Jingo

“Quite so. What you are telling me, in point of fact, is that their assassins have been doing it longer, know their way around our city and have had their traditional skills honed by you?”

“Er…”

The Patrician turned to Mr Burleigh.

“We surely have superiority in weapons, Mr Burleigh?”

“Oh, yes. Say what you like about dwarfs, but we've been turning out some superb stuff lately,” said the President of the Guild of Armourers.

“Ah. That at least is some comfort.”

“Yes,” said Burleigh. He looked wretched. “However, the thing about weapons manufacture… the important thing…”

“I believe you are about to say that the important thing about the business of weaponry is that it is a business,” said the Patrician.

Burleigh looked as though he'd been let off the hook on to a bigger hook.

“Er… yes.”

“That, in fact, the weapons are for selling.”

“Er… exactly.”

“To anyone who wishes to buy them.”

“Er… yes.”

“Regardless of the use to which they are going to be put?”

The armaments manufacturer looked affronted.

“Pardon me? Of course. They're weapons.”

“And I suspect that in recent years a very lucrative market has been Klatch?”

“Well, yes… the Seriph needs them to pacify the outlying regions…”

The Patrician held up his hand. Drumknott, his clerk, gave him a piece of paper.

“The ‘Great Leveller’ Cart-Mounted Ten-Bank 500-pound Crossbow?” he said. “And, let me see… the ‘Meteor’ Automated Throwing Star Hurler, Decapitates at Twenty Paces, Money Back If Not Completely Decapitated?”

“Have you ever heard of the D'regs, my lord?” said Burleigh. “They say the only way to pacify one of them is to hit him repeatedly with an axe and bury what's left under a rock. And even then, choose a heavy rock.”

The Patrician seemed to be staring at a large drawing of the “Dervish” Mk III Razor-Wire Bolas. There was a painful silence. Burleigh tried to fill it up, always a bad mistake.

“Besides, we provide much-needed jobs in Ankh-Morpork,” he murmured.

“Exporting these weapons to other countries,” said Lord Vetinari. He handed the paper back and fixed Burleigh with a friendly smile.

“I'm very pleased to see that the industry has done so well,” he said. “I will bear this particularly in mind.”

He placed his hands together carefully. “The situation is grave, gentlemen.”

“Whose?” said Mr Burleigh.

“I'm sorry?”

“What? Oh… I was thinking about something else, my lord…”

“I was referring to the fact that a number of our citizens have gone out to this wretched island. As have, I understand, a number of Klatchians.”

“Why are our people going out there?” said Mr Boggis of the Thieves' Guild.

“Because they are showing a brisk pioneering spirit and seeking wealth and… additional wealth in a new land,” said Lord Vetinari.

“What's in it for the Klatchians?” said Lord Downey.

“Oh, they've gone out there because they are a bunch of unprincipled opportunists always ready to grab something for nothing,” said Lord Vetinari.

“A masterly summation, if I may say so, my lord,” said Mr Burleigh, who felt he had some ground to make up.

The Patrician looked down again at his notes. “Oh, I do beg your pardon,” he said, “I seem to have read those last two sentences in the wrong order… Mr Slant, I believe you have something to say here?”

The president of the Guild of Lawyers cleared his throat. The sound was like a death rattle and technically it was, since the man had been a zombie for several hundred years although historical accounts suggested that the only difference dying had made to Mr Slant was that he'd started to work through his lunch break.

“Yes, indeed,” he said, opening a large legal tome. “The history of the city of Leshp and its surrounding country is a little obscure. It is known to have been above the sea almost a thousand years ago, however, when records suggest that it was considered part of the Ankh-Morpork empire—”

“What is the nature of these records and do they tell us who was doing the considering?” said the Patrician. The door opened and Vimes stepped in. “Ah, commander, do take a seat. Continue, Mr Slant.”

The zombie did not like interruptions. He coughed again. “The records relating to the lost country date back several hundred years, my lord. And they are of course our records.”

“Only ours?”

“I hardly see how any others could apply,” said Mr Slant severely.

“Klatchian ones, for example?” said Vimes, from the far end of the table.

“Sir Samuel, the Klatchian language does not even have a word for lawyer,” said Mr Slant.

“Doesn't it?” said Vimes. “Good for them.”

“It is our view,” said Slant, turning his chair slightly so that he did not have to look at Vimes, “that the new land is ours by Eminent Domain, Extra-Territoriality and, most importantly, Acquiris Quodcumque Rapis. I am given to understand that it was one of our fishermen who first set foot on it this time.”

“I hear the Klatchians claim that it was one of their fishermen,” said Vetinari.