"Wolfgang hit you," said Angua. She wiped his brow.

"What with?" Carrot tried to push himself upwards, winced and fell back.

"What have I always told you about the Marquis of Fantailler?" said Vimes.

"Sorry, sir."

Something bright rose from the distant forests. It vanished, and then a green light expanded into existence. A moment later came the pop of the flare.

"The signallers have got to the tower," said Vimes.

"Can"t this damn thing go any faster?" said Angua.

"I mean, we can contact Ankh-Morpork," said Vimes. After everything, he felt curiously cheered by this. It was as if a special human howl had gone up. He wasn"t floundering around loose now. He was floundering on the end of a very long line. That made all the difference.

It was a small public room over a shop in Bonk and, since it belonged to everybody, it looked as though it didn"t belong to anyone. There was dust in the corners, and the chairs that were currently arranged in a ragged circle had been chosen for their ability to be stacked neatly rather than sat on comfortably.

Lady Margolotta smiled at the assembled vampires. She liked these meetings.

The rest of the group were a pretty mixed bunch, and she wondered what their motives were. But perhaps they at least shared one conviction - that what you were made as wasn"t what you had to be or what you might become...

And the trick was to start small. Suck, but don"t impale. Little steps. And then you found that what you really wanted was power, and there were much politer ways of getting it. And then you realized that power was a bauble. Any thug had power. The true prize was control. Lord Vetinari knew that. When heavy weights were balanced on the scales, the trick was to know where to place your thumb.

And all control started with the self.

She stood up. They watched her with slightly worried yet friendly faces.

"My name, in the short form, is Lady Margolotta Amaya Katerina Assumpta Crassina von Uberwald, and I am a vampire..."

They chorused: "Hello, Lady Margolotta Amaya Katerina Assumpta Crassina von Uberwald!"

"It has been almost four years now," said Lady Margolotta, "and I am still taking vun night at a time. Vun neck would always be vun too many. But... there are compensations..."

There were no guards on the gate of Bonk, but there was a cluster of dwarfs outside the embassy as the sleigh slid to a halt. The wolves in the traces jerked nervously and whined at Angua.

"I"ll have to let them go," she said, getting out. "They"ve only come this far because they"re frightened of me..."

Vimes wasn"t surprised. At the moment, anything would be frightened of Angua.

Even so, a squad of dwarfs was hurrying to the sledge.

It"d take them a few seconds to get a grip on things, Vimes realized. There were uptown guards here, and an Igor, and a werewolf. They"d be puzzled as well as suspicious. That should give him a tiny crack to lever open. And, ashamed as he was to say it, an arrogant bastard always had the edge.

He glared at the lead dwarf. "What is your name?" he demanded.

"You are under - "

"You know the Scone of Stone was stolen?"

"You... what?"

Vimes reached round and pulled a sack out of the sleigh.

"Bring those torches closer!" he shouted, and because he delivered the command in a tone that said there was no doubt that it"d be obeyed, it was obeyed. I"ve got twenty seconds, he thought, and then the magic goes away.

"Now look at this," he said, lifting the thing out of the sack.

Several dwarfs fell to their knees. The murmuring spread out. Another howl, another rumour... In his current state he could see, in his mind"s bloodshot eye, the towers in the night, clicking and clacking, delivering to Genua exactly the message that had been sent from Ankh-Morpork.

"I want to take this to the King," he said in the hushed silence.

"Wewill take it - " the dwarf began, moving forward.

Vimes stepped aside.

"Good evenin", boys," said Detritus, standing up in the sleigh.

The tortured noises the bow"s springs were making under their preternatural stress sounded like some metal animal in extreme pain. The dwarf was a couple of feet away from several dozen arrow points.

"On the other hand," said Vimes, "we could continue talking. You look like a dwarf who likes to talk."

The dwarf nodded.

"First of all, is there any reason why the two wounded men I have here couldn"t be taken inside before they die of their wounds?"

The bow twitched in Detritus"s hands.

The dwarf nodded.

"They can go inside and be treated?" said Vimes.

The dwarf nodded again, still looking into a bundle of arrows bigger than his head.

"Capital. See how we get on when we simply talk? And now I suggest that you arrest me."

"You want me to arrest you?"

"Yes. And Lady Sybil. We place ourselves under your personal jurisdiction."

"That"s right," said Sybil. "I demand to be arrested." She drew herself up and out, righteous indignation radiating like a bonfire, causing the dwarfs to back away from what was clearly an unexploded bosom.

"And since the arrest of its ambassador will certainly cause... difficulties with Ankh-Morpork," Vimes went on, "I strongly suggest you take us directly to the King."

