Pratchett Terry David John. Guards! Guards!

   "Sir," corrected Sergeant Colon.
   "My voice is in plain clothes too," said Nobby. "Initiative, that is."
   Vimes walked slowly around the corporal.
   "And your plain clothes do not cause old women to faint and small boys to run after you in the street?" he said.
   Nobby shifted uneasily. He wasn't at home with irony.
   "No, sir, guv," he said. "It's all the go, this style."
   This was broadly true. There was a current fad in Ankh for big, feathered hats, ruffs, slashed doublets with gold frogging, flared pantaloons and boots with ornamental spurs. The trouble was, Vimes reflected, that most of the fashion-conscious had more body to go between these component bits, whereas all that could be said of Corporal Nobbs was that he was in there somewhere.
   It might be advantageous. After all, absolutely no one would ever believe, when they saw him coming down the street, that here was a member of the Watch trying to look inconspicuous.
   It occurred to Vimes that he knew absolutely nothing about Nobbs outside working hours. He couldn't even remember where the man lived. All these years he'd known the man and he'd never realized that, in his secret private life, Corporal Nobbs was a bit of a peacock. A very short peacock, it was true, a peacock that had been hit repeatedly with something heavy, perhaps, but a peacock nonetheless. It just went to show, you never could tell.
   He brought his attention back to the business in hand.
   "I want you two," he said to Nobbs and Colon, "to mingle unobtrusively, or obtrusively in your case, Corporal Nobbs, with people tonight and, er, see if you can detect anything unusual."
   "Unusual like what?" said the sergeant.
   Vimes hesitated. He wasn't exactly sure himself. '' Anything," he said, " pertinent.''
   "Ah." The sergeant nodded wisely. "Pertinent. Right."
   There was an awkward silence.
   "Maybe people have seen weird things," said Captain Vimes. "Or perhaps there have been unexplained fires. Or footprints. You know," he finished, desperately, "signs of dragons."
   "You mean, like, piles of gold what have been slept on," said the sergeant.
   "And virgins being chained to rocks," said Nobbs, knowingly.
   "I can see you're experts," sighed Vimes. "Just do the best you can."
   "This mingling," said Sergeant Colon delicately, "it would involve going into taverns and drinking and similar, would it?"
   "To a certain extent," said Vimes.
   "Ah," said the sergeant, happily.
   "In moderation."
   "Right you are, sir."
   "And at your own expense."
   "Oh."
   "But before you go," said the captain, "do either of you know anyone who might know anything about dragons? Apart from sleeping on gold and the bit with the young women, I mean."
   "Wizards would," volunteered Nobby.
   "Apart from wizards," said Vimes firmly. You couldn't trust wizards. Every guard knew you couldn't trust wizards. They were even worse than civilians.
   Colon thought about it. "There's always Lady Ramkin," he said. "Lives in Scoone Avenue. Breeds swamp dragons. You know, the little buggers people keep as pets?"
   "Oh, her," said Vimes gloomily. "I think I've seen her around. The one with the 'Whinny If You Love Dragons' sticker on the back of her carriage?"
   "That's her. She's mental," said Sergeant Colon.
   "What do you want me to do, sir?" said Carrot.
   "Er. You have the most important job," said Vimes hurriedly. "I want you to stay here and watch the office."
   Carrot's face broadened in a slow, unbelieving grin.
   "You mean I'm left in charge, sir?" he said.
   "In a manner of speaking," said Vimes. "But you're not allowed to arrest anyone, understand?" he added quickly.
   "Not even if they're breaking the law, sir?"
   "Not even then. Just make a note of it."
   "I'll read my book, then," said Carrot. "And polish my helmet.''
   "Good boy," said the captain. It should be safe enough, he thought. No one ever comes in here, not even to report a lost dog. No one ever thinks about the Watch. You'd have to be really out of touch to go to the Watch for help, he thought bitterly.
   ...
