, except for the ruler of the city. For Havelock Vetinari, sleep was something that happened to other people.
"Die, foul spawn of however many hells there happen to be . . ." he hissed in his office. Holding up a wad of junk mail and unimportant paper that had been sorted through during the day in one hand and a matchbox in the other, he grinned evilly. Just because you work with paper all day doesn't mean you have to like it.*
Striking the match on the top of his desk, and evil gleam had become apparent in Vetinari's eye by the light of the flickering flame. Carefully, very carefully indeed, he touched the small flame to a lower corner of the unlucky pile. The papers lit up in a burst of flames, and were gleefully dropped out of an open window. A gardener below noted to inform the Patrician the next morning of meteorites.
Truth be told, the Patrician was as sane as anything in the day, and a lunatic pyromaniac at night. During both times he was equally as frightening. The ice-blue stare did what a handful of flaming papers and a pocket full of fireworks could achieve easily.
Wuffles stirred. Vetinari did not really like Wuffles, if all the truths be told. He had been his mother's dog and when she had finally kicked the bucket he had inherited the smelly hellhound. Though in some, distant, remote sort of way he felt that if anyone ever hurt the dog he would have to seriously injure the party concerned. If not because of the dog, but because of the stress relief it provided.
As he riffled through more unimportant papers and letters asking him for money, he thought vaguely of his mother and her tendency to treat everything that breathed as a dog. His father had owned a collar, and she'd tried to convince young but not-so-impressionable Havelock to wear a leash. Due to the lack of any other solutions in the circumstances, he'd bitten her, and was given a muzzle for Hogswatch. This was ceremonially burned in the backyard, along with the leash and his father's collar.
With a professional touch, Vetinari shoved a small firework rocket through a small pile of unwanted paper. Taking out his crossbow, which he had had Leonard redesign for his corrupt and pyrotechnic purposes, Vetinari carefully loaded the rocket, pointed it out of the window, lit it, and fired. Below, a gardener gave the lighted window of the Oblong Office a cagey look.
Vetinari gave his desk a disturbed look. It was clean. Empty. Whatever word you wish to connect with bare. There was no more paper, and this is a terrible tragedy, because Vetinari still had three firework rockets left.
His mind wandered back to the leash. And his mother. And all of her damned little yappy dogs that had never really liked him anyway. In his frustration with small canines, Lord Vetinari kicked Wuffles, who growled a warning, which was ignored. Slowly, still thinking of that loathsome leash, Vetinari reached down, took a key out of his pocket, and walked over toward the wall. Seeing as it was dark and his Lordship wasn't really paying attention to his surroundings, the drama of this small journey was interrupted when Vetinari tripped over a chair and almost lost a fight with a garbage can. It was all terribly embarrassing, as you can imagine.
When the almighty and god-like Patrician had managed to collect himself, he limped over to the wall, cursing slightly while trying to control the bleeding of a small cut below his eye, he pressed** an ordinary part of the wall.
The next few moments had some rather amusing dialogue, but as the author would like to keep this story child-appropriate, it shall not be inserted. Very few people knew the Patrician well-enough to have heard his extensive knowledge of swear words, but even those who have would have been shocked, chagrinned, mortified, and stupefied at some of the words that the normally calm and collected Patrician was using quite creatively to describe the chair and the wastebasket.
After the short walk through the incredibly secret passage, the air was left a little less clean and Vetinari had almost relived his tensions concerning his momentary fall from grace. Reaching the end, he shoved the key into the lock a little harder than was perhaps necessary. The door swung open, revealing the only room in the Palace where the Patrician was allowed to have a personal life. There were various cupboards in the room, some with labels and some without. Those with labels were all written in code.
Hopping over to the smallest cupboard in the room Vetinari reminded himself to watch where he was stepping†. Avoiding any malicious piles of papers, he reached the tiny cupboard, which almost seemed to tremble, except for the fact that it is inanimate and therefore cannot tremble unless under the circumstances of severe weather or tectonic forces.
With a great amount of care, Vetinari opened the topmost drawer of the small piece of furniture. Inside were several bags of ashes labeled, not in code, but in everyday Morporkian.
They read: 'Leash,' 'Collar,' 'Muzzle,' 'Dad,' Lupine Wonse,' 'Various Assorted Mimes.' Lord Havelock Vetinari was truly a deranged man. But it had been his father's last wish, that. To be stored in a brown paper bag and kept close to his sanest child. Calling Vetinari sane at this time of night was a stretch, so the wording in the will was kept to 'sanest.' The rest were people who Vetinari had never really liked and were therefore kept for such trying nights as this.
Using his resources, Vetinari tied the bag containing Lupine Wonse‡ to a rocket with a bit of decaying splinter extracted from the drawer of the cupboard. It was then fired with great ceremony into the night.
Vetinari was aware of a strange and unusual feeling coming over him. It was something he hadn't felt for years. Perhaps he was ill? Thinking random thoughts on arsenic, food poisoning, and other such recreational things, he trudged slowly back to his office. It was then that it hit him. He was tired. This was very out-of-the-ordinary for Lord Vetinari. Deciding sleep was the best thing, he migrated from his office to his sparsely-furnished bedroom.
The last thing he was aware of before he fell forward onto his bed and drifted off into sleep was that he was not feeling quite right. Dismissing that as another sign of exhaustion, Vetinari curled up into a ball and slept like a log.
*Rather like standardized tests, most professors, and many bosses.
**Not really pressed, rather kicked it until it found the sense in its inertness to open and press as close to the wall as possible.
†Or, in this case, hopping.
‡Who the author never liked anyway.
End.
A/n II: Perhaps the Unspoken second sentence there is 'for now.' I do have a sequel written if any of you show vague interest. Please review. If you do, you get a magic cookie and my Pyrotechnic Crossbow of Doom shall be pointed elsewhere. Even if you didn't like it, review.