Patrol
"So I'm almost ready to head out when Sniveler comes stumbling in, his head all wrapped with bloody tape." Sally recounted as she and Angua proceeded towards the Palace.
"Oh lord, no." Angua groaned sympathetically. Sniveler had wasted more Watch time than the combined efforts of all the Guilds and the League for Equal Heights.
"He's got about a brick's worth of gauze in his mouth so it takes 10 minutes just to find out that he got the stuffing kicked out of him by three guys – nothing new – and then another 5 for each of the attackers' names. Ever heard someone try to say 'The Crimson Leech' around a mouthful of cotton? It's impossible, he resorted to mime and the whole office came in to watch. It took another 15 minutes and I'm still not sure we have it right. Turns out, Sniveler isn't pressing charges for assault-,"
"We'd have to arrest half of Morpork."
"He wants to file a stolen property report. He'd had 5 teeth smashed out of his mouth and couldn't find them. Apparently he knows a place where he can fetch four pence a tooth."
"Oh? That's a penny more than the Fairies are currently doing. Good old Sniveler, strips the silver lining off clouds with a potato peeler."
"So, I'm forgiven for being 6 minutes and 18 seconds late?" Sally teased with one arched brow.
Angua only caught the expression from the corner of her eye, noting with chagrin that the coquettish expression suited her vampire partner perfectly. She might not be a raving fan of the other Undead species but she'd grudgingly allowed herself a tiny amount of respect and even affection for Salacia Delorisista Amanita Trigestrata Zeldana -Who The Hell Needs This Many Names? - Von Humpeding. There were more names in there somewhere but Angua always felt her attention flagging around the twentieth syllable.
"I'll excuse the first 4 minutes. You can make up the rest by filing any incident reports we have tonight." The Werewolf smiled. There's an incredibly frightening and altogether unexplored phenomenon of dental communication that takes place when a Vampire and Werewolf smile at each other.
The rest of the walk to the Palace was mostly silent save the usual necessary copper-speak in Ankh-Morpork.
'Drop that Dwarf,'
'No axe-wielding in public, please,'
'Stop right there and show me your Thieves' Guild License,'
'Pick up those severed fingers, littering is fined.'
'Madam, please put your knockers away, it's after vending hours.'
It was actually a fairly quiet evening. The whole city was holding its breath for the impending chaos that always accompanied the Guild Banquet. What once had been a fairly harmless occasion for businessmen, lawyers and politicians to engage in highly illegal conversations had, in recent years, become an opportunity for guild members of all kinds to display their prowess by any means possible. Chefs, Tailors, Musicians and Actors all tried desperately to gain entry and advertise their abilities. The Gamblers' Guild made book on them. The Lawyers' Guild profited off each one caught.
It was a well-known fact that any currently licensed guild member who managed to sneak into the Banquet and complete a targeted assignment would be awarded duty-free membership for life. Angua still remembered last year when she had to drag away a screaming mathematics teacher who was convinced he could explain the concept of Zero to the Guild of Merchants. They were just a minor nuisance. It was the Thieves and Assassins that were the real problem. They were the reason Angua and Sally were being asked to survey the grounds and look for any hint of security weakness. Lord Downey was actually proud of the fact that his students had managed to penetrate the banquet every year. They hadn't successfully inhumed anyone – thanks to Commander Vimes' paranoia and reflexes – but they always found a way in.
"I almost forgot to ask, how's Hugo?" Angua inquired just as they entered the Palace gates. She mentally commended herself for remembering a personal detail that had absolutely no relevance to crime. Maybe Carrot was rubbing off on her.
"I had to break up with him. Last week." Sally shrugged. They began their circle of the main building, senses spun out in all directions to pick up irregularities. Funny thing about instinctive detection: it works better at picking up subtleties when the mind is distracted.
"What? But things were going so well! You said that he had skills that might help him keep up with you."
"I though since he was one of Vetinari's clerks he might. They have a lot of training and his reflexes really were beautiful," Sally had a momentarily dreamy expression, "But for all their deadly abilities the dark clerks are just too fragile to be playing with the undead. C'est la vie."
(a Genuan phrase that translates literally as: life is shit)
Angua recognized the resigned tone and the ring of disappointment.
