A/N: Thank you for the reviews! (This being the Sister talking, not Contra Mundi). I highly appreciate them. I'd like to give you a long, detailed explanation of great genius as to how I came to choose this plot, driving home much symbolism and metaphor (aka, Great, Fat Lies). However, I'm rather ashamed to say, it popped into my head one night, unaccompanied by revelations, flaming angels, or indeed, a devil with a violin.

Ihadanepiphany (how interesting! What did it feel like?): Thank you for saying you were carried along with the plot! It's a little far-fetched, I admit, and I was worried by it, so your review was a great reassurance.

Syntia13: You're the one who inspired me to write this new chapter so figuratively 'soon', I'm afraid that if I wait too long, you'll lose interest and disappear along with my muse-fodder. Thank you for the review!

Lady Twatterby: Of course there will be more Vetinari/Drumknott! It's practically canon, I tell you, CANON. Do you know why Vetinari always gets those little figures of speech wrong? Have you ever wondered? Hah! It's so he can get Drumknott to lean in and put his mouth close to his (Vetinari's obviously, because if Drumknott's mouth alone were that flexible… well…) ear!

-wanders off singing the chorus to Maskerade-

Oh yes, and thanks for the review!

A/N2: I'm not sure if any of you have favorited this story, or if, like you get mails when the chapter is editted. In which case you probably have five hundred mails in your inbox owing to my complete idiocy. I'm terribly sorry. Contra's pissed at me this evening and won't help me.

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As the road led away from Ankh-Morpork, the trails became notably bumpier, Constable Ping thought. That was probably why Commander Vimes seemed to be – well, 'cuddled' was as good a word as any, Ping supposed with a slight shudder – against his wife. Really, alone on his seat, Ping slipped and slid here and there, while the Vimeses were pressed together as the carriage tossed here and there.

Maybe on the roof of the vehicle one didn't feel the impact so much. After a while on the road, Captain Carrot, Angua and Cheery Littlebottom had exchanged looks and gone on up. Carrot had extended an invitation to Ping, but he had decided to stay where he was, reason being that he while he had no problems with heights, he did, indeed, have a problem with falling.

Ping couldn't see where Vimes's hand was.

It was probably a good thing.

Vimes shifted. "Ping, you look a little green. Why don't you go on up?"

"I don't want to get greener, sir. Or… squashier… and redder…"

"Ah," said Lady Sybil weakly.

There was silence for a while. Vimes seemed to be looking outside at the scenery from one window. Lady Sybil looked out of the other. Ping, for lack of anything to do, looked at them.

Although observant, he wasn't the very smartest of constables. Ping could see the dots, but connecting them took time and a tongue sticking out from the corner of his mouth.. Slowly, heavily, like Young Sam drawing with his blunt crayons, tongue-out-at-the-corner-of-his-mouth-like, Ping blinked.

"I think I'll go on up," he said finally.

Vimes looked at him. The back of Lady Sybil's neck was red. "You do that," said Vimes, a trifle heavily.

Ping couldn't get out of there fast enough. Carrot, Angua and Cheery gave him sympathetic looks as he hauled himself out and promptly attempted to spread himself out on the roof, burying his face into the musty canvas on top. They didn't say anything. They didn't need to.

It should be criminal for people over forty to do, you know… that.

Meanwhile, Lady Sybil looked at her husband. "Sam, do you think he…?"

"Of course not," said Vimes soothingly. "Ping is in training to be the next Fred."

"Oh, I see," said Sybil. Her breathing was a little erratic. Her, Sam blushed, mammary glands were heaving slightly as she…

"Sybil…?"

"Yes, Sam?"

"Is that your hand?"

"Yes, dear."

"Gods."

"Yes, dear."

---

Drumknott and Vetinari were having decidedly less fun. This was not Vetinari's fault. It's not like he would have minded. He had even decided to move Drumknott's desk into the Oblong Office, ostensibly, Vetinari could watch Young Sam. It is probably more accurate to say he watched Drumknott watch Young Sam. If Vetinari even watched Young Sam at all. However, it could be agreed that Drumknott was getting the worse of the deal. Young Sam tugged at his shirt, pulling is all askew as he whined, wanting to sit in Drumknott's lap while he attempted to categorize Rains of Zebras in Klatch by date, heaviness of the shower, and the difference of stripes.

"Alright, alright," he sighed, bending down and hauling the chubby ball of destruction onto his lap. "Now let's see, in the winter of the year of the Flying Donkey, there was a brief shower of species Eructatus Parallelus which escalated quickly into a torrential downpour, providing the Dregs with much food and inciting a battle over – what is it, now?"

