Thanks for the reviews everyone! Great guesses by a lot of you on what's really going on but I'm dropping no hints. Stick with the story and you'll see a lot of twists and turns… (p.s. The verse throughout the story is an English translation of the work of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, in my opinion the best poet of the 20th century in any language. I hope his spirit – and the Neruda estate – forgive me and Isabella for being inspiring by it.)
3. A Loving Wife
As usual, two things were happening at once. More than two things, of course, if one counted the million souls in Ankh-Morpork and the million bits of mischief they got themselves into at any given moment. In the Ramkin-Vimes House, more than two things were happening if the dragons and servants were counted. For the moment, they weren't.
First, the dining room.
Isabella Capelli (Vetinari) sat by the open window picking at the roast beef and green beans on her plate. Lady Sybil chattered in an attempt to improve her guest's mood but it didn't seem to be working. Isabella wasn't really listening. It wasn't rudeness on her part. There was something else going on in her head.
Inspiration streamed into the purple paisley dining room and resonated in Isabella's fragile mind. It had always happened, sometimes in words but mostly in drawings of impossible monuments – bridges spanning great bodies of water with steel beams and cables hanging suspended in the fog; tunnels submerged in water where carriages passed without getting wet, buildings of glass with spires that pierced the clouds.
Today, it was words.
She set down her fork and looked at her hands.
By the skin of my reason, with my fingers, (she was thinking) / with slow waters indolently swamped, / I fall to the imperium of the forget-me-nots, / an unforgiving air of mournfulness, / a decayed, forgotten hall / and a cluster of bitter cloves.
There was no way Sybil's chatter about the first baby dragon bred at the Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons could compete with this. Isabella daydreamed poetry only in moments of deepest stress, sadness, fear or fatigue. With all four encasing her like a suit of armour, the inspiration rained down, blotting out everything but her hands clasped in her lap.
The other thing happening at the Ramkin-Vimes House was taking place on the other side of the dining room window where Isabella sat. It faced the garden.
Sergeant Angua leaned against the wall of the house just to the left of the window, arms crossed, eyes closed, breathing deeply. She didn't need to see Isabella; a werewolf's gift was in the nose. Angua's functioned well even when it wasn't that time of the month. Nearby, Vimes chewed on an unlit cigar and wondered how Angua could have a nose for anything but the roast. It was making his mouth water.
"What do you think?" he whispered.
"It's…strange, sir."
"Strange, how?"
Angua turned her head to more effectively use the direction of the wind.
"I can't quite place it."
Angua's nose was usually reliable when no slaughterhouses, strong peppermints or other distracting scents were around. The puzzled look on her face was not what Vimes wanted to see. He wanted answers about Isabella Capelli so-called Vetinari, not more questions. She certainly wasn't offering much. She'd been up and about all day, had listened calmly as he told her about what her mother had said about a carriage accident, had denied knowledge of it but otherwise…nothing.
"Let's start with an easy one," he said to Angua. "Is she a werewolf?"
"I don't think so, sir."
"That's not very helpful, sergeant."
"You can wait until full moon."
"By then, I want her back where she belongs, wherever that is. If she doesn't smell like a werewolf, what does she smell like?"
"Just…" Angua took another deep sniff, then shook her head. "…wrong." She sighed. "I'm sorry I can't help you more, sir."
Vimes was irritated enough to bite the end off his cigar and spit it noiselessly to the ground. He hadn't considered that Angua's verdict would be inconclusive.
"What would make someone smell wrong?" he said.
"If I change, I might be able to tell you more. Every smell has a special colour, but I can only see it when I'm on all fours."
Vimes nodded and waved toward a clump of bushes up the white gravel path.
The bushes rustled as Angua took off her armour as quietly as she could, then began on the few bits of clothing that were left. Vimes kept his eyes chastely on the other side of the garden. After a minute or two, the rustling stopped.
