Chapter 11 - Sic Faciunt Omnes
Carlin stood stockstill in the middle of Vimes's office, staring at the floor. The room seemed empty. Clean. Almost sterile, but Nobby was there so it was still slightly tainted.
The Lady Sybil Free Hospital? Dr Lawn? And what was that about the animal wing...?
She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, and then glared up at Nobby. "Corporal!" she barked. "AttenHUT!"
Carlin's oft-practiced sergeant voice reached down through Nobby's soul, bypassing his ears, and pulled his brain up by its bootstraps. He snapped off a smart salute, and then looked slightly ashamed. "'Ere, you ain't my commander..." he started.
"Corporal," Carlin interrupted in a grim voice, "we find ourselves in a sorely dire situation."
"Not MY commander..." Nobby muttered.
"Go fetch Sergeant Angua, will you? I need to think for a moment. And whatever you do... don't tell her what's happened. I need to do that myself."
Nobby went, muttered disconsolately all the while.
Carlin counted to twenty before she moved, darting to the desk on twenty-one. Damn, damn... didn't the man have a map of the city anywhere, or did he just trust his own memory of the streets? She flipped hurriedly through the papers piled dangerously high on his desk, doing her level best not to read bits of them as they flashed by. She ended up reading bits anyway, of course... reports mentioned graffitti and vandalism, attacks on influential citizens, thefts with odd patterns... Carlin paused. With all of it laid out all it once like this, maybe it was different from seeing it bit by bit, two or three reports at a time, when you're still worrying about your wife and your son and Nobby getting into the tea kitty... She almost had it. She could smell it. Maybe just a little bit more...
There was a knock at the door, and Carlin scuttled away from the desk hurriedly. "Hello?" she said.
Angua opened the door, and narrowed her eyes when she saw Carlin. "Where's Carrot?" she snarled. "Nobby reeked of fear. And other things, of course, but we won't go into that, all right?"
"Er," said Carlin. "Listen, I'm going to tell you something, and you have to promise not to go spare, because I think I might have a plan."
Angua suddenly looked extremely dangerous. "Where's Carrot?"
"That's the thing," Carlin said in a hopeless sort of way. "Two palace guards just came, to take him into custody. He's suspected of aiding and abetting." Angua glared at her, breathing deeply. "Hey, whoa!" Carlin squeaked, waving her arms and backing away. "You promised not to go spare, remember?"
Angua snorted. "Damn," she said, after a moment. "You're telling the truth, aren't you?"
Carlin looked affronted.
"I'm sorry," Angua said quietly, looking down. "I just... didn't want to believe you."
"I understand."
The werewolf's eyes flashed, and she gave Carlin a terrible look. "I'm in charge, then," she growled. "I'm next in the chain of command. And... and so..."
"And so what?"
"We're going to storm the palace."
"No!" cried Carlin, startling both of them. "Um... no," she said again, quieter this time. "You shouldn't. You can't. It... look, I think I can help you. And we should try to contact Lady Sybil as well. Vimes and the captain wouldn't want us to, to storm the palace... they'd want us to figure this damn thing out. Wouldn't they?"
Angua growled. "So you think you can do this, then?"
Carlin blushed. "No, I don't," she said quietly. "I just want to help you to do it."
Angua glared at her steadily for a moment or two. "Well?" she said eventually.
"I," Carlin said, managing to look relieved and devious simultaneously, "have a cunning plan." Angua gave her a funny look. "No, listen, Carrot mentioned something before he left..."
In the Rats Chamber, Lad Nils shuffled papers around and tried to look important and busy. It was working pretty well so far, with her girls to pick up the slack, but if she let her guard down she knew that that evil little... little... what was his name, clerk boy, would be all over her in a flash, snide comments and all.
She paused for a moment and fanned herself. The thought of the man outside the door being all over her was a little more exciting than she'd care to admit.
There was a soft knock at the door. Lady Nils hurriedly stuff a few very important pieces of paper into random doors and tucked her handkerchief haphazardly into her sleeve. "Enter," she called lazily, spread carefully in her chair.
The door swung open, and Lady Nils, trying not to look too disappointed, straightened. "Oh," she said, a sigh in her voice. "It's you."
"Yes ma'am," the young woman in front of her murmured, bobbing out a neat curtsy.
Lady Nils pressed the back of her hand to her forehead and waved absent-mindedly at the girl. "Oh, really, do sit. We're all equals here."
