Work Text:
Silence. Then:
“About the postmaster.”
He says nothing. Usually if one remains quiet long enough the other person will begin babbling out of sheer discomfort. This proves less effective, however, with certain categories of individual. Among them, recently: the journalists from the Times. Also watchmen.
Vimes makes a move, apparently at random.
The commander remains very predictable. It is one of his better qualities. Ever since they began this little ritual some months ago he has refused to improve his Thud game, probably out of spite. His pieces roam mazily over the board.
This leaves Vetinari in the annoying position of forsaking the killing blow so as not to curtail their play unnecessarily. He dislikes this. Presumably Vimes knows he dislikes it and that is why the man behaves in such a way. It is the commander’s manner of asking: why am I here? But to such questions a direct answer cannot be given.
He sets down a dwarf. Clack of wood on wood. The commander raises his eyebrows, the left one still with a nasty, puckered slash through it.
Very well then. Not without irritation he speaks.
“Enlighten me, Sir Samuel.”
“There’s something familiar about him. We asked around,” says Vimes. He crosses his arms. “Or … sniffed around.”
Vetinari raises an eyebrow in return.
“Albert Spangler,” says Vimes.
“The name may ring a distant bell.”
“Well, you’re a busy man,” Vimes tells him sourly. “You can’t be expected to remember everything.”
At the end of the sentence floats the ghostly sir. When they first began to play this game he requested that Vimes not declaim that word here. Though if he utters Your Grace then sometimes the commander will dispense it in retaliation.
His Grace asks, “So is Spangler his name?”
“Dear me, no. By all accounts he really does seem to be named Lipwig.”
“Poor bastard.”
“When we were young,” he says, “Downey used to call me Dog-botherer.”
He and Vimes are sitting at a low table set apart from his desk and lit by candles to ward off the evening murk. They crouch in some rather shabby armchairs, two cups of tea next to them. Or, more precisely, for himself hot water and lemon; for the commander, something clotted with sugar and brewed to the thickness of a primeval tar.
Vetinari has asked the servants not to disturb them, except the event of any one of twenty-three precisely delineated circumstances and six specific sub-types of emergency. In other rooms, throughout the high halls of the palace, the clerks are working. Diligently their pens scratch out the measure of the day.
“So what is this with Mr. Lipwig,” says Vimes. “Pluck another poor bastard out from the gutter, eh? Get him to do your dirty work? How many of us are there going to be?”
“Your Grace.” A warning.
“Bought and sold,” says Vimes, wearily.
“The work of the city is dirty work.”
“To you we’re all just bought and sold.”
No sir; a bad sign. Vetinari flicks rapidly through a number of ways to hint with oblique elegance at what he means. This task is a regular one but more difficult when he has no idea what, in fact, his intentions are—which is not a typical circumstance.
Between the commander’s journey to Uberwald and then through that other country of the past, Vetinari has recently spent a great deal of time considering his younger days. Is it possible that this is a symptom of growing old? In the corner of the room sits the fine basalt Thud board, bestowed to him by the Low King; on that board is arrayed the flotsam of a recent match by clacks between himself and Margolotta. (He won.) It will not do to wonder what they might have said to one another twenty years ago had the Grand Trunk been extant then. He had intended as a young man to write her letters—encoded, no doubt, in the most graceful and mathematically superior of ciphers—but when, back in Ankh-Morpork, he sat down finally with a pen, he found himself seized with insurmountable embarrassment.
He and Vimes are now waltzing through their battle on a very respectable but not nearly so hallowed Thud set, selected by Vetinari on the grounds that fine things make the commander nervous. Usually this would be a source of leverage. But after some reflection he has concluded that he does not want to make the commander nervous now. To the quiet indignation of Drumknott, he requested that the tea served to them this evening be presented in a somewhat battered set of china cups that Wuffles, over-enthused, once knocked over.
