"The whole carrier-pigeon network is a complete mess - "

"More or less sorted out, sir, now we"ve changed their feed. Besides, the clacks seems to be functioning very well."

"We"ve got to get the River Watch set up - "

"Can"t do much for a week or two, sir, until we"ve dredged up the boat."

"The drains at the Chitterling Street station are - "

"I"ve got the plumbers working on it, sir."

Vimes knew that he had lost. He had lost as soon as Sybil was involved, because she was always a reliable siege engine against the walls of his defences. But there was such a thing as going down fighting.

"You know I"m no good at diplomatic talk," he said.

"On the contrary, Vimes, you appear to have amazed the diplomatic corps here in Ankh-Morpork," said Lord Vetinari. "They"re not used to plain speech. It confuses them. What was it you said to the Istanzian ambassador last month?" He riffled through the papers on his desk. "Let me see, the complaint is here somewhere... Oh, yes, on the matter of military incursions across the Slipnir river, you indicated that further transgressions would involve him, personally, that is to say the ambassador, and I quote "going home in an ambulance"."

"I"m sorry about that, sir, but it had been a long day and he was really getting on my - "

"Since when their armed forces have pulled back so far that they are nearly in the next country," said Lord Vetinari, moving the paper aside. "I have to say that your observation complied only with the general thrust of my view in this matter but was, at least, succinct. Apparently you also looked at the ambassador in a very threatening way."

"It was only the way I usually look."

"To be sure. Happily, in Uberwald you will only need to look friendly."

"Ah, but you don"t want me saying things like "How about selling us all your fat really cheap?" do you?" said Vimes desperately.

"You will not be required to do any negotiating, Vimes. That will be dealt with by one of my clerks, who will set up the temporary embassy and discuss such matters with his opposite numbers among the courts of Uberwald. All clerks speak the same language. You will simply be as ducal as you can. And, of course, you will take a retinue. A staff," Vetinari added, seeing Vimes"s blank look. He sighed. "People to go with you. I suggest Sergeant Angua, Sergeant Detritus, and Corporal Littlebottom."

"Ah," said Carrot, nodding encouragingly.

"Sorry?" said Vimes. "I think there must have been a whole piece of conversation just then that I must have missed."

"A werewolf, a troll and a dwarf," said Carrot. "Ethnic minorities, sir."

"... but in Uberwald they are ethnic majorities," said Lord Vetinari. "All three officers come from there originally, I believe. Their presence will speak volumes."

"So far it hasn"t sent me a postcard," said Vimes. "I"d rather take - "

"Sir, it will show people in Uberwald that Ankh-Morpork is a multicultural society, you see?" said Carrot.

"Oh, I see. "People like us". People you can do business with," said Vimes glumly.

"Sometimes," Vetinari said testily, "it really does seem to me that the culture of cynicism in the Watch is... is..."

"Insufficient?" said Vimes. There was silence.

"All right," he sighed, "I"d better go off and polish the knobs on my coronet, hadn"t I...?"

"The ducal coronet, if I remember my heraldry, does not have knobs on. It is decidedly... spiky," said the Patrician, pushing across the desk a small pile of papers topped by a gold-edged invitation card. "Good. I will have a... a clacks sent immediately. You will be more fully briefed later. Do give my regards to the Duchess. And now, please do not let me detain you further..."

"He always says that," muttered Vimes as the two men hurried down the stairs. "He knows I don"t like being married to a duchess."

"I thought you and Lady Sybil - "

"Oh, being married to Sybil is fine, fine," said Vimes hurriedly. "It"s just the duchess bit I don"t like. Where is everyone tonight?"

"Corporal Littlebottom"s on pigeon duty, Detritus is on night patrol with Swires, and Angua"s on special duty in the Shades, sir. You remember? With Nobby?"

"Oh gods, yes. Well, when they come in tomorrow you"d better get them to report to me. Incidentally, get that bloody wig off Nobby and hide it, will you?" Vimes leafed through the paperwork. "I"ve never heard of the Low King of the dwarfs. I thought that "king" in dwarfish just meant a sort of senior engineer."

