A Hogswatch Carol

Author's Note: This is a series of fics, which will be uploaded one for every day we draw nearer to Christmas. They are based not only on well-known parties or organisations in the Discworld series, like Vetinari and the Watch, but also on the lesser focused upon, such as the Post Office and the Cheesemongers.

I would like to make it clear that these are neither songfics or filks. I know there's a rule against them, and even though I have personal objections to that rule I will not break it. It is no crime to quote from well-known literary sources of prose or poetry, and surely carols as songs are considered poems. I am only quoting. Don't sue me. I rest my case.

Disclaimer: Lord Vetinari is Terry Pratchett's. This version of Silent Night is by Damien Rice, and is a hidden track on the album O. Truth be told, I like it better than the original classic.

1. Silent Night

Silent night, broken night
All is fallen when you take your flight
I found some hate for you, just for show
You found some love for me, thinking I'd go
Don't keep me from crying to sleep
Sleep in heavenly peace

The silence was a deep, muffled, blanketed emptiness, a vacancy, a vacuum in the night. The snow overlaid the normal sordid state of the twin cities beyond the window, falling clean and white and pristine, but not for long. The snow on the streets had been trodden into a dirty grey; on the Ankh's waters, which had not so much frozen as simply stopped moving, the snow had turned a truly sickly yellow.

But still the snow was falling with ignorant bliss, out of an empty sky.

Lord Vetinari dipped the quill tip into the inkpot. It bumped into an ink-berg, a new natural phenomenon resultant of the temperature indoors, and sent the chunk of inky-purplish ice spinning away sluggishly to rest against the wall of the inkpot.

Vetinari raised the quill and went on writing.

One would think that, embroiled in the festive spirit, people would stop sending in things for him to deal with: letters, complaints, proposals. Contrary to popular belief, the amount of paperwork he received almost doubled around Hogswatch every year. All those festival parades, for one. Messrs. Colon and Nobbs had taken the opportunity to clamp every vehicle, animal and lamppost that had been caught in the ensuing traffic congestion, and the flow of complaints had been positively torrential.

Downstairs, there was the sound of the maidservants packing up and leaving for their Hogswatch family celebrations.

He desired to compare certain statistics in a document to the ones he had collected, and accordingly called for Drumknott to bring in the required files. When the clerk did not respond, he called again.

After the third call, he suddenly remembered that Drumknott wasn't there.

This was primarily because Drumknott, unlike Vetinari, had a family, and this year he had finally obtained permission from his employer to take five days' leave so he could return to the family home for Hogswatch. Vetinari reckoned he should have kept this fact in mind. He put it down to the sheer habit of having Drumknott always at hand.

Vetinari got up and opened the door of his office.

Downstairs, the lights were going out. The palace was slowly emptying of its staff. Normally most of them slept here for the sake of convenience – but this night, Hogswatchnight, they were all going home.

Vetinari shut the door. He went back to his desk and stared reflectively at the amount of paperwork left to tackle. For some reason he felt like burning some of it, an unnatural and immature inclination, the like of which he had not experienced since he was seventeen and controlled by an irresistible urge to raze all of Downey's textbooks for him.

He looked at the inkpot, and discovered that it had taken the opportunity, while he was distracted, to ice over entirely.

He permitted himself the luxury of an exasperated sigh, picked it up and put it down by the fireplace to melt.

Then he went to the window and stood there for a long while, contemplating the wintry scene below.

Ankh-Morpork would be celebrating their beloved festival down there. From up here he could see the lights, strung up across the streets, twinkling from the branches of trees. Even the area of the Shades was lit by a few tawdry red-and-green lanterns. And there were lights in the houses, lights in the windows, lights behind the cracks of open doors, welcoming and warm.

Down there, they would be laughing, singing, carolling. With the window shut against the cold he could hear none of it. The room was silent, apart from the crackle of the fire and the occasional rustle of a sheet of paper.

Vetinari, deliberately avoiding the stares his paperwork was giving him, went to sit down in the more comfortable of the two chairs in the room. It was straight-backed and wooden, and lacked a cushion.

The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat in his chair and stared at the blank wall of his office, unseeing.

He was trying to remember the last time he had received a real Hogswatch card – not the ones from political counterparts, but the ones sent not out of duty but goodwill. The only person who ever sent him anything for Hogswatch was his aunt, and then only when she felt he deserved it.

There had been the Thud! set from Margolotta, but since it was only because she wanted him to play with her over the clacks, it hardly counted in her favour. At any rate, such gifts were rare.

He stared at the wall, and thought about how he always had the city in mind, and how that now they had their own happinesses, none of the people in it were so much as thinking of him.

There is such a thing as festive blues. Lonely people get them around Hogswatch and other happy times. The Patrician was unknowingly suffering from a severe attack of it.

With the window shut, he couldn't hear the happiness. The room was silent. He was silent.

Lord Vetinari got up, gave the paperwork a look askance, left the ink-bergs melting by the fire and went upstairs to his bedroom.

Always, on Hogswatchnight, he went to bed uncharacteristically early.

End.