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Vimes’ ears registered Sybil’s cooed words, ‘Look at you now, darling, meeting your godfather for the first time!’, let the shutters crash down, put up the Closed sign and sent the parts of the brain that did the active thinking into the basement for their own safety. Unfortunately, his eyes were still lagging behind as all mental activity tried its best to screech to a halt. Sybil was putting his – their son into the arms of the Patrician. Vimes stared into the corners of the room, willing other potential godfathers to appear from behind the curtains or the crack between two floorboards on which he’d caught his big toe more than once in the dark (and, alright, sometimes in broad daylight), but no one seemed willing to oblige him. And that was what one was a Duke for? Didn’t the shiny title have any perks? He tried to kick his brain into gear again. Had Sybil told him about this? Had she employed devious wiles and methods and inserted the ‘suggestion’ into a litany of details about the most recommended materials for baby socks? If she had pulled that off, gods knew what else she had got him to agree to! Should he prepare himself for a lifetime of wearing his best red tights by contract every Sunday? Was he about to find out they’d engaged Nobby as a permanent babysitter for their son?
‘Congratulations, dear Sybil,’ Vetinari was saying, and was the bastard sounding soft? Vimes frightened his eyes into cooperative submission and fixed them on the man currently holding their three-day-old baby in his arms. With extreme care, he noticed. This was probably how an assassin carried vials of the five most lethal and possibly also explosive poisons known to the Disc. ‘I see he has your nose,’ Vetinari continued, while Young Sam, by all appearances happy to be carried around by tyrants, babbled quietly in his sleep. He flashed Sybil a – warm… smile?
‘He has, hasn’t he?’ she said. ‘That could have been worse.’
Vimes realised he was being grinned at by both his wife and his boss, which was not an experience he would have found himself keen to make, if he had ever stopped to think about it, which he had not because Ankh-Morpork provided more than enough other ways of driving a man mad at the best of times. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That your son has been lucky enough to inherit your mouth instead, Commander,’ Vetinari replied smoothly, and Vimes without thinking leaned forward to inspect his son’s tiny puckered lips again, as though he hadn’t studied every feature of that beautiful, gorgeous face already. ‘You’ve been hoping someone would say that,’ fluted the treacherous little voice at the back of his mind. Vimes kicked it down to the mental basement too.
‘When exactly,’ he asked airily, ‘did we decide His Lordship would be Sam’s godfather, dear? It’s just slipped my mind.’
‘Oh, we didn’t decide as such, dear,’ said his loving wife. ‘Naturally it was always going to be Havelock.’
She had to correctly interpret his look as that of a man flipping through his internal dictionary like a stubborn tornado in search of a hitherto unknown meaning of the word naturally, because she felt compelled to add, ‘You didn’t have anyone else in mind, did you?’
The honest answer was, no, unless you counted ‘literally anyone else except maybe Foul Ole Ron and bloody vampires’, which Sybil probably wouldn’t.
‘If the Commander does not –‘ Vetinari began, but was shushed. Seeing this cheered Vimes up a little.
‘The Commander is being silly,’ his wife declared. ‘Really, dear, Havelock is such an old friend, to say nothing of the amazing advantage it will be to Young Sam to have the ruler of the city himself as his godfather! And Havelock will teach him to play Thud and hold his own in debates, won’t you?’
‘If he comes to me with such a wish, certainly…’ Vetinari’s attention was being absorbed by the tiny hand tugging on his robes. Young Sam still hadn’t opened his eyes, but he seemed so determined to get a good grip that one – well, Vimes - might think he didn’t trust his carrier not to drop him. Clever little lad.
‘Is there a godmother too?’ he asked his wife.
‘Why, no, Sam, who would that be?’
Vimes shrugged. Sybil had a notebook filled with the addresses of women to whom she wrote long letters despite not having seen them since they’d left school together. How was he to know what she put into all those letters?[1] He gave her a kiss on the cheek in the hope that it would absolve him from the obligation to answer.
‘Now, are you wondering whether waking up would be advisable just now?’ Vetinari muttered. It took Vimes’ reeling brain a moment to scribble down and file the confirmation that he was talking to Young Sam. Who had succeeded in getting hold of the tyrant’s forefinger. ‘Oh, he’s a very determined young man,’ Vetinari observed, and there was that damned smile again – why did he know how to make that look so genuine all of a sudden? ‘A Vimes, no doubt. Just what the city needs.’
Vimes Senior’s eyes narrowed, but after years of Oblong Office conversations he normally trusted in his ability to detect irony in the Patrician’s tone.
Yawning so endearingly you had to hold your breath until the event was over, his son pedalled in the air, turned, and buried his face in the black-clad chest, still gripping Vetinari’s finger like an insurance policy promising five hundred dollars in the event of a fall.
Sybil was beaming at the three of them. ‘Well, isn’t this perfectly lovely.’
***
Coming home was different when you were a parent.