"Ah, well, the Low King is rather special," said Carrot.

"Why?"

"Well, it all starts with the Scone of Stone, sir."

"The what?"

"Would you mind a little detour on the way back to the Yard, sir? It"ll make things clearer."

The young woman stood on a corner in the Shades. Her general stance indicated that she was, in the specialized patois of the area, a lady-in-waiting. To be more precise, a lady-in-waiting for Mr. Right, or at least Mr. Right Amount.

She idly swung her handbag.

This was a very recognizable signal, for anyone with the brains of a pigeon. A member of the Thieves" Guild would have passed carefully by on the other side of the lane, giving her nothing more than a gentlemanly and above all nonaggressive nod. Even the less-polite freelance thieves who lurked in this area would have thought twice before eyeing the handbag. The Seamstresses" Guild operated a very swift and non-reversible kind of justice.

The skinny body of Done It Duncan, however, did not have the brains of a pigeon. The little man had been watching the bag like a cat for fully five minutes, and now the very thought of its contents had hypnotized him. He could practically taste the money. He rose on his toes, lowered his head, dashed out of the alley, grabbed the bag and got several inches before the world exploded behind him and he ended up flat in the mud.

Something right by his ear started to drool. And there was a long, very long-drawn-out growl, not changing in tone at all, just unrolling a deep promise of what would happen if he tried to move.

He heard footsteps, and out of the corner of his eyes saw a swirl of lace.

"Oh, Done It," said a voice. "Bag snatching? That"s a bit low, isn"t it? Even for you. You could"ve got really hurt. It"s only Duncan, miss. He"ll be no trouble. You can let him up."

The weight was removed from Duncan"s back. He heard something pad off into the gloom of an alley.

"I done it, I done it!" said the little thief desperately as Corporal Nobbs helped him to his feet.

"Yes, I know you did, I saw you," said Nobby. "And you know what"d happen to you if the Thieves" Guild spotted you? You"d be dead in the river with no time off for good behaviour."

"They hate me "cos I"m so good," said Duncan through his matted beard. "ere, you know the robbery at All Jolson"s last month? I done that."

"That"s right, Duncan. You done that."

"An" that haul at the gold vaults last week, I done that too. It wasn"t Coalface and his boys."

"No, it was you, wasn"t it, Duncan?"

"An" that job at the goldsmith"s that everyone says Crunchie Ron done - "

"You done it, did you?"

"s"right," said Duncan.

"And it was you what stole fire from the gods, too, wasn"t it, Duncan?" said Nobby, grinning evilly under his wig.

"Yeah, that was me." Duncan nodded. He sniffed. "I was a bit younger then, of course." He peered shortsightedly at Nobby Nobbs.

"Why"ve you got a dress on, Nobby?"

"It"s hush-hush, Duncan."

"Ah, right." Duncan shifted uneasily. "You couldn"t spare me a bob or two, could you, Nobby? I ain"t eaten for two days."

Small coins gleamed in the dark.

"Now push off," said Corporal Nobbs.

"Thanks, Nobby. You got any unsolved crimes, you know where to find me."

Duncan lurched off into the night.

Sergeant Angua appeared behind Nobby, buckling on her breastplate.

"Poor old devil," she said.

"He was a good thief in his day," said Nobby, taking a notebook out of his handbag and jotting down a few lines.

"Kind of you to help him," said Angua.

"Well, I can get the money back out of petty cash," said Nobby. "An" now we know who did the bullion job, don"t we? That"ll be a feather in my cap with Mister Vimes."

"Bonnet, Nobby."

"What?"

"Your bonnet, Nobby. It"s got a rather fetching band of flowers around it."

"Oh... yeah..."

"It"s not that I"m complaining," said Angua, "but when we were assigned this job I thought it was me who was going to be the decoy and you who was going to be the back-up, Nobby."

