The Fifth Elephant d-24

by Terry Pratchett

  Albrecht glared at Vimes and then stepped up to the table.

  He looked at the Scone from several angles. He moved the candles and leaned down so that he could inspect the crust closely.

  He took a knife from his belt, tapped the Scone with it and listened with ferocious care to the note produced. He turned the Scone over. He sniffed at it.

  He stood back, his face screwed up in a scowl, and then said, 'H gradz?'

  The dwarfs muttered among themselves, and then, one by one, nodded.

  To Vimes's horror, Albrecht chipped a tiny piece from the Scone and put it in his mouth.

  Plaster, thought Vimes. Fresh plaster from Ankh-Morpork. And Dee will talk his way out of it.

  Albrecht spat the piece out into his hand and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. While he chewed.

  Then he and the King exchanged a long, thoughtful stare.

  'P'akga,' said Albrecht at last, 'a p'akaga-ad...'

  Behind the outbreak of murmuring Vimes heard Cheery translate: ' "It is the thing, and the whole of—" '

  'Yes, yes,' said Vimes. And he thought: by gods, we're good. Ankh-Morpork, I'm proud of you. When we make a forgery it's better than the real damn thing.

  Unless... unless I've missed something...

  'Thank you, gentlemen,' said the King. He waved a hand. The dwarfs filed out, reluctantly, with many backward glances at Vimes.

  'Dee? Please fetch my axe from my chamber, will you?' the King said. 'Yourself, please. I don't want anyone else to handle it. Your excellency, you and your lady will remain here. Your... dwarf must leave, however. The guards are to be posted on the door. Dee?'

  The Ideas Taster hadn't moved.

  'Dee?'

  'Wh... Yes, sire?'

  'You do what I tell you!'

  'Sire, this man's ancestor once killed a king!'

  'I daresay the family have got it out of their system! Now do as I say!'

  The dwarf hurried away, turning to stare at Vimes for a moment as he left the cave.

  The King sat back. 'Sit down, your monitorship. And your lady, too.' He put one elbow on the arm of the chair and cupped his chin on his hand. 'And now, Mister Vimes, tell me the truth. Tell me everything. Tell me the truth that is more valuable than small amounts of gold.'

  'I'm not sure I know it any more,' said Vimes.

  'Ah. A good start,' said the King. 'Tell me what you suspect, then.'

  'Sire, I'd swear that thing is as fake as a tin shilling.'

  'Oh. Really?'

  'The real Scone wasn't stolen, it was destroyed. I reckon it was smashed and ground up and mixed with the sand in its cave. You see, sire, if people see that something's gone, and then you turn up with something that looks like it, they'll think "This must be it, it must be, because it isn't where we thought it was." People are like that. Something disappears and something very much like it turns up somewhere else and they think it must somehow have got from one place to the other...' Vimes pinched his nose. 'I'm sorry, I haven't had much sleep...'

  'You are doing very well for a sleepwalking man.'

  'The... thief was working with the werewolves, I think. They were behind the "Sons of Agi Hammerthief" business. They were going to blackmail you off the throne. Well, you know that. To keep Uberwald in the dark. If you didn't. step down there'd be a war, and if you did Albrecht would get the fake Scone.'

  'What else do you think you know?'

  'Well, the fake was made in Ankh-Morpork. We're good at making things. I think someone had the maker killed, but I can't find out more until I get back. I will find out.'

  'You make things very well in your city, then, to fool Albrecht. How do you think that was done?'

  'You want the truth, sire?'

  'By all means.'

  'Is it possible that Albrecht was involved? Find out where the money is, my old sergeant used to say.'

  'Hah. Who was it said, "Where there are policemen, you find crimes"?'

  'Er, me, sir, but—'

  'Let us find out. Dee should have had time to think. Ah...'

  The door opened. The Ideas Taster stepped through, carrying a dwarfish axe. It was a mining axe, with a pick point on one side, in order to go prospecting, and a real axe blade on the other, in case anyone tried to stop you.

  'Call the guards in, Dee,' said the King. 'And his excellency's young dwarf. These things should be seen, see.'

