Feet of Clay

No more kings. Vimes had difficulty in articulating why this should be so, why the concept revolted in his very bones. After all, a good many of the patricians had been as bad as any king. But they were … sort of … bad on equal terms. What set Vimes’s teeth on edge was the idea that kings were a different kind of human being. A higher lifeform. Somehow magical. But, huh, there was some magic, at that. Ankh-Morpork still seemed to be littered with Royal this and Royal that, little old men who got paid a few pence a week to do a few meaningless chores, like the Master of the King’s Keys or the Keeper of the Crown Jewels, even though there were no keys and certainly no jewels.

Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.

It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: ‘Kings. What a good idea.’ Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.

There was a knock at the door. It should not be possible for a knock to sound surreptitious, yet this knock achieved it. It had harmonics. They told the hindbrain: the person knocking will, if no one eventually answers, open the door anyway and sidle in, whereupon he will certainly nick any smokes that are lying around, read any correspondence that catches his eye, open a few drawers, take a nip out of such bottles of alcohol as are discovered, but stop short of major crime because he is not criminal in the sense of making a moral decision but in the sense that a weasel is evil — it is built into his very shape. It was a knock with a lot to say for itself.

‘Come in, Nobby,’ said Vimes, wearily.

Corporal Nobbs sidled in. It was another special trait of his that he could sidle forwards as well as sideways.

He saluted awkwardly.

There was something absolutely changeless about Corporal Nobbs, Vimes told himself. Even Fred Colon had adapted to the changing nature of the City Watch, but nothing altered Corporal Nobbs in any way. It wouldn’t matter what you did to him, there was always something fundamentally Nobby about Corporal Nobbs.

‘Nobby …’

‘Yessir?’

‘Er … take a seat, Nobby.’

Corporal Nobbs looked suspicious. This was not how a dressing-down was supposed to begin.

‘Er, Fred said you wanted to see me, Mr Vimes, on account of time-keeping …’

‘Did I? Did I? Oh, yes. Nobby, how many grandmothers’ funerals have you really been to?’

‘Er … three …’ said Nobby, uncomfortably.

‘Three?’

‘It turned out Nanny Nobbs weren’t quite dead the first time.’

‘So why have you taken all this time off?’

‘Don’t like to say, sir …’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re gonna go spare, sir.’

‘Spare?’

‘You know, sir … throw a wobbler.’

‘I might, Nobby.’ Vimes sighed. ‘But it’ll be nothing to what’ll get heaved if you don’t tell me …’

‘Thing is, it’s the tricentre — tricera — this three-hundred-year celebration thing next year, Mr Vimes …’

‘Yes?’

Nobby licked his lips. ‘I dint like to ask for time off special. Fred said you were a bit sensitive about it all. But … you know I’m in the Peeled Nuts, sir …’^{29}

Vimes nodded. ‘Those clowns who dress up and pretend to fight old battles with blunt swords,’ he said.

‘The Ankh-Morpork Historical Recreation Society, sir,’ said Nobby, a shade reproachfully.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Well … we’re going to recreate the Battle of Ankh-Morpork for the celebrations, see. That means extra practice.’

‘It all begins to make sense,’ said Vimes, nodding wearily. ‘You’ve been marching up and down with your tin pike, eh? In my time?’

‘Er … not exactly, Mr Vimes … er … I’ve been riding up and down on my white horse, to tell the truth …’

‘Oh? Playing at being a general, eh?’

‘Er … a bit more’n a general, sir …’

‘Go on.’

Nobby’s adam’s apple bobbed nervously. ‘Er … I’m going to be King Lorenzo, sir. Er … you know … the last king, the one your … er …’

The air froze.

‘You … are going to be …’ Vimes began, unpeeling each word like a sullen grape of wrath.

‘I said you’d go spare,’ said Nobby. ‘Fred Colon said you’d go spare, too.’

‘Why are you—?’

‘We drew lots, sir.’

‘And you lost?’

Nobby squirmed. ‘Er … not exactly lost, sir. Not precisely lost. More sort of won, sir. Everyone wanted to play him. I mean, you get a horse and a good costume and everything, sir. And he was a king, when all’s said and done, sir.’

‘The man was a vicious monster!’

‘Well, it was all a long time ago, sir,’ said Nobby anxiously.

Vimes calmed down a little. ‘And who drew the straw to play Stoneface Vimes?’

‘Er … er …’

‘Nobby!’