   Scoone Avenue was a wide, tree-lined, and incredibly select part of Ankh, high enough above the river to be away from its all-pervading smell. People in Scoone Avenue had old money, which was supposed to be much better than new money, although Captain Vimes had never had enough of either to spot the difference. People in Scoone Avenue had their own personal bodyguards. People in Scoone Avenue were said to be so aloof they wouldn't even talk to the gods. This was a slight slander. They would talk to gods, if they were well-bred gods of decent family.
   Lady Ramkin's house was not hard to find. It commanded an outcrop that gave it a magnificent view of the city, if that was your idea of a good time. There were stone dragons on the gatepost, and the gardens had an unkempt overgrown look. Statues of Ramkins long gone loomed up out of the greenery. Most of them had swords and were covered in ivy up to the neck.
   Vimes sensed that this was not because the garden's owner was too poor to do anything about it, but rather that the garden's owner thought there were much more important things than ancestors, which was a pretty unusual point of view for an aristocrat.
   They also apparently thought that there were more important things than property repair. When he rang the bell of the rather pleasant old house itself, in the middle of a flourishing rhododendron forest, several bits of the plaster facade fell off.
   That seemed to be the only effect, except that something round the back of the house started to howl. Some things.
   It started to rain again. After a while Vimes felt the dignity of his position and cautiously edged around the building, keeping well back in case anything else collapsed.
   He reached a heavy wooden gate in a heavy wooden wall. In contrast with the general decrepitude of the rest of the place, it seemed comparatively new and very solid.
   He knocked. This caused another fusillade of strange whistling noises.
   The door opened. Something dreadful loomed over him.
   "Ah, good man. Do you know anything about mating?" it boomed.
   ...
   It was quiet and warm in the Watch House. Carrot listened to the hissing of sand in the hourglass and concentrated on buffing up his breastplate. Centuries of tarnish had given up under his cheerful onslaught. It gleamed.
   You knew where you were with a shiny breastplate. The strangeness of the city, where they had all these laws and concentrated on ignoring them, was too much for him. But a shiny breastplate was a breastplate well shined.
   The door opened. He peered across the top of the ancient desk. There was no one there.
   He tried a few more industrious rubs.
   There was the vague sound of someone who had got fed up with waiting. Two purple-fingernailed hands grasped the edge of the desk, and the Librarian's face rose slowly into view like an early-morning coconut.
   "Oook," he said.
   Carrot stared. It had been explained to him carefully that, contrary to appearances, laws governing the animal kingdom did not apply to the Librarian. On the other hand, the Librarian himself was never very interested in obeying the laws governing the human kingdom, either. He was one of those little anomalies you have to build around.
   "Hallo," said Carrot uncertainly. ("Don't call him 'boy' or pat him, that always gets him annoyed.")
   "Oook."
   The Librarian prodded the desk with a long, many-jointed finger.
   "What?"
   "Oook. "
   "Sorry?"
   The Librarian rolled his eyes. It was strange, he felt, that so-called intelligent dogs, horses and dolphins never had any difficulty indicating to humans the vital news of the moment, e.g., that the three children were lost in the cave, or the train was about to take the line leading to the bridge that had been washed away or similar, while he, only a handful of chromosomes away from wearing a vest, found it difficult to persuade the average human to come in out of the rain. You just couldn't talk to some people.
   "Oook!" he said, and beckoned.
   "I can't leave the office," said Carrot. "I've had Orders."
   The Librarian's upper lip rolled back like a blind.
   "Is that a smile?" said Carrot. The Librarian shook his head.
   "Someone hasn't committed a crime, have they?" said Carrot.
   "Oook."
   "A bad crime?"
   "Oook!"
   "Like murder?"
   "Eeek."
   "Worse than murder?"
   "Eeek!" The Librarian knuckled over to the door and bounced up and down urgently.
   Carrot gulped. Orders were orders, yes, but this was something else. The people in this city were capable of anything.
