'You've got to admit it wasn't a bad councillor. Compared to some of the others.'

'As I recall, the others at that time were a vase of flowers, a heap of sand and three people who had been beheaded.'

'Remember all those fights? All the little gangs of thieves fighting all the time? It got so that there was hardly any energy left to actually steal things,' said Mr Boggis.

'Things are indeed more... reliable now.'

Silence descended again. That was it, wasn't it? Things were reliable now. Whatever else you said about old Vetinari, he made sure today was always followed by tomorrow. If you were murdered in your bed, at least it would be by arrangement.

'Things were more exciting under Lord Snapcase,' someone ventured.

'Yes, right up until the point when your head fell off.'

'The trouble is,' said Mr Boggis, 'that the job makes people mad. You take some chap who's no worse than any of us and after a few months he's talking to moss and having people flayed alive.'

'Vetinari isn't mad.'

'Depends how you look at it. No one can be as sane as he is without being mad.'

'I am only a weak woman,' said Mrs Palm, to the personal disbelief of several present, 'but it does seem to me that there's an opportunity here. Either there's a long struggle to sort out a successor, or we sort it out now. Yes?'

The guild leaders tried to look at one another while simultaneously avoiding everyone else's glances. Who'd be Patrician now? Once there'd have been a huge multi-sided power struggle, but now...

You got the power, but you got the problems, too. Things had changed. These days, you had to negotiate and juggle with all the conflicting interests. No one sane had tried to kill Vetinari for years, because the world with him in it was just preferable to one without him.

Besides... Vetinari had tamed Ankh-Morpork. He'd tamed it like a dog. He'd taken a minor scavenger among scavengers and lengthened its teeth and strengthened its jaws and built up its muscles and studded its collar and fed it lean steak and then he'd aimed it at the throat of the world.

He'd taken all the gangs and squabbling groups and made them see that a small slice of the cake on a regular basis was better by far than a bigger slice with a dagger in it. He'd made them see that it was better to take a small slice but enlarge the cake.

Ankh-Morpork, alone of all the cities of the plains, had opened its gates, to dwarfs and trolls (alloys are stronger, Vetinari had said). It had worked. They made things. Often they made trouble, but mostly they made wealth. As a result, although Ankh-Morpork still had many enemies, those enemies had to finance their armies with borrowed money. Most of it was borrowed from Ankh-Morpork, at punitive interest. There hadn't been any really big wars for years. Ankh-Morpork had made them unprofitable.

Thousands of years ago the old empire had enforced the Pax Morporkia, which had said to the world: 'Do not fight, or we will kill you.' The Pax had arisen again, but this time it said: 'If you fight, we'll call in your mortgages. And incidentally, that's my pike you're pointing at me. I paid for that shield you're holding. And take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor.'

And now the whole machine, which whirred away so quietly that people had forgotten it was a machine at all and thought that it was just the way the world worked, had given a lurch.

The guild leaders examined their thoughts and decided that what they did not want was power. What they wanted was that tomorrow should be pretty much like today.

'There's the dwarfs,' said Mr Boggis. 'Even if one of us - not that I'm saying it would be one of us, of course - even if someone took over, what about the dwarfs? We get someone like Snapcase again, there's going to be chopped kneecaps in the streets.'

'You're not suggesting we have some sort of... vote, are you? Some kind of popularity contest?'

'Oh, no. It's just... it's just ... all more complicated now. And power goes to people's heads.'

'And then other people's heads fall off.'

'I wish you wouldn't keep on saying that, whoever you are,' said Mrs Palm. 'Anyone would think you'd had your head cut off.'

'Uh—'

'Oh, it's you, Mr Slant. I do apologize.'

'Speaking as the President of the Guild of Lawyers,' said Mr Slant, the most respected zombie in Ankh-Morpork, 'I must recommend stability in this matter. I wonder if I may offer some advice?'

'How much will it cost us?' said Mr Sock.

'Stability,' said Mr Slant, 'equals monarchy.'

'Oh, now, don't tell us—'

'Look at Klatch,' said Mr Slant doggedly. 'Generations of Seriphs. Result: political stability. Take Pseudopolis. Or Sto Lat. Or even the Agatean Empire—'

'Come on,' said Dr Downey. 'Everyone knows that kings—'

'Oh, monarchs come and go, they depose one another, and so on and so forth,' said Mr Slant. 'But the institution goes on. Besides, I think you'll find that it is possible to work out ... an accommodation.'

He realized that he had the floor. His fingers absent-mindedly touched the seam where his head had been sewn back on. All those years ago Mr Slant had refused to die until he had been paid for the disbursements in the matter of conducting his own defence.

'How do you mean?' said Mr Potts.

'I accept that the question of resurrecting the Ankh-Morpork succession has been raised several times recently,' said Mr Slant.

'Yes. By madmen,' said Mr Boggis. It's part of the symptoms. Put underpants on head, talk to trees, drool, decide that Ankh-Morpork needs a king...'

'Exactly. Supposing sane men were to give it consideration?'

'Go on,' said Dr Downey. 'There have been precedents,' said Mr Slant. 'Monarchies who have found themselves bereft of a convenient monarch have... obtained one. Some suitably born member of some other royal line. After all, what is required is someone who, uh, knows the ropes, as I believe the saying goes.'

'Sorry? Are you saying we send out for a king?' said Mr Boggis. 'We put up some kind of advertisement? Throne vacant, applicant must supply own crown ?'

'In fact,' said Mr Slant, ignoring this, 'I recall that, during the first Empire, Genua wrote to Ankh-Morpork and asked to be sent one of our generals to be their king, their own royal lines having died out through interbreeding so intensively that the last king kept trying to breed with himself. The history books say that we sent our loyal General Tacticus, whose first act after obtaining the crown was to declare a war on Ankh-Morpork. Kings are ... interchangeable.'

'You mentioned something about reaching an accommodation,' said Mr Boggis. 'You mean, we tell a king what to doT

'I like the sound of that,' said Mrs Palm.

'I like the echoes,' said Dr Downey.

'Not tell,' said Mr Slant. 'We... agree. Obviously, as king, he would concentrate on those things traditionally associated with kingship—'

'Waving,' said Mr Sock.

'Being gracious,' said Mrs Palm.

'Welcoming ambassadors from foreign countries,' said Mr Potts.

'Shaking hands.'

'Cutting off heads—'

'No! No. No, that will not be part of his duties. Minor affairs of state will be carried out—'

'By his advisors?' said Dr Downey. He leaned back. 'I'm sure I can see where this is going, Mr Slant,' he said. 'But kings, once acquired, are so damn hard to get rid of. Acceptably.'

There have been precedents for that, too,' said Mr Slant.

The Assassin's eyes narrowed.

Tm intrigued, Mr Slant, that as soon as the Lord Vetinari appears to be seriously ill, you pop up with suggestions like this. It sounds like ... a remarkable coincidence.'

There is no mystery, I assure you. Destiny works its course. Surely many of you have heard the rumours - that there is, in this city, someone with a bloodline traceable all the way back to the last royal family? Someone working in this very city in a comparatively humble position? A lowly Watchman, in fact?'