15. Terms of Respect
"Come to kill me, Vetinari?"
Klieg lay draped over the edge of her coffin, her chin on a pale hand, her hair spilling like an oil slick over the wood. The cellar was dark except for the slivers of moonlight that came in from a tiny grate high up on one of the dank stone walls.
The Patrician had changed to all black. To most eyes, he was invisible. Not to Klieg's.
"I suggest we have a conversation like civilized creatures," he said from his corner.
Klieg yawned, revealing two uncomfortably long fangs. She patted her mouth, stretched, and stood up in the coffin.
"Vill you give me my clozing, please?"
Vetinari tossed them over. He wasn't about to be uncomfortable merely at the sight of a nude woman. He was made of stronger stuff than that. Klieg dressed slowly. Showing off, flexing a long pale leg before slipping it slowly into her trousers, and so on. He was not impressed.
When she finished, Klieg stepped out of the coffin and went to the single rough table in a corner, uncorked a ceramic pot, plugged her nose and took a drink.
"I'm alvays so zirsty in ze morning. Drink?" She shook the bottle at Vetinari. The contents swished thickly. He remained impassive, silent. "I didn't zink so," she said. "Vhat shall ve talk about?"
"Have you been enjoying our fair city?"
"Oh yes. Ze Ankh-Morpork hospitality is legendary. Vhy, a fellow vampire gave me zis vonderful cellar vizout zinking. So generous."
"What do you think of the cuisine?"
Klieg licked her lips. "Exqvisite. Ze children especially are zo tender. I zink it is ze diet of jammy devils." She grinned.
"Four men and three children dead in a week. All your work?"
"Oh, yes."
Vetinari paused, his hands clasped behind his back. "Your meals have caused quite a bit of bad feeling in the city toward vampires. Unfortunate."
Klieg shrugged.
"More than a dozen have been injured," said the Patrician.
Her smile disappeared. "Veaklings! Zey should fight back."
"Most apparently don't think it worth giving up their vows of abstinence."
"Veaklings! Zey try to stop being vhat zey are and start being vhat zey are not. It is pazetic."
"I assume then that you don't think it noble to control the base appetites."
"Zey can not be controlled. Not nature. It is pushed down and grows stronger in ze dark. Everyzing grows stronger in ze dark. And vone day, it comes in a rush vorse zan before..." Her eyes were gleaming.
The pattern of murders was too calculated to be random in Lord Vetinari's view, and he'd concluded even before the children died that the murderer wanted to anger a broad spectrum of Morporkians. It made sense only in light of the conflict between the Reds and Blacks in Uberwald. A Red could come to the city, feed on members of each social class and enrage the people enough to make violence a likely outcome. The Black Ribboners of Ankh-Morpork would be tested: React passively to the xenophobia or answer it with a violence that could topple their convictions about consuming human blood.
A very clever test. Very…political.
The Patrician sharpened his gaze. He didn't move, didn't blink, didn't smile or frown. The stillness of him, the utter lack of even the tiniest automatic motion, was something like the stillness of a coil when the tension is at its highest.
It was a contrast with Klieg. She moved fluidly as she closed the distance between them.
"Tell me about your vife, Vetinari. How does she taste?"
"I have no wife."
Klieg smiled. "Ah…Isabella, she lies to increase my envy and passion. Vhat a delight."
"She did not lie."
Klieg's smile dropped. A thoughtful moment passed before she said, "Zat is vhy she is sad. She believes herself to be vhat she is not. Too many people do zis. Vampires and humans." She shrugged. "I shall see her ven ve are finished viz our business."
Vetinari folded his fingers before his lips. "Ah, business. Yes. Arising no doubt from your place in Lady Margolotta's household. Kind of your employer to give you a business trip, hm? Half holiday, half work."
Festus' answer to his clacks query about a vampire named Lavinia hadn't contained much, but it did reveal an interesting detail. Her last known place of residence, Margolotta's castle.
"Employer?" Klieg's fangs could be seen even in the dimness as she smiled. "Oh, Vetinari, you have no idea. Really…"
She laughed, a hearty, high-pitched chuckling. The Patrician waited patiently.
