Feet of Clay

by Terry Pratchett

  Vimes peered around the shadowy, musty room. The voice might as well have come from a tomb.

  A panicky look crossed the face of the little Herald. “Perhaps Sir Samuel would be kind enough to step this way?” said the voice. It was chilly, clipping every syllable with precision. It was the kind of voice that didn’t blink.

  “That is, in fact, er…Dragon,” said Red Crescent.

  Vimes reached for his sword.

  “Dragon King of Arms,” said the man.

  “King of Arms?” said Vimes.

  “Merely a title,” said the voice. “Pray enter.”

  For some reason the words re-spelled themselves in Vimes’s hindbrain as “prey, enter.”

  “King of Arms,” said the voice of Dragon, as Vimes passed into the shadows of the inner sanctum. “You will not need your sword, Commander. I have been Dragon King of Arms for more than five hundred years but I do not breathe fire, I assure you. Ah-ha. Ah-ha.”

  “Ah-ha,” said Vimes. He couldn’t see the figure clearly. The light came from a few high and grubby windows, and several dozen candles that burned with black-edged flames. There was a suggestion of hunched shoulders in the shape before him.

  “Pray be seated,” said Dragon King of Arms. “And I would be most indebted if you would look to your left and raise your chin.”

  “And expose my neck, you mean?” said Vimes.

  “Ah-ha. Ah-ha.”

  The figure picked up a candelabrum and moved closer. A hand so skinny as to be skeletal gripped Vimes’s chin and moved it gently this way and that.

  “Ah, yes. You have the Vimes profile, certainly. But not the Vimes ears. Of course, your maternal grandmother was a Clamp. Ah-ha…”

  The Vimes hand gripped the Vimes sword again. There was only one type of person that had that much strength in a body so apparently frail.

  “I thought so! You are a vampire!” he said. “You’re a bloody vampire.”

  “Ah-ha.” It might have been a laugh. It might have been a cough. “Yes. Vampire, indeed. Yes, I’ve heard about your views on vampires. ‘Not really alive but not dead enough,’ I believe you have said. I think that is rather clever. Ah-ha. Vampire, yes. Bloody, no. Black puddings, yes. The acme of the butcher’s art, yes. And if all else fails there are plenty of kosher butchers down in Long Hogmeat. Ah-ha, yes. We all live in the best way we can. Ah-ha. Virgins are safe from me. Ah-ha. For several hundred years, more’s the pity. Ah-ha.”

  The shape, and the pool of candlelight, moved away.

  “I’m afraid your time has been needlessly wasted, Commander Vimes.”

  Vimes’s eyes were growing accustomed to the flickering light. The room was full of books, in piles. None of them were on shelves. Each one sprouted bookmarks like squashed fingers.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. Either Dragon King of Arms had very hunched shoulders or there were wings under his shapeless robe. Some of them could fly like a bat, Vimes recalled. He wondered how old this one was. They could “live” almost forever…

  “I believe you’re here because it is considered, ah-ha, appropriate that you have a coat of arms. I am afraid that this is not possible. Ah-ha. A Vimes coat of arms has existed, but it cannot be resurrected. It would be against the rules.”

  “What rules?”

  There was a thump as a book was taken down and opened.

  “I’m sure you know your ancestry, Commander. Your father was Thomas Vimes, his father was Gwilliam Vimes—”

  “It’s Old Stoneface, isn’t it,” said Vimes flatly. “It’s something to do with Old Stoneface.”

  “Indeed. Ah-ha. Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes. Your ancestor. Old Stoneface, indeed, as he was called. Commander of the City Watch in 1688. And a regicide. He murdered the last king of Ankh-Morpork, as every schoolboy knows.”

  “Executed!”

  The shoulders shrugged. “Nevertheless, the family crest was, as we say in heraldry, Excretus Est Ex Altitudine. That is to say, Depositatum De Latrina. Destroyed. Banned. Made incapable of resurrection. Lands confiscated, house pulled down, page torn out of history. Ah-ha. You know, Commander, it is interesting that so many of, ah-ha, ‘Old Stoneface’s’ descendants”—the inverted commas dropped neatly around the nickname like an old lady carefully picking up something nasty in a pair of tongs—“have been officers of the Watch. I believe, Commander, that you too have acquired the nickname. Ah-ha. Ah-ha. I have wondered whether there is some inherited urge to expunge the infamy. Ah-ha.”

