2. Not Quite Paved With Gold
The first thing Erich noticed about Ankh Morpork was the noise. After the placid silence of his homeland, the babble of voices, the clatter of carts, the clamour of people variously crying their wares, crying people's names and crying for help, it all hit him like the audio version of a brick to the head.
And when the door opened, well. If the sound was an audial brick, the smell was the olfactory equivalent of a high-rise building falling on him. He followed the bustling old woman who he had been bearing the company of for the last day to the coach door, and paused for a moment.
To a boy for whom, previously, the term 'urban metropolis' would have conjured up an image of the one-and-a-half horse town of Bad Schlechtsburg, a good five hour's hard walk from the castle, it was all very overwhelming. The people hurried by, faces innumerable, and none of them paid the slightest bit of notice to the pale, pimply boy hovering hunched in the doorway of the coach.
"'Ere, guv, I 'aven't got all day, you know." The coachman scowled back at him from the front. "Got to get 'er loaded up for the Sto Lat delivery, dun' I?"
"Oh. Sorry."
And Erich von Baronheim stepped forth into the first day of his bright new life in Ankh Morpork.
Upon which somebody stole his wallet. More specifically, somebody kicked him in the shins hard enough that he heard a distinct crack, headbutted him in the stomach and pushed him into an alley, where a similarly accommodating gentleman was waiting with a cosh, and he awoke some hours later to find somebody had stolen his wallet. And his suitcase, and his coat. Which was in fact incidental to the fact that he seemed to be lying in not insubstantial amounts of his own blood.
The sky had darkened from smoggy city noon to smoggy city twilight by the time he awoke, and it was several shades closer to night by the time he stood up rather unsteadily, supporting himself against the wall and trying not to imagine what lent the wall its slightly slimy texture. Gingerly, almost afraid of what he might find, Erich touched his half-closed left eye, feeling bruises under his fingertips. He winced, probing the other parts of his face. Erich had always prided himself on his hereditary ability to think clearly whilst in pain; it had only just occurred to him that possibly it was just that he had never previously been in enough pain to limit his thinking. By the feel of it, several ribs were broken, and his left wrist felt odd. And his mouth tasted of copper and loose teeth.
Through the muzzy haze of the Thieves' Guild's finest handiwork, Erich managed to locate a few coherent thoughts. The Watch. Commander Vimes. Do what he came to do. Make a proper man of you.
Well, the only sort of man the city had made him so far was a very sore one, but perhaps the Watch was supposed to do the rest. Trying to ignore the stabbing pains in his chest, he limped out of the alleyway and headed in the vague direction of Pseudopolis Yard.
---
A throat cleared in a quiet firelit room. "Commander Vimes?"
"Huh? Wstfksgwn?!" Commander Vimes replied intelligently, and jerked upwards in the classic 'I'm working, honestly' pose of the recently-comatose. His look dared the hapless watchman in front of him to comment. "What is it? I'm very busy with the paperwork from the Wraith case."
"Uh. There's a young man here to see you, sir. Got a nice black eye and blood all over his face. Says his bags got nicked when he arrived." The stocky young watchman sensibly forbore to remark on the pooling dribble all over the paperwork from the Wraith case, and similarly withheld comment on the inky marks on the Commander's poorly-shaven cheek.
"Send him to talk to Angua, then. She's on desk duty tonight, isn't she?"
"Yes sir. But he says he wants to talk to you in person, sir."
"I'm busy, man. If some kid is too dumb to pay up his Thieves' Guild subscription, that's a matter for the officer on desk duty. I know you're new to the force, but I'd expect a Shades boy like you to know that." Vimes picked up a pen, arranging his face into a serious, desk-work expression.
"It's not that, sir. He says he came to Ankh Morpork to see you, sir."
Vimes gave a sigh which somehow managed to mingle irritation with an almost undetectable relief at a momentary reprieve from paperwork, put down his pen and picked up a cigar instead. He lit it, and sat in silence for a moment, watching the increasingly nervous constable in front of him. "Fine," he said eventually. "Send him in."
