"In that case," said Nobby firmly, "we"ve got to have a big metal drum to burn old scrap wood in, while we"re pickin" at it."

"Why?" said Reg.

"You got to stand around warmin" your hands over a big drum," said Nobby. "That"s how people know you"re an official picket and not a bunch of bums."

"But we are a bunch of bums, Nobby. People think we are, anyway."

"All right, but let"s be warm ones."

The sun was a finger"s width above the Rim when Vimes"s coach set off from the tower. Igor whipped the horses up. Vimes looked out of the window at the road"s edge, a few feet away and several hundred feet above the river.

"Why so fast?" he shouted.

"Got to be home by thunthet!" Igor shouted. "It"th tradithional."

The big red sun was moving through bars of cloud.

"Oh, let him, dear, if it gives the poor soul pleasure," said Lady Sybil, shutting the window. "Now, Sam, what happened at the tower?"

"I don"t really want to worry you, Sybil."

"Well, now that you"ve got me really worried, you may as well tell me. All right?"

Vimes gave in and explained the little that he knew.

"Someone"s killed them?"

"Possibly."

"The same people that ambushed us back in that gorge?"

"I don"t think so."

"This isn"t turning out to be much of a holiday Sam."

"It"s being unable to do anything that makes me sick," said Vimes. "Back in Ankh-Morpork... well, I"d have leads, contacts, some kind of a map. Everyone here is, well, hiding something, I think. The new king thinks I"m a fool, the werewolves treated me as if I was something the cat dragged in. The only person who"s been halfway civil was a vampire!"

"Not the cat," said Sybil.

"What?" said Vimes, mystified.

"Werewolves hate cats," said Sybil. "I distinctly remember that. Definitely not cat people."

"Hah. No. Dog people. They don"t like words like bath or vet, either. I reckon if you threw a stick at the Baron he"d leap out of his chair to catch it - "

"I suppose I ought to tell you about the carpets," said Sybil, as the coach rocked around a corner.

"What, isn"t he house-trained?"

"I meant the carpets in the embassy. You know I said I"d measure up for them? Well, the measurements aren"t right on the first floor..."

"I don"t want to sound impatient, dear, but is this a carpet moment?"

"Sam?"

"Yes,, dear?"

"Just stop thinking like a husband and start listening like a... a copper, will you?"

Vimes marched into the embassy and summoned Detritus and Cheery. "You two are coming with us to the ball tonight," he said. "It"ll be posh. Have you got anything to wear apart from your uniform, sergeant?"

"No, sir."

"Well, go and see Igor. There"s a good man with a needle if I ever saw one. How about you, Cheery?"

"I do, er, have a gown," said Cheery, looking down shyly.

"You do?"

"Yes, sir."

"Oh. Well. Good. I"m putting the two of you on the embassy staff, too. Cheery, you"re... you"re Military Attache."

"Oh," said Detritus, disappointed.

"And, Detritus, you"re Cultural Attache."

The troll brightened up considerably. "You will not regret dis, sir!"

"I"m sure I won"t," said Vimes. "Right now, I"d like you to come with me."

"Is dis a cultural matter, sir?"

"Broadly. Perhaps."

Vimes led the troll and Sybil up the stairs and into the office, where he stopped in front of a wall.

"This one?" he said.

"Yes," said his wife. "It"s hard to notice until you measure the rooms, but that wall really is rather thick - "

Vimes ran his hands along the panelling, looking for anything that might go "click". Then he stood back.

"Give me your crossbow, sergeant."

"Here we are, sir."

Vimes staggered under its weight but managed to get it pointed at the wall.

"Is this wise, Sam?" said Sybil.

Vimes stood back to take aim, and the floorboard moved under his heel. A panel in the wall swung gently.

"You scared der hell out of it, sir," said Detritus loyally.

Vimes carefully handed the crossbow back and tried to look as though he"d meant things to happen this way.

He"d expected a secret passage. But this was a tiny workroom. There were jars on shelves labelled "New Suet Strata, Area 21", "Grade A Fat, the Big Hole". There were lumps of crumbling rock, with neat cardboard tags attached to them saying things like "Level #3, Shaft 9, Double-Pick Mine".

There was a set of drawers. One of them was full of make-up, including a selection of moustaches.