By blessed chance, the distant tower sent up another flare. Green light illuminated the snows for a moment.

"What"s that mean?" said the dwarf captain.

"It means that Ankh-Morpork knows what"s going on," said Vimes, praying that it did. "And I don"t reckon you want to be the dwarf who started the war."

The dwarf spoke to the dwarf beside him. A third dwarf joined them. Vimes couldn"t follow the hurried conversation, but right behind him Cheery whispered: "It"s a bit beyond him. He doesn"t want anything to happen to the Scone."

"Good."

The dwarf turned back to Vimes. "What about the troll?"

"Oh, Detritus will stay in the embassy," said Vimes.

This seemed to lighten the tone of the debate somewhat, but it still appeared to be heavy going.

"What"s happening now?" whispered Vimes.

"There"s no precedent for anything like this," muttered Cheery. "You"re supposed to be an assassin, but you"ve come back to see the King and you"ve got the Scone - "

"No precedent?" said Sybil. "Yes there bloody well is, pardon my Klatchian..." She took a deep breath and began to sing.

"Oh," said Cheery, shocked.

"What?" said Vimes.

The dwarfs were staring at Lady Sybil as she changed up through the gears into full, operatic voice. For an amateur soprano she had an impressive delivery and range, a touch too wobbly for the professional stage but exactly the kind of high coloratura to impress the dwarfs.

Snow slid off roofs. Icicles vibrated. Good grief, thought Vimes, impressed. With a spiky corset and a hat with wings on it she could be ferrying dead warriors off a battlefield...

"It"s Ironhammer"s "Ransom" song," said Cheery. "Every dwarf knows it! Er, it doesn"t translate well, but... "I come now to ransom my love, I bring a gift of great wealth, none but the King can have power over me now, standing in my way is against all the laws of the world, the value of truth is greater than gold"... er, there"s always been some debate about that last line, sir, but it"s generally considered acceptable if it"s a really big truth - "

Vimes looked at the dwarfs. They were fascinated, and one or two of them were mouthing along to the words.

"Is it going to work?" he whispered.

"It"s hard to think of a bigger precedent than this, sir. I mean, it"s the song of songs! The ultimate appeal! It"s built into dwarf law, almost! They can"t refuse. It"d be... not being a dwarf, sir!"

As Vimes watched, one dwarf pulled a fine chain-mail handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose with a wet, jingling noise. Several others were in tears.

When the last note died away there was silence, and then the sudden thunder of axes banging on shields.

"It"s all right!" said Cheery. "They"re clapping!"

Sybil, panting with the effort, turned to her husband. She gleamed in the torchlight. "Do you think that was all right?" she said.

"By the sound of it, you"re an honorary dwarf," said Vimes. He held out his arm. "Shall we go?"

News was going on ahead. Dwarfs were pouring out of the entrance to Downtown when the Duke and Duchess arrived.

There were dwarfs behind them now. They were being swept along. And all the time, hands reached out to touch the Scone as it passed.

Dwarfs crowded into the elevator with them. Down below, the roar of conversation stopped abruptly as Vimes stepped out and raised the Scone above his head. Then the rock echoed and re-echoed to one enormous cheer.

They can"t even see it, thought Vimes. To most of them it"s a tiny white dot. And that was what the plotters had known, wasn"t it? You don"t have to steal something to hold it hostage.

"They are to be arrested!" Dee was hurrying forward, with more guards behind him.

"Again?" said Vimes. He kept the Scone aloft.

"You attempted to kill the King! You escaped from your cell!"

"That"s something about which we could hear more evidence," said Vimes, as calmly as he could. The Scone was heavy. "You can"t keep people in the dark all the time, Dee."

"You shall certainly not see the King!"

"Then I will drop the Scone!"

"Do so! It won"t - "

Vimes heard the gasp of the dwarfs behind him.

,"It won"t what?" he said quietly. "It won"t matter? But this is the Scone!"

One of the dwarfs that had accompanied them from the embassy shouted something, and several others took it up.

"Precedent is on your side," Cheery translated. "They say they can always kill you after you"ve seen the King."

"Well, not exactly what I was hoping, but it"ll have to do." Vimes looked at Dee again. "You said you wanted me to find the thing, didn"t you? And now, how fitting that I return it to its rightful owner..."

"You... the King is... You may give it to me," said Dee, pulling himself up to the height of Vimes"s chest.

"Absolutely not!" snapped Lady Sybil. "When Ironhammer returned the Scone to Bloodaxe, would he have given it to Slogram?"

There was a general chorus of dissent.