“Such is politics, Sir Samuel,” he says, perhaps a bit hollowly.
Vimes reaches down without looking at the board and shunts a troll from square to square.
“I believe that move was illegal.”
“Oh deary me,” the commander growls.
“Would you have Mr. Lipwig hanged?”
“What?” says Vimes. Suddenly he looks hunted. “Why?”
He captures the misplaced troll with one of his dwarfs and sets it to the side. Vimes, he realizes, has not tasted his tea; maybe the commander is worried it has been poisoned? As Patrician he often hosts guests but he is not accustomed to doing so in a register other than one of cultured menace.
“The postmaster is, as you have so ably noted, a criminal.”
Eventually Vimes says, “You know me better than that.”
“Perhaps I do.” He sips from the chipped teacup. “There is a very old principle that a man who survives his hanging has been chosen by the gods for another destiny. Of course, as another ancient principle tells us, ‘you will know the wise man by the underpants on his head.’ But this is generally agreed to have suffered in translation from the original Latatian—”
“You’re going to keep talking, aren’t you,” says Vimes.
“—at any rate, we must also keep in mind the equally ancient idea that the king, aha, retains ultimately the power to grant mercy from the application of the law. An act of grace. A second chance, perhaps, for the public good. Quia ego sic dico.”
“Generally,” says Vimes, “I thought the idea was to grant the person mercy before hanging them.”
“You will permit me my little idiosyncrasies.”
Vimes picks up his cup. (A satisfactory outcome.) Awkwardly the commander holds it with both hands as if worried that the porcelain will spontaneously disintegrate or perhaps explode. He wears an expression that suggests he is thinking, Well, it’s better than scorpions. Or pulling people apart with wild tortoises, governing the city by advice of a horse, et cetera.
Fewer and fewer of them now remember the bad old days. There are worse things on which to build a city than a horror of pointless cruelty; though pointed cruelty is of course another matter. Take for example the young postmaster and his very scintillating suit. He came to the city as a teenager and has known no other patrician. During his time in office Vetinari has been deposed, shot at, poisoned, arrested for treason, framed for robbery and attempted murder. But he considers it a mark of success that recent years have been calmer, if still … diverting in other respects. When last they spoke about the candles Downey seemed almost abashed.
Vimes says, “So what’s the plan for your shiny, shiny boy?”
Briefly he considers deflecting and then decides against it.
“I am not a young man, commander.”
Vimes looks as if he is about to fall out of his chair.
“One must begin to consider one’s legacy.”
Vimes sputters. Eventually he chokes out, “You can’t be serious.”
“Consider it an audition of sorts. I intend to see how he does with the Mint.”
“Ye gods!”
“I shall look forward to your candid assessment of his performance.”
“He’s a damn crook! A swindler! A—”
“A man reborn,” he says, “given a second chance for the good of the city. A man who lives, in the most, aha, visceral sense, for public service. Who is … gifted at problem-solving. Sam, it is reasonable to begin thinking early about the issue of succession. We both know what the city looks like when the wrong person is in charge.”
“He stole $150,000! Isn’t there anybody else?
“No, Your Grace. There isn’t.”
They pause briefly to consider this.
“Captain Ironfoundersson, however, is a promising young man,” says Vetinari.
“Captain Carrot,” says Vimes, very carefully, in the manner of someone who has thought a great deal about how best to say this, “is well-suited to his current role.”
“Some might say he is well-suited to many roles. Such is the nature of Captain Carrot.”
He offered Vimes’s job to Carrot after the business with the gonne. As a sort of consolation prize, given that the man showed no desire to exercise his birthright. Or a test, perhaps; though of which of the two of them he cannot say. For a time, if Vetinari was honest with himself, he would have said that the captain was the only person in the city of whom he was afraid.
“Does Lipwig know this is your plan,” says Vimes.
“What do you take me for, commander? Of course not.” He pauses. “I do hope this will remain between us.”
