Rain was a copper's friend. Tonight people were making do with indoor crime.
Vimes stood in the lee of one of the fountains in Sator Square. The fountain hadn't worked for years, but he was getting just as wet as if it were in full flow. He'd never experienced truly horizontal rain before.
There was no–one around. The rain marched across the square like... like an army...
Now there was an image from his youth. Funny how they hung around in the dark alleys of your brain and suddenly jumped out on you.
Rain falling on water...
Ah, yes... When he was a little lad he'd pretended that the raindrops splashing in the running gutters were soldiers. Millions of soldiers. And the bubbles that sometimes went floating by were men on horseback.
Right now he couldn't remember what the occasional dead dog had been. Some kind of siege weapon, possibly.
Water swirled around his boots and dripped off his cape. When he tried to light a cigar the wind blew the match out and the rain poured off his helmet and soaked the cigar in any case.
He grinned in the night.
He was, temporarily, a happy man. He was cold, wet and alone, hying to keep out of the worst of the weather at three o'clock on a ferocious morning. He'd spent some of the best nights of his life like this. At such times you could just... sort of hunch your shoulders like this and let your head pull in like this and you became a little hutch of warmth and peace, the rain banging on your helmet, the mind just ticking over, sorting out the world...
It was like this in the old days, when no–one cared about the Watch and all you really had to do was keep out of trouble. Those were the days when there wasn't as much to do.
But there was as much to do, said an inner voice. You just didn't do it.
He could feel the official truncheon hanging heavily in the special pocket that Sybil herself had sewn in his breeches. Why is it just a bit of wood? he'd asked himself when he'd unwrapped it. Why not a sword? That's the symbol of power. And then he'd realized why it couldn't ever be a sword
'Ho there, good citizen! May I ask your business this brisk morning?'
He sighed. There was a lantern appearing through the murk, surrounded by a halo of water.
Ho there, good citizen... There was only one person in the city who would say something like that and mean it.
'It's me, captain.'
The halo drew nearer and illuminated the damp face of Captain Carrot. The young man ripped off a salute – at godsdam three in the morning, Vimes thought – that would have brought a happy tear to the eye of the most psychotic drill sergeant.
'What're you doing out, sir?'
'I just wanted to... check up on things,' said Vimes.
'You could have left it all to me, sir,' said Carrot. 'delegation is the key to successful command.'
'Really? Is it?' said Vimes sourly. 'My word, we live and learn, don't we.' And you certainly learn, he added in the privacy of his head. And he was almost sure he was being mean and stupid.
'We've just about finished, sir. We've checked all the empty buildings. And there will be an extra squad of constables on the route. And the gargoyles will be up as high as they can. You know how good they are at watching, sir.'
'Gargoyles? I thought we just had Constable Downspout...'
'And Constable Pediment now, sir.'
'One of yours?'
'One of ours, sir. You signed–'
'Yes, yes, I'm sure I did. Damn!'
A gust of wind caught the water pouring from an overloaded gutter and dumped it down Vimes's neck.
'They say this new island's upset the air streams" said Carrot.
'Not just the air,' said Vimes. 'A lot of damn fuss over a few square miles of silt and some old ruins! Who cares?'
'They say it's strategically very important,' said Carrot, falling into step beside him.
'What for? We're not at war with anyone. Hah! But we might go to war to keep some damn island that's only useful in case we have to go to war, right?'
'Oh, his lordship will have it all sorted out today. I'm sure that when moder…
