Chapter Five
In which the bell tolls for Vimes and Vimes alone and two out of three Uberwaldean females have a two-hearts-to-heart chat
As the cracked bronze bell of the Teachers' Guild struck twelve, Vimes ascended the steps to the Oblong Office.
Drumknott glanced up when he entered the reception area but made no comment, so Vimes assumed that he was supposed to wait for however long Vetinari felt necessary until his brain had been reduced to a suitable consistency of porridge. He sat down in one of the uncomfortable chairs and settled back to wait.
Tick...tock.
He resisted the temptation to smoke.
Ticktock.
What had happened, any way? One day everything appeared normal, the next Watchmen were going mad left and right. Not just sergeants, really, 'cos clearly Sally had been pretty badly affected as well.
Tick. Tock.
Symptoms? Hah. Cheery practically going drudak'ak and Angua waking up Uncertain and Sally about to break her Pledge... what is it with the Uberwaldeans these days?
...tick...tocktick.
An epidemic, he'd said earlier. Viral, possibly. But it wasn't as if they were having the same problems...
Tock.
Not the same problems...
"Lord Vetinari will see you now," said Drumknott. Vimes started at the sound of his voice, but recovered quickly and stood up smoothly enough. He opened the door and went in to the office.
"Ah, Vimes," said Vetinari, laying down his pen and carefully pushing the paperwork to one side.
"Sir."
"Please sit. I understand there's been quite a lot of excitement."
"Yes, sir." He didn't sit. He was jittery, frankly, and not in the mood to be standing still, let alone resting any more than he had to.
"Well?"
"There's been some... funny business with the Pseudopolis embassy."
The left eyebrow raised. "Oh? I hope there has been no... trouble with Madam Meserole," the Patrician said delicately.
"Besides the whole you arranging for me to meet her thing?" said Vimes, secure in the knowledge that if Vetinari killed him now Sybil would come to complain, "No, nothing. I'm talking about the coach ride after the party. You know? The one where the two passenger's stories of what happen totally disagree except in one aspect, where they're exactly the same and equally mysterious?"
"I may have heard something of that nature," said Vetinari, unperturbed. "How go the Watch's enquiries, then?"
"Nowhere."
"I see." The other man stood up, in one fluid motion, and went to the window. "And have you discovered the source of the attacks on your own person?"
"Well, sir, we're not really sure that they're attacks on me, per se."
"Your desk exploding? Someone shooting a loaded syringe at you? It seems aggressive enough."
"Er... yes and no, sir. We haven't actually identified the liquid as poisonous."
"And the desk?"
"It wasn't a very effective explosion, was it? I mean, unless their intention was to blow me out the window, but if they could get something inside, why not just throw a properly destructive chemical if they wanted me dead?"
"That is, of course, the question."
Vimes didn't answer, since while he wasn't certain it was the question, he was certain it was a rhetorical one. Until he got his hands on the perpetrator, that was.
In the ensuing silence, Vimes decided to broach the Other Subject.
"Why did you tell me to go to that party?" he asked.
"I was not aware that my aunt was a member of the Pseudopolis embassy," said Vetinari, distantly.
"Really."
"Indeed." There was a hint of warning in the man's voice, and Vimes knew better than to push it, because even if Sybil came to complain, he would still be learning lots of exciting new things about the life and times of Androctonus crassicauda(a)
He saluted, ironically enough to make his personal feelings clear. "Sir."
"Thank you, Commander. That would appear to be all."
Vimes left.
After a while, the Patrician opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a clear sphere full of viscous green fluid. He stared at it for a moment.
He started, after a few minutes, to get the impression it was staring back.
(a) Also known as the fat-tailed scorpion. No one knows why they are called this(b), since their tails are really more muscled, or possibly big-boned, than fat.
(b) Except for the person who first dubbed it that, presumably, but they don't count.
---
Sally went, reluctantly, down to Igor's cell.