Wordlessly, Vimes opened one of a stack of notebooks. The first pages had a pencil-drawn streetmap of Bonk, with red lines threading through it.

"Good grief, look at this," he breathed, flicking onwards. "Maps. Drawings. There"s pages of stuff about the assaying of fat deposits. Huh, says here "The new suets, while initially promising, are now suspected of having high levels of BCBs and are likely to be soon exhausted." And here it says "A werewolf putsch is clearly planned in the chaos following the loss of the Scone... K. reports that many of the younger werewolves now follow W., who has changed the nature of the game..." This stuff... this stuff is spying. I wondered how Vetinari always seems to know so much!"

"Did you think it came to him in dreams, dear?"

"But there"s loads of details here... notes about people, lots of figures about dwarf mining production, political rumours... I didn"t know we did this sort of thing!"

"You use spies all the time, dear," said Sybil.

"I do not!"

"Well, what about people like Foul Ole Ron and No Way Jose and Cumbling Michael?"

"That is not spying, that is not spying! That"s just "information received". We couldn"t do the job if we didn"t know what"s happening on the street!"

"Well, perhaps Havelock just thinks in terms of... a bigger street, dear."

"There"s loads more of this muck. Look. Sketches, more bits of ore... What the hell"s this?"

It was oblong, and about the size of a cigarette packet. There was a round glass disc on one face, and a couple of levers on one side.

Vimes pushed one of them. A tiny hatch opened and the smallest head that he"d ever seen that could speak said, "s?"

"I know dat!" said Detritus. "Days a nano-imp! Dey cost over a hundred dollars! Dey"re really small!"

"No one"s bloody fed me for a fortnight!" the imp squeaked.

"It"s an iconograph small enough to fit in a pocket," said Vimes. "Something for a spy... It"s as bad as Inigo"s damn one-shot crossbow. And look..."

Steps led downwards. He took them carefully and swung open the little door at the end.

Wet heat slapped into him.

"Pass me down a candle, will you, dear?" he said. And by its light he looked out into a long dank tunnel. Crusted pipes, leaking steam at every joint, lined the far wall.

"A way in and out where no one will see him, too," he said. "What a dirty world we live in..."

The clouds had covered the sky and the wind was whipping thick snowflakes around the tower when Inigo finished setting up the red mortar on the platform below the big square shutters.

He lit a couple of matches but the wind streamed them out before he could even cup his hands around them.

"Damn. Mhm, mmm."

He slid down the ladder and into the warmth of the tower. It"d be better to spend the night here, he thought, as he rummaged in drawers. The night didn"t hold many terrors for him, but this storm had the feel of another big snow and the mountain roads would soon be treacherous.

Finally an idea struck him, and he opened the door of the stove and pulled out a smouldering log with the tongs.

It burst into flame when he carried it out at the top of the tower, and he directed it into the touch hole at the base of the tube.

The mortar fired with a "phut" that was lost in the wind. The flare itself tumbled invisibly up into the snow and then, a few seconds later, exploded a hundred feet overhead, casting a brief red glare over the forests.

Inigo had just got back into the room when there was a knock at the door, down on the ground.

He paused. There was a window and hatch at this level; the designers of the tower had at least known that it would be a good idea to be able to look down and see who was a-knocking.

There was no one there.

When he"d climbed back into the room the knock came again.

He hadn"t locked the door after Vimes went. A bit late to regret that now, he realized. But Inigo Skimmer had trained in an academy that made the School of Hard Knocks look like a sandpit.

He lit a candle and crept down the ladder in the darkness, shadows fleeing and dancing among the stacks of provisions.

With the candle set down on a box, he pulled the one-shot crossbow from inside his coat and, with an effort, cocked it against the wall. Then he flexed his left arm and felt the palm dagger ease itself into position.

He clicked his heels in a certain way and sensed the tiny blades slide out from the toes.

And Inigo settled down to wait.

Behind him something blew the candle out.

As he turned, and the crossbow"s one bolt whirred into darkness, and the palm dagger scythed at nothing, it occurred to Inigo Skimmer that you could knock on either side of a door.

They really were very clever...

"Mhm, m - "

Cheery twirled, or at least attempted to. It was not a movement that came naturally to dwarfs.

"You look very... nice," said Lady Sybil. "It goes all the way to the ground, too. I don"t think anyone could possibly complain."