   He buckled on his breastplate, screwed his sparkling helmet on to his head, and strode towards the door.
   Then he remembered his responsibilities. He went back to the desk, found a scrap of paper, and painstakingly wrote: Out Fighting Crime, Pleass Call Again Later. Thankyou.
   And then he went out on to the streets, untarnished and unafraid.
   ...
   The Supreme Grand Master raised his arms. "Brethren," he said, "let us begin ..." It was so easy. All you had to do was channel that great septic reservoir of jealousy and cringing resentment that the Brothers had in such abundance, harness their dreadful mundane unpleasantness which had a force greater in its way than roaring evil, and then open your own mind . . .
   . . . into the place where the dragons went.
   ...
   Vimes found himself grabbed by the arm and pulled inside. The heavy door shut behind him with a definite click.
   "It's Lord Mountjoy Gayscale Talonthrust III of Ankh," said the apparition, which was dressed in huge and fearsomely-padded armour. "You know, I really don't think he can cut the mustard."
   "He can't?" said Vimes, backing away.
   "It really needs two of you."
   "It does, doesn't it," whispered Vimes, his shoulder blades trying to carve their way out through the fence.
   "Could you oblige?" boomed the thing.
   "What?"
   "Oh, don't be squeamish, man. You just have to help him up into the air. It's me who has the tricky part. I know it's cruel, but if he can't manage it tonight then he's for the choppy-chop. Survival of the fittest and all that, don't you know."
   Captain Vimes managed to get a grip on himself. He was clearly in the presence of some sex-crazed would-be murderess, insofar as any gender could be determined under the strange lumpy garments. If it wasn't female, then references to "it's me who has the tricky part" gave rise to mental images that would haunt him for some time to come. He knew the rich did things differently, but this was going too far.
   "Madam," he said coldly, "I am an officer of the Watch and I must warn you that the course of action you are suggesting breaks the laws of the city," and also of several of the more strait-laced gods, he added silently, "and I must advise you that his Lordship should be released unharmed immediately…"
   The figure stared at him in astonishment.
   "Why?" it said. "It's my bloody dragon."
   ...
   "Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?" said Sergeant Colon unsteadily.
   "I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt Colon," said Nobby.
   They were taking inconspicuosity seriously. That ruled out most of the taverns on the Morpork side of the river, where they were very well known. Now they were in a rather elegant one in downtown Ankh, where they were being as unobtrusive as they knew how. The other drinkers thought they were some kind of cabaret.
   "I was thinking," said Sgt Colon.
   "What?"
   "If we bought a bottle or two, we could go home and then we'd be really inconspicuous."
   Nobby gave this some thought.
   "But he said we’ve got to keep our ears open," he said. "We're supposed to, what he said, detect anything."
   "We can do that at my house," said Sgt Colon. "We could listen all night, really hard."
   "Tha's a good point," said Nobby. In fact, it sounded better and better the more he thought about it.
   "But first," he announced, "I got to pay a visit."
   "Me too," said the sergeant. "This detecting business gets to you after a while, doesn't it."
   They stumbled out into the alley behind the tavern. There was a full moon up, but a few rags of scruffy cloud were drifting across it. The pair inconspicuously bumped into one another in the darkness.
   "Is that you, Detector Sergeant Colon?" said Nobby.
   "Tha's right! Now, can you detect the door to the privy, Detector Corporal Nobbs? We're looking for a short, dark door of mean appearance, ahahaha."
   There were a couple of clanks and a muffled swearword from Nobby as he staggered across the alley, followed by a yowl when one of Ankh-Morpork's enormous population of feral cats fled between his legs.
   "Who loves you, pussycat?" said Nobby under his breath.
   "Needs must, then," said Sgt Colon, and faced a handy corner.
   His private musings were interrupted by a grunt from the corporal.
   "You there, Sgt?"
   "Detector Sergeant to you, Nobby," said Sgt Colon pleasantly.