"How many times did you put him in the hospital?"
"We were at the Lady Sybil 3 times this month. The last time I'd snapped his collar bone and broke four ribs. Dr. Lawn lectured me for 45 minutes." Sally grimaced. Angua winced in sympathy. She'd heard Mossy Lawn's dissertation on 'safe sex' several times. He had quite a different script for the Undead than for everyone else.
"Humans are awfully delicate. Maybe you'll meet someone at the Temperance League?" Angua was doing her best in the role of supportive companion. She didn't have a lot of experience. Somehow she didn't think that the conversations she'd had with Nobby and his paramours would be relevant.
"Not a chance," Sally actually scoffed – which is harder than it sounds, "I'd never date another Vampire. They're vain, petty, self-absorbed, arrogant and that obsessive nature is just impossible! Do you know what a Vampire thinks is romantic? Stalking."
"I never would've imagined." Angua kept her face a complete mask.
"I just wish I could find a Werewolf." Sally sighed wistfully, eyeing a roof parapet.
"W-w," Angua actually stopped walking, "What?!"
"All that stamina? And nearly impossible to kill! Not to mention they're hardly bashful in the nudity department," Sally winked, "Honestly, I think most Vampires would prefer a nice, furry friend."
"We've been enemies for millennia!" Angua noticed some of the Palace Guards turn at her exclamation.
"Oh, naturally. Our species couldn't maintain this sort of animosity for so long without some component of attraction in the mix. Don't tell me you never noticed all the sexual tension?"
"I guess anger just isn't one of my turn-ons." Angua blushed, wishing a thief would burst around the corner to distract them right now.
"Really?" Sally's eyebrows both rose innocently, "What do you call make-up sex?"
"I call it private." Angua cleared her throat and the noise was very obviously a growl. Vampires have perfect night vision, the damn woman was undoubtedly seeing the color in her cheeks.
"I've made you uncomfortable. I'm sorry." Sally looked down, allowing her partner some privacy to recover her coloring.
"Just not the sort of conversation I'm used to. Sober anyway."
"It's not like it's terribly relevant. Werewolves are a bit scarce outside Uberwald. I'll just have to hope another nice one shows up in Ankh-Morpork someday." The smaller woman sighed again. Angua's brain caught 'another nice one' and paused over the phrase. She decided she'd been embarrassed enough this evening and let it pass. They were already half way around the Palace and at this rate would finish their surveillance early. Damn Carrot. Now she really needed that double-knot.
"Wait, I smell something." Angua stopped dead in her tracks. The faint, tickling sensation in her nostrils was the delicate trail of an almost fading scent. The city's criminals had become a lot smarter over the years. It was now part of Stealth 101 to put strongly scented oil in your criminal kit. Right now the dark evening air was carrying the light alto tones of peppermint. Straight up the wall.
"I hear someone half way up. Slow heartbeat. They're coming down." Sally verified. Angua nodded and pulled her partner into the shadow of a decorative statue. From here their suspect would drop directly in front of them facing the wrong way. It should be easier than biting candy to snatch him up.
The shadows on the Palace wall slithered and fluctuated as an extra patch of darkness moved with spidery grace down the façade. Angua's night vision was good but not as good as Sally's so when her superbly sensitive ears picked up the Vampire's quick breath of surprise she listened closer. When Sally spoke it was at the volume of a falling leaf.
"Don't move. He's coming down facing out." Von Humpeding warned. No one scaled or descended buildings facing out. Only someone extremely paranoid and ludicrously talented would do such a thing. Which meant he also had to have a weapon within easy reach. Angua's muscles coiled tight, ready to lunge the moment their prey blinked. His feet were firmly on the ground now and close enough that she could see him staring into the shadows all around him. For a moment he looked directly at them. Then, unable to penetrate the dark enough to see the watchmen, he turned to retrieve his scaling tools. That was when Angua lunged.
She had him pinned to the wall in the same moment that Sally gripped his wrist hard enough to make him drop his dagger. Her superhuman strength crushed the spring loader in his sleeve that would've slipped another blade to his palm. Instead there was a faint grunt of irritated pain when the sharp edge broke the skin of his wrist.