  Oh, good grief, thought Vimes, watching Dee's face as the others shuffled in. There must be a manual. Every copper knows how this goes. You let 'em know you know they've done something wrong, but you don't tell 'em what it is and you certainly don't tell 'em how much you know, and you keep 'em off balance, and you just talk quietly and—

  'Place your hands upon the Scone, Dee.'

  Dee spun around. 'Sire?'

  'Place your hands upon the Scone. Do as I say. Do it now.'

  —you keep the threat in view but you never refer to it, oh no. Because there's nothing you can do to them that their imagination isn't already doing to themselves. And you keep it up until they break, or in the case of my old dame school, until they feel their boots get damp.

  And it doesn't even leave a mark.

  'Tell me about the death of Lorigfinger, the candle captain,' said the King, after Dee, with a look of hollow apprehension, had touched the Scone.

  The words rushed out. 'Oh, as I told you, sire, he—'

  'If you do not keep your hands pressed upon the Scone, Dee, I will see to it that they are fixed there. Tell me again.'

  'I... he... took his own life, sire. Out of shame.'

  The King picked up his axe and turned it so that the long point faced outwards.

  'Tell me again.'

  Now Vimes could hear Dee's breathing, short and fast.

  'He took his own life, sire!'

  The King smiled at Vimes. 'There's an old superstition, your excellency, that since the Scone contains a grain of truth it will glow red hot if a lie is told by anyone touching it. Of course, in these more modern times, I shouldn't think anyone believes it.' He turned to Dee.

  'Tell me again,' he whispered.

  As the axe moved slightly the reflected light of the candles flashed along the blade.

  'He took his own life! He did!'

  'Oh, yes. You said. Thank you,' said the King. 'And do you recall, Dee, when Slogram sent false word of Bloodaxe's death in battle to Ironhammer, causing Ironhammer to take his own life in grief, where was the guilt?'

  'It was Slogram's, sir,' said Dee promptly. Vimes suspected the answer had come straight from some rote-remembered teaching.

  'Yes.'

  The King let the word hang in the air for a while, and then went on: 'And who gave the order to kill the craftsman in Ankh-Morpork?'

  'Sire?' said Dee.

  'Who gave the order to kill the craftsman in Ankh-Morpork?' The King's tone did not change. It was the same comfortable, sing-song voice. He sounded as though he would carry on asking the question for ever.

  'I know nothing about—'

  'Guards, press his hands firmly against the Scone.'

  They stepped forward. Each one took an arm.

  'Again, Dee. Who gave the order?'

  Dee writhed as if his hands were burning. 'I... I...'

  Vimes could see the skin whiten on the dwarf's hands as he strained to lift them from the stone.

  But it's a fake. I'd swear he destroyed the real one, so he knows it's a fake, surely? It's just a lump of plaster, probably still damp in the middle! Vimes tried to think. The original Scone had been in the cave, hadn't it? Was it? If it wasn't, where had it been? The werewolves thought they had a fake, and it certainly hadn't left his sight since. He tried to think through the fog of fatigue.

  He'd half wondered, once, whether the original Scone had been the one in the Dwarf Bread Museum. That would have been the way to keep it safe. No one would try to steal something that everyone knew was a fake. The whole thug was the Fifth Elephant, nothing was what it se
emed, it was all a fog.

  Which one was real?

  'Who gave the order, Dee?' said the King.

  'Not me! I said they must take all necessary steps to preserve secrecy!'

  'To whom did you say this?'

  'I can give you names!'

  'Later, you will. I promise you, boyo,' said the King. 'And the werewolves?'

  'The Baroness suggested it! That is true!'

  'Uberwald for the werewolves. Ah, yes... "joy through strength". I expect they promised you all sorts of things. You may take your hands off the Scone. I do not wish to distress you further. But why? My predecessors spoke highly of you, you are a dwarf of power and influence... and then you let yourself become a paw of the werewolves. Why?'

  'Why should they be allowed to get away with it?' Dee snapped, his voice breaking with the strain.

  The King looked across at Vimes. 'Oh, I suspect the werewolves will regret that they—' he began.

