Author's Note: Well, I typed up this chapter, didn't like it, and then deleted it. Typed it up again, liked it, and then little brother deleted it by mistake. Typed it up a third time, and here it is. I hope you appreciate it after all I've gone through to get this to you. I'll be trying to see if I can update on a schedule, but I find I'm depending more on the number of reviews that I have than the actual day of the week. In the future, however, I may not be this punctual since this is spring break and school will be starting again soon. By the way, how would you write a Jersey accent? I've had some trouble with it and I've settled with a semi-Bostonian accent for the nasally voice in the Assassin's Guild. It will be changing soon, though, as soon as I figure it out. Any help? Oh, and ix-nay on the Alm-pay. No more Mrs. CakePalm. Mrs. Cake now has an inn and that's it, no questions asked. Okay? Okay. I thought so. By the way, sorry for the test chapter earlier, my computer was acting funky and not working. So if you reviewed the test chapter to tell me it was working, I'll turn my anonymous blocker off so you can review again if it doesn't let you. Because I know you all are just dying to review me. (evil grin) Anyway, enough boring you with my mindless rambling, onto the story.
(Dis)Claimer: Elsie belongs to me. Tartarus Smith belongs to me (the one who died in the Shades and the one who died in Quirm). The Assassin, Iggy the troll and the disembodied nasally voice belong to me. And the pants belong to me. That is just about it. Sad, isn't it? Everyone else including Vimes, Vimes's silver matchbox, Carrot, the Assassin's Guild, Angua, the Shades, the Year of the Incontinent Buffalo (actually, funnily enough that does belong to me), Cheery and Reg and Fred and Nobby, Mrs. Cake, Mrs. Cake's Hat (or the Hat's Mrs. Cake), and Discworld all belong to Terry Pratchett and Harper Torch Publishing. Thank you!
Vimes stared at the abominable spelling and scrawling handwriting on Carrot's hasty report, trying in vain to fight off a nasty headache and wishing desperately he had time to go outside and have a quiet smoke. The silver matchbox he'd received from Sybil was burning a hole in his pocket.
"So…" he commented slowly, his lips moving ever so slightly as he attempted to make out the unruly writing. "There was an assassin in the Shades."
"No sir." Carrot shook his head, standing in front of Vimes's desk, his arms crossed and one hand absentmindedly massaging the handle of his massive sword. "Not an assassin."
Vimes paused, raising his head to meet Carrot's gaze with an air of tired determination. "Then what was it, Captain?" he asked. "And this better be good, I've got a terrible headache—"
"It was an Assassin, sir." Young and naïve as Carrot was, his honest smile and youthful body (1) kept people from strangling him on the spot when he made such comments. Despite bulging muscles and deadly sword, Vimes was teetering on the edge of murdering his Captain.
"Angua smelled it," Carrot offered earnestly. "Definitely an Assassin."
A glance at his watch told Vimes it was quite later than Sybil would like, (2) and past experiences had helped his realized that unnecessary arguing with Carrot could end up quite long and grueling and one-sided. Long and grueling because it took an abnormally long time to figure out that Carrot had actually been agreeing with you this whole time. One-sided because you were the only one shouting. Carrot tended to take abuse with that candid smile still plastered onto his face, unable to comprehend that you were actually trying to insult him.
"So there was an Assassin in the Shades," Vimes tried again, choosing not to ask how on the Disc Angua could smell capital letters. "A young Assassin. Odd. They don't usually go into the Shades, do they?"
"No offense to those who live there, sir, but they're not the kind of people other people would pay to kill."
"Point taken. And he murdered this chap—" Vimes scanned the report again, "Tartarus Schmidt."
"Smith. Sorry for the handwriting, sir, I was in a bit of a hurry."
"Any apparent motives?"
"According to Guild records only one Tartarus Smith ever existed on the Disc."
"And?"
"And he died way back in the Year of the Incontinent Buffalo. In Quirm."