Vimes grins. “What do you take me for?”
“Commander—”
“Of course,” says Vimes irritably.
In Uberwald, in his youth, sometimes he would consider what he might say if Margolotta were to offer him that greatest and most obscene of benedictions. She never did. Perhaps it was a mark of respect. Perhaps it was something else. Now she has climbed aboard what she very persistently refers to as the vagon and thereby the matter has become moot—as have so many matters between them.
Still, though, he has wondered recently about the advantages. Margolotta sweats at the sight of a toothpick and even on a cloudy day she will not go out at noon without a hat. But she will never have to worry about choosing a successor.
“One envies the king,” he says. Vimes opens his mouth. “Allow me to finish. Kings—they provide a simple answer. Their power is granted by the gods. Jure divino. Whereas a ruler such as myself has a more difficult task. From whence do I derive my authority? From whence does the Patrician who follows me?”
“No kings,” says Vimes, flatly.
“No kings.” He nods. “Are you going to make a move, commander?”
With a gesture exuding sarcasm in every infinitesimal twitch of muscle Vimes props his chin on his hands and studies the board.
Vetinari says, “A long time ago the man who ruled did so because he was capable of carrying a big stick. Today we have become more civilized and now it is only necessary that the man in power employ somebody else to carry a big stick on his behalf.”
“Detritus is a very capable officer.”
“Certainly I am a tyrant.” He waves his narrow fingers. In an obscure way he has always been pleased with his long thin hands; they show he is the kind of man he has so carefully crafted himself to be. “But I am a tyrant by the grace of the people. They are always free to leave. The city gates are open! And yet they remain.”
Vimes points a troll at Vetinari as if considering whether to bludgeon him with it. “That is a bloody stupid argument,” he says, “as I hope you are aware.”
“If they did not consent to be governed by me, then surely I could not remain in power. As you have often reminded me when it comes to the ability of a handful of watchmen to retain control over an angry crowd.”
“And yet,” says Vimes, “if the idea is that they could get rid of you at any minute”—the troll clicks home—"I have not actually known you to advertise this fact. Sir.”
“Would you stop them?”
Vimes is silent. Not so many years ago the question would have tipped him into a fury. He says, quietly, “You don’t need to ask what I would do.”
After a point all their conversations began to orbit around the possibility of this conversation. With a certain stillness they regard one another from across the board.
“Perhaps not,” says Vetinari.
“What would you do?”
Like the table, the city stretches out between them. It is what allows the two of them to sit down together but it is also the thing that holds them back at a perpetual arms’ length. Through the windows, in the dusk, the sky rises up over the hunch of buildings in a flat blue plane.
For some reason hidden to him he opts for wit rather than honesty.
“Well, commander, you’ve seen my dungeons.”
Vimes is watching him very closely. “You’re not getting out of this that easily,” he says.
After Winder’s death he threw up. Or not exactly. He slipped out of the ballroom and leapt across the rooftops. He sat with Madam in a hidden room not too far from the palace. They discussed what came next. She glided off to conduct Politics. Then he threw up. At the time he was not sure why; he had inhumed men before, among them the thug who tried just nights before to kill the person he then knew as John Keel.
Yet the business with Winder burned something out of him. It was too much. He was too young—though at the time he thought himself exquisitely sophisticated. Not many months later he went rattling away across the plains on the coach that would lead him to Uberwald. Does Vimes know that he fled during that first bloody convulsion of Snapcase’s rule? Of course he has met Margolotta but Vetinari cannot imagine that the specifics came up. It is possible that if Vimes discovered this the commander would never forgive him.
“It used to be,” he says, “that the king would be killed if the crops failed—a sign that the gods had forsaken him. For this reason I have always felt it prudent to maintain a good relationship with various religious authorities. And also to ensure that the people do not go hungry.”
Vimes gives a little huff of frustration. “Fine,” he says. “I can’t make you answer if you don’t want to.”