"Of course not," said Dee, "Slogram was a trait - "

He stopped.

"I think," said Vimes, "that we had better see the King, don"t you?"

"You can"t demand that!"

Vimes indicated the press of dwarfs behind them. "You"re going to be amazed at how difficult it"s going to be for you, explaining that to them," he said.

It took half an hour to see the King. He had to be roused. He had to dress. Kings don"t hurry.

In the meantime, Vimes and Sybil sat in an anteroom on chairs too small for them, surrounded by dwarfs who weren"t themselves sure if they were a prisoner escort or an honour guard. Other dwarfs were peering around the doorway; Vimes could hear the buzz of excited conversation.

They weren"t wasting much time looking at him. Their gaze always fell on the Scone that he held in his lap. It was clear that most of them hadn"t even seen it before.

You poor little sods, he thought. This is what you all believe in, and before the day"s out you"re going to be told it"s just a bad fake. You"ll see it"s a forgery. And that about wraps it up for your little world, doesn"t it? I set out to solve a crime and I"m going to end up committing a bigger one.

I"m going to be lucky to get out of here alive, aren"t I?

A door was rolled open. A couple of what Vimes thought of as the heavy dwarfs stepped through and gave everyone the official, professional look which said that for your comfort and convenience we have decided not to kill you right at this very moment.

The King entered, rubbing his hands.

"Ah, your excellency," he said, pronouncing the word as a statement of fact rather than a welcome. "I see you have something that belongs to us."

Dee detached himself from the crowd at the door.

"I must make a serious accusation, sire!" he said.

"Really? Bring these people into the law room. Under guard, of course."

He swept away. Vimes looked at Sybil and shrugged. They followed the King, leaving the hubbub of the main cavern behind.

Once again Vimes was in the room with too many shelves and too few candles. The King sat down.

"Is the Scone heavy, your excellency?"

"Yes!"

"It is weighted with history, see? Put it down on the table with extreme care, please. And... Dee?"

"That... thing," said Dee, pointing a finger, "that thing is... a fake, a copy. A forgery! Made in Ankh-Morpork! Part of a plot which, I am sure can be proven, involves milord Vimes! It is not the Scone!"

The King lifted a candle a little closer to the Scone and gave it a critical look from several angles.

"I have seen the Scone many times before," he said at last, "and I would say that this appears to be the true thing and the whole of the thing."

"Sire, I demand - that is, I advise you to demand a closer inspection, sire."

"Really?" said the King mildly. "Well, I am not an expert, see? But we are fortunate, are we not, that Albrecht Albrechtson is here for the coronation? All of dwarfdom knows, I think, that he is the authority on the Scone and its history. Have him summoned. I daresay he is close at hand. I should think just about everyone is on the other side of that door now."

"Indeed, sire." The look of triumph on Dee"s face as he swept past Vimes was almost obscene.

"I think we"re going to need another song to get us out of this one, dear," murmured Vimes.

"I"m afraid I can only remember that one, Sam. The others were mainly about gold."

Dee returned with Albrecht and a following of other senior and somewhat magisterial dwarfs.

"Ah, Albrecht," said the King. "Do you see this on the table? It is claimed that this is not the true thing and the whole of the thing. Your opinion is sought, please." The King nodded at Vimes. "My friend understands Morporkian, your excellency. He just chooses not to pollute the air by speaking it. Just his way, see?"

Albrecht glared at Vimes and then stepped up to the table.

He looked at the Scone from several angles. He moved the candles and leaned down so that he could inspect the crust closely.

He took a knife from his belt, tapped the Scone with it and listened with ferocious care to the note produced. He turned the Scone over. He sniffed at it.

He stood back, his face screwed up in a scowl, and then said, "H gradz?"

The dwarfs muttered among themselves, and then, one by one, nodded.

To Vimes"s horror, Albrecht chipped a tiny piece from the Scone and put it in his mouth.

Plaster, thought Vimes. Fresh plaster from Ankh-Morpork. And Dee will talk his way out of it

Albrecht spat the piece out into his hand and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. While he chewed.

Then he and the King exchanged a long, thoughtful stare.

"P"akga," said Albrecht at last, "a p"akaga-ad...."

Behind the outbreak of murmuring Vimes heard Cheery translate: " "It is the thing, and the whole of - " "

"Yes, yes," said Vimes. And he thought: by gods, we"re good. Ankh-Morpork, I"m proud of you. When we make a forgery it"s better than the real damn thing.

Unless... unless I"ve missed something...

"Thank you, gentlemen," said the King. He waved a hand. The dwarfs filed out, reluctantly, with many backward glances at Vimes.

