Angua returned as dawn's light was beginning the slow ooze around the city walls. As she reached the door she gave it a brisk rap, pausing diplomatically in case blanket readjustment was needed inside before pushing inside a bundle of clothes. A few minutes later Vimes opened the door to let her in; looking more like himself than since this whole thing started. She hefted a covered basket towards him, grinning at his surprise as he took it and felt the weight.
"Sybil was worried about you when I said you had to work through the day. I'm afraid she personally supervised these 'light provisions'."
"Ye Gods, they'll be enough to feed an army in here."
"I'd say that was a good thing - changing takes a lot of energy. You may be hungrier than you think."
Angua watched him eat, relieved to see her commander back in control and the brittle edges of his psyche tucked away again. She thought of how to begin, how best to distil a life of hard-won experience into a coherent structure. In the end it was Vimes that spoke first, pausing between mouthfuls of something beyond any description further than 'burnt'.
"Does the coloured smoke stuff get any less distracting? I remember you trying to explain to Carrot what smell 'looked like', but I didn't expect it to be this intrusive."
"It's always strongest on either side of the change. The rest of the time it fades into the background, you'll end up tuning it out most of the time. You'll get plenty of practice in the city; Ankh-Morpork was not designed for those with heightened senses."
"Ankh-Morpork wasn't designed for anyone, but I'll adjust. Anything else I should know?"
"Nothing you don't already; I'm sure you remember what my family was like. Control your temper, watch your new strength and don't spend too long in wolf form and forget how to think. Silver jewellery is probably out as well."
Vimes suppressed a shudder.
"Yes, I'd worked that one out…I guess Vetinari owes me a new cigar case."
"I'll add it to the list I'm drawing up."
She didn't want to break the relaxed mood but knew she had delayed for long enough.
"You have to change again before we go back sir."
Blunt formality made a good shield against the way Vimes' eyes blanked as the walls came back up.
"Any particular reason or just for your amusement?"
Angua ignored the bite in his tone in favour of the defensive hunch of his shoulders.
"If you don't learn to call the change it will always be able to take you by surprise. The first change is always painful, most of us experience it when we are too young to remember so I have no idea how it felt for you today. All I can do is promise it won't be like that again."
She met his eyes steadily, letting the silence draw out until Vimes was the one to look away as he climbed abruptly to his feet.
"Let's get it over with then. Inside?"
Angua shook her head and moved to the door.
"Ah door handles, knew there had to be some drawbacks to becoming a werewolf." Vimes muttered sarcastically, following her out into the chill morning.
Angua turned and looked at him in the pallid morning light, looking as calm as Vimes wished he felt.
"What do I do?" Vimes said, placing himself in her hands.
"First you can try and relax," she replied, looking him up and down with a grimace. "This will become as natural as breathing, you don't have to force it."
Vimes took a breath, willing his hands to unclench as he settled into parade rest. He could tell Angua wasn't fooled but she continued regardless.
"Find the wolf in your mind; he'll be waiting for you. He'll be dormant for now and you'll have to wake him, other times he'll come looking for you."
Vimes turned his thoughts inwards, looking at what he regarded as himself; the part that made sarcastic remarks about the way the rest of him handled things. Lurking behind that was something different, something strange and feral yet oddly familiar. He was reminded of what had surfaced in the glacial river in Uberwald and the torture chamber, but that had been born of anger and this was the calm of a predator. As he considered it he felt something uncurl, aware of the scrutiny. Vimes steeled himself and pulled, feeling it surge up and into him in a shudder that started in his mind and finished in the tips of his fur. He shook his way out of the clothes that now hung around him, revelling in the new information presented by his nose and ears.
Angua watched him getting a proper feel for his new body, intrigued by the differences from her family. Vimes had none of her deceptive refinement, or the hulking ferocity of her brother, but all of the aura Gavin had worn like a cloak. She changed as well, a practiced wiggle taking care of her own clothes as she sat and waited for Vimes' attention to come back to her. She was ready for the involuntary bristle of his fur as she came to stand by him, keeping her tail below the line of her back as she dipped to lick his muzzle from below. The expression of confusion that greeted this was still comical when translated through the medium of ears and angled head.
"Just letting you know you're still my Commander, even if I'll be doing the teaching at first."
Vimes snorted softly, flicking an ear in the direction of the two piles of discarded clothing.
"I guess diplomacy can have its uses. I didn't realise we would be able to talk to each other so easily."
"We aren't, not really, your brain is just translating into something you can understand. Quite useful when you don't have the same vocal chords anymore and wolves aren't equipped for sign language."