A sleek, blond wolf emerged from the bushes and paused in the path, nose in the air, gauging the wind. Experience had taught Angua to change at will, though it was not an enjoyable experience. She padded up to the window, pulled herself up on the wall with her front paws and let her nose hover just below the sill.
Minutes passed.
Then slowly, silently, she bared her teeth.
"Angua!" Vimes hissed.
She dropped down from the wall and trotted back to the bushes. Angua emerged a few minutes later, concentrating on her humanness, pushing the wolf down and away.
"I've never seen anything like it, sir," she said.
"What?"
"Everyone has a smell that werewolves see as a colour and the range is infinite. Every colour is individual. But your house guest's is different."
"She doesn't have her own colour?"
"Just the opposite. She has too many." Angua frowned. "Sort of."
Vimes had an inkling that he wasn't going to like where this was going.
"How many?"
"I'm not very good at counting in wolf form," said Angua, embarrassed. "I lost count at about a hundred."
"What does that mean, sergeant?"
"I don't know exactly. The basic colour was a kind of sapphire blue, that was clear. And then it just… It's a cloud, sir, or something like a…a fog. Everybody has it. Except that hers seemed to…change."
"Change as in blue to yellow, or what?"
"It stayed blue but the shade was always changing. You know like when you see a bit of oil on the cobbles after a rain, the swirls and reflections can be seen? It was like that, but all of the shades swirled around the basic sapphire."
This was not how Vimes imagined the little experiment would turn out. It was a simple question -- Was this Isabella alive or undead? – but even that seemed to stump Angua's normally reliable nose. As they crossed the garden, Vimes noted that his list of questions about Isabella was getting too long for his liking.
Angua paused at the garden gate.
"When I was changed, I was thinking that she had more colours than I could ever smell," she said. "She's not like the undead, sir, and not like other people either."
"What is she, then? An elf? A demi-goddess?"
"I don't know." Angua looked back toward the garden window. "If anything, I'd say she's too alive."
**
Ah…the Shades! The dark-haired creature wandered through the malodorous, twisted streets in the same way she might traipse through a field of dandelions, were she the traipsing type. At night, the neighbourhood was glorious. Creatures of all kinds on certain streets, spilling out of bars and houses of negotiable affection; other streets deserted, swept clean of everything but refuse from the day.
She followed her nose to a pub that had no sign, but the head of a troll hanging over the door. There were others of her kind there. It was a good sign. After a moment examining the choices, she slipped into a booth next to a pale, thin man who nursed a drink with his fingers but didn't taste it.
"Greetings, brozer," she said.
He slid his eyes toward her but said nothing.
"Vhat are you drinking?" she asked, pointing at his cup.
"Vodka," he said.
She smiled at the black ribbon tied around his arm, sign that he had given up a diet of human blood. Most vampires in Ankh-Morpork had done this, and those who didn't got their meals by arrangement so as not to upset the populace.
"How does it taste?" she asked.
"Terrible."
They smiled at one another, and she guessed by his scent he hadn't been a Black Ribboner for long. At least his incisors hadn't been sawed down, as some of the more radical of the group did. It was a controversial theme. Some thought the elimination of fangs was a denial of the species, while others saw it as a move that symbolized a New Way of Life.
"My name is Klieg," she said. "I am sure you have guessed I am new in ze city. I vould like to see ze sites."
"Velcome." He held out a hand. "Call me Beber." They shook hands and after they were finished, Klieg didn't let go.
"I am alone here, Beber," she said. "I have novhere to go vhen ze sun rises."
He stared at her hand, then her eyes. "Ve are not so organized here as ze dwarfs," he said. "Zere are no temporary homes for newcomers. Ve must…" Klieg slid closer to him, as if eager to listen to what he had to say. "…take care of our own."
"Zat is a vonderful sentiment," she said. "Ve must take care of our own. I have alvays believed zat." She leaned closer. "Do you?"
If Beber had been a human, he might have been unsettled by her smile. He wasn't, so…he wasn't.
"Yes, I believe zat as vell."
He kissed her hand.