Today, it was different in yet another way. In the door to the living room Vimes almost stumbled over his own feet as they braked sharply. He told the surprised curses on the tip of his tongue to back down.
Right there, on the couch with the covering Sybil had made him, or rather his husband autopilot, choose from a selection of patterns that as far as Vimes was concerned had resembled each other more closely than a procession of Igors, was his son. He’d been put into the blue dragon onesie[2]. Young Sam appeared to be fast asleep, despite the fact that what he was fast asleep on was the despotic ruler of a city that never slept, or at least kept getting up at moments when you didn’t want it to. And Vetinari, stretched out and taking up all of the couch, looked as relaxed as Vimes had ever seen him, with Young Sam snuggled up on his chest.
So that was what it had come to. A man couldn’t come home after a ten-hour shift spent in the company of some fine examples of what the Times liked to call Ankh-Morpork’s Public without finding tyrants in his own living room[3].
Vimes had no doubt he’d already been heard, and was just being given some more time to stew. He decided to grab initiative by the scruff of the neck, i.e. to announce his presence so Vetinari would at least have to pretend to wake up, if he was currently pretending to be asleep, which he had to be, unless someone had managed to dose him with arsenic again, which they bloody better had not, in his bloody house. ‘Good evening, Sir.’
Vetinari opened his eyes, slowly. ‘Ah, Vimes.’
‘Sorry to wake you. Sir.’
‘Not at all. I was not, in fact, sleeping.’ He held up his left hand so Vimes could see that his thumb was once more firmly clamped in a fist shorter than the digit in question. Asleep or not, Young Sam always had a grip like a wizard confronted with another wizard and the last drumstick at a banquet. ‘I would sit up, only I’m not currently at liberty to choose my movements with consideration for the social niceties only. I’m sure you understand, Commander.’
Of course I bloody understand, he’s my son, isn’t he?, Vimes didn’t say, as always aware that the bastard could read minds like he himself read Where’s my Cow?. Speaking of which… His eyes darted to the coffee table. The chewed-on literary masterpiece there seemed to feature only dogs (wearing hats and having tea, as dogs do) on its screamingly colourful cover. He relaxed a little.
‘Ah, yes, I did read to him,’ said the Patrician. ‘Not the book, of course, I wouldn’t dream of intruding in such a manner. Some things are, well, sacred, even in this city, aren’t they?’ Without his gaze letting Vimes off, he somehow looked down at Young Sam’s tightly closed chubby fist again. It seemed just possible that the little smile that skated across his lips was entirely free of irony.
‘It’s astonishing, Sir.’
‘Did you apprehend that violent criminal the concerned citizens have dubbed the Bungle Bogeyman?’
‘Yes, he’s being worn down by Detritus now. It’s got Reg up in arms. He says the nickname’s another brazen insult to the undead community and anyway we’re pretty sure the guy is both human and alive. You wouldn’t know where my wife is, would you?’
‘Lady Sybil is taking care of some dragons that are, as she put it, a touch poorly.’ Lord Vetinari paused as both men applied the adjective to creatures whose idea of blooming health was finding themselves one hiccup short of spontaneous redistribution across walls, ceilings, and whatever unfortunate buggers happened to be in the vicinity. Nowadays the main difference between a healthy swamp dragon and the Alchemists’ guild was that the latter exploded less often. ‘I was just about to leave after tea when she asked if I could perhaps find the time to look after Sam Vimes the Younger until the Older returned, which, incidentally, I could. She promised it would under no circumstances be later than six o’clock sharp.’
‘He’s usually wide awake when I get home,’ said Vimes.
‘I’m afraid I might have tired him out. He got very enthusiastic about playing tag.’
Vimes decided that he could not be expected to comment on this. ‘He’s drooled on your waistcoat, Sir.’ That was another disturbing element. Who had given the Patrician the right to take off the black robes and lie around in his shirtsleeves? This probably counted as casual dress for him. Sybil had explained to her husband that ‘casual’ described a sartorial stage in between a uniform and dress armour with plumes, and if nothing else, Vimes preferred the term to ‘civilian’. He hated thinking of non-coppers as ‘civilians’ almost as much as he hated other people calling themselves ‘civilians’ to his face because what were coppers if not civilians with badges and a collection of special bastard senses? Otherwise they might be soldiers.
‘Yes,’ said Vetinari, ‘I know. Don’t trouble yourself, Sir Samuel – strange as it may seem, I do in fact possess more than one set of clothing.’
Vimes had a horrifying vision of Sybil suggesting the Patrician borrow one of his shirts. Just occasionally he felt he had a right to be glad of her temporary absence even if no one was trying to stab him. Before his tongue had wrapped itself around an answer, Young Sam stirred and nearly rolled off Vetinari’s chest. Vimes was already jumping forward when the Patrician’s right hand shot up and held his son’s body safely in place. Young Sam cracked his eyes open. ‘Don’wannagobed… Dad!’ He finally let go of Vetinari’s left thumb and tried to push himself up.