  Vimes gritted his teeth. “Are you telling me I can’t have a coat of arms?”

  “This is so. Ah-ha.”

  “Because my ancestor killed a—” He paused. “No, it wasn’t even execution,” he said. “You execute a human being. You slaughter an animal”

  “He was the king,” said Dragon mildly.

  “Oh, yes. And it turned out that down in the dungeons he had machines for—”

  “Commander,” said the vampire, holding up his hands, “I feel you do not understand me. Whatever else he was, he was the king. You see, a crown is not like a watchman’s helmet, ah-ha. Even when you take it off, it’s still on the head.”

  “Stoneface took it off all right!”

  “But the King did not even get a trial.”

  “No willing judge could be found,” said Vimes.

  “Except you…that is, your ancestor…”

  “Well? Someone had to do it. Some monsters should not walk under the living sky.”

  Dragon found the page he had been looking for and turned the book around. “This was his escutcheon,” he said.

  Vimes looked down at the familiar sign of the morpork owl perched on an ankh. It was atop a shield divided into four quarters, with a symbol in each quarter.

  “What’s this crown with a dagger through it?”

  “Oh, a traditional symbol, ah-ha. Indicates his role as defender of the crown.”

  “Really? And the bunch of rods with an axe in it?” He pointed.

  “A fasces. Symbolizes that he is…was an officer of the law. And the axe was an interesting harbinger of things to come, yes? But axes, I’m afraid, solve nothing.”

  Vimes stared at the third quarter. It contained a painting of what seemed to be a marble bust.

  “Symbolizing his nickname, ‘Old Stoneface’,” said Dragon helpfully. “He asked that some reference be made. Sometimes heraldry is nothing more than the art of punning.”

  “And this last one? A bunch of grapes? Bit of a boozer, was he?” said Vimes sourly.

  “No. Ah-ha. Word play. Vimes = Vines.”

  “Ah. The art of bad punning,” said Vimes. “I bet that had you people rolling on the floor.”

  Dragon shut the book and sighed. “There is seldom a reward for those who do what must be done. Alas, such is precedent, and I am powerless.” The old voice brightened up. “But, still…I was extremely pleased, Commander, to hear of your marriage to Lady Sybil. An excellent lineage. One of the most noble families in the city, ah-ha. The Ramkins, the Selachiis, the Venturis, the Nobbses, of course…”

  “That’s it, is it?” said Vimes. “I just go now?”

  “I seldom get visitors,” said Dragon. “Generally people are seen by the Heralds, but I thought you should get a proper explanation. Ah-ha. We’re so busy now. Once we dealt with real heraldry. But this, they tell me, is the Century of the Fruitbat. Now it seems that, as soon as a man opens his second meat-pie shop, he feels impelled to consider himself a gentleman.” He waved a thin white hand at three coats of arms pinned in a row on a board. “The butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker,” he sneered, but genteelly. “Well, the candle-maker, in point of fact. Nothing will do but that we burrow through the records and prove them acceptably armigerous…”

  Vimes glanced at the three shields. “Haven’t I seen that one before?” he said.

  “Ah. Mr. Arthur Carry the candle-maker,” said Dragon. “Suddenly business is booming and he feels he must be a gentleman. A shield bisected by a
bend sinister d’une mèche en metal gris—that is to say, a steel gray shield indicating his personal determination and zeal (how zealous, ah-ha, these businessmen are!) bisected by a wick. Upper half, a chandelle in a fenêtre avec rideaux houlant (a candle lighting a window with a warm glow, ah-ha), lower half two chandeliers illuminé (indicating the wretched man sells candles to rich and poor alike). Fortunately his father was a harbor master, which fact allowed us to stretch ourselves a little with a crest of a lampe au poisson (fish-shaped lamp), indicating both this and his son’s current profession. The motto I left in the common modern tongue and is ‘Art Brought Forth the Candle.’ I’m sorry, ah-ha, it was naughty but I couldn’t resist it.”

  “My sides ache,” said Vimes. Something kicked his brain, trying to get attention.