Vetinari selects a dwarf.
“Still training the rats in the dungeons, are you,” says Vimes nastily.
He reaches across the board to set the dwarf down on the side closest to the commander. Even from here he can smell the cigar smoke that surrounds the man at all times. They have come a long way, he thinks, since Captain Vimes stood in the charred hallways of the palace and bellowed at him to shut up. Or perhaps they have circled back around.
Sometimes he does wonder what the other version of him thought of Vimes before the commander parachuted into history. That person’s thoughts have been erased—a fact that annoys him. He does not like to misplace things, least of all his own memories. Were he a man who asked such questions, he might press Vimes on whether that lost person was more or less cruel to Sam in the beginning.
“I believe we were discussing Captain Carrot.”
Vimes plonks down a troll with tremendous force. His tea sloshes dangerously. “Carrot is happy in the Watch.”
“But there will one day be opportunities for advancement there.”
Vimes runs a finger around the rim of his teacup, then picks up another troll. The commander can never keep still except when he is working. Now he vibrates like a component of one of Leonard’s ominous machines. “Carrot stays a captain,” he says. “That’s what he wants. That’s the right thing. The Watch—the Patrician can’t be looking over his shoulder at the commander of the Watch. Not as a rival. I’m your guard.”
“We both know that’s not quite true, commander.”
“I’m your guard,” says Vimes again. “Under the law. Not against it.”
The commander studies the tiny carving in his hands. In some backwards sense perhaps it is the certainty of this betrayal that allows them to trust one another. Vetinari is grateful for that friendship: before the law, if the city needed it, the commander would give him up. This is the truest promise a tyrant may know.
“Sergeant von Uberwald is due for a promotion soon,” Vimes informs the troll. “She’ll go far if she lets herself. And is—encouraged.”
“It is always a delight to see a talented young person advancing in the ranks.”
“But she makes people uneasy,” Vimes goes on, as if to himself. “Including Lipwig.”
“From a protege of yours, Vimes, I would expect nothing less.”
The commander shakes his head. “Ye gods,” he says again. Probably it is a positive development that the man has not yet taken a moment to stalk outside the office and deliver a healthy punch to the dented plaster. Or flipped over the board.
“Mind you,” says Vimes. “If Lipwig puts a foot wrong, now or ever, then Angua or I will have him arrested him faster than you can say ‘tyrant.’”
“Salus populi suprema lex.” He smiles. “‘The good of the people shall be the supreme law.””
Vimes swallows down his horrible tea. Vetinari has been thinking more often than you might expect about that first time young Havelock saw him. A genius, he thought, looking down at the Watch House. Thick spring dark pressing his young body flush against the rooftop, trigger of the crossbow cocked. That man in the doorway, painted with light.
The man in question sets down the teacup. “So this was why you asked me here,” he says to Vetinari, frowning.
Perhaps it had been the next day when he followed Keel and the young constable through the city as they patrolled. He felt with unaccustomed fervor the need to comprehend this impossible person. At one point he tucked himself into a doorway as they passed by. Keel was on the far side of the alley from him—then he cursed this—but he could feel the weight of that other skinny boy on the humid air. He could have reached out and touched Sam then. He could have whispered in his ear.
For months after the Glorious Revolution he would wake in the tomb before dawn to find himself weighed down by a dreadful and unknown hand. Decades later he discovered that the light, too, could press you up against that ancient terror. It was not always that his body was an accounting of violence. Curve of a figure against him in the night. Thorn of heat pricking at Havelock’s stomach, the scar along his thigh.
“You have a plan for Lipwig,” Vimes says dangerously. “Did you have a plan like that for me?“
But in his reverie he has missed the signs of rage beginning to eddy.
“Don’t sell yourself short, commander.”
“Bought and sold,” says Vimes again. “You bastard.”