Vimes felt that pastel haze descend comfortingly through (almost) every layer of his mind. ‘Easy now, lad…’ Vetinari only let go of Young Sam when Vimes held him safely in his arms. His son was trying to impart to him a stream of information concerning his afternoon activities, hindered only slightly by the punctuation of yawns and the fact that his vocabulary had only recently toddled past the monosyllabic stage, so that Vimes now proudly reflected that his son could beat your average hero in a debate, at least if said hero had spent the last three hours in the Mended Drum. Admittedly it was the time spent with his godfather that was clearly leaving its marks in the shape of the odd ‘nevertheless’ or ‘indeed’, sticking out of Young Sam’s speech like predatory black flamingos in a picture book about behatted dogs.
‘Dear me, really?’ Vimes said in a loving effort to stem the flood of babble. ‘What do you say – shall we read Where’s My Cow?’
The spark of someone suspecting himself within throwing distance of a breach of rule lit up his son’s eyes (how could they be so big, thought Vimes, like he did every single time). ‘Mummy not here?’
‘No, we can’t read that version. You know mummy would find out, and then your old dad would be in trouble.’ The pricking of the hairs on the back of his neck pulled Vimes’ head around. Vetinari stilled in the doorframe behind them, his robes slung over one shoulder. Vimes hadn’t seen him move at all. He felt his eyes narrow of their own accord.
‘I shall leave you to it, Commander.’ The Patrician tucked a handkerchief[4] back into his trouser pocket. The stain on his waistcoat hadn’t entirely come off. The petty part of Vimes enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing that toddler spit didn’t just slide off his clothes either; he’d harboured a suspicion the entire man had contrived to make himself anything-that-threatens-his-put-together-look-repellent.
Young Sam stretched out both arms. ‘Uncle Hav’lock! Don ‘go!’
His godfather stepped closer and offered him his thumb again, which was instantly snatched. Vimes wondered if he was watching their secret handshake, or the sort of shake you have to make do with when one party’s whole face could be covered twice over by the other party’s hand. ‘Goodnight, Sam. I very much enjoyed our afternoon together. If you like, we might incorporate some elements of the Agatean arts of self-defence into the game of tag next time.’ Then, to Vimes, ‘Please give Lady Sybil my best, Commander.’
‘Sorry, what arts?’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven, Sir Samuel. With a full report of that questionable Bogeyman’s confession, no doubt.’
***
Whenever Vimes, upon returning home, was greeted with the information that his son was spending time with his godfather, he never knew if he had to go looking for them in the Ramkin library, or in the first drawing room with the shelf full of inherited boardgames, or on a roof. [5]
‘Right. And where are they today?’
Sybil didn’t look up from the bucket of dragon medicine she was mixing. ‘In the second drawing room we never use, you know the one, with the carpet we haven’t got round to replacing yet. I didn’t want paint on any of the nicer carpets.’
‘Paint?’ He knew Sybil used to be forced to do an inordinate amount of sketches in Quirm College, but did they teach watercolours at killing-people-school? Vimes strode off, took a moment to remember the way to the second drawing room they never used because who needed two of the bloody things? - strode on, and opened the correct door without knocking (it was still his house, even if it contained a silly number of rooms). He could tell it was the correct door because his son’s laughter had spilled through it and all the way down the corridor, guiding him like a bright warm bubble of light.
Sybil had been right to shift the danger from a good carpet to an ugly one; there was paint in several places that weren’t sketch-pads. Some of it had dried on Young Sam’s face, where Vimes presumed it had even been meant to go. A sizeable portion of the rest was spread evenly over his shirt, arms, and hands. Just as Vimes opened his mouth for some form of greeting, Young Sam, the tip of his tongue poking out in concentration, dragged both palms down the cheeks of the man who was known to him as Uncle Havelock, to Vimes as the most twisty bastard he’d ever arrested and to the rest of Ankh-Morpork as their mostly benevolent tyrant lord. He didn’t even blink. ‘Yes, that’s very good,’ he said, as Young Sam started giggling again. ‘Yet you can still see me, can’t you?’
‘Yes!’
‘But if we do this very, very well, we’ll both be able to vanish.’
‘Yes! Like at the party when you said you got bored!’
‘Indeed.’ Smiling, Vetinari turned his head. ‘Ah, Vimes.’
‘What party was that?’ asked Vimes. ‘Hullo, Sam!’
‘Dad! I’m practising –‘ the little pink tongue poked out again – ‘con-feal-ment!’
‘Dear me, really?’
‘You know how Uncle Havelock is better at not being seen than you?’
So that was what people meant when they claimed that children and fools told the truth[6]. He religiously, or rather atheistically, avoided Vetinari’s gaze, who remained seated with his legs crossed on the tasteless carpet, somehow looking almost as dignified as he did behind his desk and without two wobbly stripes on his face. ‘Even better, you mean? Yes, I guess I know that pretty well.’