"I see. Anything else that would have been a motive? Money in his wallet, perhaps? Or a murder for personal reasons?"
"Angua says he probably hadn't seen tuppence for months. As for the personal reasons, we have no idea." Carrot shook his head hopelessly.
"I suppose it would be too much to ask if Angua had caught a whiff of the murderer?"
"He had a peppermint in his mouth. She could make out clothes and dyes, but nothing concrete."
Vimes sighed. Whatever gods happened to be in the heavens at the moment were certainly smiling. In fact, they were probably doubled up in laughter at his current predicament. You could always count on the gods to be sensitive, caring beings until you got yourself in trouble.
"And Angua found this… Clue at the scene of the crime."
"Yes, Commander. We took it in for investigation."
Vimes paused. "You are aware that they are pants, yes, Captain?"
"Certainly, sir."
"Quite odd pants, though."
"I agree, sir.
"They're blue."
"Strange color for pants, sir."
"I mean, what fellow in their right mind would go around in blue pants? Black is perfectly acceptable, brown I can deal with; even green is permissible at certain occasions. But blue? What sane creature dresses in blue?"
"I couldn't say, sir."
Vimes gave the pants a long, hard stare. He hated Clues. They got in the way of solving a crime in the same way that words got in the way of books. (3)
Carrot speculated. "I can't see how anybody could get comfortable in them, sir. The material is very rough. And there's something sinister about them, sir."
Vimes glared, disbelieving. "Sinister? How can pants be sinister?"
"Sergeant Angua agrees with me, sir. I think, sir, they're not quite like normal pants."
Vimes made an attempt to keep an open mind, something extremely difficult for a Commander of the Watch with a grumpy demeanor at three in the morning who wanted to get home to his wife before she sought him out with a frying pan. "You mean, like the difference between breeches and ruby tights?" he ventured cautiously. (4)
"Possibly, sir." Carrot looked thoughtful.
Vimes sat back, and sighed. "Who have you assigned to the case?" he asked, wearily and heavily.
"Angua and I, sir, and Cheery. And Reg. And Fred and Nobby." Carrot peered at his commander. "Would you like to work the case, sir?"
Vimes sighed again. "Carrot, I'm a desk officer now. According to society, dukes aren't meant to be running around the streets at night trying to find murderers. And I really should be spending more time with Sybil and Young Sam." He propped his feet on the desk. "Intriguing as the case may be, I'm old, Captain, and fat from all this paperwork. Find someone else."
"Yessir." Carrot left the room wisely, something he usually didn't have the common sense to do. His Grace Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh-Morpork and Commander of the Watch, was left alone, staring out the window at the sludgy rain.
"I'm a desk officer now," he repeated, at decibels even a suspicious housewife (5) couldn't hear. "A desk officer. I need some coffee."
Let the mind's eye zoom out from the scene in the Commander's office to a different scene, on the other side of the city. Pass by Sator Square with its shouts of fruits and vegetables and sausages inna bun, float over the steaming fumes of the Ankh River, and zoom in again at the elegant architecture of the Guild of Assassins. Now zoom in farther. No, farther than that. There you go. Deep in the dungeons of the Guild, wicked plans are forming.
"Yew left it for der Watch on purpose?" came a booming voice. The Assassin responsible for this little meeting had had some trouble figuring out how to get a seven-foot hunk of silicone into the Guild unnoticed. However, the Assassin took pride in problem solving. Now the only trouble was getting the troll to stay quiet.
"Shh, Iggy, not so loud! Yes, we left it for the Watch, and they took it as planned."
"So what's the next step, bawss?" came a wheedling, nasal voice that set even Iggy's lichen on end the first time he heard it. "What are we gonna do naow?"
The Assassin's eyes glinted with a feverish light. "Find someone who can sew. That shouldn't be too hard. There is a Guild of Seamstresses here, right?"
