Commander Vimes signed deeply, tilted back in his chair and carefully studied the ceiling. In front of him, a slowly melting puddle of shame and embarrassment filled the space formerly occupied by Del Ironfoundersdaughter.

"So tell me again, Lance-Constable. When you finally caught up with the little brats, they'd managed to... "

"Draw a moustache on the giant portrait of Lars Larscousin leading the dwarf troops into Koom Valley, Uncle Samu - I mean, Commander Vimes, sir."

"And?"

"And they'd managed to sort of accidentally knock over the holy ancient jewelled sceptre of Cadmium son of Bauxite. And it sort of smashed to bits on the cobblestones, sir."

"And then what happened?"

"Well, Mr. Stronginthearm sort of shouted, 'It's all a plot, I knew it all along, let's have at those bloody trolls, lads!' and sort of whacked Coalface around the knees with a ceremonial loaf of Überwaldian Fencing Bread, sir. And after that I don't really know what happened, 'cause there was a lot of shouting and things breaking and people running about and also I think Eleanora Blatch might have bitten me. Sir."

"I see. Well, I'm not impressed, Del - er, Lance-Constable Ironfoundersdaughter. You realise I'm probably going to get called to see the Patrician over this?"

"I'm - I'm sorry Uncle S-sir! I didn't mean it to-"

"Yes, I should bloody well hope you didn't mean it! I'd hate to have to tell Vetinari that twenty years of hard work defusing the ancient hatred between trolls and dwarfs have just been smashed to tiny little pieces, as I might add has most of Short Street, old Mr. Garbanzo's inflatable castle and Dibbler's sausage-inna-bun cart, all because one of my Watchmen bloody well MEANT IT!!".

Del also shifted her gaze to the ceiling, her dark blue eyes stinging like they hadn't done since the time she and her best friend had sampled a bottle of Soggy Mountain Dew from Gerhardtina's dad's liquor cabinet. No matter what happened, she refused to cry in front of Uncle Samuel.

"Ah, Del. What are we going to do with you?"

"Don't know, sir."

The worst part, Vimes reflected, was that he couldn't even bring himself to be properly angry. Godsdammit, the girl just stood there, all bony awkward limbs and hang-dog expression, looking so gormless he didn't even have the heart to shout properly.

"Alright then. Three weeks scrubbing the cells, and you're demoted from active duty for the same period. As, I might add" - he raised his voice slightly - "are Sergeant Anthracite and Corporal Dwarrows, for drinking on duty plus the rampant bloody stupidity of leaving a copper on her first day alone in charge of the Tent."

There was a scuffling outside, as of two heads, one large and one small, being removed from a keyhole, and a kind of disgusted muttering duet, growing fainter in the distance, along the theme of:

"Told you it was a bad idea."

"Did not!"

"I bloody well did!"

"You say, 'Leave young one in charge of tent, be a good laugh, let's go get hammered, why not eh, it New Year-Koom Valley Day after all'."

"Well, you KNOW I have bad ideas, that's what you get for listening to me!"

Del sighed, squared her large shoulders, and saluted her way out of Uncle Commander Samuel's presence.

* * *

The spark was bored, and restless. It crackled around the small and fledgling Guild of Iconographers and zapped through the office of the Ankh- Morpork Times. It dropped in to an intimate gathering at Lady Selachii's house, and caused one of the guests to give another a nasty static shock through a misfired air-kiss. It thrummed and hovered through the streets. Looking for somewhere to go.

* * *

And to top everything else off, didn't it just have to be a full moon.

Dinner at the little house in Shuttering Street was drawing to a close. Del had abandoned all pretence at eating her Vegetarian Paella Surprise, while her mother just pushed it aimlessly around her plate. Angua von Überwald - she'd never taken on Carrot's name, which had made things easier when the two of them finally called it quits just before their only daughter's tenth birthday - was a handsome woman, most of the time, in her early forties. She still wore her hair long and ash-blonde, tumbling down her back in a style her daughter had tried, and failed, to emulate. On Del, any kind of long hair just looked like stringy rat-tails hanging off her head (provided, of course, that the rats involved were a violent shade of orange and prone to tangling themselves in epic knots, which may sound improbable but stranger things have happened in the rubbish heaps around Unseen University). As a result, she generally kept her hair short and told everyone that it was for Reasons of Hygiene.

"So, yeah, I'll make sure nobody accidentally latches the shutters tonight, Mum."

"Thankyou, dear. Now, you're quite sure you're not feeling any... different?"

Del blushed. "Mu-um! I told you, I'm not like you! I'm not gonna get... that... thing. Never."

Angua assumed her best irritatingly-wise-maternal expression, and choked down a vague urge to laugh. "It could still happen, you know. I mean, I was fourteen before mine came, *and* my parents were both ... I'm just saying have some patience, that's all. Some girls develop later than others, it's nothing to be embarrassed about."