"Yeah, but what with you bein"..." Nobby"s expression creased as he edged his way into unfamiliar linguistic territory, "... mor phor... log... is... ally gifted..."

"A werewolf, Nobby. I know the word."

"Right... well, obviously, you"d be a lot better at lurkin", an"... an" obviously it"s not right, women havin" to act as decoys in police work..."

Angua hesitated, as she so often did when attempting to talk to Nobby on difficult matters, and waved her hands in front of her as if trying to shape the invisible dough of her thoughts.

"It"s just that... I mean, people might..." she began. "I mean... well, you know what people call men who wear wigs and gowns, don"t you?"

"Yes, miss."

"You do?"

"Yes, miss. Lawyers, miss."

"Good. Yes. Good," said Angua slowly. "Now try another one..."

"Er... actors, miss?"

Angua gave up. "You look good in taffeta, Nobby," she said.

"You don"t think it makes me look too fat?"

Angua sniffed. "Oh, no..." she said quietly.

"I thought I"d better put scent on for verysillymitude," said Nobby quickly.

"What? Oh..." Angua shook her head, took another breath. "I can smell... some... thing... else..."

"That"s surprising, "cos this stuff"s a bit on the pungent side and frankly I don"t think lily of the valley is supposed to smell like this..."

"It"s not perfume."

"... but the lavender stuff they had you could clean brass with..."

"Can you get back to the Chitterling station by yourself, Nobby?" said Angua. Despite her rising panic, she mentally added: after all, what could happen? I mean, really?

"Yes, miss."

"There"s something I"d better... sort out."

Angua hurried away, the new scent filling her nostrils. It would have to be powerful to combat Eau de Nobbs, and it was. Oh, it was.

Not here, she thought. Not now.

Not him.

The running man swung along a branch wet with snow, and managed at last to lower himself on to a branch belonging to the next tree. That took him a long way from the stream. How good was their sense of smell? Pretty damn good, he knew. But this good?

He"d got out of the stream on to another overhanging branch. If they followed the banks, and they"d be bright enough to do that, they"d surely never know he"d left the stream.

There was a howl, away to the left.

He headed right, into the gloom of the forest.

Vimes heard Carrot scrabble around in the gloom, and the sound of a key in the lock.

"I thought the Campaign for Equal Heights was running this place now," he said.

"It"s so hard to find volunteers," said Carrot, ushering him through the low door and lighting a candle. "I come in every day just to keep an eye on things, but no one else seems very interested."

"I can"t imagine why," said Vimes, looking around the Dwarf Bread Museum.

The one positive thing you could say about the bread products around him was that they were probably as edible now as they had been on the day they were baked.

"Forged" was a better term. Dwarf bread was made as a meal of last resort and also as a weapon and a currency. Dwarfs were not, as far as Vimes knew, religious in any way, but the way they thought about bread came close.

There was a tinkle and a scrabbling noise somewhere in the gloom.

"Rats," said Carrot. "They never stop trying to eat dwarf bread, poor things. Ah, here we are. The Scone of Stone. A replica, of course."

Vimes stared at the misshapen thing on its dusty display stand. It was vaguely scone-like, but only if someone pointed this out to you beforehand. Otherwise, the term "a lump of rock" was pretty accurate. It was about the size, and shape, of a well sat-on cushion. There were a few fossilized currants visible.

"My wife rests her feet on something like that when she"s had a long day," he said.

"It"s fifteen hundred years old," said Carrot, with something like awe in his voice.

"I thought this was the replica."

"Well, yes... but it"s a replica of a very important thing, sir," said Carrot.

Vimes sniffed. The air had a certain pungent quality. "Smells strongly of cats in here, doesn"t it?"

"I"m afraid they get in after the rats, sir. A rat who"s nibbled on dwarf bread tends not to be able to run very fast."

Vimes lit a cigar. Carrot gave it a look of uncertain disapproval. "We do thank people for not smoking in here, sir," he said.