Young Sam was bouncing up and down ineffectively. He had stopped suddenly, jolting Drumknott's papers, and was looking at nothing in particular with a look of concentration on his face. Drumknott lifted him up worriedly, staring at the round face. "What is it? Sammy?"

"'Sammy?'" repeated Vetinari, dubiously. His eyes carried from Drumknott to Young Sam, and he was just in time to say, "Er, Drumknott…"

A Bad Smell started.

Drumknott stared at Young Sam as he began to relax himself and beamed toothlessly at Drumknott. "That's…" said Drumknott weakly. "That's… very… good, Sammy…" Regard for his head clerk grew by leaps and bounds as Vetinari watched him calmly set Young Sam onto the desk and began to rummage in the dinosaur of the bag that Sybil Vimes had gotten a troll to carry up. The bag was so big that it seemed to have its own gravitational field. He pulled out a diaper, powder and pins.

Drumknott lifted Young Sam and went out. Unfortunately, the Smell did not. It could be worse, Vetinari reflected. Foul Ole Ron's Smell might meet Young Sam's Smell. They might fall in love. And make lots of new Smells. A few minutes later, Drumknott was back with the waxen expression of a man who had hanglided over hell. Silently, he walked over to Vetinari and plunked Young Sam down onto the large desk. The boy looked at the Patrician with round eyes, and started to suck his thumb.

"Your turn," hissed Drumknott. His salary didn't cover this! It wasn't as if he got any extra perks either! The best it ever got was when Vetinari sucked at his pen absent-mindedly! –

-- Drumknott almost wavered. Then the sight of his desk, with papers actually jutting out in no particular order at all, and iconographs of zebras brought him to his senses and his heart seemed to bleed with a hundred paper cuts. He walked towards his resolutely, paused for a moment, turned, added, "And we don't put that in our mouths, Sammy."

"Drumknott-" Vetinari started to protest.

His clerk turned on him with all the pain of misfiling brimming in his wide, brown eyes.

The Patrician closed his mouth quietly. Young Sam began to cry. Vetinari watched as Drumknott almost turned and came running. Then he got a grip, and went towards his pile of paperwork. The sweet hum of alphabetical filing would fill his soul and grant him immunity from the world for a while.

In the meantime…

He gave Young Sam a look, complete with two raised eyebrows. "You will stop this crying," he stated.

Young Sam gave him a dark look, and to Vetinari's disbelief, the little monster's cheeks were as dry as Klatch, even as he continued to churn out that long, grating wail. Which he didn't even attempt to tone down in the least. Vetinari frowned. He was used to making grown man wet their – be very uneasy. He leaned forward, normally a tactic that made most, including Commander Vimes, jerk back.

His son, instead, leaned forward as well, till they were almost curl to forehead.

Drumknott, glancing up as he squared some files, stared, and then closed his eyes and said a little prayer to the patron saint of children – Juvenilinus.

"Gagh," said Young Sam.

"Let me put it to you this way then," said Vetinari quietly, ruining a perfectly good chance to say "I'm sorry, I don't speak monkey". Drumknott strained forward to hear but the words sounded like nothing but the rustle of curtains at the window from where he was. Young Sam gurgled and drooled.

"Argh ga," he said finally.

"Good," said Vetinari sitting back. "I'm glad that's settled."

"Ahgagaga good um du moo da," said Young Sam with the air of one who can't wait to grow up. "Buglit."

Vetinari's face split immediately into a wide, bright smile. "My, my, what books have daddy been reading to you?"

"Um…" said Drumknott from his corner. Vetinari found that he rather enjoyed being able to look up from his letters (delicately worded threats) to various sovereigns and guilds to take little glances at his head clerk. Normally, he resorted to asking Drumknott for files at the bottom of the filing cabinets. One of these days…

…he was going to pay the laundress to shrink Drumknott's pants…

"Yes, Drumknott?" he said curtly, shaking the image out of his head.

"Commander Vimes left a selection of books here, sir. He, er, specifically instructed for…someone to read them to his son at six in the evening. So the books he has been reading to Sammy are Where's My Cow?, Where's My Rabbit, Pietre and Janet Have Fun-"

"Oh, that one sounds interesting."

"They play with a big red ball, my lord," said Drumknott with a completely straight face. "And have picnics in meadows. What else? Oh, there's Gary Had A Little Ram, Frothingale Has Two Mummies, Ding A Dong A Dozy, and-"

"I'm sure that you'll be able to do quite as well as Vimes does in amusing and educating his little br- boy, Drumknott," said Vetinari with an air of finality.

"Sir?" said Drumknott, bristling.

"I rule the city!"

Drumknott subsided, "As if that's any excuse…" and mentally drafted a letter in which he asked for a raise and for Vetinari to suck his pens more often.