The Fifth Elephant

'Dee? Please fetch my axe from my chamber, will you?' the King said. 'Yourself, please. I don't want anyone else to handle it. Your excellency, you and your lady will remain here. Your... dwarf must leave, however. The guards are to be posted on the door. Dee?'

The Ideas Taster hadn't moved.

'Dee?'

'Wh... Yes, sire?'

'You do what I tell you!'

'Sire, this man's ancestor once killed a king!'

'I daresay the family have got it out of their system! Now do as I say!'

The dwarf hurried away, turning to stare at Vimes for a moment as he left the cave.

The King sat back. 'Sit down, your monitorship. And your lady, too.' He put one elbow on the arm of the chair and cupped his chin on his hand. 'And now, Mister Vimes, tell me the truth. Tell me everything. Tell me the truth that is more valuable than small amounts of gold.'

'I'm not sure I know it any more,' said Vimes.

'Ah. A good start,' said the King. 'Tell me what you suspect, then.'

'Sire, I'd swear that thing is as fake as a tin shilling.'

'Oh. Really?'

'The real Scone wasn't stolen, it was destroyed. I reckon it was smashed and ground up and mixed with the sand in its cave. You see, sire, if people see that something's gone, and then you turn up with something that looks like it, they'll think "This must be it, it must be, because it isn't where we thought it was." People are like that. Something disappears and something very much like it turns up somewhere else and they think it must somehow have got from one place to the other...' Vimes pinched his nose. 'I'm sorry, I haven't had much sleep...'

'You are doing very well for a sleepwalking man.'

'The... thief was working with the werewolves, I think. They were behind the "Sons of Agi Hammerthief" business. They were going to blackmail you off the throne. Well, you know that. To keep Uberwald in the dark. If you didn't. step down there'd be a war, and if you did Albrecht would get the fake Scone.'

'What else do you think you know?'

'Well, the fake was made in Ankh-Morpork. We're good at making things. I think someone had the maker killed, but I can't find out more until I get back. I will find out.'

'You make things very well in your city, then, to fool Albrecht. How do you think that was done?'

'You want the truth, sire?'

'By all means.'

'Is it possible that Albrecht was involved? Find out where the money is, my old sergeant used to say.'

'Hah. Who was it said, "Where there are policemen, you find crimes"?'

'Er, me, sir, but—'

'Let us find out. Dee should have had time to think. Ah...'

The door opened. The Ideas Taster stepped through, carrying a dwarfish axe. It was a mining axe, with a pick point on one side, in order to go prospecting, and a real axe blade on the other, in case anyone tried to stop you.

'Call the guards in, Dee,' said the King. 'And his excellency's young dwarf. These things should be seen, see.'

Oh, good grief, thought Vimes, watching Dee's face as the others shuffled in. There must be a manual. Every copper knows how this goes. You let 'em know you know they've done something wrong, but you don't tell 'em what it is and you certainly don't tell 'em how much you know, and you keep 'em off balance, and you just talk quietly and—

'Place your hands upon the Scone, Dee.'

Dee spun around. 'Sire?'

'Place your hands upon the Scone. Do as I say. Do it now.'

—you keep the threat in view but you never refer to it, oh no. Because there's nothing you can do to them that their imagination isn't already doing to themselves. And you keep it up until they break, or in the case of my old dame school, until they feel their boots get damp.

And it doesn't even leave a mark.

'Tell me about the death of Lorigfinger, the candle captain,' said the King, after Dee, with a look of hollow apprehension, had touched the Scone.

The words rushed out. 'Oh, as I told you, sire, he—'

'If you do not keep your hands pressed upon the Scone, Dee, I will see to it that they are fixed there. Tell me again.'

'I... he... took his own life, sire. Out of shame.'

The King picked up his axe and turned it so that the long point faced outwards.

'Tell me again.'

Now Vimes could hear Dee's breathing, short and fast.

'He took his own life, sire!'

The King smiled at Vimes. 'There's an old superstition, your excellency, that since the Scone contains a grain of truth it will glow red hot if a lie is told by anyone touching it. Of course, in these more modern times, I shouldn't think anyone believes it.' He turned to Dee.

'Tell me again,' he whispered.

As the axe moved slightly the reflected light of the candles flashed along the blade.

'He took his own life! He did!'

'Oh, yes. You said. Thank you,' said the King. 'And do you recall, Dee, when Slogram sent false word of Bloodaxe's death in battle to Ironhammer, causing Ironhammer to take his own life in grief, where was the guilt?'

'It was Slogram's, sir,' said Dee promptly. Vimes suspected the answer had come straight from some rote-remembered teaching.

'Yes.'