"Why? You don"t know they"re not going to," said Vimes. He leaned against the display cabinet. "All right, captain. Why am I really going to... Bonk? I don"t know a lot about diplomacy, but I do know it"s never just about one thing. What"s the Low King? Why"re our dwarfs scrapping?"

"Well, sir... Have you heard of kruk?"

"Dwarf mining law?" said Vimes.

"Well done, sir. But it"s a lot more than that. It"s about... how you live. Laws of ownership, marriage laws, inheritance, rules for dealing with disputes of all kinds, that sort of thing. Everything, really. And the Low King... well, you could call him the final court of appeal. He"s advised, of course, but he"s got the last word. Still with me?"

"Makes sense so far."

"And he is crowned on the Scone of Stone and sits on it to give his judgements because all the Low Kings have done that ever since B"hrian Bloodaxe, fifteen hundred years ago. It... gives authority."

Vimes nodded dourly. That made sense, too. You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was "But we"ve always done it this way." A million dead people can"t have been wrong, can they?

"Does he get elected, or born or what?" he said.

"I suppose you could say he"s elected," said Carrot. "But really a lot of senior dwarfs arrange it among themselves. After listening to other dwarfs, of course. Taking soundings, it"s called. Traditionally he"s from one of the big families. But... er..."

"Yes?"

"Things are a little different this year. Tempers are a bit... stretched."

Ah , thought Vimes.

"Wrong dwarf won?" he said.

"Some dwarfs would say so. But it"s more that the whole process has been called into question," said Carrot. "By the dwarfs in the biggest dwarf city outside Uberwald."

"Don"t tell me, that must be that place Hubwards of - "

"It"s Ankh-Morpork, sir."

"What? We"re not a dwarf city!"

"Fifty thousand dwarfs now, sir."

"Really?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir."

Of course he is, Vimes thought. He probably knows them all by name.

"You have to understand, sir, that there"s a sort of big debate going on," said Carrot. "On how you define a dwarf."

"Well, some people might say that they"re called dwarfs because - "

"No, sir. Not size. Nobby Nobbs is shorter than many dwarfs, and we don"t call him a dwarf."

"We don"t call him a human, either," said Vimes.

"And, of course, I am also a dwarf."

"You know, Carrot, I keep meaning to talk to you about that - "

"Adopted by dwarfs, brought up by dwarfs. To dwarfs I"m a dwarf, sir. I can do the rite of k"zakra, I know the secrets of h"ragna, I can ha"lk my g"rakha correctly... I am a dwarf."

"What do those things mean?"

"I"m not allowed to tell non-dwarfs." Carrot tactfully tried to stand out of the way of the cigar smoke. "Unfortunately, some of the mountain dwarfs think that dwarfs who"ve moved away aren"t proper dwarfs either. But this time the kingship has been swung by the views of the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs, and a lot of dwarfs back home don"t like it. There"s been a lot of bad feeling all round. Families falling out, that sort of thing. Much pulling of beards."

"Really?" Vimes tried not to smile.

"It"s not funny if you"re a dwarf."

"Sorry."

"And I"m afraid this new Low King is only going to make matters worse, although of course I wish him well."

"Tough, is he?"

"Er, I think you can assume, sir, that any dwarf who rises sufficiently in dwarf society to even be considered as a candidate for the kingship did not get there by singing the hi-ho song and bandaging wounded animals in the forest. But by dwarf standards, King Rhys Rhysson is a modern thinker, although I hear he doesn"t like Ankh-Morpork very much."

"Sounds like a very clear thinker, too."

"Anyway, this has upset a lot of the more, er, traditional mountain dwarfs who thought the next king would be Albrecht Albrechtson."

"Who is not a modern thinker?"

"He thinks even coming up above ground is dangerously non-dwarfish."

Vimes sighed. "Well, I can see there"s a problem, Carrot, but the thing about this problem, the key point, is that it"s not mine. Or yours, dwarf or not." He tapped the Scone"s case.