  'Not them! The... ones in Ankh-Morpork! Wearing make-up and dresses and... and abominable things!' Dee pointed a finger at Cheery. 'Ha'ak! How can you even look at it! You let her,' and Vimes had seldom heard a word sprayed with so much venom, 'her flaunt herself, here! And it's happening everywhere because people have not been firm, not obeyed, have let the old ways slide! Everywhere there are reports. They're eating away at everything dwarfish with their... their soft clothes and paint and beastly ways. How can you be King and allow this? Everywhere they are doing it and you do nothing! Why should they be allowed to do this?' Now Dee was sobbing. 'I can't!'

  Vimes saw that Cheery, to his amazement, was blinking back tears.

  'I see,' said the King. 'Well, I suppose that is an explanation.' He nodded to the guards. 'Take... her away. Some things must wait a day or two.'

  Cheery saluted, suddenly. 'Permission to go with her, sire?'

  'What on earth for, young... young dwarf?'

  'I expect she'd like someone to talk to, sire. I know I would.'

  'Indeed? I see your commander has no objection. Off you go, then.'

  The King leaned back when the guards had left with their prisoner and the prisoner's new counsellor.

  'Well, your excellency?'

  'This is the real Scone?'

  'You are not certain?'

  'Dee was!'

  'Dee... is in a difficult state of mind.' The King looked at the ceiling. 'I think I will tell you this because, your excellency, I really do not want you going through the rest of your time here asking silly questions. Yes, this is the true Scone.'

  'But how could—'

  'Wait! So was the one that is, yes, ground to dust in the cave by Dee in her... madness,' the King went on. 'So were the... let me see... five before that. Still untouched by time after fifteen hundred years? What romantics we dwarfs are! Even the very best dwarf bread crumbles after a few hundred.'

  'Fakes?' said Vimes. 'They were all fakes?'

  Suddenly the King was holding his mining axe again. 'This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation... but is this not the nine-hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good. Will you tell me this is a fake too?' He sat back again.

  Vimes remembered the look on Albrecht's face. 'He knew.'

  'Oh, yes. A number of... more senior dwarfs know. The knowledge runs in families. The first Scone crumbled after three hundred years when the king of the time touched it. My ancestor was a guard who witnessed it, see. He got accelerated promotion, you could say. I'm sure you understand me. After that, we were a little more prepared. We would have been looking for a new one in fifty years or so in any case. I'm glad one was made in the large dwarf city of Ankh-Morpork, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out to be an excellent keeper. Look, they've even got the currants right, see?'

  'But Albrecht could have exposed you!'

  'Exposed what? He is not King, but I will be very surprised if one of his family is not King again, in the fullness of time. What goes around comes around, as the Igors say.' The King leaned forward.

  'You have been labouring under a misapprehension; I reckon. You think that because Albrecht dislikes Ankh-Morpork and has... oldfashioned ideas, he is a bad dwarf. But I have known him for two hundred years. He is honest and honourable... more so than me, that I'm sure of. Five hundred years ago he would have made a fine king. Today, perhaps not. Perhaps... hah... the axe of my ancestors needs a different handle. But now I am King and he accepts that with all his heart because if he did not, he'd think he wasn't a dwarf, see? Of course he will now oppose me at every turn. Being Low King was never an easy job. But, to use one of your metaphors, we are all floating in the same boat.

  We may certainly try to push one another over the side, but only a maniac like Dee would make a hole in the bottom.'

  'Corporal Littlebottom thought there'd be a war—' said Vimes weakly.

  'Well, there are always hotheads. But while we argue about who steers the boat, we don't deny that it's an important voyage. I see you are tired. Let your good lady take you home. But as a nightcap... What is it, your excellency, that Ankh-Morpork wants?'

  'Ankh-Morpork wants the names of the murderers,' mumbled Vimes.

  'No, that is what Commander Vimes wants. What is it that Ankh-Morpork wants? Gold? So often it is gold. Or iron, perhaps? You use a lot of iron.'

  Vimes blinked. His brain had finally given up. There was nothing left any more. He wasn't certain he could even stand up.

  He remembered a word.

  'Fat,' he said blankly.

  'Aha. The Fifth Elephant. Are you sure? There's some good iron now. Iron makes you strong. Fat only makes you slippery.'

  'Fat,' parroted Vimes, feeling the darkness closing in. 'Lots of fat.'