"Dee? Please fetch my axe from my chamber, will you?" the King said. "Yourself, please. I don"t want anyone else to handle it. Your excellency, you and your lady will remain here. Your... dwarf must leave, however. The guards are to be posted on the door. Dee?"

The Ideas Taster hadn"t moved.

"Dee?"

"Wh... Yes, sire?"

"You do what I tell you!"

"Sire, this man"s ancestor once killed a king!"

"I daresay the family have got it out of their system! Now do as I say!"

The dwarf hurried away, turning to stare at Vimes for a moment as he left the cave.

The King sat back. "Sit down, your monitorship. And your lady, too." He put one elbow on the arm of the chair and cupped his chin on his hand. "And now, Mister Vimes, tell me the truth. Tell me everything. Tell me the truth that is more valuable than small amounts of gold."

"I"m not sure I know it any more," said Vimes.

"Ah. A good start," said the King. "Tell me what you suspect, then."

"Sire, I"d swear that thing is as fake as a tin shilling."

"Oh. Really?"

"The real Scone wasn"t stolen, it was destroyed. I reckon it was smashed and ground up and mixed with the sand in its cave. You see, sire, if people see that something"s gone, and then you turn up with something that looks like it, they"ll think "This must be it, it must be, because it isn"t where we thought it was." People are like that. Something disappears and something very much like it turns up somewhere else and they think it must somehow have got from one place to the other..." Vimes pinched his nose. "I"m sorry, I haven"t had much sleep..."

"You are doing very well for a sleepwalking man."

"The... thief was working with the werewolves, I think. They were behind the "Sons of Agi Hammerthief" business. They were going to blackmail you off the throne. Well, you know that. To keep Uberwald in the dark. If you didn"t. step down there"d be a war, and if you did Albrecht would get the fake Scone."

"What else do you think you know?"

"Well, the fake was made in Ankh-Morpork. We"re good at making things. I think someone had the maker killed, but I can"t find out more until I get back. I will find out."

"You make things very well in your city, then, to fool Albrecht. How do you think that was done?"

"You want the truth, sire?"

"By all means."

"Is it possible that Albrecht was involved? Find out where the money is, my old sergeant used to say."

"Hah. Who was it said, "Where there are policemen, you find crimes"?"

"Er, me, sir, but - "

"Let us find out. Dee should have had time to think. Ah..."

The door opened. The Ideas Taster stepped through, carrying a dwarfish axe. It was a mining axe, with a pick point on one side, in order to go prospecting, and a real axe blade on the other, in case anyone tried to stop you.

"Call the guards in, Dee," said the King. "And his excellency"s young dwarf. These things should be seen, see."

Oh, good grief, thought Vimes, watching Dee"s face as the others shuffled in. There must be a manual. Every copper knows how this goes. You let "em know you know they"ve done something wrong, but you don"t tell "em what it is and you certainly don"t tell "em how much you know, and you keep "em off balance, and you just talk quietly and -

"Place your hands upon the Scone, Dee."

Dee spun around. "Sire?"

"Place your hands upon the Scone. Do as I say. Do it now."

- you keep the threat in view but you never refer to it, oh no. Because there"s nothing you can do to them that their imagination isn"t already doing to themselves. And you keep it up until they break, or in the case of my old dame school, until they feel their boots get damp.

And it doesn"t even leave a mark.

"Tell me about the death of Lorigfinger, the candle captain," said the King, after Dee, with a look of hollow apprehension, had touched the Scone.

The words rushed out. "Oh, as I told you, sire, he - "

"If you do not keep your hands pressed upon the Scone, Dee, I will see to it that they are fixed there. Tell me again."

"I... he... took his own life, sire. Out of shame."

The King picked up his axe and turned it so that the long point faced outwards.

"Tell me again."

Now Vimes could hear Dee"s breathing, short and fast.

"He took his own life, sire!"

The King smiled at Vimes. "There"s an old superstition, your excellency, that since the Scone contains a grain of truth it will glow red hot if a lie is told by anyone touching it. Of course, in these more modern times, I shouldn"t think anyone believes it." He turned to Dee.

"Tell me again," he whispered.

As the axe moved slightly the reflected light of the candles flashed along the blade.

"He took his own life! He did!"

"Oh, yes. You said. Thank you," said the King. "And do you recall, Dee, when Slogram sent false word of Bloodaxe"s death in battle to Ironhammer, causing Ironhammer to take his own life in grief, where was the guilt?"

"It was Slogram"s, sir," said Dee promptly. Vimes suspected the answer had come straight from some rote-remembered teaching.

"Yes."

