** (*cue evil, insane cackling*) I'm having so much fun seeing y'all biting your nails! But I'm not going to drag out the suspense too long – like Havvie, I do have a heart. (*grin*) A word to anna: You won't have to wait too much longer for answers to your questions. So… here's the next chap. Enjoy!**

17. Extenuating Circumstances

            The first thrust of the Patrician's wooden stake missed its target because Klieg was much faster than he was. She bent out of the way of the wood, danced away, laughing.

            "Anozer round!" she cried. She skipped toward him and dodged two of his blows, quick jabs of the right and left stakes, and caught him with her fist in the ribs. He doubled over.

            Klieg stood over him, her hands on her hips. "You are zin and veak, Vetinari."

            A moment later he straightened again, his face grim, his body still.

            "Lavinia! Stop!" shouted Isabella.

            Klieg ignored her. She lifted herself into the air, floated out of the Patrician's reach, and descended on him at speed, twisting away from the wooden points. This time, the flat of her hand caught him across the face hard enough to knock him back and against the tower battlements.

            "You vork all day in a chair," Klieg said with satisfaction. "At a desk. Vhy did you zink you could fight?"

            There was blood on the Patrician's face.         

            "Lavinia!" Isabella cried again.

            The Patrician staggered to his feet, the look in his eye of dead determination. He tightened his grip on the stakes and took his waiting stance again.

            "Zis is so lovely," said Klieg. She held an arm up in the air. "I shall beat you viz vone hand, shall I?" She plunged at him and the stakes in his hands cracked as he crossed them to block her, but the force of her advance drove him against the battlements again. He lost his wind and slid to the ground.

            As Klieg smiled down at him there, Isabella breathed deeply and tried to convince herself that she was right. What she was going to do needed to be done. Even if he didn't want it.

            Maybe especially because.

**

            Vimes was annoyed because the stitch in his side wasn't going away, he was breathing too hard, his left knee hurt and he didn't have time for his body to let him down. Ten minutes running and he was about to fall over. It wasn't like the old days.

            They'd cut up Cheapside to Filigree and were still running.

            "The Palace, right?" Vimes shouted at Pefka, who was twenty feet ahead of him.

            Instead of answering, Pefka launched himself into the air.

**

            Klieg squatted down in front of him, smiling at the blood on his face. She seemed to be considering her next move. The Patrician's eyes were open but he wasn't doing much more than catching his breath. Isabella stooped and touched his cheek.

            "How veak he is," said Klieg with disgust.

            Isabella looked at him there, limp against the wall, his face bruised and bleeding, his breaths laboured. Despite everything, she was his wife with heart and mind and – who knows? – maybe even soul, and she didn't like to see him down.

            She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said, "You drink warm blood from the living, don't you?"

            "Varm, yes. It must be varm. Ozers have told me he is cold-blooded. Ve shall see."

            Isabella gave Vetinari an apologetic smile, then went to the center of the tower platform.

            "My blood also? It must be warm?"

            The Patrician was suddenly on his feet and moving toward her but she had a head start. She ran and without hesitation leapt over the edge of the tower.

            Klieg let out a surprised cry and jumped into the air. She careened down just as Vetinari skidded to the edge and saw Isabella falling, her skirts billowing up around her.

            After a fast drop, Klieg swooped around and grasped Isabella round the waist and shot straight up into the sky, up past Vetinari, past the Rimward Tower. 

            They finally hovered, the city spread out below like a greeting card, like one of Isabella's maps, sparkling with light, sprawling, crawling with life. For a moment Isabella forgot why she was up there. She'd never seen the city from that vantage point. Imagined, yes. But never expected to see it with her own eyes.

            "You zink it beautiful?" asked Klieg. "It is interesting but it is ugly, Ankh-Morpork."

            Her words snapped Isabella back to her task.

            "What do you intend to do now?"

            "Vill you put your head on my shoulder?"

            "Will you drop me if I let go of you?"

            "I vill never drop you."

            Isabella looked down at the tower and could see the small black figure of Havelock Vetinari looking up at them. She had the urge to wave, to call out how amazing the view was up there, but it was foolish and she knew it. Instead, she put her head on Klieg's shoulder.