"Zank you for a tremendous laugh. It is very healzy. No, I call Margolotta Milady but not because I vork for her in ze same vay a clerk vorks for you. It is a term of respect. All children should have respect for zeir parents."
Vetinari's face hadn't really changed, but Klieg's broadening smile seemed to be a reaction to something she saw in him. A twitch, perhaps. A minute shift in the eyes. A slight deepening of the lines between his brows.
"So, you see now! Bravo! Do you zink ve vampires valk around saying mama and papa? Ha! Ve have more style. Some of us." The malicious glee suddenly dropped from her face as if it had been wiped away with a cloth. "Have you nozing to say, Vetinari?"
He didn't.
"Maybe if you have more information. Information is currency, is it not?" Her eyes narrowed. "I am young. Tventy nine years ago I vas born into zis vorld and my mozer is Margolotta. Tventy nine years. How is your mazematics, hm? Are you reckoning vell tonight?"
Lord Vetinari remained silent.
"Remind me again exactly vhen you visited Ubervald. Zat vas vhich monz?" Klieg tapped her temple with a finger and stared into space as if trying to remember something. "Grune. A beautiful Grune in ze forests, vas it not? And zen, oh, nine monzs later…"
Klieg stepped right up to the Patrician and stood on tiptoe so she could match the level of his stare. They were almost nose to nose. He made no attempt to lean back or move away.
"Out of respect I should call you Milord but I vill not," she hissed. "I do not respect you and so I call you Vetinari."
**
They rushed through the twisted, narrow alleys of the Shades, Sergeant Angua in the lead, her nose taking them on what clearly wasn't the most direct route to wherever the Patrician had gone. Several times they passed the same tavern or street with a broken lantern, and once or twice, Angua pulled up short, her face turned up.
She did it again. They were at a nameless street corner surrounded by ramshackle, half-timbered houses that looked like a soft breeze would blow them over. Property tax was paid on ground only, so the houses had been built as vertical as possible. People on the upper floors sought more room by building loggias jutting out over the street. The sky was nearly blotted out by them.
"What's wrong?" asked Vimes.
"I think the lines cross, sir."
"The what?"
"The scents. From here they go off in two different directions."
"You sure they're both him?"
Angua nodded. "One line is fainter than the other."
"Where are they going?"
"One widdershins, one more hubwards."
Vimes looked to Isabella. "Did he give any clue as to where the vampire was?"
"He didn't tell me anything. That's why I was following him."
"What about you," he said to Pefka, "can you smell him out?"
"To be truthful," he looked at Isabella, "I can not smell anything very well when the lady is nearby."
A disgusted look passed over Vimes' face. He was wishing he'd brought more watchmen with him, or that at least he had a pigeon. Or a couple of mini clacks paddles. The only one in the group capable of doing much about the murderer if she took to the air when they found her was Pefka. Vimes couldn't send him off to follow one of the scent trails in case it was the wrong one.
"All right, we'll stay together and pick a direction. Which way?"
"We can pick the older scent or the newer one," said Angua.
"The old one could take us in circles again," said Isabella.
"Right. The new one, then." Vimes and the rest followed as Angua took off down the alley again, away from the river.
It led to the clacks tower on Digger Street.
"Is she here?" Vimes asked Pefka quietly as he opened the door and peered up the dark stairway.
"I am sorry, sir. But with Miss Capelli nearby, my powers of smell are overloaded."
Isabella tried to push her way through the doorway but Vimes pulled her back.
"Stay here."
"Commander, I--"
"No argument. Pefka, you take the lead in case she tries to flee. Angua, watch our backs." He drew his sword and they started as quietly and at the same time quickly as they could up the stairway. Isabella waited at the bottom only a moment before following.
There was a door at the top of the stairs. Pefka pushed it open slowly and the group eased into the room beyond.
It was a plain room that contained a large table, a chair, a lantern, a coffee pot and a young man who was nodding as he accepted a piece of paper from the hand of Lord Vetinari.
