Well, I had hoped for more reviewers before I posted again, but that doesn't seem to be happening (stifling a sob). So, here is another chapter. I have laboured over it all today (seriously, you would think I didn't have exams to prepare for, or anything!) so I hope you like it. For those of you who wanted a longer chapter (Deathwisher, Erin), here it is! Very long indeed by my standards. For those of you who wanted to know what the hell was going on and for me to stop with the cliffhangers (Enelya, Lavondyss), sorry! You still don't get to know. Hehe, yes, I am evil. But the more reviews I get, the more I am inspired to write (oddly enough). So review, all ye who read this, and even those who don't (not sure how that would work…but meyh. This is my alternate universe, it doesn't have to make sense.)

Summary- Vimes and Ahmed- getting it on. Sybil and Downey, getting it on, getting married, having a baby. Vetinari and Drumknott…some waters are too deep to wade. But blatantly, getting it on. Creepy hooded figure- well read on, and find out what he's (or she's) doing!

Disclaimer- The name on my birth certificate isn't Terry Prattchett, so Vimes, Vet and Ahmed sadly aren't mine. But Judith is! Muahahaha.

NYA

Chapter 3- A Bloody A

Vimes sat in the Watch house, ignoring the reproachful creaking of the floorboards that meant Carrot was still outside, pacing, waiting to deliver his reports. For the first time in years, Vimes had no interest whatsoever in what the crazy people of Ankh-Morpork were up to. They could be shredding each other in the streets, blowing things up (even more than normal), staging a tribute day to old Stoneface, and he wouldn't have cared.

Well, well, well. So Sybil was pregnant. He hadn't told anyone but clearly Vimes had been Sybil's last inhibition, the marriage notice, gleefully written by William de Worde (who had posted by coincidence a cartoon of Vimes looking angry on the preceding page) had been in the Times and on Vimes' desk before the ink was even dry. The watchmen were avoiding his eye; even Fred had only shoved his messages under the door before waddling off to hide behind his desk. There was nothing about the baby in the paper. Vimes felt a burning desire to get very, very drunk.

The post had contained a small moment of comfort;

Sam, (said Ahmed's hurried handwriting)

Arrived safely. Made excellent time- so unlike our previous journey, where I was forced to cut my own rigging to avoid losing you. They do say the excitement is all in the chase. The men think I have become weak in Ankh-Morpork- so I gave some of them unexpected haircuts. Don't look so reproachful, Sam- actual haircuts. With my sword. See how I have learned the ways of civilisation. Judith met me on the dock, with her entourage. She has not changed. I have to go now to an interminable 'forgiveness' dinner with Khufurah. I am afraid he wishes to scold me for running off. How very boring.

Yours,

Ahmed

Vimes placed the note in his next drawer. He was too full of feelings to write back to him- he was sure Ahmed would not appreciate a page of rambling about Sybil, and even less a note reproving him for visiting Judith in the first place. Thinking about Ahmed made him feel guilty, as if caring about Sybil was tantamount to infidelity. It was natural still to care about someone you had loved, wasn't it? That's not the question, said the sly inner Vimes. The question is, why are you so jealous?

A frantic knocking disturbed his brooding sanctum.

'Go away' he snapped, but Carrot burst in anyway, his cheeks and ears pink with excitement.

'I'm sorry, sir, but there's been a murder!' Vimes raised his eyes to the ceiling and shut them.

'Cheery! Detritus! Angua!' he bellowed. 'Let's go!' He turned to Carrot. 'You're in charge.' Carrot ripped off a salute.

'Yessir!'

-oOo-

The people of Klatch had not forgotten him. Ahmed had stood on the prow of the boat when they landed at Al'Khali, his sword glinting and the heat from his homeland hitting him as if from an oven. There was a small crowd on the harbour, shimmering in the heat. Some were curious, some came to gloat, some wanted to show the wali their loyalty hadn't waned. He had heard the men whispering together on the ship. 'Poof', they had called him, an Ankh-Morpork word and not one that the Klatchian seamen would know. Someone had been talking. Ahmed smiled to himself as he pictured the look on their faces when they realised he was listening. There were some sailors in Al'Khali now with very short hair.

But now he was here, in Judith's silken, extravagant apartment in the palace. After the dinner they had retired to the chambers that they still, officially, shared as man and wife. Ahmed pulled out his silver cigarette holder, inserted one and lit it carefully. He never used it in Ankh-Morpork. Across the room, Lady Judith did the same. They blew out matching coils of smoke that undulated across the distance between them and wreathed together between the oil lamps hanging overhead.

'Samuel Vimes, I seem to remember, smokes some sort of vile cigar, does he not?' Ahmed met her eyes for a second.

'They aren't that vile.' If you looked very carefully you might have seen Judith's cheeks redden for a fraction of a second. But the woman had control. You had to give her that, Ahmed thought.