   Nobby's tone was urgent and suddenly very sober. "Don't piss about, Sergeant, I just saw a dragon fly over!"
   "I've seen a horsefly," said Sgt Colon, hiccuping gently. "And I've seen a housefly. I've even seen a greenfly. But I ain't never seen a dragon fly."
   "Of course you have, you pillock," said Nobby urgently. "Look, I'm not messing about! He had wings on him like, like, like great big wings!"
   Sergeant Colon turned majestically. The corporal's face had gone so white that it showed up in the darkness.
   "Honest, Sergeant!"
   Sgt Colon turned his eyes to the damp sky and the rain-washed moon.
   "All right," he said, "show me."
   There was a slithering noise behind him, and a couple of roof tiles smashed on to the street.
   He turned. And there, on the roof, was the dragon.
   "There's a dragon on the roof!" he warbled. "Nobby, it's a dragon on the roof! What shall I do, Nobby? There's a dragon on the roof! It's looking right at me, Nobby!"
   "For a start, you could do your trousers up," said Nobby, from behind the nearest wall.
   ...
   Even shorn of her layers of protective clothing, Lady Sybil Ramkin was still toweringly big. Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armour-bra'd, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while singing in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion. When she spoke, every word was like a hearty slap on the back and clanged with the aristocratic self-assurance of the totally well-bred. The vowel sounds alone would have cut teak.
   Vimes's ragged forebears were used to voices like that, usually from heavily-armoured people on the back of a war charger telling them why it would be a jolly good idea, don't-cher-know, to charge the enemy and hit them for six. His legs wanted to stand to attention.
   Prehistoric men would have worshipped her, and in fact had amazingly managed to carve lifelike statues of her thousands of years ago. She had a mass of chestnut hair; a wig, Vimes learned later. No one who had much to do with dragons kept their own hair for long.
   She also had a dragon on her shoulder. It had been introduced as Talonthrust Vincent Wonderkind of Quirm, referred to as Vinny, and seemed to be making a large contribution to the unusual chemical smell that pervaded the house. This smell permeated everything. Even the generous slice of cake she offered him tasted of it.
   "The, er, shoulder ... it looks . . . very nice," he said, desperate to make conversation.
   "Rubbish," said her ladyship. "I'm just training him up because shoulder-sitters fetch twice the price."
   Vimes murmured that he had occasionally seen society ladies with small, colourful dragons on their shoulders, and thought it looked very, er, nice.
   "Oh, it sounds nice," she said. "I'll grant you. Then they realize it means soot-burns, frizzled hair and crap all down their back. Those talons dig in, too. And then they think the thing's getting too big and smelly and next thing you know it's either down to the Morpork Sunshine Sanctuary for Lost Dragons or the old heave-ho into the river with a rope round your neck, poor little buggers." She sat down, arranging a skirt that could have made sails for a small fleet. "Now then. Captain Vimes, what was it?"
   Vimes was at a loss. Ramkins long-dead stared down at him from ornate frames high on the shadowy walls. Between, around and under the portraits were the weapons they'd presumably used, and had used well and often by the look of them. Suits of armour stood in dented ranks along the walls. Quite a number, he couldn't help noticing, had large holes in them. The ceiling was a faded riot of moth-eaten banners. You did not need forensic examination to understand that Lady Ramkin's ancestors had never shirked a fight.
   It was amazing that she was capable of doing something so unwarlike as having a cup of tea.
   "My forebears," she said, following his hypnotised gaze. "You know, not one Ramkin in the last thousand years has died in his bed."
   "Yes, ma'am?"
   "Source of family pride, that."
   "Yes, ma'am."
   "Quite a few of them have died in other people's, of course."
   Captain Vimes's teacup rattled in its saucer. "Yes, ma'am," he said.