            Klieg breathed in deeply, taking up Isabella's scent and swallowing it like a smoker does the cloud from a cigarette, exhaling only after letting it careen through her lungs and back up and out.

            With some difficulty, Isabella untied the scarf around her neck one-handed. And used it to grasp Dibbler's stake, which she'd strapped to her leg before going out to follow the Patrician. She drew out a wooden hammer she'd entangled into a stocking garter, and in one quick second had the stake at Klieg's chest. She swung the hammer as hard as she could. It impacted, then slipped from her fingers and tumbled down out of sight. 

            The start was made, though. The tip of the stake went in, not deep, but there was blood and Isabella embraced Klieg tightly and the stake went deeper before it shattered into splinters.

            There was no scream from Klieg, only a startled intake of breath and a flash of fury in her eyes and then…weakness. Isabella pushed herself away, Klieg tried to scrabble to reach her, changed her mind and pulled at the stake. Finally, she got it out and dropped it and put her hand over the blood and closed her eyes. She fell.

            Isabella was falling too, didn't notice when she passed the tower and the Patrician bracing himself at the edge of the platform, his attention snapping from her back to the sky. He was ready for Klieg.

            Isabella had the peculiar sensation that she would die -- if she wasn't already dead, that is -- and that she wouldn't want to be found with her skirt up around her head. She tried to push it down as she fell. It billowed out around her despite her efforts, but she at least had the satisfaction of knowing that her garters weren't showing when Pefka caught her.

**

            There was a regular shuttle running between the ground and the tower. Pefka was the means of transport. He carried Vimes up first, then Angua and several other watchmen. They crowded around Klieg, who lay bleeding and senseless on the stone. At Vetinari's order, her arms, feet and – a surprise to Vimes – mouth were bound.

            There were many ways to kill a vampire but there were even more ways to wound one. By the rattling sound of Klieg's breathing, the stake had pierced a lung. It was a serious wound, but one a vampire would live through, unlike the cutting off of a limb, exposure to various religious shapes, consumption of tzatziki or any other garlic-intensive foods, the drinking of certain acids, sunlight, starvation and so on. Still, the Patrician ordered Vimes to get an Igor to patch Klieg up. Vimes sent Pefka, who was becoming a useful extension of the City Watch.

            After landing safely, Isabella had walked calmly to the wall, leaned against it for a moment, then slid slowly to the ground. Angua looked her over and informed the Patrician that she was fine. In general. Except for having just nearly fallen fifteen plus stories to her death. Twice. Even if she was already dead, it was certainly a frightening experience.

            The Patrician opened the secret passage and directed the watchmen to take Klieg to the palace dungeon. Once they were gone, Vetinari, Vimes and Isabella were the only ones left.

            "You don't look good, sir," said Vimes.

            The Patrician touched the corner of his mouth and looked with interest at the blood on his fingers.

            "It's all superficial, commander. Thank you for your concern. I would like to congratulate you on your excellent timing."

            "Flattery isn't going to work. I still want to know what the hell that vampire was doing here."

            "Her name is Klieg. She has an interest in Miss Capelli." The Patrician looked down at Isabella. She was watching them in a dazed sort of way. She looked like she couldn't move if she wanted to.

            "The same interest as Pefka?" asked Vimes.

            "Explain."

            After Vimes told him what happened at Pseudopolis Yard, Vetinari said, "Such valuable blood. How…interesting."

            "Disgusting, more like."

            "We can't blame a creature for being what it is, can we?"

            "We could say the same about this Klieg, sir." Vimes surveyed the patches of blood on the floor of the tower. "Interesting you wanted her gagged. She must have some things to say."

            "Indeed. And she may say them when I wish it."

            The Patrician stooped in front of Isabella. Klieg's blood had made a mess of the front of her gown. Small splinters were stuck in the fabric like a dusting of pencil shavings.

            "Don't scold me, Havelock," she said weakly, "I couldn't just let--"

            He took her up into his arms and held her so tightly that it was hard for her to adjust her nose and mouth to get a bit of air in.