**
Vimes had lifted a fork full of roast to his mouth before he realized he was still biting down on his cigar. He set it on the bread plate and tucked in, famished despite the disappointment in the garden.
Sybil had already cleared her plate once and was starting on a third helping of green beans. Her recent consumption of green beans had reached alarming levels, the latest in her pregnancy cravings. Isabella ate very little before Vimes arrived and nothing at all after he sat down. She watched him as if it was still a surprise to sit at the same table with him.
He did notice what she was wearing, though. Not the gown they'd found her in, which was far too elegant for a simple evening. Sybil had gone shopping with her that afternoon and found several gowns, bought them for her actually, since she had no money. This one was dark blue with a scooped neckline. It was not anything Vimes would have paid too much attention to if earlier Sybil hadn't told him to pay attention to it. So he tried, without looking too obvious.
It was difficult; he was burning to ask where in the world she'd gotten that kind of scar. It was just below her left shoulder, an inch across, a pink-brown line on her skin. A few times he almost asked. But there was something about her face, the faraway look, as if she was somewhere else completely. She made the little noises that showed she was listening with one ear to what Sybil was saying, but she added nothing to the conversation.
The resonance still played with her.
It is because I am myself faced with your colour of world,/ with your pale dead shoulders, / your gathered hearts, /your silent multitude.
Sybil's voice finally died away, the forced cheerfulness drowned under Isabella's stubborn mental absence. She looked helplessly at Vimes. He washed down his bite of potatoes and made a show of setting the glass down too hard. The chime of it hitting the edge of his dinner plate seemed to wake up Isabella. She blinked.
"Was just wondering," said Vimes, "about that nasty scar you got there." He tapped the space below his own shoulder.
Isabella looked down and rubbed her eyes for a moment, pulling herself back.
"A gonne shot," she said.
Vimes and Sybil glanced at each other. As far as they knew there was only one gonne in the world and that had been fired in public on, of all things, their wedding day.
"What happened?" he asked.
"I was in a carriage with the Patrician when Dr. Cruces fired on us. Both of us were hit once."
Vimes knew about that already. He'd lived it. Captain Carrot had jumped into the carriage first, taking the second lead pellet meant for Lord Vetinari. Vimes had reached the carriage when it was already collapsed. It had all happened fast, but he was certain there hadn't been a woman around. Certainly no Lady Vetinari.
"That must have hurt like the devil," Sybil offered.
"The pellet missed my lung by a sliver. A difference in the wind that day and I would have been…dead."
It was a word guaranteed to spoil any dinner. Vimes gave up on the rest of the food on his plate and went back to his cigar. Sybil got up to make a last round of the dragons. Isabella followed her and Vimes followed Isabella out to the stables.
In the warm summer evening the dragons were lolling around in their pens trying to stay cool. They had an internal heating mechanism in their stomachs that made most of them more suited to cold, damp, swampy areas. Ankh-Morpork in winter was perfect. In summer, the dragons got a bit fussy. When they saw and smelled Sybil, they lumbered to their feet, snorting and squealing. They expected a bit of a snack before bed.
When they smelled Isabella, the dragons fell silent. Reptilian eyes watched her every move. Vimes wasn't normally as attuned to dragon moods as his wife, but even he felt it. They seemed to be waiting for something to happen.
Isabella stood in the center of the stable, turning slowly, looking at the dragons looking at her. A young dragon with yellow eyes and wiry black whiskers on his chin took a running start, flapped his wings hard enough to get some upward motion going and landed on the top bar of his pen.
"Bagglesworth!" scolded Sybil.
The dragon balanced on his claws, his wings still out, and stared at Isabella. She took a step toward him.
"I'm not going to hurt you," she said quietly. She held out her hand.
Bagglesworth took a deep breath.
"Oh, no you don't!" cried Sybil.
She leapt at the dragon just as Vimes leapt at Isabella and pulled her out of the way of a weak but still relatively effective stream of fire. They landed on a heap of straw.
Fearless, Sybil scooped up Bagglesworth and showed him the streak of carboned straw on the ground where Isabella had stood.