  “This one is for Mr. Gerhardt Sock, president of the Butchers’ Guild,” said Dragon. “His wife’s told him a coat of arms is the thing to have, and who are we to argue with the daughter of a tripe merchant, so we’ve made him a shield of red, for blood, and blue and white stripes, for a butcher’s apron, bisected by a string of sausages, centralis a cleaver held in a gloved hand, a boxing glove, which is, ah-ha, the best we could do for ‘sock.’ Motto is Futurus Meus est in Visceris, which translates as ‘My Future is in (the) Entrails’, both relating to his profession and, ah-ha, alluding to the old practice of telling—”

  “—The future from entrails,” said Vimes. “A-mazing.” Whatever was trying to get into his attention was really jumping up and down now.

  “While this one, ah-ha, is for Rudolph Potts of the Bakers’ Guild,” said Dragon, pointing to the third shield with a twig-thin finger. “Can you read it, Commander?”

  Vimes gave it a gloomy stare. “Well, it’s divided into three, and there’s a rose, a flame and a pot,” he said. “Er…bakers use fire and the pot’s for water, I suppose…”

  “And a pun on the name,” said Dragon.

  “But, unless he’s called Rosie, I…” Then Vimes blinked. “A rose is a flower. Oh, good grief. Flower, flour. Flour, fire and water? The pot looks like a guzunder to me, though. A chamber pot?”

  “The old word for baker was pistor,” said Dragon. “Why, Commander, we should make a Herald of you yet! And the motto?”

  “Quod Subigo Farinam,” said Vimes, and wrinkled his forehead. “‘Because’…‘farinaceous’ means to do with corn, or flour, doesn’t it?…oh, no…‘Because I Knead The Dough’?”

  Dragon clapped his hands. “Well done, sir!”

  “This place must simply rock on those long winter evenings,” said Vimes. “And that’s heraldry, is it? Crossword clues and plays on words?”

  “Of course there is a great deal more,” said the Dragon. “These are simple. We more or less have to make them up. Whereas the escutcheon of an old family, such as the Nobbses…”

  “Nobbs!” said Vimes, as the penny dropped. “That’s it! You said ‘Nobbs’! Before—when you were talking about old families!”

  “Ah-ha. What? Oh, indeed. Yes. Oh, yes. A fine old family. Although now, sadly, in decay.”

  “You don’t mean Nobbs as in…Corporal Nobbs?” said Vimes, horror edging his words.

  A book thumped open. In the orange light Vimes had a vague upside-down glimpse of shields, and a rambling, unpruned family tree.

  “My word. Would that be a C. W. St. J. Nobbs?”

  “Er…yes. Yes!”

  “Son of Sconner Nobbs and a lady referred to here as Maisie of Elm Street?”

  “Probably.”

  “Grandson of Slope Nobbs?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “Who was the illegitimate son of Edward St. John de Nobbes, Earl of Ankh, and a, ah-ha, a parlormaid of unknown lineage?”

  “Good gods!”

  “The Earl died without issue, except that which, ah-ha, resulted in Slope. We had not been able to trace the scion—hitherto, at any rate.”

  “Good gods!”

  “You know the gentleman?”

  Vimes regarded with amazement a serious and positive sentence about Corporal Nobbs that included the word “gentleman.” “Er…yes,” he said.

  “Is he a man of property?”

  “Only other people’s.”

  “Well, ah-ha, do tell him. There is no land or money now, of course, but the title is still extant.”

  “Sorry…let me make sure I understand this. Corporal Nobbs…my Corporal Nobbs…is the Earl of Ankh?”

  “He would have to satisfy us as to proof of his lineage but, yes, it would appear so.”

  Vimes stared into the gloom. Thus far in his life, Corporal Nobbs would have been unlikely to satisfy the examiners as to his species.

  “Good gods!” Vimes said yet again. “And I suppose he gets a coat of arms?”

  “A particularly fine one.”

  “Oh.”

  Vimes hadn’t even wanted a coat of arms. An hour ago he’d have cheerfully avoided this appointment as he had done so many times before. But…

  “Nobby?” he said. “Good gods!”

  “Well, well! This has been a very happy meeting,” said Dragon. “I do so like to keep the records up to date. Ah-ha. Incidentally, how is young Captain Carrot getting along? I’m told his young lady is a werewolf. Ah-ha.”

  “Really,” said Vimes.