The King let the word hang in the air for a while, and then went on: "And who gave the order to kill the craftsman in Ankh-Morpork?"

"Sire?" said Dee.

"Who gave the order to kill the craftsman in Ankh-Morpork?" The King"s tone did not change. It was the same comfortable, sing-song voice. He sounded as though he would carry on asking the question for ever.

"I know nothing about - "

"Guards, press his hands firmly against the Scone."

They stepped forward. Each one took an arm.

"Again, Dee. Who gave the order?"

Dee writhed as if his hands were burning. "I... I..."

Vimes could see the skin whiten on the dwarf"s hands as he strained to lift them from the stone.

But it"s a fake. I"d swear he destroyed the real one, so he knows it"s a fake, surely? It"s just a lump of plaster, probably still damp in the middle! Vimes tried to think. The original Scone had been in the cave, hadn"t it? Was it? If it wasn"t, where had it been? The werewolves thought they had a fake, and it certainly hadn"t left his sight since. He tried to think through the fog of fatigue.

He"d half wondered, once, whether the original Scone had been the one in the Dwarf Bread Museum. That would have been the way to keep it safe. No one would try to steal something that everyone knew was a fake. The whole thug was the Fifth Elephant, nothing was what it seemed, it was all a fog.

Which one was real?

"Who gave the order, Dee?" said the King.

"Not me! I said they must take all necessary steps to preserve secrecy!"

"To whom did you say this?"

"I can give you names!"

"Later, you will. I promise you, boyo," said the King. "And the werewolves?"

"The Baroness suggested it! That is true!"

"Uberwald for the werewolves. Ah, yes... "joy through strength". I expect they promised you all sorts of things. You may take your hands off the Scone. I do not wish to distress you further. But why? My predecessors spoke highly of you, you are a dwarf of power and influence... and then you let yourself become a paw of the werewolves. Why?"

"Why should they be allowed to get away with it?" Dee snapped, his voice breaking with the strain.

The King looked across at Vimes. "Oh, I suspect the werewolves will regret that they - " he began.

"Not them! The... ones in Ankh-Morpork! Wearing make-up and dresses and... and abominable things!" Dee pointed a finger at Cheery. "Ha"ak! How can you even look at it! You let her," and Vimes had seldom heard a word sprayed with so much venom, "her flaunt herself, here! And it"s happening everywhere because people have not been firm, not obeyed, have let the old ways slide! Everywhere there are reports. They"re eating away at everything dwarfish with their... their soft clothes and paint and beastly ways. How can you be King and allow this? Everywhere they are doing it and you do nothing! Why should they be allowed to do this?" Now Dee was sobbing. "I can"t!"

Vimes saw that Cheery, to his amazement, was blinking back tears.

"I see," said the King. "Well, I suppose that is an explanation." He nodded to the guards. "Take... her away. Some things must wait a day or two."

Cheery saluted, suddenly. "Permission to go with her, sire?"

"What on earth for, young... young dwarf?"

"I expect she"d like someone to talk to, sire. I know I would."

"Indeed? I see your commander has no objection. Off you go, then."

The King leaned back when the guards had left with their prisoner and the prisoner"s new counsellor.

"Well, your excellency?"

"This is the real Scone?"

"You are not certain?"

"Dee was!"

"Dee... is in a difficult state of mind." The King looked at the ceiling. "I think I will tell you this because, your excellency, I really do not want you going through the rest of your time here asking silly questions. Yes, this is the true Scone."

"But how could - "

"Wait! So was the one that is, yes, ground to dust in the cave by Dee in her... madness," the King went on. "So were the... let me see... five before that. Still untouched by time after fifteen hundred years? What romantics we dwarfs are! Even the very best dwarf bread crumbles after a few hundred."

"Fakes?" said Vimes. "They were all fakes?"

Suddenly the King was holding his mining axe again. "This, milord, is my family"s axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation... but is this not the nine-hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y"know. Pretty good. Will you tell me this is a fake too?" He sat back again.

Vimes remembered the look on Albrecht"s face. "He knew."

"Oh, yes. A number of... more senior dwarfs know. The knowledge runs in families. The first Scone crumbled after three hundred years when the king of the time touched it. My ancestor was a guard who witnessed it, see. He got accelerated promotion, you could say. I"m sure you understand me. After that, we were a little more prepared. We would have been looking for a new one in fifty years or so in any case. I"m glad one was made in the large dwarf city of Ankh-Morpork, and I wouldn"t be at all surprised if it turns out to be an excellent keeper. Look, they"ve even got the currants right, see?"

"But Albrecht could have exposed you!"

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