Iggy coughed. Loudly. "Er, dem seamstresses aren't egzactly—"
"We'll kidnap a seamstress. And then…" the Assassin paused for dramatic effect. There was a slight, silent pause as the occupants of the basement wondered politely whether the Assassin had forgotten what to say.
"You was saying, about that seamstress…" Iggy offered helpfully.
"Yes, yes," the Assassin snapped. "We will kidnap a seamstress, and be written in the books of fashion as long as the Ankh runs."
Another pause.
"Well, der river don't egzactly run, boss. It, er, strolls, boss."
"Shut up, Iggy."
"Yes, boss."
"When does we find the seamstress, bawss?" whined the nasally voice in the dark.
"Soon," said the Assassin. "Very soon. But first, there is someone we need to inhume. His name… is Vetinari."
There was another long pause.
"How come we have to inhume der Patrician?" asked Iggy the troll, scratching his head.
"Because I said so," the Assassin snapped.
"Pants," said Vimes thoughtfully, twirling a pen around in his fingers. "Was this Tartarus fellow wearing his pants?"
Elsie wept into the blankets, feeling extreme pity on herself.
She'd tried so hard to make her mother proud, but no matter how many sweaters she crocheted, how many embroidery contests she'd won, how many knitting circles she'd joined, her mother was never completely satisfied. She'd examine Elsie's latest masterpiece with a critical eye, and comment on something she's seen just like it at one of the imaginary Ankh-Morpork seamstress's galas. Elsie had grown up firmly believing—no, knowing that she was destined to become one of the great seamstresses of the Guild, and now had traveled through mind-numbing endless cabbages to find the only type of sewing she'd do in the Guild would be patching up the undergarments men had torn off.
She felt helpless, now, in an inn with little money to pay rent. The kind old Mrs. Cake, after she'd turned off her premonition, had offered her a room upstairs in the humble little inn, half dollar a night, very cheap and very comfortable. Unsure of anywhere else to say Elsie had agreed, though she couldn't help being disconcerted by the feeling that it was really the Hat that was doing the talking.
Her sewing kit was strewn on the floor where she had left it, looking as miserable as she felt. Sniffing, she lifted her head and looked at it, speculatively.
An hour later, having sobbed and cried and sniveled as much as she would allow a practical lady like herself to do, she was busy at work transforming simple cloth into works of art. She wouldn't let the lack of a Guild upset her Talent. She knew she had Talent. It was something everyone in her village had said. Talent was one of the few virtues she did possess.
Unfortunately for her, she also possessed Beauty, something certainly useful except in cases where you couldn't turn it off.
(1) Carrot's youthful body kept a lot of people from doing a lot of things. Things like beating him over the head with a stick, sticking a dagger in his chest and throwing his body on the Ankh. If everybody had a youthful body like Carrot's the crime rate would be absolutely eliminated.
(2) Actually, if Sybil had her way Vimes wouldn't work at all. However, considering the circumstances, eight o'clock was permissible. Eight oh one was not. Anything later than eight thirty and you were looking at an early bedtime for a week, mister, and no allowance either. Sybil's attitudes towards her husband and teenagers were pretty much one and the same.
(3) Words really do get in the way of books. It's a well-known fact. Not to mention those bloody metaphors mucking everything up like rabies in a dog kennel.
(4) Vimes was quite familiar with both breeches and ruby tights. Needless to say, one of them he'd rather not be quite so familiar with. Torture in the chambers on the Omnian Exquisition was okay. Ruby tights were not.
(5) There is no being on the history on the Disc with better hearing than a suspicious housewife. Believe me on this.
Author's Note: This wasn't the best of the best as far as chapters go, but I think it was decent considering my mind is as numb as a toad in liquid nitrogen. Do you like my wonderful similes? I do need to further develop Elsie Mags, someone was kind enough to point that out to me and I shall work on it in the future. For now I'm focusing on getting the plot well developed and all my characters at least in the scene. Thanks so much for all reviewers who have supported me! See you soon, I hope!
(KC)