‘I’m gonna be just as good!’ his son announced proudly, scrambling to his feet to hug his dad’s legs.
‘I can’t wait to see that.’ Vimes bent down to kiss the soft hair. That explained this week’s increased standing still practice sessions, then. He’d grown quite good at turning around corners and pretending he couldn’t see Young Sam standing rigid as a truncheon with his back against ornamental wallpaper slowly going blue in the face with the effort of melting into it.
‘No, you’re not gonna see me! At all!’
‘Because you’re gonna paint your face – what is that, some sort of dark green?’ He sniffed. The paint seemed to have no smell whatsoever.
Young Sam nodded importantly. ‘Yes, people think black would work better, but it’s dark green that’s best – like tigers.’
Tigers weren’t a subject Vimes would have felt confident explaining but he thought he remembered them seldom being green. ‘Interesting?’
Vetinari uncrossed his legs and deftly wiped the paint from his cheekbones. ‘A little-known technique and in a way the opposite of superstition. Very few people believe in it and yet it’s true.’
‘How often do you vanish from parties you find boring, Sir?’ He wasn’t allowed to do that. Sybil had put her foot down ages ago. And when his wife put her foot down, it stayed put.
‘Not as often as you would like to, I’m sure.’ Neither of Lord Vetinari’s eyebrows went up but Vimes understood that he wasn’t to prod.
Young Sam, however, had found a question he had to ask. ‘Can we go and see a tiger next time?’
Vetinari’s eyebrows stayed down. Vimes had yet to see him use them on his son. ‘I’m afraid Ankh-Morpork doesn’t have any, Sam.’
‘Aawww. Not even in the men… mena… where the hippos live?’
‘The trouble is that we think tigers probably wouldn’t be happy to live there. It isn’t the right place for them.’
Young Sam seemed to turn this over in his mind. ‘Like dad at parties?’
Gods, was he raising a traitor? ‘I thought you’d said your godfather here was the one who vanished from parties.’
‘Mum says she has to keep you from running away every time she an’ you go to one. She told me how she gave Uncle Nobby a dollar to make sure you –‘
Vimes threw himself at his son with a roar. ‘I’m a big green tiger and I’m coming to eat little boys who talk too much!’
Young Sam folded up with laughter but kept kicking at his father’s mercilessly tickling hands until he was thrown up in the air and caught in Vimes’ arms. ‘Uncle Havelock’s gonna teach me self-defence!’
‘Next time,’ said Uncle Havelock in the faintly amused voice that in Vimes’ Vetinari/Normal people dictionary corresponded to boisterous laughter.
***
‘’s not true that they bite off noses, you know,’ Young Sam was telling his dad, ‘but they can rip your arm off without any weapons!’
Vimes looked at his son’s explanatory gestures and then at Vetinari. ‘Twist it out of the glenohumeral joint,’ the Patrician specified.
‘And you don’t think it’s a bit early for you to learn about almost ripping people’s arms off, lad?’ asked Vimes, a man whom the school of the street had taught at the age of seven to memorise the twelve most unsportsmanlike points of attack on the human anatomy.
‘Haven’t learned yet,’ said Young Sam reproachfully.
‘We have progressed as far as defence against an unarmed opponent trying to render one immobile,’ said Vetinari.
‘Uncle Havelock explained me this one move –‘ Young Sam was bouncing up and down – ‘it’s like – you go like this, look dad look, and then you have to try like that –‘
Vimes and Uncle Havelock watched for a minute before Vimes bent forward to plug his son off his left leg. ‘You might have to practice on someone your size at school, but don’t tell your mother I allowed that.’
Young Sam stopped pulling on Vimes’ knee. ‘You can show me on daddy!’
With a moment’s delay, the Commander realised this had been directed at Vetinari. He made his facial expression and body language carry a workload roughly equivalent to that of one of those heroes who spend all eternity rolling boulders ten times their size up the same mountainside to illustrate a philosophical insight, sending in utter silence the message that he, Sam Vimes, who did not feel bad about sharing some handfuls of genes with a man that had taken an axe to a leader who hadn’t known where to stop with the absolute ruling, knew about crossing and not crossing lines. He watched out for those damn lines all the time. His Grace the egalitarian class warrior and anti-authoritarian authority figure might have accepted that he would continue calling the man who was technically his boss Sir and even creatively take his orders into consideration during decision-making processes, but it was important not to forget that ‘anyone can be arrested’ could convincingly be argued to cover ‘anyone can be kneed in the crotch’. In other words, someone with the benefit of an education at the gentleman’s murder college might be a dab hand at martial arts, but someone who had the stuff of the street copper stamped onto a layer of his self far beneath anything to do with genes would always find a tender place to aim a distinctly artless kick at, especially when he had technically just lost the harmless instructive fight.