'Of course not' she said airily, and gave tinkling little laugh. It used to make Ahmed smile but now set his teeth on edge. What had he seen in this woman? Her audacity knew no bounds. He couldn't believe she sat here calmly insulting the man whom she had tried to force him to kill. Judith fixed her huge dark eyes on him and smiled, her red lips full and inviting. Ah, he remembered. She was beautiful, and darkly alluring, so opposite to lady Sybil that you would not even have guessed them related, let alone sisters. He had been so captivated by her beauty and her charm, and his extraordinary good luck that she was eager to bestow both on him, that he had waved away the sudden tempers and irrational behaviour she exhibited. Oh, how quickly her playfulness had turned to spite and petulance.

She was watching him, testing him to see how he would react. But Ahmed was a D'reg, a hardened desert policeman, and someone whose cynicism could give Sam Vimes a run for his money. He was damned if Judith would get any satisfaction out of this meeting. Nevertheless…

Without warning Ahmed's arm shot out and caught the wrist of a young girl, one of Judith's personal handmaidens, who was setting the ornate silver pot of Klatchian coffee down on the lacquered table between them. Judith raised an exquisitely manicured eyebrow.

'What is your name?'

'J-Junga, wali.'

'Empty your pockets' said Ahmed quietly, aware of the eyes of the other servants tracing his every move. The girl began to shake, tipping the bag of powder from the concealed pocket in her dress. Her mistress kept her eyes averted, she was lighting another cigarette, rearranging the folds of her dress, flicking ash away with dainty, precise movements. Ahmed looked at her with something approaching disgust. The girl's life meant nothing to her. He drew his sword with a hiss of steel and the handmaiden began to cry, snatches of prayer in Klatchian. He raised the great curved blade and drew it swiftly across the back of her hand.

She gasped. Beads of blood, red as rubies, stood out from the crimson slit. When Ahmed spoke it was to Junga but he kept his gaze on Judith's resolutely downcast eyes.

'If I ever see you in this house again I shall cleave your head from your body and give it to your mother. Now leave. All of you!' The girl fled, dry eyed from terror, and the rest of the servants followed without a backward glance.

Judith leaned forward and drank straight from the spout of the coffee pot.

'Clean' she said, running her pointed tongue over her lips. 'A test. You passed. And failed.' She poured coffee into his cup.

'I could kill you' he said, watching her hands for the slip, the flash of powder from a ring, a drip from a concealed bottle, but there was nothing.

'Just as easily as you could have killed that girl.' Ahmed flushed behind his beard. 'How far would you get, I wonder, with Khufurah's men in the cities and Cadram hiding in the badlands?' Ahmed stared into his cup. Khufurah, once his prince and his friend, had been at the Dinner cold and distant. No amount of diplomacy could reconcile him to the fact that Ahmed, his most trusted advisor and friend, had left when he was most needed. He looked at Ahmed and saw a coward, a deserter, and worse- the blank faces of those who had died when Ahmed's D'reg tribe, enraged when they thought him dead, had attacked the prince's escort. Anger flared in Ahmed's chest. Judith was poison.

'The desert could swallow me,' he said. Judith waved a hand airily, mockingly.

'Oh, the desert. Of course. But we both know you would want to get on a ship and go running back to that idiot you left me for.' Ahmed's face contorted but he did nothing. His head felt curiously light. The heat, he thought. I must be unused to the heat.

'I have people watching him' Judith said. He could feel her heavy eyes on his face. 'They send me ciphers. Do you know what he is doing in your absence? He has gone to Vetinari. Vetinari's terrier, isn't that what they call him?' She laughed again, and the silvery waves of her voice seemed to wash over Ahmed, to drown him in anger. He grabbed clumsily at her arms and pushed her back, onto the floor, her body bent crookedly beneath him as he fought to clear his head.

'Go on' she said 'do something. Hit me, kill me.' He threw her hands away and half rolled, half fell to the ground. The pink-silk bedecked ceiling swam in front of his eyes.

'You can't, can you? So it's true.' Judith was sneering now, her beautiful face twisted into loathing, snakelike. 'The rumours are true. Wali is soft, Wali is weak. Wali cannot even kill a girl who is trying to poison him. I thought my sources lied to please me but they were right…where is the man I loved, Ahmed? You let that policeman, that stupid, ignorant man change you.' Every word dripped with venom and she crept, lithe as a girl, atop his body. She wound her arms around him, caressed his face.

'The cup' he whispered.

'Of course there was something in the cup. But don't worry, my darling, it wasn't poison. Just a little something to restore you to your old self.' Even as she said the words he felt it, the lust flooding his limbs, his blood, his brain. Judith lowered her beautiful red lips like a lioness to the kill and kissed him, devoured him. He lost himself in the capacity for her betrayal and knew no more until it was too late.