   "Captain is such a dashing title, I've always thought." She gave him a bright, brittle smile. "I mean, colonels and so on are always so stuffy, majors are pompous, but one always feels somehow that there is something delightfully dangerous about a captain. What was it you had to show me?"
   Vimes gripped his parcel like a chastity belt.
   "I wondered," he faltered, "how big swamp . . . er . . ." He stopped. Something dreadful was happening to his lower regions.
   Lady Ramkin followed his gaze. "Oh, take no notice of bun," she said cheerfully. "Hit him with a cushion if he's a bother."
   A small elderly dragon had crawled out from under his chair and placed its jowly muzzle in Vimes's lap. It stared up at him soulfully with big brown eyes and gently dribbled something quite corrosive, by the feel of it, over his knees. And it stank like the ring around an acid bath.
   "That's Dewdrop Mabelline Talonthrust the First," said her ladyship. "Champion and sire of champions. No fire left now, poor soppy old thing. He likes his belly rubbed."
   Vimes made surreptitiously vicious jerking motions to dislodge the old dragon. It blinked mournfully at him with rheumy eyes and rolled back the corner of its mouth, exposing a picket fence of soot-blackened teeth.
   "Just push him off if he's a nuisance," said Lady Ramkin cheerfully. "Now then, what was it you were asking?"
   ' 'I was wondering how big swamp dragons grow?'' said Vimes, trying to shift position. There was a faint growling noise.
   "You came all the way up here to ask me that? Well ... I seem to recall Gayheart Talonthrust of Ankh stood fourteen thumbs high, toe to mattock," mused Lady Ramkin.
   "Er . . ."
   "About three foot six inches," she added kindly.
   "No bigger than that?" said Vimes hopefully. In his lap the old dragon began to snore gently.
   "Golly, no. He was a bit of a freak, actually. Mostly they don't get much bigger than eight thumbs."
   Captain Vimes's lips moved in hurried calculation. "Two feet?" he ventured.
   "Well done. That's the cobbs, of course. The hens are a bit smaller."
   Captain Vimes wasn't going to give in. "A cobb would be a male dragon?" he said.
   "Only after the age of two years," said Lady Ramkin triumphantly. "Up to the age of eight months he's a pewmet, then he's a cock until fourteen months, and then he's a snood-"
   Captain Vimes sat entranced, eating the horrible cake, britches gradually dissolving, as the stream of information flooded over him; how the males fought with flame but in the laying season only the hens breathed fire, from the combustion of complex intestinal gases, to incubate the eggs which needed such a fierce temperature, while the males gathered firewood; a group of swamp dragons was a slump or an embarrassment; a female was capable of laying up to three clutches of four eggs every year, most of which were trodden on by absent-minded males; and that only until their third clutch, of course. After that they're dams.
   An that dragons of both sexes were vaguely uninterested in one another, and indeed everything except firewood, except for about once every two months when they became as single-minded as a buzzsaw.
   He was helpless to prevent himself being taken out to the kennels at the back, outfitted from neck to ankle in leather armour faced with steel plates, and ushered into the long low building where the whistling had come from.
   The temperature was terrible, but not as bad as the cocktail of smells. He staggered aimlessly from one metal-lined pen to another, while pear-shaped, squeaking little horrors with red eyes were introduced as "Moonpenny Duchess Marchpaine, who's gravid at the moment" and "Moonmist Talonthrust II, who was Best of Breed at Pseudopolis last year". Jets of pale green flame played across his knees.
   Many of the stalls had rosettes and certificates pinned over them.
   "And this one, I'm afraid, is Goodboy Bindle Featherstone of Quirm," said Lady Ramkin relentlessly.
   Vimes stared groggily over the charred barrier at the small creature curled up in the middle of the floor. It bore about the same resemblance to the rest of them as Nobby did to the average human being. Something in its ancestry had given it a pair of eyebrows that were about the same size as its stubby wings, which could never have supported it in the air. Its head was the wrong shape, like an anteater. It had nostrils like jet intakes. If it ever managed to get airborne the things would have the drag of twin parachutes.