The message shot across the room in the same amount of time it took Young Sam to pull out his best pout and paste a pleading shimmer over his eyeballs. ‘Please? Pleasepleaseplease?’
‘I think perhaps better not, Sam,’ said Vetinari, looking away from Vimes.
‘But why not?’
‘Do you remember what I told you about journalists?’
Young Sam’s brow creased in an effort of recollection. ‘They think it’s them that should decide what people should know about what’s going on?’
‘Indeed, but also –‘
Young Sam took up his bouncing again. ‘Oh, I know! You never know if one of them is hiding in the shrubbery?’ He ran over to the open window and hung his head outside. ‘I can’t see anyone with a notebook! Only Willikins! Willikins isn’t a journalist.’
‘That we can all concede without trouble,’ said Vetinari, ‘but you’re quite right, the newspapers might get wind of precisely the sort of thing you do not wish them to write about, never mind how many much more important matters ought to be taking up their attention, considering their incessant claims about duty to the public and, rather endearingly, the truth.’
‘He’s saying it might get political, and we don’t want political,’ Vimes told his son, but that one was now shouting something through the window. ‘Willikins! Can you come in, please?’
The butler sailed through the door a minute later. ‘Is my assistance being requested?’ He nodded at the Patrician. ‘My lord.’
‘Young Sam wants you to have a bash at fighting His Lordship, but I want you to know you don’t have to,’ said his employer. He had a feeling he should utter some more definite words, but the little voice that occasionally made a case for a man being allowed to have some fun amidst all the responsibilities was quietly suggesting that Willikins might stand a chance of … well, getting something done.
‘There is no obligation,’ Vetinari agreed, as though telling Drumknott the switch from eleven inch to more modern eleven and a half inch manila envelopes wasn’t mandatory if it hurt his soul. ‘And no weapons,’ Vimes added, remembering that this was a very necessary caveat even if the butler had just nipped down to the tobacconist. He probably didn’t have to issue warnings about biting off noses and ripping arms from their sockets… did he?
Willikins said he would be happy to assist with any demonstrations calculated to teach the lad something useful for any unannounced tests in the school of life. He only begged a moment so as to remove from about his person one or two items that might accidentally slip over his fingers by force of habit and get him disqualified for cheating. Young Sam wrapped his arms around his godfather’s good leg. ‘But you’re not going to hurt Willikins, are you?’ he whispered, eyes like saucers in his upturned face.
The Patrician ran a hand through the fluffy mop of hair. ‘You needn’t worry, Sam. It’s merely pretence.’ He gently pushed Young Sam towards his dad, who swung the boy up onto his shoulders and let him hold his ears in excited suspense.
Willikins and Vetinari exchanged urbane half-smiles that shot from one to the other like single bits of code between clacks towers, and then something happened even faster.
Vimes’ ears were gripped tightly and sent a note of protest. ‘Uuuuuh,’ squealed his son.
Vetinari let go of Willikins’ arms. If Vimes hadn’t been Vimes, he might have thought that the butler looked like a street cat that had just learned about panthers, but since he was Vimes, the comparison his mind supplied was, ‘Godsdamnit, that’s exactly the face Nobby pulled the first time someone else gave him the special kick when he was down!’
‘I trust you’re alright?’ asked the Patrician in the polite voice that made Vimes think longingly of the manacles he’d been ordered to acquire for the Watch during the final act of the Leshp crisis. He had folded his hands behind his back and stepped aside as if a teacher had told him he could go and sit down again. Willikins sucked air, sorted out his limbs and scrambled to his feet. ‘Perfectly alright, Sir.’ Of course Nobby had nothing on him when it came to composure and dignity, that had to be added for fairness’ sake.
‘It went too quick!’ Young Sam was protesting, leaning forward over Vimes’ head until Vimes, feeling he was seconds away from watching his son tumble down literally right in front of his eyes, pulled him down and tucked him under his arm instead. ‘Tough luck,’ he told him. ‘That’s enough for today. And I’m sure your mum would agree.’ Young Sam knew that his mother’s authority differed in some hard-to-define but important respect from his father’s. He still tried the pout again. It was very unfair. All he’d seen had been something like a flash turned inside out and the next moment the two men hadn’t been standing up anymore because Uncle Havelock had been crouching above a very funny-looking Willikins pinned to the floor. Young Sam hadn’t been able to follow the six steps of the move that allowed you to use your opponent’s momentum against them when they were trying to corner you behind the Mended Drum and saying, ‘Yes, of course your daddy is Commander Vimes, and I’m the Queen of Djelibeby. Give me all your money!’ If only his parents had got him one of those really good cameras with several imps painting very fast, but they always found boring excuses not to buy useful things. His friends at school said it was a parents thing, but they were also jealous of his pet dragons and all the interesting people who came to play with him and generally of the opinion that in the grand scheme of things Young Sam led a life no one could whine about.
