Chapter Two

In which a lady in lilac receives no answers and an excess of chemicals makes the plot thicken

It had been a perfectly pleasant party, or at least a relatively peaceful one. Sybil didn't try to make him dance or talk to Vetinari, no one appeared to be about to commit a crime...

The last bit, actually, was something of a shame, and he was starting to consider the potential of the loose bricks in the garden wall outside vis-a-vis the big, plate glass windows when he saw the approaching Madam.

The face hadn't changed much, though the features were softened slightly by a fine web of wrinkles, and there was more grey in her hair. He barely heard the bright, familiar introduction, but he did catch the pause and sharp intake of breath. The woman opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.

Bloody buggering hell, Vimes thought, summed it up pretty nicely, but he didn't say it aloud because Sybil had Sensibilities.

"Er... Hello, Madam..." he said, trying to regain his composure.

"Is there something wrong?" murmured Sybil into his ear.

"No, nothing..." A thought struck him, and he almost, but not quite(a), smiled. "I was just surprised at how familiar you were. Then it occurred to me where I recognized you from."

"Pardon?"

"My old sergeant's funeral. It must have been, what, thirty years ago...?"

"Ah. Yes," said Madam. "Perhaps that was it."

"I see," said Sybil, but still looked curious. Apparently concluding that it would make things worse to pry(b), she bustled over towards the Patrician and started making conversation at him, to his apparent mild shock.

"Keel?" Madam hissed, as soon as Sybil was out of earshot.

"That was the name of my old sergeant, yes," said Vimes evenly.

"You know what I mean."

"You haven't changed much since I last saw you," said Vimes.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," said Madam, with dignity, before going back to prying vigorously. "You look precisely like Keel."

"No, Madam, I don't. Keel had an eyepatch."

"And a beard, as I recall," she retorted. "Although possibly not intentionally. But underneath he must had your face."

"Really? Well, it's amazing how similar men can look." She's not going to believe it, thought Vimes, but she's going to pretend...

There was a pause, after which she smiled at him.

"Of course. Just a passing fancy, I'm afraid. I grow doting in my old age."

"I doubt -"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a line, a shifting darkness, and he started to move, based entirely on instinct.

Then he stopped, because the line had resolved itself into a dart that had pinned his arm to the wall.

"Bugger," he said, in the horrible little pocket of silence that followed.

He prodded the dart. It appeared to have gone through his sleeve but not his arm, and was in fact more correctly classed as a fletched syringe.

He sighed, pulled it out, and bellowed, at the top of his lungs, "DETRITUS!"

One of the 'pillars' at the entrance to the hallway crouched down and knuckled over. Vimes blinked.

"I thought you were covering the back entrance?"

"Yes, sir, but I fort it be best if I switched with Ping when I heard about your desk exploding, sir."

"Oh. Well, good," said Vimes weakly.

The problem, he thought, was that there were so many places the would-be assassin could be hiding. The arrow could have been shot from anywhere along the balcony.

"Get some officers to cover the exits," he said finally. "I know, for instance, that Captain Carrot is currently outside on the pretext of learning the names of every single gargoyle who roosts on this building, so it shouldn't be hard."

Then he ran.

There were, on his side, wide stairs curving up to the balcony, but no one on it, assassin or otherwise. He sped up it, accidentally losing his hat in the process(c), and almost skidded when he hit the hardwood floor of the gallery.

Someone was peering out of a narrow doorway at the end of the hall. Lotto!

The figure was hooded, but Vimes was sure he made out eyes widening in terror as it caught sight of the accelerating policeman. It shot back within the room, and he followed soon after...

...but it was gone.

He stared.

The room was in fact more accurately described as a closet, narrow and rough-paneled and dim. The only window was tiny and high on the wall across from him. There was a dark garment lying crumpled on the floor, true, but the person occupying it had completely disappeared.

He walked over to the discarded cloak and picked it up, gingerly, because he did have some experience with mysterious disappearing assassins, although they tended to be rather more efficient than this last one. The dart hadn't even nicked him, which was odd, since the distance between the balcony and where he had been standing wasn't far, although he had moved.

As he backed out of the room, he had the distinct feeling that he had missed something that was staring him in the face.

(a) He did have a reputation to uphold, after all.