Del squirmed and looked down at the table. Her mother had brought this subject up on repeated embarrassing occasions, and had even left a pamphlet on Del's pillow entitled 'What Everie Girl Shouldde Knowe'. It had had friendly little case-stories of girls with names like Mary and Betty who were very proud and happy that they were growing up and becoming w - er, well, you get the idea. And it'd had *diagrams*. With cutaway pictures of mysterious blue fluids leaking out of various internal organs. Del hadn't been able to use the pillow for a week afterwards.

* * *

Old Mrs. Cosmopilite furrowed her already-quite-furrowsome brow, making that very special critical "errm" noise that usually means the noise-maker is trying to formulate his or her uncomplimentary opinions into a phrasing that will neither injure the feelings of the criticise-ee, nor earn the criticise-er a swift kick in the kneecaps.

"It's a bit... you know, dear. You wouldn't be able to wear it down the shops."

"Yes, Aunt Marietta."

Emmelina Cosmopilite sighed, and turned back to the sewing machine. She really thought she'd had it, that time. The dress had fluttered through her dreams the night before, and whispered around her head all day as she worked on half a dozen amazingly boring cotton petticoats for Miss Greystread the piano teacher. Of course, now that her great-aunt held the shimmering scraps of fabric up to her more-than ample bosom, Emmelina did see her point. Who, of the rather matronly ladies that patronised Cosmopilite and Niece's dress shop, would be caught dead in a slashed satinette bias-cut evening gown with an asymmetrical neck-line and a strong Klatchian influence around the waist and hem? She took the dress back from her great-aunt, draping it carefully across a workbench in the far corner of the room. Neither of the women noticed the tiny, barely crackling blue sparks that darted from the folds of the fabric.

* * * Angua stalked the night-time streets, occasionally checking her reflection in a shop-window to make sure the polished copper badge was still firmly secured at her throat. She paced by Chalky's all-night pottery, where a couple of shadowy figures were arguing about the cost of repairing an extensively-damaged sausage-inna-bun cart. She picked her way over the loose cobblestones and sad scraps of inflatable rubber that littered the entrance to Short Street, shaking her head. Ah, Del. Angua had tried to hint as tactfully as possible that the Watch was no life for someone so, well, let's face it, clumsy and... and vague, and just not quite tuned to the frequency of reality. But the girl had dreamed about being in the Watch since Angua and Carrot had started bringing her to work with them at the age of four and a half. It was their own faults, really. They'd used to park her for days at a time in a nice safe cell with her wooden toys and highly educational Leonard da Quirm colouring-in book. They'd get Cheri or Colon to look in on her every so often with food, while they raced around the city solving mysteries and heroically saving the day. They'd joked that between them they'd managed to solve the problems of in-house childcare and recruiting both at once. Back in the time when they'd still had love and pride in common, enough to let them imagine it could somehow all work out. Angua sighed, a strange hollow sound echoing through the warm spring air. At least something good had come out of it all. Her daughter had been a sweet child really, all wide eyes and freckles and the kind of dragging- socks-and-scraped-knees tomboyishness that stops at 'cute' before veering left into 'actually-kinda-creepy'. And then quite suddenly, Angua had turned around one day and found this big, hulking, red-haired not-quite stranger, thumping around the house and actually eating the dwarf bread, bringing home a copper badge and breastplate with her face scribbled over with innocent, simple-minded pride.

She expected the girl to start saying "D*mn" any day now.

* * *

Immanuel Blannick was the son of a cobbler. He was the son of a son of a cobbler, who was himself a son of a cobbler, who was a son of an innkeeper, which just goes to show how a family can move sideways in the world*. All his life, he'd toiled in his Dad's little shop in the Street of Cunning Artificers, until one depressing day it had become his own little shop in the Street of Cunning Artificers and then he'd toiled twice as hard and for twice as long because that was what you had to do when you were the one that signed the wage cheques. Over the years, Manny and his loyal team (which mostly consisted of Mistress Coralie Nailsande, old Tommy No-Thumbs and little Bobby Cattermole whose mother wanted him to learn a decent trade) had made more kinds of footwear than they could possibly catalogue, even in the glossy thirty-page Blannick's Annual Home Shoppinge Catelogge. They'd produced stout boots for the men (and women, and dwarfs, and even tiny little ones for the gnomes) of the City Watch. They'd painstakingly stitched delicate high-heeled ladies' slippers for dancing and promenading (and collapsing against a wall screaming "OUCH!" and demanding some sticking-plasters and a carriage home). They'd made shiny squeaky black dress shoes for wearing to one's wedding with the letters "HE" and "LP" amusingly chalked on the soles, and chunky brown sandals for wearing afterwards with grey woollen socks while on one's honeymoon on the beach at Klatch. They'd even made some really *interesting* leather... um... things, on a special order for Mrs. Palm's House of Negotiable Affection. But Manny had never been as proud of any of them as he was of the shoe he held up to the light at this moment. The lines, the symmetry, the insouciant little twist to the stitching on the side buckle that would never be noticed by anyone who hadn't spent twenty-five years learning to appreciate fine footwear... With a dreamy smile, he lifted the little leather brand out of the fire, applying it with pride and pleasure to the shoe's inner lining, letting the world know that this was a "MANNY BLANNICK ORIGINAL".