To succeed in this job you must be able to think of people as objects to be shuffled about for maximum advantage. Consider, e.g., Drumknott, who makes an excellent clerk in part because he gives every appearance of having no interior life at all. Godlike the Patrician holds in his hands both death and the uncertain blessing of a tyrant’s forgiveness—of which Mr. Lipwig is an unusually effervescent demonstration. This is the foundation of what it means to rule.
Once he might have said that this was not just the foundation but the whole of it. Certainly Margolotta believes this. But you must also understand, he thinks, that much remains hidden within these absurd little creatures as they creep across the earth. (Sometimes he does spy Drumknott observing him with a disquieting intensity.) Even such beasts are capable of surprising and of grace. And despite it all you are one of them also.
“Salus populi suprema lex,” he repeats. And then, unexpectedly, “Sam, that is not what I meant.”
Vimes looks at him with great carefulness. The fury has gone. The night is coming down and their reflections emerge wraithlike from the tall windows.
“You will want to be getting home, commander.”
There is something gentle, almost wary in Vimes’s expression. “I can stay a little longer,” he says. “Sybil’s all right. She sends her love.”
“Do give her my best. And to Young Sam.”
They have worked beside each other a long time now. In some ways it is like a marriage or what Vetinari imagines a marriage must be. You come to know everything about one another; and yet, the more you know, the deeper runs the question of whether it is ever possible to really understand another person.
Feeling unaccountably off-balance he takes refuge in what he knows.
“If it were day, I might ask you to look out those windows and tell me what you see—“
“Nothing,” says Vimes. “It’s dark.”
“—but because it is night we will have to content ourselves with abstractions.” He tilts his hand toward the board. “We play games, I think, to fool ourselves into thinking we understand the world. In this space the rules that guide us are clearly stated. It is an enclosed universe in which we might know ourselves at last. We may revel briefly in our own agency, which is so often beaten down by life. There is a phrase in Uberwaldean—”
”Here we go again,” Vimes says, mostly to himself.
“—die Welt zu lieben. It means—“
Vimes rolls his eyes.
“—to love the world. That is, to care for the shape of things in the way that they are—warts and all, one might say. To not strive overmuch for perfection. As the philosopher asks: Warum ist es so schwer, die Welt zu lieben? ‘Why is it so difficult to love the world?’"
“Thank you for sharing with the class,” says Blackboard Monitor Vimes in a tone of tremendous irony.
He gestures. “Your move.”
Vimes glances down at the board. Over the course of the game, gradually, painstakingly, Vetinari has arranged his dwarves so as to give the advantage to the commander’s remaining trolls. By now Vimes can win in three moves if he is clever. In one if he is clever and, despite his protests, really does know the rules.
They both look up. The commander’s eyes are hard and bright. Then Vimes’s expression cracks sweetly into bafflement. From across the table they smile at each other.
Vimes shakes his head, almost innocently. He laughs and laughs as if he cannot believe it.
“You absolute bastard,” he says. “You bastard.”
Soon Vetinari will straighten the empty cups. In one sugar clings softly to the lip of china. In another the slice of lemon curls like a memento mori. Soon the commander will depart, saluting as he turns from Vetinari ironically but without meanness. Not thundering his fury down the stairs but quietly, reflectively, in the way of a man at ease with the dark.
Vetinari will pinch out the candles one by one; slowly he will breathe in the smoke of the wick and the smell of cigars. A scratchy scent, like rough fabric against skin. He will think of how the commander might walk along those murky streets. Past the black rustle of leaves in the palace garden. Past the Post Office where Mr. Lipwig dreams still of flight. Vimes steps through the doorway. He takes off his armor. He walks to the library where Sybil is waiting. How is Havelock, she might ask, setting down her knitting. What did you talk about?
The commander’s hand gentle on her shoulder. Perhaps his touch on the short crop of curls that she hides under her wigs and which Vetinari has not seen in years. Her hair was dark when the two of them were young.
Everything, Vimes says. You know him.