  “Ah-ha.” In the dark, Dragon made a movement that might have been a conspiratorial tap on the side of the nose. “We know these things!”

  “Captain Carrot is doing well,” said Vimes, as icily as he could manage. “Captain Carrot always does well.”

  He slammed the door when he went out. The candle flames wavered.

  Constable Angua walked out of an alleyway, doing up her belt.

  “That went very well, I thought,” said Carrot, “and will go some way to earning us the respect of the community.”

  “Pff! That man’s sleeve! I doubt if he even knows the meaning of the word ‘laundry’,” said Angua, wiping her mouth.

  Automatically, they fell into step—the energy-saving policeman’s walk, where the pendulum weight of the leg is used to propel the walker along with the minimum of effort. Walking was important, Vimes had always said, and because Vimes had said it Carrot believed it. Walking and talking. Walk far enough and talk to enough people and sooner or later you had an answer.

  The respect of the community, thought Angua. That was a Carrot phrase. Well, in fact it was a Vimes phrase, although Sir Samuel usually spat after he said it. But Carrot believed it. It was Carrot who’d suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to “serve the community” by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork’s crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get into it sideways.*

  “I’ve found something very interesting that you will be very interested to see,” said Carrot, after a while.

  “That’s interesting,” said Angua.

  “But I’m not going to tell you what it is because I want it to be a surprise,” said Carrot.

  “Oh. Good.”

  Angua walked in thought for a while and then said: “I wonder if it will be as surprising as the collection of rock samples you showed me last week?”

  “That was good, wasn’t it?” said Carrot enthusiastically. “I’ve been along that street dozens of times and never suspected there was a mineral museum there! All those silicates!”

  “Amazing! You’d imagine people would be flocking to it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, I can’t think why they don’t!”

  Angua reminded herself that Carrot appeared to have in his soul not even a trace element of irony. She told herself that it wasn’t his fault he’d been brought up by dwarfs in some mine, and really did think that bits of rock were interesting. The week before they’d visited an iron foundry. That had been interesting, too.

  And yet…and yet…you couldn’t he
lp liking Carrot. Even people he was arresting liked Carrot. Even old ladies living in a permanent smell of fresh paint liked Carrot. She liked Carrot. A lot. Which was going to make leaving him all the harder.

  She was a werewolf. That’s all there was to it. You either spent your time trying to make sure people didn’t find out or you let them find out and spent your time watching them keep their distance and whisper behind your back, although of course you’d have to turn round to watch that.

  Carrot didn’t mind. But he minded that other people minded. He minded that even quite friendly colleagues tended to carry a bit of silver somewhere on their person. She could see it upsetting him. She could see the tensions building up, and he didn’t know how to deal with them.

  It was just as her father had said. Get involved with humans other than at mealtimes and you might as well jump down a silver mine.

  “Apparently there’s going to be a huge firework display after the celebrations next year,” said Carrot. “I like fireworks.”

  “It beats me why Ankh-Morpork wants to celebrate the fact it had a civil war three hundred years ago,” said Angua, coming back to the here-and-now.

  “Why not? We won,” said Carrot.

  “Yes, but you lost, too.”

  “Always look on the positive side, that’s what I say. Ah, here we are.”

  Angua looked up at the sign. She’d learned to read dwarf runes now.

  “‘Dwarf Bread Museum’,” she said. “Gosh. I can’t wait.”

  Carrot nodded happily and pushed open the door. There was a smell of ancient crusts.

  “Coo-ee, Mr. Hopkinson?” he called. There was no reply. “He does go out sometimes,” he said.

  “Probably when the excitement gets too much for him,” said Angua. “Hopkinson? That’s not a dwarf name, is it?”

  “Oh, he’s a human,” said Carrot, stepping inside. “But an amazing authority. Bread’s his life. He wrote the definitive work on offensive baking. Well…since he’s not here I’ll just take two tickets and leave tuppence on the desk.”

  It didn’t look as though Mr. Hopkinson got many visitors. There was dust on the floor, and dust on the display cases, and a lot of dust on the exhibits. Most of them were the classic cowpat-like shape, an echo of their taste, but there were also buns, close-combat crumpets, deadly throwing toast and a huge dusty array of other shapes devised by a race that went in for food-fighting in a big and above all terminal way.