---
"This'd better be good. I've got work to do, you know." The cigar shifted from one corner of Vimes' mouth to the other. Erich could feel the Commander's eyes on him, and it made him very uncomfortable. He knew what a mess he looked; the blonde sergeant on the front desk had found him a new shirt from the evidence locker to replace his bloody and ripped one (somehow, it was impossible not to feel sympathy for someone as utterly pathetic as Erich), and he'd spent the bare minimum of time in the dingy washroom cleaning the blood off his face, but he was acutely aware of the purple and red mess of his eye, the blood matting parts of his hair and the stagger with which he had entered the room. Not to mention his pimples and greasy hair. He tried to stand to attention, but instead doubled over as something pulled on his broken ribs.
"Oh hells," Vimes said, "sit down before you fall down, man." He gestured at the chair in front of Erich, who was only too happy to do as he was told. The rest was like balm to his tired body. He didn't realise how much he was drifting until Vimes' voice brought him back to earth. "Well? What is it?"
"Oh." Erich tried to sit up and gave in. "Um. My name is Erich von Baronheim, Commander, und I came from Überwald zis mornink. My father sent a message via zer clacks, sir, und I did haff a letter of recommendation but it vos in my case and my case vos taken ven I vos attacked, but I vant to join zer Vatch, sir, because my father thinks it vill make a man out of me. I von't be very good on the street, sir, but I am very good at science, so if zat doesn't vork out I thought I could do somesink useful in forensics."
Vimes puffed on his cigar.
"Wait a minute. You came here instead of finding a doctor because you wanted a job?"
"Yes. Um. Is zat alright?"
"Apart from being bloody stupid, yes, it's fine. I don't want stupid coppers, Mister von Baronheim."
"Oh. Erm. I am sorry, I only vanted to…"
"Are you bloody stupid, Mister von Baronheim? Or did you just do a bloody stupid thing?"
Erich resisted the urge to turn and run, and stared at his hands instead, which wasn't much comfort. "I think…" He picked at dirt under his nails. Überwaldian dirt. From his expedition to the Roots the day before. "I think I did a bloody stupid thing, sir. Und I think I vill try not to be bloody stupid."
"Good man." Vimes almost smiled, and took his cigar out of his mouth. "We'll swear you in once you've seen a good doctor. Oh, and Mister von Baronheim?"
Erich paused in the painful process of hoisting himself out of the chair. "Yes, sir?"
"You're not a vampire or anything, are you?"
"No, sir. Just human."
"Oh. You look a bit vampiric around the eyes, you know."
"It's probably zer blut all over my face, sir."
"Yeah. Come back when you look less like the wrong end of a beaten mule, alright?"
Limping slightly and holding his side, Erich left. Vimes watched him go with a sigh. As if he wasn't busy enough. People shouldn't be allowed to come and bother people just to ask for a job. That's what he had people for.
He glanced at the darkening sky outside the window. Sybil would want him home soon. It was bad enough in her book that he'd gone back to the Yard after reading to Young Sam, not for a dramatic midnight chase but for godsdamned paperwork. Anyway, he was tired. Absently, he checked his watch.
The hands were stuck at 9:49. Outside, Old Tom began to toll its heavy silences. Vimes glared at the little thing in his hand, banged it off the desk a couple of times on general principle, and then opened up the back.
The imp inside was gone. Evaporated. Instead, around its little seat, metal discs had begun to grow, as if the watch was trying to organically change into one of those newfangled clockwork thingummys.
"Oh ......," Vimes swore around Old Tom's chimes, "it's .........ng magic."
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A/N: The plot thickens slightly, as I stir the flour of plot twistery into the dough of the story and leave it to rise. I'm not entirely confident about my Vimes voice, and still stumbling on the accents a bit, so let me know what you think, ok? Or sink. Or zink. WHAT IS IT?