(b) This explains almost everything you need to know about the Ramkin bloodline, except for those members of it that died in other people's beds.

(c) It was subsequently shredded under mysterious circumstances. These have nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Constable Downspout, the very next day, got a pigeon bonus.

---

Below, the party had resumed. Not many people had noticed anyway, and those who had put it down to too much sherry, with the exception of the Patrician, his aunt, Lady Sybil, and, though she said nothing, Madam Louisa.

Instead, the blonde young woman glided away from her dancing partner and tapped Madam on the shoulder.

"Bobbi," she murmured, "I'm feeling rather overexposed. Do let us return to the embassy."

"I'm sure Jamie can escort you home," said Madam distractedly. "Jamie!"

A solemn twelve-year-old in a really terrible shade of magenta velvet marched over. "Yes, Auntie Bobbi?"

"Be a dear and escort her ladyship back to Pseudopolis, will you? I have to stay and clear certain things up with Havelock."

"Yes, Bobbi," the two chorused. Louisa went, leaving a few dazed gentlemen in her wake. Jamie looked embarrassed and hurried after her. Vetinari watched her go for a moment before turning back and smiling broadly at his companions.

"A most charming young woman, I thought. I do hope Sir Samuel is all right. He's been up there for some time."

Sybil, who had already been looking anxiously over her shoulder at the balcony, took her cue graciously. "I believe I'll go and check on him."

As soon as she had swept out, Madam tugged him forcefully back into the shadows.

"Who was he?"

He grinned, mirthlessly this time. "Ah, you mean His Grace the Duke of Ankh?"

"If that's even his name."

"Oh, but it is, I assure you. Who else, after all, would he be?"

Madam stared into his extremely honest blue eyes for a heartbeat before nodding, sharply. "Of course."

They talked of other things, pretended not to notice when Vimes sped past them, bellowing out various officers' names, and within the hour Madam had disappeared, supposedly to follow her charge home. Vetinari stayed and sipped sherry and, the moment she had left the building, wrote a memo to Drumknott about the valuable services of Clerk Brian and how appropriate they would be in application to certain situations.

---

Vimes arrived at the Watch House just as the clock struck eleven.

"Where's Cheery?" he snapped at Constable Grabthroat, who was dwarfing the desk.

"Loo, I mean lab, sir," said Grabthroat, standing. "Shall I get her-"

Vimes was already heading down the hall.

"Sergeant?"

A small, round helmet came out of the Forensics section's private laboratory, followed soon after by its chain-mail-clad owner.

"Yessir?"

"Well? Do you know what made the desk explode?"

Cheery hesitated. "Uh... not exactly. I've detected trace amounts of, er, several different opiates, but nothing really solid. There's not enough of it to do much comprehensive testing..."

"Well, here, add this to your collection," said Vimes, pulling the dart out of his pocket and setting it on the low wooden table.

"Sir?"

"Someone shot this at me while attending Lady Selachii's lovely Hogswatch ball. It's a syringe, containing a liquid I don't recognize. I thought there might be a connection, although I could, of course, be wrong. Or crazy."

"Someone shot at you?"

"Yep. And mysteriously disappeared in a room with its only door covered and a very small window, leaving behind their cloak. It just gets better and better. I'm just thankful," he said shortly, pinching the bridge of his nose, "that it's still a week to actual Hogswatch night, otherwise Sybil wouldn't have let me check in."

"I know how it is, sir," said Cheery sympathetically. "Just the other day Hrolf was complaining about how I spent all my time at work, and never took time off to look at the iconos of some interesting veins of iron ore under Sto Helit."

Vimes gave her a long, long look, which she didn't notice.

"Er... right," he said, coughing politely in order to keep from breaking into completely inappropriate hysterical laughter. "Er... I think I'll just check on how Angua's doing..."
He beat a hasty retreat to the corridor, took a few deep breaths, and then went down to Igor's cell.

What he saw inside, however, stopped him.

Igors tend to have secret laboratories of a rather more dramatic type than dwarves in any case, even dwarves in high heels and mascara, but things appeared to have changed in the last few hours. For one thing, most of the space now appeared to be taken up by a large, transparent vat full of trapped lightning. Consequently, the space was filled with a pulsating blue glow, which shaded the walls erratically and did nothing to soften the blow when Igor peered down at him from one of the high shelves, bulging olive eyeball magnified by his trademark glass. Vimes bit back a scream.

