Men at Arms (Discworld #15)(65)

Lady Ramkin's butler, Willikins, had filled him a big bath. Hah! Tomorrow it'd be his butler, and his bath. And this wasn't one of the old hip bath, drag-it-in- front-of-the-fire jobs, no. The Ramkin mansion collected water off the roof into a big cistern, after straining out the pigeons, and then it was heated by an ancient geyser[24] and flowed along drumming, groaning lead pipes to a pair of mighty brass taps and then into an enamelled tub. There were things laid out on a fluffy towel beside it -huge scrubbing brushes, three kinds of soap, a loofah.

Willikins was standing patiently beside the bath, like a barely heated towel rail.

'Yes?' said Vimes.


'His lordship . . . that is, her ladyship's father . . . he required to have his back scrubbed,' said Willikins.

'You go and help the old geyser stoke the furnace,' said Vimes firmly.

Left alone, he struggled out of his breastplate and threw it in the corner. The chainmail shirt followed it, and the helmet, and the money pouch, and various leather and cotton oddments that came between a Watchman and the world.

And then he sank, gingerly at first, into the suds.

'Try soap. Soap'11 work,' said Detritus.

'Hold still, will you?' said Carrot.

'You're twisting my head off!'

'Go on, soap him head.'

'Soap your own head!'

There was a thung noise and Cuddy's helmet came free.

Cuddy emerged, blinking, into the light. He focused on the Librarian, and growled.

'He hit me on the head!'

'Oook.'

'He says you came up through the floor,' said Carrot.

'That's no reason to hit me on the head.'

'Some of the things that come up through the floor at Unseen University don't even have a head,' said Carrot.

'Oook!'

'Or they have hundreds. Why were you digging down there?'

'We weren't digging down. We were digging up . . .'

Carrot sat and listened. He interrupted only twice.

'Shot at you?'

'Five time,' said Detritus, happily. 'Have to report damage to breastplate but not to backplate on account of fortunately my body got in way, saving valuable city property worth three dollars.'

Carrot listened some more.

'Sewers?' he said, eventually.

'It's like the whole city, underground. We saw crowns and stuff carved on the walls.'

Carrot's eyes sparkled. 'That means they must date right back to the days when we had kings! And then when we kept on rebuilding the city we forgot they were down there . . .'

'Um. That's not all that's down there,' said Cuddy. 'We . . . found something.'

'Oh?'

'Something bad.'

'You won't like it at all,' said Detritus. 'Bad, bad, bad. Even worse.'

'We thought it would be best to leave it there,' said Cuddy, 'on account of it being Evidence. But you ought to see it.'

'It's going to upset everything,' said the troll, warming to the part.

'What was it?'

'If we tell you, you say, stupid ethnic people, you pulling my leg off,' said Detritus.

'So you'd better come and see,' said Cuddy.

Sergeant Colon looked at the rest of the Watch.

'All of us?' he said, nervously. 'Er. Shouldn't a couple of senior officers stay up here? In case anything happens?'

'Do you mean in case anything happens up here?' said Angua, tartly. 'Or in case anything happens down there?'

'I'll go with Lance-Constable Cuddy and Lance-Constable Detritus,' said Carrot. 'I don't think anyone else ought to come.'

'But it could be dangerous!' said Angua.

'If I find who's been shooting at Watchmen,' said Carrot, 'it will be.'

Samuel Vimes reached up with a big toe and turned on the hot tap.

There was a respectful knock at the door, and Willikins old-retainer'd in.

'Would sir be wanting anything?'

Vimes thought about it.

'Lady Ramkin said you wouldn't be wanting any alcohol,' said Willikins, as if reading his thoughts.

'Did she?'

'Emphatically, sir. But I have here a very fine cigar.'

He winced as Vimes bit the end off and spat it over the side of the bath, but produced some matches and lit it for him.

'Thank you, Willikins. What's your first name?'

'First name, sir?'

'I mean, what do people call you when they've got to know you better?'

'Willikins, sir.'

'Oh. Right, then. Well. You may go, Willikins.'

'Yes, sir.'

Vimes lay back in the warm water. The inner voice was still in there somewhere, but he tried not to pay any attention. About now, it was saying, you'd be proceeding along the Street of Small Gods, just by the bit of old city wall where you could stop and smoke a rollup out of the wind . . .

To drown it out, he started to sing at the top of his voice.

The cavernous sewers under the city echoed with human and near-human voices for the first time in millennia.

'Hi-ho—'

'—hi-ho—'

'Oook oook oook oook ook—'

'You all stupid!'