Unless they were remotely fashion conscious, she had to admit. The problem was that the... well, she had to think of them as the new dwarf women, hadn"t quite settled on a look.

Lady Sybil herself usually wore ballgowns of a light blue, a colour often chosen by ladies of a certain age and girth to combine the maximum of quiet style with the minimum of visibility. But dwarf girls had heard about sequins. They seemed to have decided in their bones that if they were going to overturn thousands of years of subterranean tradition they weren"t going to go through all that for no damn twinset and pearls.

"And red is good," said Lady Sybil sincerely. "Red is a very nice colour. It"s a nice red dress. Er. And the feathers. Er. The bag to carry your axe, er - "

"Not glittery enough?" said Cheery.

"No! No... if I was going to carry a large axe on my back to a diplomatic function I think I"d want it glittery too. Er. It is such a very large axe, of course," she finished lamely.

"You think perhaps a smaller one might be better? For evening wear?"

"That would be a start, yes."

"Perhaps with a few rubies set in the handle?"

"Yes," said Lady Sybil weakly. "Why not, after all?"

"What about me, ladyship?" Detritus rumbled.

Igor had certainly risen to the occasion, applying to a number of suits found in the embassy wardrobes the same pioneering surgical skills that he used on unfortunate loggers and other people who may have strayed too close to a bandsaw. It had taken him just ninety minutes to construct something around Detritus. It was definitely evening dress. You couldn"t get away with it in daylight. The troll looked like a wall with a bow tie.

"How does it all feel?" said Lady Sybil, playing for safety.

"It are rather tight around der - what"s dis bit called?"

"I really have no idea," said Lady Sybil.

"It makes me lurch a bit," said Detritus. "But I feel very diplomatic."

"Not the crossbow, however," said Lady Sybil.

"She got her axe," said Detritus accusingly.

"Dwarf axes are accepted as a cultural weapon," said Lady Sybil. "I don"t know the etiquette here, but I suppose you could get away with a club." After all, she added to herself, it"s not as though anyone would try to take it off you.

"Der crossbow ain"t cultural?"

"I"m afraid not."

"I could put, like, glitter on it."

"Not enough, I"m afraid - oh, Sam..."

"Yes, dear?" said Vimes, coming down the stairs.

"That"s just your Watch dress uniform! What about your ducal regalia?"

"Can"t find it anywhere," said Vimes innocently. "I think the bag must have fallen off the coach in the pass, dear. But I"ve got a helmet with feathers in it and Igor"s buffed up the breastplate until he could see his face in it, although I"m not sure why." He quailed at her expression. "Duke is a military term, dear. No soldier would ever go to war in tights. Not if he thought he might be taken prisoner."

"I find this highly suspicious, Sam."

"Detritus will back me up on this," said Vimes.

"Days right, sir," the troll rumbled. "You distinctly said to say dat "

"Anyway, we"d better be goi - good grief, is that Cheery?"

"Yes, sir," said Cheery nervously.

Well, thought Vimes, she comes from a family where people go off in strange clothes to face explosions far away from the sun.

"Very nice," he said.

Lamps were lit all along the tunnel to what Vimes had come to think of as Downtown Bonk. Dwarf guards waved the coach through after a mere glance at the Ankh-Morpork crest. The ones around the giant elevator were more uncertain. But Sam Vimes had learned a lot from watching Lady Sybil. She didn"t mean to act like that, but she"d been born to it, into a class that had always behaved this way: you went through the world as if there was no possibility that anyone would stop you or question you, and most of the time that"s exactly what didn"t happen.

There were others in the elevator as it rumbled downwards. Mostly they were diplomats that Vimes didn"t recognize, but there was also, now, in a roped-off corner, a quartet of dwarf musicians playing pleasant yet slightly annoying music that ate its way into Vimes"s head as the interminable descent went on.

When the doors opened he heard Sybil gasp.

"I thought you said it was like a starry night down here, Sam!"

"Er, they"ve certainly turned the wick up..."

Candles by the thousand burned in brackets all around the walls of the huge cavern, but it was the chandeliers that caught the eye. There were scores of them, each at least four storeys high. Vimes, always ready to look for the wires behind the smoke and mirrors, made out the dwarfs working inside the gantries and the baskets of fresh candles being lowered through holes in the ceiling. If the Fifth Elephant wasn"t a myth, at least one whole toe must be being burned tonight.