"Look at that! Bad dragon! Bad Bagglesworth! No dessert for you!" She hauled him back into his pen and gave him a glare that made him waddle backward until he hit the back wall and fell over. He was a reptile of sorts but he managed to look stung. He didn't know what he'd done wrong.
Isabella and Vimes were picking straw out of their hair.
"I don't know what got into him," said Sybil. She helped brush off the back of Isabella's skirt. "Bagglesworth is normally so peaceful. And it's certainly not mating season."
"No harm done," said Isabella. She gave Vimes a smile. "Thanks for saving me, commander. Having my face burned off would be the least of my problems but why add to the list?" She held out a hand.
Vimes shook it.
Dragons are sensitive buggers, he was thinking. Did Baggleworth sense something in Isabella that he and Sybil couldn't? He patched the dragon's reaction in with Angua's and ended up with some conclusions he wasn't all that happy about. Apparently Isabella wasn't dead and wasn't undead but she was too alive and giving off whatever…signals…would make a normally friendly dragon haul off and spit fire. He'd heard dragons didn't like elves much. Or witches. He had no idea what they thought of demi-goddesses, fairies and other not quite discly creatures. At this point, Vimes was beginning to consider every possibility as to Isabella's identity.
She pointed at Vimes' cigar. It smouldered between his teeth. Bagglesworth's breath had been a closer call than he thought.
"I'd love to have one if you could spare an extra," she said.
He patted his pockets and came up empty. "I've got some more in the study if you want to come along."
Vimes' study was about as organized as the streets in the Shades and just about as clean. He'd inherited it from Sybil's father, who'd preferred the hunting lodge look, but the antlers were now in the cellars and various hazy iconographs of Ankh-Morpork city scenes were attached to the paisley wallpaper with carpet tacks.
As Vimes looked around for a fresh cigar, Isabella examined the creased and pencilled city maps he kept on a large table that Lord Ramkin had used as a display area for his favorite crossbows. She frowned at the first map, whipped it off the table and looked closely at the second. After a few moments, she moved on to the third. She looked perplexed as she lit her cigar but she seemed to calm as soon as she took a few long puffs. She started browsing the iconographs on the walls.
In Vimes' opinion, it was the perfect opportunity to get some information out of her. He had saved her from Bagglesworth.
"I reckon me preventing you from getting scorched is worth a few answers to my questions," he said.
"I'd be rather ungrateful if it wasn't," said Isabella.
Vimes leaned back against his desk, his arms crossed.
"Let's clear up the basics. Are you, in fact, dead?"
"Not that I know of."
"Are you undead?"
"Can't help you there either."
"Are you a member of some other non-human and possibly mythological species?"
"I wish I was. Zap! With my magic wand and everyone would remember me again."
Isabella stared hard at an iconograph of the New Bridge, the oldest bridge in the city. She pointed at it and turned to Vimes.
"This hasn't been rebuilt yet?"
"I won't argue that it doesn't need it. A shop for," Vimes coloured, "preventatives crumbled into the Ankh last week."
"I knew that," she said thoughtfully. "There were Sonky-shaped holes in the river that I heard some of the local boys…" She put a hand over her smile. "Never mind."
Vimes hurriedly got back to the main line of questioning.
"Let's assume that you're alive--"
"Thank you."
"What makes you think you're Vetinari's wife?"
"Because I am."
"He hasn't got one."
Isabella paused at a snapshot of Pseudopolis Yard. A very large, dark finger obscured the bottom left side.
"How do you know he hasn't got one, commander?"
"I haven't seen one."
"Maybe he keeps me and the children locked up in the Palace dungeon and I escaped but only made it to your garden before I collapsed from fatigue and the grief of leaving my children in the clutches of the guards."
Isabella calmly blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.
After some consideration, Vimes said, "Even Vetinari isn't that big a bastard."
"Oh, he is, but he's not that heartless. There's a difference." She smiled like she'd made an inside joke.