   It was also turning on Captain Vimes the most silently intelligent look he'd ever had from any animal, including Corporal Nobbs.
   "It happens," said Lady Ramkin sadly. "It's all down to genes, you know."
   "It is?" said Vimes. Somehow, the creature seemed to be concentrating all the power its siblings wasted in flame and noise into a stare like a thermic lance. He couldn't help remembering how much he'd wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they'd been starving — anything with meat on it would have done.
   He heard the dragon lady say, "One tries to breed for a good flame, depth of scale, correct colour and so on. One just has to put up with the occasional total whittle."
   The little dragon turned on Vimes a gaze that would be guaranteed to win it the award for Dragon the Judges would Most Like to Take Home and Use as A Portable Gas Lighter.
   Total whittle, Vimes thought. He wasn't sure of the precise meaning of the word, but he could hazard a shrewd guess. It sounded like whatever it was you had left when you had extracted everything of any value whatsoever. Like the Watch, he thought. Total whittles, every one of them. And just like him. It was the saga of his life.
   "That's Nature for you," said her ladyship. "Of course I wouldn't dream of breeding from him, but he wouldn't be able to anyway.''
   "Why not?" said Vimes.
   "Because dragons have to mate in the air and he'll never be able to fly with those wings, I'm afraid. I'll be sorry to lose the bloodline, naturally. His sire was Brenda Rodley's Treebite Brightscale. Do you know Brenda?"
   "Er, no," said Vimes. Lady Ramkin was one of those people who assumed that everyone else knew everyone one knew.
   "Charming gel. Anyway, his brothers and sisters are shaping up very well."
   Poor little bastard, thought Vimes. That's Nature for you in a nutshell. Always dealing off the bottom of the pack.
   No wonder they call her a mother . . .
   "You said you had something to show me," Lady Ramkin prompted.
   Vimes wordlessly handed her the parcel. She slipped off her heavy mittens and unwrapped it.
   "Plaster cast of a footprint," she said, baldly. "Well?"
   "Does it remind you of anything?" said Vimes.
   "Could be a wading bird."
   "Oh." Vimes was crestfallen.
   Lady Ramkin laughed. "Or a really big dragon. Got it out of a museum, did you?"
   "No. I got it off the street this morning."
   "Ha? Someone's been playing tricks on you, old chap."
   "Er. There was, er, circumstantial evidence."
   He told her. She stared at him.
   "Draco nobilis," she said hoarsely.
   "Pardon?" said Vimes.
   "Draco nobilis. The Noble dragon. As opposed to these fellows…" she waved a hand in the direction of the massed ranks of whistling lizards…"Draco vul-garis, the lot of them. But the big ones are all gone, you know. This really is a nonsense. No two ways about it. All gone. Beautiful things, they were. Weighed tons. Biggest things ever to fly. No one knows how they did it."
   And then they realized.
   It was suddenly very quiet.
   All along the rows of kennels, the dragons were silent, bright-eyed and watchful. They were staring at the roof.
   ...
   Carrot looked around him. Shelves stretched away in every direction. On those shelves, books. He made a calculated guess.
   "This is the Library, isn't it?" he said.
   The Librarian maintained his gentle but firm grip on the boy's hand and led him along the maze of aisles.
   "Is there a body?" said Carrot. There'd have to be. Worse than murder! A body in a library. It could lead to anything.
   The ape eventually padded to a halt in front of a shelf no different than, it seemed, a hundred others. Some of the books were chained up. There was a gap. The Librarian pointed to it.
   "Oook."
   "Well, what about it? A hole where a book should be."
   "Oook."
   "A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"
   The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide?"
   "This is practically a criminal offence, wasting Watch time," said Carrot. "Why don't you just tell the head wizards, or whoever they are?"
   "Oook." The Librarian indicated with some surprisingly economical gestures that most wizards would not find their own bottoms with both hands.