"Your grace!" Dee was advancing through the crowds.

,Ah, Ideas Taster," said Vimes as the dwarf approached, "do allow me to introduce you to the Duchess of Ankh... Lady Sybil."

"Uh... er... yes... indeed... so delighted to make your acquaintance," Dee murmured, caught off guard by the charm offensive. "But, er..."

Sybil had picked up the code. Vimes loathed the word "Duchess", so if he was using it then he wanted her to out-dutch everyone. She enveloped Dee"s pointy head in delighted Duchessness.

"Mister Dee, Sam has told me so much about you!" she trilled. "I understand you"re quite the right-hand man - "

" - dwarf - " hissed Vimes.

" - dwarf to his majesty! Please, you must tell me how you have achieved such a delightful lighting effect here!"

"Er, lots of candles," Dee muttered, glaring at Vimes.

"I think Dee wishes to discuss some political matters with me, dear," said Vimes smoothly, putting his hand on the dwarf"s shoulder. "If you"ll just take the others down, I"ll join you shortly, I"m sure." And he knew that no power in the world was going to prevent Sybil sweeping on down to the reception. That woman could sweep. Things stayed swept after she"d gone past.

"You brought a troll, you brought a troll!" muttered Dee.

"And he"s an Ankh-Morpork citizen, remember," said Vimes. "Covered by diplomatic immunity and a rather bad suit."

"Even so - "

"There is no "even so"," said Vimes.

"We are at war with the trolls!"

"Well, that"s what diplomacy is all about, isn"t it?" said Vimes. "A way to stop being at war? Anyway, I understand it"s been going on for five hundred years, so obviously no one is trying very hard."

"There will be complaints at the very highest level!"

Vimes sighed. "More?" he said.

"Some are saying Ankh-Morpork is deliberately flaunting its wickedness before the King!"

"The King?" said Vimes pleasantly. "He"s not exactly King yet, is he? Not until the coronation, which involves a certain... object..."

"Yes, but of course that is a mere formality."

Vimes moved closer. "But it isn"t, is it?" he said quietly. "It is the thing and the whole of the thing. Without the magic, there is no king. Just someone like you, unaccountably giving orders."

"Someone called Vimes teaches me about royalty?" said Dee miserably.

"And without the thing, all the bets are off," said Vimes. "There will be a war. Explosions underground."

There was a tinny little sound as he took out his watch and opened it. "My word, it"s midnight," he said.

"Follow me," Dee muttered.

"Am I being taken to see something?" said Vimes.

"No, your excellency. You are being taken to see where something is not."

"Ah. Then I want to bring Corporal Littlebottom."

"That? Absolutely not! That would be a desecration of - "

"No, it wouldn"t," said Vimes. "And the reason is, she won"t come with us because we"re not going, are we? You"re certainly not taking the representative of a potentially hostile power into your confidence and revealing that your house of cards is missing a card on the bottom layer, are you? Of course not. We are not having this conversation. For the next hour or so we"ll be nibbling titbits in this room. I haven"t even just said this, and you didn"t hear me. But Corporal Littlebottom is the best scene-of-crime officer I"ve got, and so I want her to come along with us."

"You"ve made your point, your excellency. Graphically, as always. Fetch her, then."

Vimes found Cheery standing back to back, or at least back to knees, with Detritus. They were surrounded by a ring of the curious. Whenever Detritus raised his hand to sip his drink the nearby dwarfs jumped back hurriedly.

"Where are we going, sir?"

"Nowhere."

"Ah. That sort of place."

"But things are looking up," said Vimes. "Dee has discovered a new pronoun, even if he does spit it."

"Sam!" said Lady Sybil, advancing through the throng, "they"re going to perform Bloodaxe and Ironhammer! Isn"t that wonderful?"

"Er..."

"It"s an opera, sir," Cheery whispered. "Part of the Koboldean Cycle. It"s history. Every dwarf knows it by heart. It"s about how we got laws, and kings... and the Scone, sir."

"I sang the part of Ironhammer when we did it at finishing school," said Lady Sybil. "Not the full five-week version, of course. It"ll be marvellous to see it done here. It"s really one of the great romances of history."