-oOo-

Vimes rubbed at the shape in the dust with his foot. There was no mistaking what it was. Cheery had already covered the body, taken iconographs, been sick and gone to get Igor.

'Are you sure you can't get anything else?' he asked Angua, for the third time. The young policewoman would have presented a curious sight to a tourist. She was squatting in the dust, her eyes closed, sniffing very deliberately at a piece of reddish wood she had picked up from the ground.

'Positive, sir. It's a dagger handle, drenched in blood, the same blood that's on the ground. But someone's used a scent bomb on it. And the blade is gone.' She sniffed again. 'Wait…there's another smell…' she screwed up her nose concentration as she thrust the wood closer, willing herself to smell past the sharp beguiling tang of blood. 'It's so difficult, sir!' Vimes crouched next to her.

'We're in an alleyway, sergeant. Maybe if you changed, it would be easier?'

'Not a good idea, sir.' She nodded at the entrance, where a small crowd of onlookers had gathered, peering in with the small mindedness of voyeurs everywhere. Vimes could even see a sausage vendor, one of Dibbler's rivals, edging closer.

'Detritus!' Vimes shouted. 'Block this alley!' The troll, who had been standing aimlessly looking at the wall, dinged to attention.

'Whatever you say, Mr Vimes.' He pulled a brick out of the nearest wall and placed it carefully at the mouth of the alley.

'No!' Vimes snatched the brick back and gave it to the waving hand that had appeared in the gap. 'Just stand there, Detritus. Stop people coming in and looking around.' By the time Vimes turned back Angua had already changed. Whining softly, the golden wolf sniffed at the piece of wood on the floor for a minute, and then growled. Vimes obediently shut his eyes.

'Leather, I think' said Angua, when she was pulling on her breastplate. 'Soft leather, quite new. But it's all doused in this flowery scent, all over the corpse, the floor, everything. I don't even recognise the type of flower.'

'Gloves' said Vimes distantly.

'What?'

'Leather gloves on his hands. So he wouldn't leave prints. Black, probably, to go with what I imagine is a pretty flash black outfit with a cloak. Damn. You know what this means, don't you?'

'Our murderer wears gloves, draws messages in the dirt with blood of the victim, and steals the blade but leaves the handle of his murder weapon.' Vimes glared at her.

'Yes, but also, what we have here, is a cryptic killer. Not your average murderer, who just wants to get away with it, but someone who sits down and thinks about leaving clues to lead us on, to keep our attention. We're supposed to look at…that…and come up with some kind of elaborate theory. Which will be wrong. Cryptic killers are always some scarily intelligent, twisted bastard who wants to get caught but can't quite just give himself up. A skinny runt with a grudge and a workroom full of cheese wire and knife handles. He's probably sitting somewhere now with a Make Things Bigger Device, watching us. Why do the nutters always have to come to my city? You never hear of this kind of thing in Sto Lat, or Gebra, or-or-'

'Why do you assume it's a man?' Angua interrupted. Vimes ignored her.

'And the worst thing is, he knows what he's doing. There's blood all over this alley, and not a whiff of the man. Scent bombs. Whoever came up with those was just trying to make my life difficult-'

'Hey! You can't go in dere!' Vimes peered around the troll's lichen encrusted arm to see two harassed looking members of the palace guard.

'Vimes!' said one, spotting him, 'Vetinari wants you up at the palace right now.' Vimes looked stonily at the guard, whose companion nudged him. 'Sir Samuel, I mean.'

'That's better.' said Vimes amiably. 'Damned if I won't be Sir Samuel to someone with a peacock feather, dear me, in his helmet. His lordship will have to wait, I'm investigating a murder.' The guards exchanged looks.

'His lordship anticipated your reluctance. He said to show you this…' One of them proffered an iconograph. Vimes took it and stared. Angua caught a flash of red.

'Lets go' said Vimes.

'Bring the wolf' added the guard, and Vimes raised a finger.

'I mean, bring Sergeant Angua.'

'That's right.'

-oOo-

Igor shuffled along the street until he saw Detritus' hulking form.

'Where's the body, Detrituth?' The troll pointed. 'Ye godth!' said Igor, spraying the corpse with spit. 'What happened to him?' Detritus shrugged, then rumbled into life.

'Mr Vimes said dis is evidence and you ain't to go cutting it up for organs.'

'Yeth, well, there's not much here I could use anyway. What'th that on the floor?' Detritus shuffled over.

'Dunno. But Mr Vimes said for to cover it over.' They both peered at it. Scratched deeply into the packed dirt of the alleyway and smeared with the dark brown shade of dried blood, were two diagonal lines meeting at a point and bisected by a third, shorter line.

'Lookth like a capital 'A'' said Igor thoughtfully.

'Yeah' said Detritus, grinding the letter to nothing beneath his massive foot.

-oOo-

Tune in next week…or tomorrow. Maybe. I don't know.