            Vimes had the embarrassing three's a crowd feeling. There was work to be done somewhere, paperwork or something. He began to move quietly toward the entrance to the secret passage.

            Lord Vetinari lifted his face out of Isabella's hair.

            "In my office in ten minutes, commander."

            Vimes left them huddled at the edge of the tower.

            It wasn't a scolding, exactly, though Lord Vetinari's voice was unnecessarily severe in Isabella's view. He reminded her that there were certain topics about which curious Commander Vimes didn't need to hear. On the issue of her attempt to single-handedly execute Klieg, he called her a damned fool, in those very words, because the vampire, daughter or not, was apparently valuable to Margolotta and nothing of value should be destroyed unless absolutely necessary. Or at least until its usefulness has been exhausted. Isabella didn't have the energy to argue. Being vampire bait -- and she had no doubt that's what the Patrician had intended – had taken a lot out of her.

            After he helped her down the secret passageway and deposited her in a bedroom, he seemed to relax. He looked her over himself to be sure she really hadn't been injured, and once he was satisfied, he took her by the shoulders as if he intended to shake her.

            "Be more mindful of your physical safety," he said. "There is a limit to the number of times I can watch you die."

            In the Oblong Office, Vimes smelled that something had been burned not long ago. The Patrician rarely started fires in  winter, much less in late summer. Out of professional curiosity, he wandered over to the grate and tipped the ashes around with his boot.

            "Ah, commander," said Vetinari as soon as he entered the office. He was wiping his face with a towel. "What did you find at Klieg's base?"

            "Nothing but a coffin and a hole to the old sewers, sir. Did you find something when you were there?"

            "I never said I was there."

            The Patrician eased himself into his chair as if his muscles ached.

            "I'll check the almanac to see how the weather'll be tomorrow," said Vimes. He chewed his cigar with satisfaction. "I hope the sun is shining. It'll be good for the public to see the killer's really dead. Again. For good. No more murders and all of that. The Black Ribboners ought to be relieved to see it too. I reckon we should--"

            "There will be no public execution, commander. You know what I think of those."

            Vimes knew the Patrician ordered public executions only when it was useful to inform the public that a certain evil-doer had, in fact, been brought to justice. Unlike his predecessors, Vetinari rarely ordered executions to begin with; they were mainly reserved for traitors (who were rare) and persistent murderers, the ones who kept going after they'd been told to stop. A killer like this vampire, though, seven victims in a week, that, as far as Vimes was concerned, warranted a bit of a show.

            He didn't like public executions either, but he disliked psychopathic blood-sucking vampires even more.

            "There's been a lot of bad feeling around," he said. "Maybe that'd ease up if people saw the murderer was--"

            "I have other plans for her."

            "She killed seven people!"

            The Patrician dipped a quill and began to write rapidly on a blank sheet of paper.

            "There were extenuating circumstances."

            "There were what?"

            Vimes had to replay the conversation over in his mind to believe he'd been hearing right. "No circumstances should excuse a serial killer from getting what's coming to her."

            The Patrician glanced up. For a second he looked… Not angry. There was so much more to it than that. Furious didn't do him justice. It was a look that was so far beyond simple fury that Vimes found himself fighting with the impulse to take a cautious step away from the desk.

            It was short lived. A brief second later, Lord Vetinari regained his bland expression.

            "The suspect has been caught, Sir Samuel, thanks in part to the brave work of the City Watch and, I might add, a vampire who shows all of the hallmarks of true civic virtue. These positive aspects of the case should be made public. There will be rewards all around, perhaps a bit of a wage increase for the men, a citation for Mr. Pefka…"

            "You can't be serious!"

            The look on Vetinari's face begged to differ. The bruises made it worse.

            "The Watch has done its duty," he said sternly. "The judicial arm must take over now." He raised his right arm. "This happens to be it. Have no fear; Klieg will be dealt with."

            There was a finality to the way he said it.

            "So long as people know you can't go around using the city as a feeding dish," Vimes grumbled.

            "That will be discouraged in future. Do pass on my thanks to your team."