"Replica, eh?" he said. "Sure it"s not the real one?"

"Sir! There is only one real Scone. We call it the "thing and the whole of the thing"."

"Well, if it"s a good replica, who"d know?"

"Any dwarf would, sir,"

"Only joking."

There was a hamlet down there, where two rivers met. There would be boats. This was working. The slopes behind him were white and free of dark shapes. No matter how good they were, let them try to outswim a boat...

Hard-packed snow crunched under his feet. He staggered past the few rough hovels, saw the jetty, saw the boats, fought with the frozen rope that moored the nearest one, grabbed an oar and pushed himself out into the current.

There was still no movement on the hills.

Now, at last, he could take stock. It was a bigger boat than one man could handle, but all he had to do was fend off the banks. That"d do for tonight. In the morning he could leave it somewhere, perhaps ask someone to get a message through to the tower, and then he"d buy a horse and...

Behind him, under the tarpaulin in the bows, something started to growl.

They really were very clever.

In a castle not far away the vampire Lady Margolotta sat quietly, leafing through Twurp"s Peerage.

It wasn"t a very good reference book for the countries on this side of the Ramtops, where the standard work was The Almanac de Gothick, in which she herself occupied almost four pages, but if you needed to know who thought they were who in Ankh-Morpork it was invaluable.

Her copy was now bristling with bookmarks. She sighed and pushed it away.

Beside her was a fluted glass containing a red liquid. She took a sip and made a face. Then she stared at the candlelight, and tried to think like Lord Vetinari.

How much did he suspect? How much news got back? The clacks tower had only been up for a month, and it was being roundly denounced throughout Bonk as an intrusion. But it seemed to be doing a good if stealthy local traffic.

Who would he send?

His choice would tell her everything, she was sure. Someone like Lord Rust or Lord Selachii... ? Well, she"d think a lot less of him. From all that she had heard, and Lady Margolotta heard a lot of things, the Ankh-Morpork diplomatic corps as a whole could not find its backside with a map. Of course, it was good business for a diplomat to appear stupid, right up to the moment where he"d stolen your socks, but Lady Margolotta had met some of Ankh-Morpork"s finest and no one could act that well.

The growing howling outside began to get on her nerves. She rang for her butler.

"Yeth, mithtreth?" said Igor, materializing out of the shadows.

"Go and tell the children of the night to make vonderful music somevhere else, Vill you? I have a headache."

"Indeed, mithtreth."

Lady Margolotta yawned. It had been a long night. She"d think better after a good day"s sleep.

As she went to blow out the candle she glanced again at the book. There was a marker in the Vs.

But... surely even the Patrician couldn"t know that much...

She hesitated and then pulled the bellrope above the coffin. Igor reappeared, in the way of Igors.

"Those keen young men at the clacks tower Vill be avake, von"t they?"

"Yeth, mithtreth."

"Send a clacks to our agent asking for everything about Commander Vimes of the Vatch, vill you?"

"Ith he a diplomat, mithtreth?"

Lady Margolotta lay back. "No, Igor. He"s the reason for diplomats. Close the lid, vill you?"

Sam Vimes could parallel-process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases, such as "and they can deliver it tomorrow" or "so I"ve invited them for dinner" or "they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply".

Lady Sybil was aware of this. Sam could coherently carry an entire conversation while thinking about something completely different.

"I"ll tell Willikins to pack winter clothes," she said, watching him. "It"ll be pretty cold up there at this time of year."

"Yes. That"s a good idea." Vimes continued to stare at a point just above the fireplace.

"We"ll have to host a party ourselves, I expect, so we ought to take a cartload of typical Ankh-Morpork food. Show the flag, you know. Do you think I should take a cook along?"

"Yes, dear. That would be a good idea. No one outside the city knows how to make a knuckle sandwich properly."

Sybil was impressed. Ears operating entirely on

automatic had nevertheless triggered the mouth into making a small but pertinent contribution.