"City Watch!" Angua growled and the suspect immediately held still. The Watch wasn't a particularly moving threat but the tone of her words froze blood.
"License?" Sally asked, patting down the sides of the black silk suit.
"Front left pocket." The words were offered up casually, despite having a face smashed to the brickwork. Sally found the Assassin's Guild license card and nodded to Angua. They stepped back, allowing an apparently respectable member of society to turn and dust himself off. He had black material over his head and around his face, leaving only his eyes visible. Angua took the license and examined it. The odor of peppermint on his clothes was almost overwhelming but the card had lived close to his skin for too long. She took a deep sniff.
"You're here about 24 hours early if you have an assignment for the Guild." She commented, trying to identify the familiar smell. It smelled spicy, with an undertone of wood.
"I'm on a private contract, Captain." His voice was also vaguely familiar.
"Doesn't that invalidate your guild membership?" Sally was pretty sure the Assassin's actively discouraged competition. With prejudice.
"Only if I were contracted to inhume." His accent was distinct, foreign but obviously honed in Ankh-Morpork.
"If you're not here on guild business then you're not protected by their secrecy clauses. What's your assignment?"
"I do private security. I was just setting a few traps for my brethren tomorrow night. I predict anyone trying to scale the south wall will find it rather surprising."
"Who contracted you?" Sally didn't bother to address his booby traps. Assassins all played the game by their own rules and that included altering the battlefield to their own advantage. Angua was nearly ready to bite the license card, so certain she knew this smell but couldn't place it.
"My professional services come with absolute privacy I'm afraid." The man shrugged apologetically.
"Then your services will be rendered from the lockup. Come along." Sally began to pull handcuffs from her belt. This presented a bit of difficulty as one of the fiddly metal bits had gotten tangled with the thread of her pants.
"Now really! Captain Angua!" the offended plea hit a tone that finally registered with the werewolf's subconscious. It was the sound of wounded pride; royal arrogance brought down to pedestrian demand. Neither his smell nor sound had made sense until they merged into a single entity from her memory.
"Bloody hell! Teppic? Is that you?" Angua reached out and flicked away the black silk around the captive's face. In the foggy dark his smile was dazzling in its brightness.
"I was beginning to worry you didn't know me." Teppic grinned.
"The peppermint didn't help. I thought you had gone back to Djelibeybi to check on your sister?"
"Ptraci is doing extremely well and quite hostile to anyone implying she needs help. Her aim with a spear has improved a great deal." Teppic turned and gestured to a cut by his ear.
"Best left alone to her despotic nature then." Angua grinned.
"Those were very near her words. I daresay it was the extra bits of swearing that spoiled her throw." He tsked in a way that could only be learned from years of being educated by Assassins.
"I hate to interrupt this lovely reunion but am I cuffing him or should I just let you take him to tea?" Sally finally wrenched the handcuffs free with a tiny ripping noise that told her she'd be making a payroll deduction this period. Angua glanced at the Vampire to gauge her overall annoyance level. The more fang you could see, the higher the threat to some innocent bystander. Fortunately, this was Ankh-Morpork and the last innocent bystander had been killed 3 years ago by a rogue sausage cart.
"Easy Sal," Angua gestured the cuffs away, "He might have some information for us."
"Such as?" The tiny hissing breath that escaped Von Humpeding's lips wasn't lost on Angua but the officer followed orders.
"Now Teppic, you wouldn't by any chance know anything about the annoyance that has Lord Downey so up in arms, would you?" Angua turned her attention back to the man in black. Nobody got up in arms like an assassin could. They also got up in stealth darts, tasteless poisons and ear-blowing incendiaries.
The young former king pursed his lips in the classic "I know the answer but I want you to think I'm concentrating," sort of face adopted by everyone with information desired by the law. Angua decided to move him more quickly along his act.
"Anything at all?" she leaned in closer to him with an expression that showed all her teeth but could never be confused with a smile.
"I might know a bit. Yes." Teppic tried to back away but couldn't make his backside crawl through brick.
"Great!" Angua leaned back, "Then you won't mind coming down to the Yard and telling us all about it."
R&R if you liked it.