Vimes, had he been there, would have been surprised to observe the changes that had taken place in the time since he had last seen it. The lightning tank had been stowed away somewhere, the slab had been pushed back to the center of the room, and next to it was a new, gleaming stainless steel tray, loaded heavily with all sorts of strange, bubbling chemicals, which Sergeant Angua was regarding with interest but keeping well away from.
"Hi," she said, closing the door behind her.
"Oh, it's you. What are you doing here?" said Angua.
"Thanks," said the constable, with heavy sarcasm, "for the warm greeting. Mister Vimes wants me to talk with you."
"Is he still upset about that business with the bar that burnt down? Because frankly -"
"No," said Sally shortly. "He wanted me to talk to you about the... whatever it was you smelled in his office."
"Why?"
Sally told her, succinctly, about what exactly she'd been dealing with from the moment she'd got in the coach onwards.
"Hmm," said the werewolf. "He thinks there's a connection between the Pseudopolis embassy and his desk?"
Sally tried not to grin and shook her head. "He thinks there's a connection between the Pseudopolis embassy and his lack thereof."
"Ha. I suppose that makes sense. They did arrive on the same day, and sitting next to that Lady Louisa made you... ah... what was that charming term? Major Clogston used it in Borogravia, remember? Tetchy, that was it."
"Yes."
"Well... you could say what I had was a similar experience..."
Vampires and werewolves don't get along. They may be friendly on the surface of it, but underneath it's always been a rivalry. It's often assumed this is because they are so different; the one shaggy, crude, bestial, while the other is refined, stylish, always polite, even - especially - to the death.
This is untrue. The real reason vampires and werewolves dislike each other lies in their similarities, not their differences. The sense of superiority - and the subsequent indignation at the impudence of humanity, or, for that matter, the rest of the undead. The thirst for power and control, in any form.
The thirst, too, for blood.
But while these things meant that a stake-out(a) with Sally and Angua could get rather heated, they also meant that the one was uniquely equipped to understand the plight of the other. Sally listened and understood on a purely instinctual level in a way no human, or, for that matter, dwarf or troll could.
When the sergeant had finished, they sat in silence for a while.
"That sounds like it could be the same thing. Some sort of smell that causes... lust for the b-word..." Sally winced slightly. "That could bring on the - the wolf, right?"
"Probably."
"And if it was in the coach I would have sensed it."
"But why did it knock me out and not you? And why the hell would someone throw a chemical causing bloodlust into Vimes' office? That's just asking for trouble."
"It clearly doesn't affect humans. Both Vimes and Carrot have been in the office and haven't been affected at all."
"Damn. We don't have enough evidence, do we."
"Not really. Especially since we're both undead, which doesn't really set us up as trustworthy witnesses in any case, in the eyes of the rest of the world. Plus, we can't prove we're not just losing our grip."
Angua sighed. "So what do we do?"
"Wait for something more solid."
"That's not a lot of help." She paused. "Look, you should tell Mister Vimes our... suspicions at least. Even if he can't do anything about them now, it might at least start him on the right path."
"Be worth more if we knew where the bloody destination was."
"Hopefully," said Angua, smiling in a not-very-happy sort of way, "it's not our final one."
(a) Pun not intended, despite its repeated use in previous commentary on the idea of vampires on the Watch. No, really.(b)
(b) Well, all right. Maybe just a little.
---
While Sally and Angua chatted, Madam was riding in her coach through the streets of Ankh-Morpork and brooding. It had once been her favorite pastime when she needed to do some thinking, all those years ago...
It was another unnaturally nice day. The sun hung heavy in the sky like the yolk of the proverbial hard-boiled egg, and said sky was unbelievably blue. Admittedly the lovely shade was rather effectively ruined close up by the smoke and soot rising off the city, but if you kept your head turned directly upwards it was pretty.
Not a white Hogswatch this year, it seemed.