"Thur!" said Igor, rather more urgently than usual. "Come up here!"

"Huh?" Vimes looked around. On closer examination, he saw the sergeant lying on the slab, face shadowed. Was that a tube coming out of her head?

"Sir, I really mutht inthist -"

At this point, Angua came to.

It was, Vimes admitted later, pretty damn impressive. She was off the slab and in a defensive crouch before he could blink. Her face reminded him, horribly, of Wolfgang after the falls, flickering from wolf to woman and back again, in a state of solid Uncertainty. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, that other parts were... twisting, but her disturbed features took up most of his attention.

He came to a conclusion, pulled out his truncheon, and bopped her on the head with it.

Silver and rosewood, he thought, almost dreamily, watching as her lips peeled back in a growl -

And then, for some reason, everything seemed to collapse back in on itself.

Angua let out a yelp, which Vimes considered was something of a delayed reaction, and sat back on her haunches. He found that all he was staring at was a pleasant-faced young woman with ash blonde hair, looking at him reproachfully.

"Welcome back to the world of the living," he said calmly, replacing the truncheon in his pocket. "Sorry about that, but I always get nervous around growling werewolves. It's a family thing."

It wasn't very sensitive, but he was feeling somewhat shaken. Angua sighed and got to her feet, which Vimes took as a gesture of, at least, truce, and he took the opportunity to glare at Igor.

"Did you know that was going to happen, Constable?"

"Not... exactly, sir...(a)"

"How odd," said Vimes, pleasantly. "So the tubes connecting the good sergeant's brain to a vat of lightning - those were there just as, what shall we say, a sort of precaution?"

"Well... yes, sir."

"So, in short, you have no idea why she blacked out and you fell back on the good old back-up, a trusty lightning rod?"

Igor looked embarrassed. "Not entirely true, thur. I was pretty sure there would be unuthual thymptomth when she woke up."

"Ah? Ah. That ith-er, is helpful," said Vimes, cursing all unfortunately infectious lisps at intentionally malicious moments. "Of course, if you could have spread a warning through the Watch House, taken certain other precautions, like, for instance, a barricade or small bomb," he said innocently, pretending not to notice Angua's expression, "that might possibly have been helpful, but I'm sure the enlarged butterfly net I see you are still holding in one hand would have worked just as well. Godsdamnit!" he yelled, dropping the Mr. Friendly act, with an almost audible thud. "Is anyone doing something that would possibly be useful? I'm just asking, you understand, out of interest."

"You should calm down, sir," said Angua, who appeared to have completely recovered from her minute of indisposition. "We've all had a long day."

Vimes sagged slightly. "Yes, yes," he grumbled. "Sorry, Igor."

"That'th all right, thur. We all have our little momentth. In fact, if you'd like a tholution for that, I have some pillth right here..."

"No! I mean, er, thanks very much but I think I'll manage," said Vimes, very quickly. "Angua, see me in the canteen?"

A few minutes later, Vimes was leaning against one of the benches while Angua stood at attention at the threshold.

"So, Angua, what happened? Do you remember anything?"

Angua hesitated. "It's not a scent I've ever smelled before, sir. I'm sure of that. But..."

She began, haltingly, to try and describe what she had smelled, and, worse, what she had seen.

Vimes did know something about the way a werewolf's sense of smell worked. Angua used colors as an analogy, but really it could be defined by almost any other sense. Out of kindness towards her less able colleagues, she did her best to keep it consistent, but for some scents, words ran out.

This scent was one of those. Oily, she called it, and, for some reason, purple. It wasn't an entirely bad scent, but it reached down to your deepest levels and flipped all the wrong switches.

He didn't bother to ask her what she meant. He'd seen her face, and insofar as he could tell through the mask of the overlaid forms, and the emotion painted on it was one of complete and utter terror.

(a) Constable Igor, a modern young Igor who was eager to drag Igoring kicking and screaming into the Century of the Anchovy, had a speech impediment. He occasionally forgot to lisp. This shameful bad habit only got worse when he was agitated. The effects of daily life in Ankh-Morpork, alas, meant that these days Igor barely got a single thur in.