"Is it the same with normal wolves then?"
"Yes, but don't forget how we seem to them. If you can get close enough to hear what they're saying, you're probably too close."
It was Angua's turn then to let the conversation stall, shaking her head to disperse the memories trying to crowd her. She faced Vimes and crouched low, her tail sweeping lazily from side to side, feeling the emptiness of the fields calling to her.
"Feel like you know where your feet are sir?"
Without waiting for the answer she whirled and sprinted off among the cabbages, leaving behind furrows of churned earth and the echo of a teasing howl. Vimes took a breath, the flat and colourless world suddenly awash with colour again. Running out his tongue in a wolf laugh, Vimes temporarily turned his back on the hulking black mass of Ankh-Morpork to follow Angua's curling golden trail.
Sybil Ramkin watched a close friend murder a woman in a fit of jealous passion and found she wasn't really concentrating. The music eddied around her as she sat in her booth at the opera house but her mind was far from the dying soprano who, despite frantic signals from the conductor, was still managing to punctuate every line with exclamation marks.
When Angua had come to see her yesterday evening it had been early enough that she wasn't unduly concerned, apart from the normal 'he's out somewhere and people want him dead' that was background whenever Vimes was out of her sight. She had also not been initally concerned about the lack of detail, or that no word was sent during the following day, but the more she thought about it the more little details seemed to stand out as odd. Angua almost never came to the house, no matter what the emergency – she was usually in the thick of whatever the Watch was facing. No-one had come to complain in high-handed tones about whatever feathers Vimes had ruffled the previous night, nothing in the city was on fire… yes, Sybil was very worried.
Since she and Vimes had first begun their eccentric arrangement of companionship and support, she had never felt so cut off from his life.
Lascia! Ch'io pianga! Mia cruda sorte!
As the final tortured squeaks from the soprano ricocheted around the rafters she decided that, if Vimes wasn't home that evening, she would check every watch-house in the city until she found him.
The man in question slunk through the streets of Ankh-Morpork as the pale light of evening dimmed to dusk. After some diplomatic 'close your eyes till I cough' changing and dressing, he and Angua had parted ways - she had gone back to the watch-house, ready to smooth over the unaccustomed nightly absence of their commander, while Vimes headed to his second home. As the day passed he had begun to feel slow and grudging acceptance of his new condition, something now being systematically shredded by the thought of how Sybil would react. On the one hand she had always seemed fine with the idea of werewolves, she and Angua taking to each other with the desperate air of women who spend most of their lives surrounded by men. She could even manage to be civil to those werewolves who kidnapped her with possible murderous intentions.
'But on the other hand,' began the more treacherous part of his mind, climbing onto its soapbox, 'she's never exactly had to live with one, has she? Not in her own home. A dangerous beast that could threaten her dragons? You haven't got a hope.'
Bingley-Bingley-Beep!*
Vimes jerked reflexively before realising the sound couldn't be his watch, seeing as that was currently still on the battlefield at Gebra. Sure enough, a few seconds later, there was a rattle as the watch landed on the cobbles after being thrown through a nearby window. Vimes wished he still had his watch…it was one of those times kicking something down the pavement would have been very satisfying. The unwary traveller might have tried kicking one of the various bits of debris that littered the Ankh-Morpork streets, but that was inadvisable. At best you would have a shoe that could never be worn again, at worst a very irate gnoll that was now attached to your foot.
Even being lost in thought didn't prevent his feet inexorably closing in on Sybil's estate.
He slipped through the large iron gates and dawdled through the grounds, stealing around to the servant's entrance in a habit that Sybil had broken except in times of utmost stress. Before Vimes could even rattle the doorknob Wilikins had it open.
"Good evening sir. Lady Sybil will be overjoyed to see you safe and sound when she returns from the opera. Until then, if you would be so kind as to follow me to the library where I have a fire laid?"
He mutely followed Wilikins into the house, attempting to decide whether all butlers gained seemingly precognitive skills as part of basic training, or whether Wilikins just knew him too well. When Vimes was safely ensconced the butler paused in the doorway before bowing out of the room.
"I'm afraid Her Ladyship has left instruction that, if you attempt to leave, I am to restrain you by any means I deem appropriate."
Knowing what he did of Wilikins' former activities, Vimes tried to ignore the luridly coloured images helpfully supplied by his imagination. After lighting a cigar from the flickering fire he sat back in a high-backed chair, wishing he had his helmet to tip down over his eyes as he settled in to wait.