"You do me far too great an honor, m'lady."
Lady Nils smiled. "Hmhm," she said, and preened for a moment. "It is a habit of mine, I suppose. Now then, what was it you wanted?"
The young lady sitting in front of the painfully tidy desk smiled slightly, her dark hair twisted back sharply into a tight bun. She wore one of those ridiculous simple, severe, and black dresses that somehow still manage to look ravishing despite the obvious intended effect of governess-esque brusqueness.
She held a thin sheaf of papers, and tapped them edgewise on her knee to straighten them. "I have completed the current round of questioning, m'lady," she said quietly, calmly, watching the older woman in front of her from underneath lowered lashes. "You wished me to report our findings?"
"Oh, yes, goodness, do go on," Lady Nils tittered, flapping her handkerchief about. "I imagine that Vimes fellow is getting up to all sorts of trickery and vindictive sneakiness. Just like a man."
The young lady smiled, in expression of comedy so sudden it seemed almost forced. "Yes, yes," she said. "He is of course being led entirely by his masculine humors, my lady is correct as usual. He seems easy to flabberghast. It's a laughably simple affair to pin him down, as well. I suspect our terrier is not as sharp as he believes himself to be. Perhaps he has begun to touch drink again?"
Lady Nils sniffed and made a face ringing with disapproval. "Ah, drink... poison of man. A fitting end, I suppose. Inebriated in their own imagined self-worth. Do continue."
"The good Captain is, likewise, extremely simple and easy to confound. I imagine he is astonished that females such as ourselves could see through his hilariously dunder-headed plot." At this she smiled again, and watched Lady Nils carefully.
The older woman laughed and gave a "just you and me then, eh?" wink. "What a silly man he is. Thank goodness he's out of power and behind bars."
"Indeed," the young woman said, and smiled a real smile. A smile that knew what it was about. A smile, essentially, with fangs in.
Lady Nils laughed nervously.
"Hmm," Carlin said, through a mouth full of rubbery sultana. "What a mystery this is, then."
Carlin, along with Angua, stood across the street from the Lady Sybil Free Hospital. Carlin ate curry out of a disposable1 container, but slowly, and without putting much thought into it. They had been staring at the hospital for roughly the last five billion years, but any sign of a new animal-care facility failed to show itself.2 It was beginning to get tedious.
"I don't think there is one, Sergeant," Angua said slowly, thinking to herself.
"Commander," Carlin replied automatically, then realized what she'd just said. "I mean... that is... er..."
"Hmm," said the werewolf, and crossed the street. Carlin swallowed her aorta and followed close behind.
Angua marched through the door, the smaller woman trailing nervously behind in a cloud of worry and evaporated curry. "Hello!" she said brightly, leaning over the reception desk and giving the poor, waifish young man behind it one of her toothiest grins. "Where might we find Dr Lawn? I'm afraid my friend here is having some urgent and rather humiliating trouble with her lady parts." Behind her, Carlin choked noisily on a piece of mutton and turned a deep bluish-red.
On the other side of the desk, the receptionist was quickly gaining on Carlin in the Turning Funny Colors Marathon. "I'll just get him for you, shan't I then?" he squeaked, and hurried into a back room.
"'Rather humilating trouble with her lady parts?' What are you thinking!" Carlin hissed, mortified.
Angua waved a hand dismissively. "Don't you know what Dr Lawn did before he worked here? Mainly Seamstresses, that's what."
Carlin got an oddly faraway expression on her face. "Dr Lawn did Seamstresses?" she said, in a dreamily horrified voice.
Angua's brain came to a grinding halt. "Er, wait. No! I meant treated them. Not did them. Er. That is."
"Ladies?"
They both spun. Dr Lawn, looking bemused, stood in the doorway to their left. Angua won the Turning Funny Colors Marathon by default, so Carlin stepped forward, holding her disposable curry container in the grimmest way possible. "My dear Doctor," she said in a serious voice, "I'm afraid I treated myself to a Seamstress by doing her and now I require some rather urgent and humiliating animal care for my lady parts."
"Ah, I see," said Dr Lawn. "Well, fortunately, I just finished with what seems to be the exact same sort of case, so I have everything all laid out in my office. Would you ladies care to join me?"
"Ye gods," said Angua, turning white.3
1 "Just dump 'er inna river! She'll be right! No worries!"
2 Possibly out of shame.
3 Thereby disqualifying herself and forfeiting the Championship to Sergeant Colon.