'A --ing werewolf? Are you --ing crazy?'

'Uh... why does your partner keep saying ' 'ing' ', Mr Pin?' said a chair.

'You must be out of your --ing minds!' Tulip growled.

'Speech impediment,' said Pin. 'A werewolf? Thank you for telling us. Thank you very much. They're worse than vampires when they're on the trail! You do know that, do you?'

'You were recommended to us as men of resource.'

'Expensive men of resource,' said Mr Pin.

A chair sighed. There are seldom any other kind. Very well, very well. Mr Slant will discuss this with you.'

66

'Yeah, but they've got a sense a' smell that you wouldn't believe,' Mr Tulip went on. 'Money's no use to a --ing dead man.'

'Are there any other surprises?' said Mr Pin. 'You've got bright watchmen and one of 'em's a werewolf. Anything else? They've got trolls too?'

'Oh, yes. Several. And dwarfs. And zombies.'

'In a Watch? What kind of a city are you running here?'

'We are not running the city,' said a chair.

'But we care about the way it is going,' said another.

'Ah,' said Mr Pin. 'Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens.' He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where 'traditional values' meant 'hang someone'. He did not have a problem with this, broadly speaking, but it never hurt to understand your employer.

'You could have got someone else,' he said. 'You've got a guild of Assassins here.'

A chair made a sucking sound between its teeth.

'The trouble with the city at present,' it said, 'is that a number of otherwise intelligent people find the status quo... convenient, even though it will undoubtedly ruin the city.'

'Ah,' said Mr Pin. They are unconcerned citizens.'

'Precisely, gentlemen.'

There's a lot of them?'

The chair ignored this.

'We look forward to seeing you again, gentlemen. Tomorrow night. When, I trust, you will announce your readiness. Good evening.'

The circle of chairs was silent for a while after the New Firm had left. Then a black-clad figure entered soundlessly through the big doors, approached the light, nodded and hurried away.

'They're well outside the building,' said a chair.

'What ghastly people.'

'We should have used the Assassins' Guild, though.'

'Hah! They've done rather well out of Vetinari. In any case, we do not want him dead. However, it occurs to me that we may eventually have a job for the Guild, later on.'

67

'Quite so. When our friends have safely left the city... the roads can be so dangerous at this time of year.'

'No, gentlemen. We will stick to our plan. The one called Charlie will be kept around until everything is entirely settled, in case he can be of further use, and then our gentlemen will take him a long, long way away to, hah, pay him off. Perhaps later we will call the Assassins in, just in case Mr Pin has any clever ideas.'

'Good point. Although it does seem such a waste. The things one could do with Charlie...'

'I told you, it would not work. The man is a clown.'

'I suppose you are right. Better something once-and-for-all, then.'

'I'm sure we understand one another. And now... this meeting of the Committee to Unelect the Patrician is declared closed. And hasn't happened.'

~blk~

Lord Vetinari by habit rose so early that bedtime was merely an excuse to change his clothes.

He liked the time just before a winter's dawn. It was generally foggy, which made it hard to see the city, and for a few hours there was no sound but the occasional brief scream.

But the tranquillity was broken this morning by a cry just outside the palace gates.

'Hoinarylup!'

He went to the window.

'Squidaped-oyt!'

The Patrician walked back to his desk and rang the bell for his clerk Drumknott, who was despatched to the walls to investigate.

'It is the beggar known as Foul Ole Ron, sir,' Drumknott reported five minutes later. 'Selling this... paper full of things.' He held it between two fingers as though expecting it to explode.

Lord Vetinari took it and read through it. Then he read through it again.

'Well, well,' he said.' "The Ankh-Morpork Times". Was anyone else buying this?'

'A number of people, my lord. People coming off the night shifts, market people and so on.'

68

'I see no mention of Hoinarylup or Squidaped-oyt.'

'No, my lord.'

'How very strange.' Lord Vetinari read for a moment and said, 'Hm-,'mz. Clear my appointments this morning, will you? I will see the Guild of Towncriers at nine o'clock and the Guild of Engravers at ten past.'

'I wasn't aware they had appointments, sir.'

'They will have,' said Lord Vetinari. 'When they see this, they will have. Well, well... I see fifty-six people were hurt in a tavern brawl.'

'That seems rather a lot, my lord.'

'It must be true, Drumknott,' said the Patrician. 'It's in the paper. Oh, and send a message to that nice Mr de Worde, too. I will see him at nine thirty.'

He ran his eye down the grey type again. 'And please also put out the word that I wish to see no harm coming to Mr de Worde, will you?'

Drumknott, usually so adept in his understanding of his master's requirements, hesitated a moment.

'My lord, do you mean that you want no harm to come to Mr de Worde, or that you want no harm to come to Mr de Worde?'

'Did you wink at me, Drumknott?'

'No, sir!'

'Drumknott, I believe it is the right of every citizen of Ankh-Morpork to walk the streets unmolested.'

'Good gods, sir! Is it?'

'Indeed.'

'But I thought you were very much against movable type, sir. You said that it would make printing too cheap, and people would--'

'Sheearna-plp!' shouted the newspaper seller, down by the gates.

'Are you poised for the exciting new millennium that lies before us, Drumknott? Are you ready to grasp the future with a willing hand?'

'I don't know, my lord. Is special clothing required?'

~blk~

The other lodgers were already at the breakfast table when William hurried down. He was hurrying because Mrs Arcanum had Views about people who were late for meals.

69

Mrs Arcanum, proprietress of Mrs Eucrasia Arcanum's Lodging House for Respectable Working Men, was what Sacharissa was unconsciously training to be. She wasn't just respectable, she was Respectable; it was a lifestyle, religion and hobby combined. She liked respectable people who were Clean and Decent; she used the phrase as if it was impossible to be one without being the other. She kept respectable beds and cooked cheap but respectable meals for her respectable lodgers, who apart from William were mostly middle-aged, unmarried and extremely sober. They were mainly craftsmen in small trades, and were almost all heavily built, well-scrubbed, owned serious boots and were clumsily polite at the dining table.

Oddly enough - or, at least, oddly enough to William's expectations of people like Mrs Arcanum - she wasn't averse to dwarfs and trolls. At least, the clean and decent ones. Mrs Arcanum rated Decency above species.

'It says here fifty-six people were hurt in a brawl,' said Mr Mackleduff, who by dint of being the longest-surviving lodger acted as a kind of president at mealtimes. He had bought a copy of the Times on his way home from the bakery, where he was night-shift foreman.

'Fancy,' said Mrs Arcanum.

'I think it must have been five or six,' said William.

'Says fifty-six here,' said Mr Mackleduff sternly. 'In black and white.'

'It must be right,' said Mrs Arcanum, to general agreement, 'otherwise they wouldn't let them put it in.'

'I wonder who's doing it?' said Mr Prone, who travelled in wholesale boots and shoes.

'Oh, they'd be special people for doing this,' said Mr Mackleduff.