   "Well, I don't see what we can do about it," said Carrot. "What's the book called?"
   The Librarian scratched his head. This one was going to be tricky. He faced Carrot, put his leather-glove hands together, then folded them open.
   "I know it's a book. What's its name?"
   The Librarian sighed, and held up a hand.
   "Four words?" said Carrot. "First word." The ape pinched two wrinkled fingers together. "Small word? A. The. Fo-"
   "Oook!"
   "The? The. Second word . . . third word? Small word. The? A? To? Of? Fro-Of? Of. The something Of something. Second word. What? Oh. First syllable. Fingers? Touching your fingers. Thumbs."
   The orangutan growled and tugged theatrically at one large hairy ear.
   "Oh, sounds like. Fingers? Hand? Adding up. Sums. Cut off. Smaller word . . . Sum. Sum! Second syllable. Small. Very small syllable. A. In. Un. On. On! Sum. On. Sum On. Summon! Summon-er? Summoning? Summoning. Summoning. The Summoning of Something. This is fun, isn't it! Fourth word. Whole word-"
   He peered intently as the Librarian gyrated mysteriously.
   "Big thing. Huge big thing. Flapping. Great big flapping leaping thing. Teeth. Huffing. Blowing. Great big huge blowing flapping thing." Sweat broke out on Carrot's forehead as he tried obediently to understand. "Sucking fingers. Sucking fingers thing. Burnt. Hot. Great big hot blowing flapping thing ..."
   The Librarian rolled his eyes. Homo sapiens? You could keep it.
 
   The great dragon danced and spun and trod the air over the city. Its colour was moonlight, gleaming off its scales. Sometimes it would twist and glide with deceptive speed over the rooftops for the sheer joy of existing.
   And it was all wrong, Vimes thought. Part of him was marvelling at the sheer beauty of the sight, but an insistent, weaselly little group of brain cells from the wrong side of the synapses was scrawling its graffiti on the walls of wonderment.
   It's a bloody great lizard, they jeered. Must weigh tons. Nothing that big can fly, not even on beautiful wings. And what is a flying lizard doing with great big scales on its back?
   Five hundred feet above him a lance of blue-white flame roared into the sky.
   It can't do something like that! It'd burn its own lips off!
   Beside him Lady Ramkin stood with her mouth open. Behind her, the little caged dragons yammered and howled.
   The great beast turned in the air and swooped over the rooftops. The flame darted out again. Below it, yellow flames sprang up. It was done so quietly and stylishly that it took Vimes several seconds to realise that several buildings had in fact been set on fire.
   "Golly!" said Lady Ramkin. "Look! It's using the thermals! That's what the fire is for!" She turned to Vimes, her eyes hopelessly aglow. "Do you realise we're very probably seeing something that no one has seen for centuries?''
   "Yes, it's a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!" shouted Vimes.
   She wasn't listening to him. "There must be a breeding colony somewhere," she said. "After all this time! Where do you think it lives?"
   Vimes didn't know. But he swore to himself that he would find out, and ask it some very serious questions.
   "One egg," breathed the breeder. "Just let me get my hands on one egg ..."
   Vimes stared at her in genuine astonishment. It dawned on him that he was very probably a flawed character.
   Below them, another building exploded into flame.
   "How far exactly," he said, speaking very slowly and carefully, as to a child, "did these things fly?"
   "They're very territorial animals," murmured her ladyship. "According to legend, they…"
   Vimes realized he was in for another dose of dragon lore. "Just give me the facts, m'lady," he said impatiently.
   "Not very far, really," she said, slightly taken aback.
   "Thank you very much, ma'am, you've been very helpful," muttered Vimes, and broke into a run.
   Somewhere in the city. There was nothing outside for miles except low fields and swamp. It had to be living somewhere in the city.