"Romances?" said Vimes. "Like... a love story?"Yes. Of course."

"Bloodaxe and Ironhammer were both... er... weren"t both..." Vimes began.

"They were both dwarfs, sir," said Cheery.

"Ah. Of course." Vimes gave up. All dwarfs were dwarfs. If you tried to understand their world from a human point of view it all went wrong. "Do, er, enjoy it, dear. I"ve got to... The King wants me to... I"ll just be somewhere else for a while. Politics..."

He hurried away, with Cheery trailing behind him.

Dee led the way through dark tunnels. When the opera began it was a whisper far away, like the sea in an ancient shell.

Eventually they stopped at the edge of a canal, its waters lapping at the darkness. A small boat was tethered there, with a waiting guard. Dee urged them into it.

"It is important that you understand what you are seeing, your grace," said Dee.

"Practically nothing," said Vimes. "And I thought I had good night vision."

There was a clink in the gloom, and then a lamp was lit. The guard was punting the boat under an arch and into a small lake. Apart from the tunnel entrance, the walls rose up sheer.

"Are we at the bottom of a well?" said Vimes.

"That is quite a good way of describing it." Dee fished under his seat. He produced a curved metal horn and blew one note which echoed up the rock walls.

After a few seconds another note floated down from the top. There was a clanking, as of heavy, ancient chains.

"This is quite a short lift compared to some up in the mountains," said Dee, as an iron plate ground across the entrance, sealing it. "There"s one half a mile high that will take a string of barges."

Water boiled beside the boat. Vimes saw the walls begin to sink.

"This is the only way to the Scone," said Dee behind him.

Now the boat was rocking in the bubbling water and the walls were blurred.

"Water is diverted into reservoirs up near the peaks. Then it is simply a matter of opening and closing sluices, you see?"

"Yes," mumbled Vimes, experiencing vertigo and seasickness in one tight green package.

The walls slowed. The boat stopped shaking. The water lifted them smoothly over the lip of the well and into a little channel, where there was a dock.

"Any guards below?" Vimes managed, stepping out on to the blessedly solid stone.

"There are usually four," said Dee. "For tonight I... arranged matters. The guards understand. No one is proud of this. I must tell you, I disapprove most strongly of this enterprise."

Vimes looked around the new cave. A couple of dwarfs were standing on a lip of stone that overlooked what was now a placid pool. By the look of it, they were the ones who operated the machinery.

"Shall we proceed?" said the dwarf.

There was a passage leading off the cave, which rapidly narrowed. Vimes had to bend almost double along one length. At one point metal plates clanked under his feet, and he felt them shift slightly. Then he was standing almost upright again, passing under another arch, and there...

Either the dwarfs had cut into a huge geode or they had with great care lined this small cave with quartz crystals until every surface reflected the light of the two small candles that stood on pillars in the middle of the sandy floor. The effect dazzled even Vimes after the darkness of the tunnels.

"Behold," said Dee gloomily, "where the Scone should be."

A round flat stone, midway between the candles and only a few inches high, clearly held nothing.

Behind it water bubbled up in a natural basin and split into two streams that flowed around the stone and disappeared again into another stone funnel.

"All right," said Vimes. "Tell me everything."

"It was reported missing three days ago," said Dee. "Dozy Longfinger found it gone when he went in to replace the candles."

"And his job is..."

"Captain of the Candles."

Ah.

"It"s a very responsible position."

"I"ve seen the chandeliers. And how often does he go in there?"

"He went in there every day."

"Went?"

"He no longer holds the position."

"Because he"s a prime suspect?" said Vimes.

"Because he"s dead."

"And how did that happen?" said Vimes, slowly and deliberately.

"He... took his own life. We"re certain of this because we had to break down the door of his cave. He"d been Captain of the Candles for sixty years. I think he couldn"t bear the thought of suspicion falling on him."

"To me he does sound a likely suspect."

"He did not steal the Scone. We know that much."

"But the robes you people wear could hide practically anything. Was he searched?"

"Certainly not! But... I"ll demonstrate," said Dee. He walked off along the narrow, metalfloored corridor. "Can you see me, your excellency?"

"Yes, of course."

The floor rattled as Dee came back. "Now this time I"ll carry something... Your helmet, if you please? Just for the demonstration."

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