  'Well, certainly. The price is ten Ankh-Morpork cents a barrel but, your excellency, since I have come to know you, I feel that perhaps—'

  'Five cents a barrel for grade one high-rendered, three cents for grade two, ten cents per barrel for heavy tallow, safe and delivered to Ankh-Morpork,' said Sybil. 'And all from the Schmaltzberg Bend levels and measured on the Ironcrust scale. I have some doubt about the long-term quality of the Big Tusk wells.'

  Vimes tried to focus on his wife. She seemed, inexplicably, a long way away. 'Wha'?'

  'Er, I caught up with some reading when I was in the embassy, Sam. Those notebooks. Sorry.'

  'Would you beggar us, madam?' said the King, throwing up his hands.

  'We may be flexible on delivery,' said Lady Sybil.

  'Klatch would pay at least nine for grade one,' said the King.

  'But the Klatchian ambassador isn't sitting here,' said Sybil.

  The King smiled. 'Or married to you, my lady, much to his loss. Six, five and fifteen.'

  'Six, dropping to five after twenty thousand, three and half across the board for grade two. I can give you thirteen on tallow.'

  'Acceptable, but give me fourteen on white tallow and I'll allow seven on the new pale suets we're finding. They're making an acceptable candle, look you.'

  'Six, I'm afraid. You haven't plumbed the full extent of those deposits, and I think it may be reasonable to expect high levels of scrattle and BCBs in the lower layers. Besides, I think your forecasts about the amount of those deposits are erring on the optimistic side.'

  'Wha' BCBs?' murmured Vimes.

  'Burnt crunchy bits,' said Sybil. 'Mostly unbelievably huge and ancient animals, deep fried.'

  'You astonish me, Lady Sybil,' said the King. 'I did not know you were trained in fat extraction.'

  'Cooking Sam's breakfasts is an education in itself, your majesty.'

  'Oh, well, far be it for a mere king to argue. Six, then. Price to remain stable for two years—' The King saw Sybil's mouth open. 'All right, all right, three y
ears. I'm not an unreasonable king.'

  'Prices on the dock?'

  'How can I refuse?'

  'Agreed, then.'

  'The paperwork will be with you in the morning. And now we really must go our separate ways,' said the King. 'I can see his excellency has had a long day. Ankh-Morpork will be swimming in fat. I can't imagine what you'll use it all for.'

  'Make light,' said Vimes, and, as darkness fell at last, fell forward gently into the welcoming arms of sleep.

  Sam Vimes awoke to the smell of hot fat.

  Softness enveloped him. It practically imprisoned him.

  For a moment he thought it was snow, except that snow wasn't usually this warm. Finally, he identified it as the cloud-like softness of the mattress on the ambassadorial bed.

  He let his attention drift back to the fat smell. It had... overtones. There was a definite burnt component. Since Sam Vimes's spectrum of gastronomic delight mainly ranged from 'well fried' to 'caramelized', it was decidedly promising.

  He shifted position and regretted it immediately. Every muscle in his body squealed in protest. He lay still and waited for the fire in his back to die down.

  Bits and pieces of the previous two days assembled themselves in his head. Once or twice he winced. Had he really gone through the ice like that? Was it Sam Vimes who'd stepped up to fight the werewolf, despite the fact that the thing was strong enough to bend a sword in a circle? And had Sybil won a lot of fat off the King? And...

  Well, here he was in a nice warm bed and by the smell of it there was breakfast on the way.

  Another piece of recollection floated into place. Vimes groaned and forced his legs out of the bed. No, Wolfgang couldn't have survived that, surely.

  Naked, he staggered into the bathroom and spun the huge taps. Hot pungent water gushed out.

  A minute later he was lying full length again. It was rather too hot, but he could remember the snows, and maybe from now on he could never be hot enough.

  Some of the pain washed away.

  Someone rapped on the door. 'It's me, Sam.'

  'Sybil?'

  She came in, carrying a couple of very large towels and some fresh clothes.

  'Good to see you up again. Igor's frying sausages. He doesn't like doing it. He thinks they should be boiled. And he's doing slumpie and fikkun haddock and Distressed Pudding. I didn't want the food to go to waste, you see. I don't think I want to stay for the rest of the celebrations.'