‘Sam, Havelock, Sam, would you care to tell me what is going on?’ Sybil strode into the room taking off her wheel-sized feathered hat and setting down her no less impressive handbag. Her tone suggested that for now she was amused, the crucial element being the for now part. ‘Oh, Willikins, I hope they haven’t asked you to join them in any of their silly nonsense?’
‘Oh no, Milady. It was all quite free of the nonsensical.’
‘Havelock, did you kick our loyal butler’s feet out from under him like you did to Ronnie Rust after he called me those unpleasant names at the Selachii’s ball in, what was that now, the year of the amorous armadillo? Oh, don’t look like that, of course I know.’
‘I did not, in fact, employ the same technique,’ said Vetinari, whose expression hadn’t changed at all as far as Vimes could see. Maybe he should ask Sybil for Patrician-reading lessons. Right after he’d found a reason to arrest Rust with the help of those manacles. ‘And unpleasant is not the adjective I would have chosen, not when a number of more forceful ones are clamouring for attention, surely?’
‘It was nice of you, but dashed silly, of course. I had it quite under control, you know. The next time my mother dragged me along on a visit to the Rust’s place, I smuggled dear old Goodboy Bumple Eaglenose in with me and put him on Ronnie’s lap and told him all about the most dangerous dragon illnesses. I took great care to impress upon him who else they were dangerous for, apart from the poor dragons. When I hear him say something horrible nowadays I think back to the way he grew greener and paler at the same time when Goodboy licked his face and accidentally took off the horrid little moustache he was trying to grow at the time. Sam, darling! Have you had a lovely afternoon with your uncle, then?’
‘Yes! I’m learning how to kick bad people, mum!’
Sybil’s gaze marched from her husband (innocence angered again) to her childhood friend (suavely unapologetic) to her trusted butler (had just discreetly slipped a useful little item or two back into the pocket of his flawlessly ironed trousers). ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it might be handier than always carrying a dragon around.’
‘I might take one round to Rust’s house tomorrow.’
‘No, Sam, dear, and that means no, thank you.’
***
It was a matter of pride and fear to Vimes that he had a son who could provoke an international incident. Luckily for probably everyone, on that particular day the Lancrestian bigwig – looking a lot like a smallwig to Vimes - had already left along with the clutch of assorted guild leaders when the innocent child unmasked Charlie, so in the short term the worst that happened was Drumknott poking himself in the finger with a fountain pen.
All Vimes had said was, ‘Let’s say goodbye to the Patri- your godfather, then,’ and Young Sam had looked at him as though he were the densest being alive apart from a troll on holiday in Klatch and said, ‘That’s not Uncle Havelock,’ and gone back to making his toy dragons act out an incomprehensible but undoubtedly dramatic scene on Vimes’ knee.
‘I beg your pardon, master Sam,’ the head clerk had ventured after making sure the tip of the pen hadn’t suffered from the encounter with his finger, and that no blood had dripped onto the ledger he was holding, ‘but may I know what prompted you to say – that?’
‘So this is Charlie, then?’ asked Vimes, frowning at the black-robed man he’d been sure was Lord Havelock Vetinari, burr in his boots extraordinaire. But then he had just seen him shut up two squabbling dignitaries just by being silent at them in that uniquely pointed way. ‘You’re not denying it?’
Probably-Charlie-the-grocer-but-perhaps-Vetinari-having-a-private-joke looked at Drum-knott. The clerk gave a resigned shrug. It was like watching a suspect drop the innocent act because it’s been pointed out to them that they’re still holding the club with nails in it that corresponds to the pattern imprinted on the back of the victim’s head. The tall man’s features, though taken one by one exact copies of the Patrician’s, subtly rearranged themselves until the whole picture didn’t fit together in the same way anymore, and the look in his eyes alone was enough to convince anyone who had ever spent two minutes in the same room as Havelock Vetinari that this was not him.
Young Sam looked up at his father. ‘See?’ he said, satisfied, and tried to make one of his toy dragons high-five the other.
‘He lets you negotiate with foreign bigw- envoys?’ Vimes asked. ‘How many times have I been talking to you thinking it was him?’
Aghast, Charlie shook his head.
‘Oh, His Lordship would never delegate that kind of responsibility, Sir,’ Drumknott hastened to put in. ‘And this meeting really wasn’t very important at all.’
‘Ah, I see. Just making them feel like they’ve got a say,’ said Vimes, deciding he could allow himself a little eyeroll at this point but biting back an added ‘the bastard’. Charlie rubbed his chin in an absent-minded and very un-Vetinari-like way as though he’d been itching to do so all through the meeting.
‘That is one way to see it, certainly,’ said Drumknott smoothly, eyeing the drop of blood on his fingertip as though daring it to stay where it was until he could get a bit of sticking plaster. ‘But what I, and I’m sure His Lordship would like to know, is how the young Sir –‘
Vimes ruffled his son’s hair, hoping he was giving a convincing impression of a man who wasn’t equally bursting to learn the trick. ‘Wanna tell us your secret, lad?’
