Discworld – Feet of Clay (Terry Pratchett)

The tincture of night began to suffuse the soup of the afternoon.

Lord Vetinari considered the sentence, and found it good. He liked 'tincture' particularly. Tincture. Tincture. It was a distinguished word, and pleasantly countered by the flatness of 'soup'. The soup of the afternoon. Yes. In which may well be found the croutons of teatime.

He was aware that he was a little light-headed. He'd never have thought a sentence like that in a normal frame of mind.

In the fog outside the window, just visible by the candlelight, he saw the crouching shape of Constable Downspout.

A gargoyle, eh? He'd wondered why the Watch was indented for five pigeons a week on its wages bill. A gargoyle in the Watch, whose job it was to watch. That would be Captain Carrot's idea.

Lord Vetinari got up carefully from the bed and closed the shutters. He walked slowly to his writing table, pulled his journal out of its drawer, then tugged out a wad of manuscript and unstoppered the ink bottle.

Now then, where had he got to?

Chapter Eight, he read unsteadily, The Rites of Man.

Ah, yes …

'Concerning Truth,' he wrote, 'that which May be Spoken as Events Dictate, but should be Heard on Every Ocasfion …'

He wondered how he could work 'soup of the afternoon' into the treatise, or at least 'tincture of night'.

The pen scratched across the paper.

Unheeded on the floor lay the tray that had contained a bowl of nourishing gruel, concerning which he had resolved to have strong words with the cook when he felt better. It had been tasted by three tasters, including Sergeant Detritus, who was unlikely to be poisoned by anything that worked on humans or even by most things that worked on trolls … but probably by most things that worked on trolls.

The door was locked. Occasionally he could hear the reassuring creak of Detritus on his rounds. Outside the window, the fog condensed on Constable Downspout.

Vetinari dipped the pen in the ink and started a new page. Every so often he consulted the leather-bound journal, licking his fingers delicately to turn the thin pages.

Tendrils of fog slipped in around the shutters and brushed against the wall until they were frightened away by the candlelight.