She glanced out of the window, watching without seeing the roiling crowd of humanity that was spread across the cobblestones.
The whole trip was turning out to be most irritating. She had sent out quite a few of her private agents, waved wads of cash by her aural appendages, and generally made a lot of fuss, but she knew nothing more than she had previously. At least, nothing useful.
No one knew of any secret past of Vimes. He was not the sort of person to get tangled up in magical activities; indeed, as far as she could tell the man disliked magic with a passion rivaled only by his dislike for assassins, kings, and the undead.
The whole business was rather strange.
And there was the other thing. Louisa had been positively defiant when she had demanded a proper explanation of what had happened the night of the ball, consistently bursting into tears whenever Madam tried to get any amount of detail. She was positive that the young woman was hiding something, and her usual methods weren't working.
Madam resolved that she was not going to take on another student. They weren't supposed to use it against her, after all, yet they inevitably did.
Jamie had become quite a bit less convincing today. Strain did that to liars sometimes - once one crack showed in their veneer, it all fell to pieces. Pity. He showed some talent last night, but she couldn't have an inconsistently competent member of her little class, and besides, if he had been hiding something from her it would be back to his parents he went.
Feeling slightly better with this resolved, she settled further back into her seat. One toe tapped the floor of the carriage thoughtfully.
One, two, three...
There was a creak. Madam blinked, gently removed her foot, and looked down.
A section of the floor had popped up slightly.
After a moment of holding her breath, she lifted the lid of the secret compartment with the side of one perfect, slingback stiletto(a) shoe.
It was empty, and rather dusty. In the center, however, was an area where the dust appeared to have been disturbed, and recently. There was a dark stain just next to it.
Madam regarded it for a while. Then she smiled and shut the lid.
"Harris?" she called out to the driver. "Stop at Pseudopolis Yard on the way back, will you? I need to speak with Commander Vimes."
(a) It is perhaps worth noting here that Vetinari women didn't mess around with similes like 'sharp as a stiletto knife'. The shoe simply had a stiletto blade where Cheery would have, until her recent affliction, welded a copper heel. Madam's current status in Pseudopolis owed as much to her taste in footwear and ability to kick like a mule, discreetly, as to her political savvy.
---
Prior to Madam's discovery, in the aforementioned Yard...
Vimes was mournfully sorting through some of the mounds of paperwork. He missed his stacks. They had been familiar to him. He had been particularly fond of the one which called itself Hubert and kept him company late at night when he was working on a difficult report, although when it had started talking about the historio-political ramifications of the Diet of Bugs he had reluctantly begun to consider about calling an exterminator.
Sally came in, silently.
"Yes, Constable?"
"Er... I talked with Angua, like you said, sir."
"And?"
"We thought that our... difficulties might have been caused by the same thing, theoretically speaking."
"A chemical solution, for instance?"
"Yessir."
"So you think it's possible the same stuff was in the coach at some point."
"Sir."
"But you don't have any solid evidence, which is why you're looking at me shiftily."
"Sir."
"I see." Vimes sighed. And that still doesn't explain Cheery, he thought. "Well, there's not much I can do about it just yet. I can set some of the gargoyle officers on all three, I suppose. And the coachman?"
"Maybe just in case, sir."
"Right." He stuck his head out the window and bellowed "DOWNSPOUT?"
"YEH' 'UR?" drifted over from the roof across the street.
"Get Pediment and Cornice over here! I need you to pay special attention to a couple inconvenient individuals."
"Igh' a-ae, 'ur."
"Good man. Or whatever it is." He turned back to Sally. "Think they'll see anything?"
She hesitated, and then said frankly, "Doubt it, sure."
"I didn't think so either. We can only hope for the best."
Sally nodded and descended the stairs.
She was far enough down that when she saw Madam approaching at speed, she was too far away for Vimes to hear the gasp.
Which was a pity, all things considered, because he really could have done with a warning.
Or, better yet, a drink.