She said, "Do you think we ought to take the alligator with us?"

"Yes, that might be advisable."

She watched his face. Small furrows formed on Vimes"s brow as the ears nudged the brain. He blinked.

"What alligator?"

"You were miles away, Sam. In Uberwald, I expect."

"Sorry."

"Is there a problem?"

"Why"s he sending me, Sybil?"

"I"m sure Havelock shares with me a conviction that you have hidden depths, Sam."

Vimes sank gloomily into his armchair. It was, he felt, a persistent flaw in his wife"s otherwise practical and sensible character that she believed, against all evidence, that he was a man of many talents. He knew he had hidden depths. There was nothing in them that he"d like to see float to the surface. They contained things that should be left to lie.

There was also a nagging worry that he couldn"t quite pin down. Had he been able to, he might have expressed it like this: policemen didn"t go on holiday. Where you got policemen, as Lord Vetinari was wont to remark, you got crime. So if he went to Bonk, however you pronounced the damn place, there would be a crime. It was something the world always laid on for policemen.

"It"ll be nice to see Serafine again," said Sybil.

"Yes, indeed," said Vimes.

In Bonk he would not, officially, be a policeman. He did not like this at all. He liked this even less than all the other things.

On the few occasions he"d been outside Ankh-Morpork and its surrounding fiefdom he"d either been going to other local cities where the Ankh-Morpork badge carried some weight or he had been in hot pursuit, that most ancient and honourable of police procedures. From the way Carrot talked, in Bonk his badge would merely figure as extra roughage on someone"s menu.

His brow wrinkled again. "Serafine?"

"Lady Serafine von Uberwald," said Sybil. "Sergeant Angua"s mother? You remember me telling you last year? We were at finishing school together. Of course, we all knew she was a werewolf, but nobody would ever dream of talking about that sort of thing in those days. Well, you just didn"t. There was all that business over the ski instructor, of course, but I"m certain in my own mind that he must have fallen down some crevasse or other. She married the Baron, and they live just outside Beyonk. I write to her with a little news every Hogswatch. A very old Werewolf family."

"A good pedigree," said Vimes absently.

"You know you wouldn"t like Angua to hear you say that, Sam. Don"t worry so. You"ll have a chance to relax, I"m sure. It"ll be good for you."

"Yes, dear."

"It"ll be like a second honeymoon," said Sybil.

"Yes indeed," said Vimes, remembering that what with one thing and another they"d never really had a first one.

"On that, er, subject," said Sybil, a little more hesitantly, "you remember I told you I was going to see old Mrs Content?"

"Oh, yes, how is she?" Vimes was staring at the fireplace again. It wasn"t just old schoolfriends. Sometimes it seemed Sybil kept in touch with anyone she"d ever met. Her Hogswatch card list ran to a second volume.

"Quite well, I believe. Anyway, she agrees that - "

There was a knocking at the door.

She sighed. "It"s Willikins" evening off," she said. "You"d better answer it, Sam. I know you want to."

"I"ve told them not to disturb me unless it"s serious," said Vimes, getting up.

"Yes, but you think all crime is serious, Sam."

Carrot was on the doorstep. "It"s a bit... political, sir," he said.

"What"s so political at a quarter to ten at night, captain?"

"The Dwarf Bread Museum"s been broken into, sir," said Carrot.

Vimes looked into Carrot"s honest blue eyes.

"A thought occurs to me, captain," he said slowly. "And the thought is: a certain item has gone missing."

"That"s right, sir."

"And it"s the replica Scone."

"Yes, sir. Either they broke in just after we left, or," Carrot licked his lips nervously, "they were hiding while we were there."

"Not rats, then."

"No, sir. Sorry, sir."

Vimes fastened his cloak and took his helmet off its peg.

"So someone has stolen a replica of the Scone of Stone a few weeks before the real one is due to be used in a very important ceremony," he said. "I find this intriguing."