‘He doesn’t know the secret greeting, obviously,’ said Young Sam with an air of smug casualness. Three grown-ups stared at him.
‘I’m… sorry?’ Charlie finally said with the question mark audible at the end. His accent had climbed a couple of rungs down the social ladder; his whole voice had changed.
‘You and… your godfather… have a secret greeting,’ said Vimes.
‘I did it when we came in and he saw it but he didn’t do it back, so I knew.’
‘Really? What did you do?’
Now the filial look he got was indignant. ‘I’m not saying!’ That eyebrow his son raised at him… Vimes was going to impress it upon Sybil that she needed to have words with ‘dear Havelock’ regarding what they wished him to teach their offspring. [7]And Young Sam and his father were going to come up with a secret handshake. Or a secret salute. A codeword. Different codewords!
‘Well, it was very clever of you not to say that while the others were still present,’ said Drumknott in the faint voice of someone gauging the space that separated them from a trouser leg of time in which Young Sam had been slightly less clever.
‘To be sure,’ came a voice from the shadows behind them, and suddenly bloody Vetinari was there, swathed in loose-fitting clothes of an indistinct grey-green colour and looking as amused as he ever allowed himself to look, which was still rather high on the Vimesian scale of punchability. He’d been sure he’d been listening to that voice throwing cutting remarks around for the past half-hour, godsdamnit! And were those two doing the secret greeting thing right now? He couldn’t spot anything suspicious. This was almost as annoying as the time when Young Sam had developed a mercifully temporary interest in learning Genuan.[8] Now he was busy running up to the Patrician and being lifted onto his shoulders with a delighted laugh. ‘I can look down on your head from up here, dad,’ he announced. ‘Mum said you were angry about that spot where your hair –‘
‘Fantastic, lad, just like two days ago when you were riding around on Uncle Detritus,’ said Vimes.
‘Ooh, yes, I can see everything when Uncle Detritus carries me! It’s capital.’ Young Sam drummed his feet on Vetinari’s chest. ‘How long have you been listening, Uncle Havelock? Have you been hiding all the time?’
‘Oh no, I only returned in time to witness your feat of detection. Very nicely done. And I must thank you for not telling the gentleman from Lancre and our own esteemed dignitaries. It would have caused quite the fuss.’
Young Sam nodded importantly. ‘I know that.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘Your Lordship…’
‘Yes, Charlie, you may leave. Thank you for your service today; it is much appreciated. Do give your wife my best.’
Vimes had never seen Vetinari almost stumble over his own feet in his effort not to leave the room at a run. Imagining it was the real one would come in handy on future occasions when he’d no doubt have to continue practising not punching, well, the real one. Capital.
***
‘Vetinari has a birthday?!’
‘How did you think he’d come to live in this world, dear?’
‘I don’t know – willed himself into existence out of spite?’ That got him a Wife Look. ‘Alright, I’m sorry, dear, I just never thought about it. He hasn’t celebrated anything in years, has he?’
‘He isn’t really the type, no,’ said Sybil serenely, clicking her knitting needles. ‘But Young Sam wanted to make a gift for his godfather. I think it’s lovely of him.’
Vimes felt his insides turn to melting toffee. He smiled the perpetually astonished smile of a bred-in-the-bone cynic whose son[9] can trample all over his image of humanity. ‘Of course it’s lovely of him. What is he making?’
Now Sybil seemed to be holding back a laugh. ‘Why don’t you go in and ask him?’
‘I’ll do that.’ Vimes hesitated with his hand on the handle of the door to Young Sam’s room. ‘Er, are we giving Vetinari a birthday present?’
‘These socks aren’t for you, dear.’
Vimes glanced at the knobbly objects. ‘I see. That’s a cheery bright colour you chose there.’
‘It’ll do him good,’ Sybil pronounced. ‘No one will see them when he wears boots anyway, but he’ll know they’re red underneath.’
Vimes knew better than to question this. He gave her a kiss and knocked on their son’s door.
What had he expected? Young Sam designing his own crossword puzzle? Ceramic painting was probably more conventional as gifts went. Once again fatherly pride almost managed to smother the baffled sense of some hard-to-define wrongness. He was sure most nine-year-old boys would have tried to find a shop that sold mugs with a ‘World’s Best Godfather’ lettering. But no, here was Young Sam hard at work with brush and paint and a smudge on his nose. He only interrupted his task to beam at his father. ‘Dad! Look what I’m making!’
‘That’s very thoughtful of you, lad,’ said Vimes, who sometimes remembered in the middle of the night that the local tyrant had a mug that said ‘World’s Best Boss’ on the same desk where he read other people’s clacks messages, or at least papers that looked suspiciously like other people’s clacks messages, since he of course wasn’t a tyrant stupid enough to let people prove stuff like that. The first time Vimes had had to see that mug it had thrown him off-balance for the whole meeting, which was probably precisely the point of the horrible thing. Did Young Sam know what he was aiding and abetting? Vimes sighed. ‘Someone’s very lucky you’re the world’s best godson,’ he said.
