"What? Er...I had to clean the blackboard after lessons."

The dwarf nodded. The voices grew louder, more intense. Dwarfish was such a good language to be annoyed in.

"Erasing the teachings when they were learned!" said Dee, shouting to be heard.

"Er...yes!"

"A task only given to the trustworthy!"

"Could be, yes!"

Dee folded up the letter and handed it back, glancing briefly at Cheery.

"Well, these seem to be in order," he said. "Would you care for a drink before you go?"

"Sorry? I thought I had to present myself to your king." The swearing from the other side of the door was threatening to burn through the woodwork.

"Oh, that won't be necessary," said Dee. "At the moment he should not be bothered with-"

"-trivial matters?" said Vimes. "I thought it was how the thing ought to be done. I thought dwarfs always did the thing that ought to be done."

"At the moment it...would not be advisable," said Dee, talking very loudly again in an effort to drown out the noise. "I'm sure you understand."

"Let's a.s.sume I'm very stupid," said Vimes.

"I a.s.sure you, Your Excellency, that what I see the king sees, and what I hear the king hears."

"That's certainly true at the moment, isn't it?"

Dee drummed his fingers on his desk.

"Your Excellency, I have spent only long enough in your...city to gain a general insight into your ways, but I might feel you are making fun of me."

"May I speak freely?"

"From what I have heard of you, Your Monitorship, you usually do."

"Have you found the Scone of Stone yet?"

The expression on Dee's face told Vimes that he had scored. And that, almost certainly, the next thing the dwarf said would be another lie.

"What a strange and untruthful thing to say! There is no possibility that the Scone could have been stolen! This has been firmly declared! This is not a lie we wish to hear repeated!"

"You told me I-" Vimes tried. By the sound of it, there was a fight going on behind the door now.

"The Scone will be seen by all at the coronation! This is not a matter for Ankh-Morpork or anyone else! I protest this intrusion into our private affairs!"

"I merely-"

"Nor do we have to show the Scone to any prying troublemaker! It is a sacred trust and well-guarded!"

Vimes kept quiet. Dee was better than Done It Duncan.

"Every person leaving the Scone Cave is carefully watched! The Scone cannot be removed! It is perfectly safe!"

Dee was shouting now.

"Ah, I understand," said Vimes quietly.

"Good!"

"So...you haven't haven't found it yet, then." found it yet, then."

Dee opened his mouth, shut it again, and then slumped back in his seat.

"I think, Your Grace, that you had better-"

The door at the other end of the room rolled back. Another dwarf, cone-shaped in his robes, stamped out, stopped, glared around him, went back to the doorway again to shout some afterthoughts to whomever was beyond, and then made to head out of the room. He was brought up short when he almost walked into Vimes.

The dwarf tilted its head to look up at him. There was no real face there, just the suggestion of the glint of angry eyes between the leather flaps.

"Arnak-Morporak?"

"Yes."

Vimes didn't understand the words that followed, but the nasty tone was unmistakable. The important thing was to keep smiling. That was the diplomatic way.

"Why, thank you," he said. "And may I say it-"

There was a grunt from the dwarf. He'd seen Cheery.

"Ha'ak!" he shouted. he shouted.

Vimes heard a gasp. There were other dwarfs cl.u.s.tered around the doorway. Then he glanced down at Cheery. Her eyes were shut. She was trembling.

"Who is this dwarf?" he said to Dee.

"This is Albrecht Albrechtson," said the Ideas-taster.

"The runner-up?"

"Yes," said Dee hoa.r.s.ely.

"Then can you tell the creature that if he uses that word again in the presence of myself or any of my staff there will be, as we diplomats say, repercussions. Wrap that up in diplomacy and give it to him, will you?"

The corners of Vimes's ears picked up a suggestion that not every dwarf listening was ignorant of the language. A couple of dwarfs were already heading purposefully toward them.

Dee babbled a stream of hysterical Dwarfish just as the other dwarfs caught up with the gaping Albrecht and led him quietly but firmly away, but not before one of them had whispered something to the Ideas-taster.

"The...er...the king wishes to see you," he mumbled.

Vimes looked toward the doorway.

More dwarfs were hurrying through it now. Some of them were dressed in what Vimes thought of as "normal" dwarf clothing, others in the heavy black leathers of the deep-down clans. All of them glared at him as they went past.

Then there was just empty floor, all the way to the door.

"Do you come too?" he said.

"Not unless he asks for me," said Dee. "I wish you luck, Your Monitorship."