This was not just any old shoe.

This was a shoe with sole...

* * *

Plink!

Plink!

Plin-

"D*mn!"

"Aargh! Sorry!"

The first two stones bounced cheerfully off the window glass, while the third bounced somewhat less cheerfully off Del's forehead. In the street below, right arm cocked in a suspicious throwing-motion, stood Del's former schoolfriend, a young woman rejoicing in, or at least grit-toothedly- putting-up-with, the name of Gerhardtina Sock. The two had shared a desk at the Ankh-Morpork Mostly Public School until their departure two weeks previously, when Del had left to join the Watch and Gerhardtina to work in her uncle's sausage shop.

Now Gerhardtina looked like a *real* lost princess if Del had ever seen one (and she did, while brushing her teeth every morning). Despite belonging to a family of butchers, generally not a factor conducive to the development of overwhelming physical allure, Del's best friend possessed the kind of figure that, if it didn't stop traffic, at least severely interfered with orderly vehicular progression (particularly if Corporal Nobbs had been put on crossing-guard duty). Although nearly as tall as Del, Gerhardtina was built along the lines of a graceful racehorse or slender whippet rather than a mysterious shaggy creature brought home from the local animal shelter. She had rather a lot of silky black hair and a face like a slightly snooty-looking china doll that Del had owned briefly as a child before using it as a bat in a game of Ankh-Morpork-Rules** with Arthur Throckmorton and Jeremy Naylor down the street. She was also, to Del's current discomfort, both an insomniac and a less-than-crack shot with a window-pebble.

"What's up, then?"

Gerhardtina grinned cheekily, an expression entirely at odds with a high- boned face so obviously built for a simper or a haughty scowl. "Heard your first day at work didn't go so well." "You and the rest of the city."

"So I came to cheer you up."

"Aren't I lucky."

Gerhardtina amiably fired another rock. "So are you gonna be cheered, or not?"

Del smiled weakly. "Sorry. Thanks, really, it's nice of you to come over. I'll just go downstairs and let you in, there's loads of supper left it you're hungr-"

"Nah, mate. You're coming with me! I've got something special to show you."

"What?"

"Oooh, interrogate me, Copper Del!"

Del frowned, and leaned further out of the window into the warm night air. "C'mon, what is it?"

Gerhardtina was all but dancing. "Can't tell you. You've gotta come and see."

Feeling vaguely intrigued, Del nodded, spat on her hands and began to shin down the specially-fitted reinforced drainpipe***, leaving her blister- inducing new boots on the floor beside her bed. She landed squarely on the paving and grinned back at her friend, forgetting all about Sergeant Anthracite, Commander Vimes and Short Street, feeling suddenly barefoot and adventurous in the middle of her own dark city.

"Alright then. Let's go and see".

* Although there is insufficient space here to go into the frequently Byzantine, and occasionally Constantinoplian, workings of the class order in Ankh-Morpork, suffice it to say that although 'upward mobility' is almost unknown (except in the relatively unique case of Sir Samuel Vimes, who is on record as saying he wished he'd never heard of the bloody stupid idea in the first place and pass the godsdammned caviar), the relatively uninterrogated dynamics of 'sideways mobility' remain one of the more fascinating elements of the Ankh-Morporkian social system.

** Ankh-Morpork Rules is a street game generally played eighteen-to-a-side, popular with small children and very, very drunk people. Broadly, it involves hitting as many other players as possible as hard as possible and then running away before someone's mother and/or the Watch catches up with you. Many city-states and nations have developed their own form of sporting code known geographically as "Klatchian Rules", "Sto Helit Rules", etc. As far as can be determined, Ankh-Morpork Rules is the only sporting competition in the multiverse chiefly characterised by the fact that it appears, to the casual observer, to have *no rules whatsoever*. This makes it roughly the dimensional equivalent of what is laughingly called "Australian Rules" in our own universe.

*** Although Del had spent most of her life using a perfectly sensible set of stairs to get from the first floor to the ground, the conveniently- located drainpipe had been a present from her Aunt Cheri, who felt that every girl should have a drainpipe for her young man to climb up in situations of romantic emergency. Del, who hadn't had the heart to suggest otherwise, mostly used it for popping out and scaring the gargoyles on the roof whenever she was bored.