‘And you’re the best dad. Ever! I’m lucky, too!’
One of these days his strata of cynicism would be whittled down to something like an onion-skin layer.[10] ‘Oh, really? If that’s true, then only because I have the best son, by far.’
‘If you want to write all of that on mugs,’ the voice of the world's best wife and mother came through the door, ‘we’re going to have to throw some of the old ones from Hogswatch away.’ A brief pause. ‘Well, it’s going to be a handy excuse, at least. I’ve never liked the joke on the one my second cousin gave me, and she knew it.’
Vimes sat down next to his son. ‘Alright, any chance you have a second brush for your old dad?’
[1] The idea that a very good guess would have been ‘detailed descriptions of her husband and his various exploits as well as his hatred of salad’ never occurred to him.
[2] Ostensibly modelled after the breed called Nothingfjord Blue - that was the idea, anyway. Sybil said it wasn’t very true to life, and that the yellow-brown-orange-gods-knew-what-colour onesie did, in her opinion, a far better job of making their son look like a particularly charming Big-Nosed Jolly.
[3] He wouldn’t wish that on anyone, except perhaps Lord Rust and the Lavishes and the Guild of Lawyers and that pedigree-obsessed vampire and anyone in Twurp’s Peerage that wasn’t Sybil and the man who’d told him he was a tool of the oppressor yesterday.
[4] Black but edged in blue. It was a gift from Sybil, who had apparently been pursuing an agenda to manoeuvre some colour into his wardrobe since they’d been young. The handkerchiefs were their best compromise so far, though Sybil had vowed she would cajole, trick or bully ‘the silly man’ into wearing colourful pocket squares before either of them turned sixty.
[5]The latter apparently came under climbing practice that was often combined with lessons in rhetoric and unarmed negotiation, which Young Sam, for some reason, enjoyed greatly. Vimes saw the use of them, but once he had been sent by Sybil to find the two and had discovered half a dozen little nooks and corners of whose existence on his own grounds he had been ignorant before his son’s voice had reached his ears from somewhere at tree level. They’d been lying on their backs on the roof of the carriage house* basking in the sun and playing through a scenario in which Vetinari embodied some overbearing authority figure trying to tell Young Sam he should not be allowed to choose what to do with his life. Hearing the words, ‘An’ even if I wanna go to the Fools’ Guild, I should be allowed to because it’s an ed-ju-ca-tion and that’s valuable an’ anyway I’m a free see-tizen!’ in his son’s sweet voice had all but managed what decades of consumption of the greasy Cuisine of Burnt Crunchy Bits had not and made him pop a vein. Sometimes Young Sam tried to test his newly learned tricks in bedtime or dessert negotiations. Vimes had resolved to have words with the Patrician the day his son would inevitably steeple his fingers at him. The way the lad clambered up drainpipes made him glow with pride, though.
* One of the buildings on the estate most calculated to call forth the unease of gilt by association in Vimes. Not only did the rich have carriages, the carriages had their own houses.
[6] That said, it would take some ironclad proof to convince him about the fools, especially the Ankh-Morpork-produced sort.
[7] The eyebrow was only the tip of the iceberg. A copper who’d just got off a shift with Constable Visit wanted, as a rule, to have dinner with his wife and son, read his son a picture book, or do some fun but instructive jostling on a soft carpet until his wife reminded them it was his son’s bedtime. He did not hanker after being asked to help with a crossword clue or to play murder boardgames like stealth chess or war boardgames like Thud. Outdoing each other with terrible puns was a way to pass a rainy afternoon, though. Young Sam was getting very good*.
*Or admirably creatively bad, depending on one’s point of view. And he’d got hiccups laughing when Vimes had told him about the time he’d arrested two armies for, among other child-friendly things, ‘loitering with intent’ and ‘loitering within tent’. He must have told his godfather about it too because not much later Vimes had received a veiled allusion that passed for an appreciative compliment in Vetinariese.
[8] ‘Because Uncle Havelock used to speak it with his aunt all the time, and when they came here it was like a secret language! Secret languages are cool!’ Vimes had taken this worrying development as a challenge to teach his son some useful bits of Shades street slang, but had been stopped by higher authority before the lessons could get off the ground.
[9] And wife, of course. Someone had once remarked to Vimes that his wife must be a godsend to him, but in Vimes’ considered opinion, the gods wished they could send someone like Sybil. One of the many reasons he worshipped her was that she could have given the gods the telling-off they were always crying out for, the smug useless buggers.
[10] As Sybil was wont to let her friends know, Young Sam was growing up a real force of nature, just like his dad.*
*Not everyone thought this a cause for happiness.