Beyond the door...was a room of bookshelves, stretching up, stretching away. Here and there a candle merely changed the density of the darkness. There were lots of them, though, punctuating the distance. Vimes wondered how big big this room must be- this room must be- "In here is a record of every marriage, every birth, every death, every movement of a dwarf from one mine to another, the succession of the king of each mine, every dwarf's progress through k'zakra k'zakra, mining claims, the history of famous axes...and other matters of note," said a voice behind him. "And perhaps most importantly, every decision made under dwarf law for fifteen hundred years is written down in this room, look you."

Vimes turned. A dwarf, short even by dwarf standards, was standing behind him.

He seemed to be expecting a reply.

"Er...every decision?"

"Oh yes."

"Er...were they all good?" said Vimes.

"The important thing is that they were all made," said the king. "Thank you, young...dwarf, you may straighten up."

Cheery was bowing.

"Sorry, should I be doing that?" said Vimes. "You're...not the king, are you?"

"Not yet."

"I...I'm...I'm sorry, I was expecting someone more...er..."

"Do go on."

"...someone more...kingly."

The Low King sighed.

"I meant...I mean, you look just like an ordinary dwarf," said Vimes weakly.

This time the king smiled. He was slightly shorter than average for dwarfs, and dressed in the usual almost-uniform of leather and home-forged chain mail. He looked old, but dwarfs started looking old around the age of five years and were still looking old three hundred years later, and he had that musical cadence to his speech that Vimes a.s.sociated with Llamedos. If he'd asked Vimes to pa.s.s the ketchup in Gimlet's Whole Food Delicatessen, Vimes wouldn't have given him a second look.

"This diplomacy business," said the king, "are you getting the hang of it, do you think?"

"It doesn't come easy, I must admit...er, Your Majesty."

"I believe you have been, up until now, a watchman in Ankh-Morpork?"

"Er, yes."

"And you had a famous ancestor, I believe, who was a regicide? Took an ax, he did, and cut the head off?"

Here it comes, thought Vimes.

"Yes, Stoneface Vimes," he said, as levelly as possible. "I've always thought that word was a bit unfair, though. It was only one king. It wasn't as if it was a hobby. hobby."

"You don't like kings," said the dwarf.

"I don't meet many, sir. Not in Ankh-Morpork," said Vimes, hoping that this would pa.s.s for a diplomatic answer. It seemed to satisfy the king.

"I went to Ankh-Morpork once, when I was a young dwarf," he said, walking toward a long table piled high with scrolls.

"Er...really?"

"Lawn ornament, they called me. And...what was it...ah, yes...shorta.s.s. Some children threw stones at me."

"I'm sorry."

"I expect you will tell me that sort of thing doesn't happen anymore?"

"It doesn't happen as much. But you always get idiots who don't move with the times."

The king gave Vimes a piercing glance.

"Indeed. The times...But now they are always Ankh-Morpork's times, see?"

"I'm sorry?"

"When people say 'we must move with the times' they really mean 'you must do it my way.' That is what I'm tellin' you. And there are some some who would say that Ankh-Morpork is...a kind of vampire. It bites, and what it bites it turns into copies of itself. It sucks, too. It seems all our best go to Ankh-Morpork, where they live in squalor. You leave us dry." who would say that Ankh-Morpork is...a kind of vampire. It bites, and what it bites it turns into copies of itself. It sucks, too. It seems all our best go to Ankh-Morpork, where they live in squalor. You leave us dry."

Vimes was at a loss. It was clear that the little figure now sitting at the long table was a lot brighter than he was, although right now he felt as dim as a penny candle in any case. It was also clear that the king hadn't slept for quite some time. He decided to go for honesty.

"Can't really answer that, sir," he said, adopting a variant on his talking-to-Vetinari approach. "But..."

"Yes?"

"I'd wonder...you know, if I were a king...I'd wonder why people were happier living in squalor in Ankh-Morpork than staying back home...sir."

"Ah. You're telling me how I should think, now?"

"No, sir. Just how I think. But...there's dwarf bars all over Ankh-Morpork, and they've got mining tools wired to the wall, and there's dwarfs in 'em every night quaffing beer and singing sad songs about how they wish they were back in the mountains digging for gold. But if you said to them, fine, the gate's open, off you go and send us a postcard, they'd say 'Oh, well, yeah, I'd love to, but we've just got the new workshop finished...maybe next next year we'll go to Uberwald.'" year we'll go to Uberwald.'"

"They come back to the mountains to die," said the king.

"They live live in Ankh-Morpork." in Ankh-Morpork."

"Why is this, do you think?"