"…and of the utmost urgency," the Patrician was saying. "Do it now." He pointed at the ceiling, which was the roof of the tower, from which the young man would send the color-coded signals, or clacks, to the next tower in the chain, which would forward them to the next, and so on. The man rushed out of the room.
Since there was a lack of vampires, Vimes rammed his sword into its sheath and stalked up to the Patrician.
"Why on the Disc didn't you tell me the vampire was--" The righteous fury in his voice failed when the Patrician turned around.
His face was calm in the same way one might call a lake without ripples or waves calm. There was a glassyness to his eyes, but otherwise, there was nothing physical – no frown, no bent brows, no glare, that would hint at anything out of the ordinary. He looked mildly displeased but that's how he usually looked.
Yet he radiated something else, something invisible and at the same time more palpable than any expression of the face. It was a special quiet. The kind only felt in summer in the half hour of rising humidity and tension and expectation before the sky opens up and storms in a fury of cold rain and wind that beats the mortar off houses and snaps whole trees like twigs.
It felt like that in the room in the clacks tower.
"Ah, commander," he said quietly. "I see your watchmen have disobeyed my instructions."
"Havelock, what--" Isabella was stopped by a single, slim finger the Patrician placed in front of his lips.
Vimes wouldn't stand for that. "Did you find the vampire, sir?"
"I see you've found one yourself." Vetinari nodded politely at Pefka. Again, his voice was unusually quiet, almost faint. "Let me say on behalf of the city that your help in the investigation is appreciated."
"Thank you, sir."
"Sir," said Vimes, trying to keep his voice calm, "did you find her."
The Patrician gazed at him for a long moment. "No, commander."
Everyone in the room knew it wasn't true. Though he was a politician, Vetinari didn't lie particularly often. Most people assumed he could do it smoothly when he needed. This time, he was betrayed by the tension coming from him, thickening the air in the room.
"Why didn't you tell me she was at the Palace, sir?" said Vimes in a voice he hoped was reasonably soothing. He had the sense the Patrician would shatter at a loud noise.
"There are thousands of vampires in the city. Should there be an automatic connection between a murderous vampire and one who appears at the Palace? Not necessarily. Unless you hold by the theory that all vampires are suspect, in which case Mr. Pefka here should not be trusted."
The Patrician took Isabella by the arm and steered her toward the door, where Angua waited. She stepped aside, looking helplessly at Vimes.
"Sir!" Vimes said, following them down the steps. "You're working against me. You must give me any information you have."
"Must, commander?"
"All right, should. You should tell me what's going on!"
On Digger Street, the Patrician stopped at the curb.
Vimes got in front of him. "Why don't you want me to know where she is?"
"I'm sure Mr. Pefka will assist you well in that." The Patrician snapped his fingers at a cab turning the corner up the street. It rumbled to a stop in front of them and Vetinari helped Isabella into the two-seater before climbing in himself. He ordered the driver to take them to the Palace.
As the horses started to walk, Vimes kept pace.
"If someone is killed tonight…"
"It would be a terrible tragedy, yes."
"We can prevent it, sir!"
"I do hope so."
"Tell me where she sleeps," said Vimes, jogging lightly now alongside the cab. "Just tell me that. If you know it, sir, tell me. For gods sake."
The Patrician stared straight ahead, saying nothing. The gentle, hesitant pressure of a few fingers at his arm made him glance at Isabella. She looked like the last thing in the world she wanted to do was touch him but something had overridden her fear.
"Scree Lane, commander," he sighed. He slapped the side of the cab. "Driver! Faster!"
They sped off. Vimes skidded to a stop, breathing harder than he should have, he realized with annoyance.
"Sergeant!"
She was right behind him.
"I want twenty watchmen at Scree Lane. Now. Yesterday." He considered a moment. "Detritus and all undead constables to be present, all right?"
Angua didn't have to ask why.
Vimes waved at Pefka, who was still up the street, walking in a dignified fashion.
"You come with me," Vimes shouted, annoyed, energized and scared as Hades.