"You're not exactly talking like a loving wife," said Vimes.
The smile vanished.
"It's easier to be a loving wife when there's a loving husband around."
She turned abruptly to a group iconograph of the Night Watch. Vimes was in the center, looking much thinner, scruffier and generally pessimistic. He scowled straight out of the picture while a misfit collection of watchmen posed heroically or mugged the camera.
"Looks like marriage suits you," she said.
"Well, yes…"
"How long has it been? A couple of years?"
"We aren't talking about my marriage."
"Thirteen years for me, commander. Some people believe that number is cursed. I'm beginning to think so too."
She eased herself into a chair.
"What did Havelock have to say besides that he didn't recognize me?"
"He thought you might be--"
"Let me guess. He used the phrase mental strain, didn't he?"
Vimes nodded.
"I can't actually deny that. My husband thinks I'm delusional, my friend Sybil doesn't know me, my mother believes I'm dead, and the Watch commander I knew of as captain felt it necessary to ask me what species I am."
"That was--"
"It's all right," she sighed. "I keep feeling this is the most gigantic practical joke ever played. I have to believe that because the alternatives are even worse. Thank goodness I'm not the type of person to doubt my own sanity. Of course, I realize that might be the first sign of mental illness."
Vimes was usually an observant person, though his observations at times kicked him in the memory minutes, hours or even years after the fact. This time, he observed and processed all at once: Isabella's hand, the one holding the cigar, was shaking. The ash fluttered to her skirt but she didn't bother to brush it off. Her other hand was clenched in a fist in her lap. Vimes had the sensation of looking at a vase teetering on the edge of a table. It could settle again on its own or could fall and shatter. The outcome was uncertain but the imbalance was there.
She set her cigar aside and went to the map table, where she turned the top sheet over to its blank side. She found a pencil and looked at it for a moment with a puzzled expression before switching hands and beginning to draw. Vimes watched her from his desk for a while, then out of curiosity went closer. Her hand moved quickly, drawing perfectly straight lines and elegant curves until it was clear what she was drawing.
Clocks throughout the house chimed, signalling an hour come and gone.
Isabella expertly rolled up the paper. "Will you take this to the Patrician tomorrow?"
Vimes nodded. It wasn't necessary to mention that he was going to take a good long look at the drawing himself before he handed it over to Lord Vetinari. Once the Patrician got a hold of it, he probably wasn't going to give it back.
Isabella rubbed her eyes. "And let us make fire / and silence / and sound / and let us burn / and be hushed among bells."
She didn't realize she'd spoken aloud until she saw Vimes looking at her.
**
That night, Klieg took care of Beber with a sharpened wooden table leg she kept hidden under her cloak for such purposes. She wasn't completely heartless, though; they prowled the night a bit first, she located a delicious pauper orphan of about ten years old that Beber couldn't stand to watch without tasting himself, throwing off his black ribbon in animal triumph. He took Klieg back to the cellar he rented in a stinking neighbourhood by the river and made love to her before she thrust the stake into his heart.
Then she consulted the "Vampire's Guide to Ankh-Morpork" and visited the top sightseeing tips. First was the peak of the Tower of Art, where the city spread out below her like a filthy, termite-ridden jewel. Then off to Mad Lord Snapcase's cruet set on Upper Broadway. The matching salt and pepper shakers built by Bloody Stupid Johnson were big enough to house a few families and some of the winter grain supply. They looked wonderfully phallic to Klieg. Last for the evening was the Ankh-Morpork Opera House which was closed, though she did get in through the roof to get a look at Bloody Stupid's organ.
Quite a jam-packed night.
Klieg returned to Beber's cellar all tuckered out. Now that she had a home base in the city, she could relax a bit. Let her hair down. There was her mission, yes. She wouldn't forget that. But there was time. She was a vampire for goodness sake. If there was one thing she had, it was time.
Yawning, she eased herself into Beber's coffin and closed the lid. Ankh-Morpork was everything she thought it would be. She was quite enjoying herself already.
