Edward d'Eath drew the curtains, bolted the door and leaned on it. It had been so easy!

He'd put the bundle on the table. It was thin, and about four feet long.

He unwrapped it carefully, and there… it… was.

It looked pretty much like the drawing. Typical of the man—a whole page full of meticulous drawings of crossbows, and this in the margin, as though it hardly mattered.

It was so simple! Why hide it away? Probably because people were afraid. People were always afraid of power. It made them nervous.

Edward picked it up, cradled it for a while, and found that it seemed to fit his arm and shoulder very snugly.

You're mine.

And that, more or less, was the end of Edward d'Eath. Something continued for a while, but what it was, and how it thought, wasn't entirely human.

It was nearly noon. Sergeant Colon had taken the new recruits down to the archery butts in Butts Treat.

Vimes went on patrol with Carrot.

He felt something inside him bubbling over. Something was brushing the tips of his corroded but nevertheless still-active instincts, trying to draw attention to itself. He had to be on the move. It was all that Carrot could do to keep up.

There were trainee Assassins in the streets around the Guild, still sweeping up debris.

“Assassins in daylight,” snarled Vimes. “I'm amazed they don't turn to dust.”

“That's vampires, sir,” said Carrot.

“Hah! You're right. Assassins and licensed thieves and bloody vampires! You know, this was a great old city once, lad.”

Unconsciously, they fell into step… proceeding.

“When we had kings, sir?”

“Kings? Kings? Hell, no!”

A couple of Assassins looked around in surprise.

“I'll tell you,” said Vimes. “A monarch's an absolute ruler, right? The head honcho—”

“Unless he's a queen,” said Carrot.

Vimes glared at him, and then nodded.

“OK, or the head honchette—”

“No, that'd only apply if she was a young woman. Queens tend to be older. She'd have to be a… a honcharina? No, that's for very young princesses. No. Um. A honchesa, I think.”

Vimes paused. There's something in the air in this city, he thought. If the Creator had said, “Let there be light” in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have got no further because of all the people saying “What colour?”

“The supreme ruler, OK,” he said, starting to stroll forward again.

“OK.”

“But that's not right, see? One man with the power of life and death.”

“But if he's a good man—” Carrot began.

“What? What? OK. OK. Let's believe he's a good man. But his second-in-command—is he a good man too? You'd better hope so. Because he's the supreme ruler, too, in the name of the king. And the rest of the court… they've got to be good men. Because if just one of them's a bad man the result is bribery and patronage.”

“The Patrician's a supreme ruler,” Carrot pointed out. He nodded at a passing troll. “G'day, Mr Carbuncle.”

“But he doesn't wear a crown or sit on a throne and he doesn't tell you it's right that he should rule,” said Vimes. “I hate the bastard. But he's honest. Honest like a corkscrew.”

“Even so, a good man as king—”

“Yes? And then what? Royalty pollutes people's minds, boy. Honest men start bowing and bobbing just because someone's grandad was a bigger murdering bastard than theirs was. Listen! We probably had good kings, once! But kings breed other kings! And blood tells, and you end up with a bunch of arrogant, murdering bastards! Chopping off queens' heads and fighting their cousins every five minutes! And we had centuries of that! And then one day a man said ‘No more kings!’ and we rose up and we fought the bloody nobles and we dragged the king off his throne and we dragged him into Sator Square and we chopped his bloody head off! Job well done!”

“Wow,” said Carrot. “Who was he?”

“Who?”

“The man who said ‘No More Kings’.”

People were staring. Vimes' face went from the red of anger to the red of embarrassment. There was little difference in the shading, however.

“Oh… he was Commander of the City Guard in those days,” he mumbled. “They called him Old Stoneface.”

“Never heard of him,” said Carrot.

“He, er, doesn't appear much in the history books,” said Vimes. “Sometimes there has to be a civil war, and sometimes, afterwards, it's best to pretend something didn't happen. Sometimes people have to do a job, and then they have to be forgotten. He wielded the axe, you know. No-one else'd do it. It was a king's neck, after all. Kings are,” he spat the word, “special. Even after they'd seen the… private rooms, and cleaned up the… bits. Even then. No-one'd clean up the world. But he took the axe and cursed them all and did it.”

“What king was it?” said Carrot.

“Lorenzo the Kind,” said Vimes, distantly.

“I've seen his picture in the palace museum,” said Carrot. “A fat old man. Surrounded by lots of children.”

“Oh yes,” said Vimes, carefully. “He was very fond of children.”

Carrot waved at a couple of dwarfs.

“I didn't know this,” he said. “I thought there was just some wicked rebellion or something.”

Vimes shrugged. “It's in the history books, if you know where to look.”

“And that was the end of the kings of Ankh-Morpork.”

“Oh, there was a surviving son, I think. And a few mad relatives. They were banished. That's supposed to be a terrible fate, for royalty. I can't see it myself.”

“I think I can. And you like the city, sir.”

“Well, yes. But if it was a choice between banishment and having my head chopped off, just help me down with this suitcase. No, we're well rid of kings. But, I mean… the city used to work.”

“Still does,” said Carrot.

They passed the Assassins' Guild and drew level with the high, forbidding walls of the Fools' Guild, which occupied the other corner of the block.

“No, it just keeps going. I mean, look up there.”

Carrot obediently raised his gaze.

There was a familiar building on the junction of Broad Way and Alchemists. The façade was ornate, but covered in grime. Gargoyles had colonized it.

The corroded motto over the portico said “NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT CAN STAY THESE MESENGERS ABOT THIER DUTY” and in more spacious days that may have been the case, but recently someone had found it necessary to nail up an addendum which read:

DONT ASK US ABOUT:

rocks

troll's with sticks

All sorts of dragons

Mrs Cake

Huje green things with teeth

Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows

Rains of spaniel's.

fog.

Mrs Cake

“Oh,” he said. “The Royal Mail.”

“The Post Office,” corrected Vimes. “My granddad said that once you could post a letter there and it'd be delivered within a month, without fail. You didn't have to give it to a passing dwarf and hope the little bugger wouldn't eat it before…”

His voice trailed off.

“Uh. Sorry. No offence meant.”

“None taken,” said Carrot cheerfully.

“It's not that I've got anything against dwarfs. I've always said you'd have to look very hard before you'd find a, a better bunch of highly skilled, law-abiding, hard-working—”

“—little buggers?”

“Yes. No!”

They proceeded.

“That Mrs Cake,” said Carrot, “definitely a strong-minded woman, eh?”

“Too true,” said Vimes.

Something crunched under Carrot's enormous sandal.

“More glass,” he said. “It went a long way, didn't it.”

“Exploding dragons! What an imagination the girl has.”

“Woof woof,” said a voice behind them.

“That damn dog's been following us,” said Vimes.

“It's barking at something on the wall,” said Carrot.

Gaspode eyed them coldly.