   His sandals flapped on the cobbles as he hurtled down the streets. Somewhere in the city! Which was totally ridiculous, of course. Totally ridiculous and impossible.
   He didn't deserve this. Of all the cities in all the world it could have flown into, he thought, it's flown into mine . . .
   ...
   By the time he reached the river the dragon had vanished. But a pall of smoke was hanging over the streets and several human bucket chains had been formed to pass lumps of the river to the stricken buildings.^[13] The job was considerably hampered by the droves of people streaming out of the streets, carrying their possessions. Most of the city was wood and thatch, and they weren't taking any chances.
   In fact the danger was surprisingly small. Mysteriously small, when you came to think about it.
   Vimes had surreptitiously taken to carrying a notebook these days, and he had noted the damage as if the mere act of writing it down somehow made the world a more understandable place.
   Itym: Ae Coache House (belonging to an inoffensive businessman, who'd seen his new carriage go up in flames).
   Itym: Ae smalle vegettable shoppe (with pin-point accuracy).
   Vimes wondered about that. He'd bought some apples in there once, and there didn't appear to be anything about it that a dragon could possibly take offence at.
   Still, very considerate of the dragon, he thought as he made his way to the Watch House. When you think of all the timber yards, hayricks, thatched roofs and oil stores it could have hit by chance, it's managed to really frighten everyone without actually harming the city.
   Rays of early morning sunlight were piercing the drifts of smoke as he pushed open the door. This was home. Not the bare little room over the candlemaker's shop in Wixon's Alley, where he slept, but this nasty brown room that smelt of unswept chimneys, Sgt Colon's pipe, Nobby's mysterious personal problem and, latterly, Carrot's armour polish. It was almost like home.
   No one else was there. He wasn't entirely surprised. He clumped up to his office and leaned back in his chair, whose cushion would have been thrown out of its basket in disgust by an incontinent dog, pulled his helmet over his eyes, and tried to think.
   No good rushing about. The dragon had vanished in all the smoke and confusion, as suddenly as it had come. Time for rushing about soon enough. The important thing was working out where to rush to ...
   He'd been right. Wading bird! But where did you start looking for a bloody great dragon in a city of a million people?
   He was aware that his right hand, entirely unbidden, had pulled open the bottom drawer, and three of his fingers, acting on sealed orders from his hindbrain, had lifted out a bottle. It was one of those bottles that emptied themselves. Reason told him that sometimes he must occasionally start one, break the seal, see amber liquid glistening all the way up to the neck. It was just that he couldn't remember the sensation. It was as if the bottles arrived two-thirds empty . . .
   He stared at the label. It seemed to be Jimkin Bear-hugger's Old Selected Dragon's Blood Whiskey. Cheap and powerful, you could light fires with it, you could clean spoons. You didn't have to drink much of it to be drunk, which was just as well.
   It was Nobby who shook him awake with the news that there was a dragon in the city, and also that Sgt Colon had had a nasty turn. Vinies sat and blinked owlishly while the words washed around him. Apparently having a fire-breathing lizard focusing interestedly on one's nether regions from a distance of a few feet can upset the strongest constitution. An experience like that could leave a lasting mark on a person.
   Vimes was still digesting this when Carrot turned up with the Librarian swinging along behind him.
   "Did you see it? Did you see it?" he said.
   "We all saw it," said Vimes.
   "I know all about it!" said Carrot triumphantly. "Someone's brought it here with magic. Someone's stolen a book out of the Library and guess what it's called?"
   "Can't even begin to," said Vimes weakly.
   "It's called The Summoning of Dragons!"
   "Oook," confirmed the Librarian.
   "Oh? What's it about?" said Vimes. The Librarian rolled his eyes.
   "It's about how to summon dragons. By magic!"
   "Oook."
   "And that's illegal, that is!" said Carrot happily. "Releasing Feral Creatures upon the Streets, contrary to the Wild Animals (Public…"
   Vimes groaned. That meant wizards. You got nothing but trouble with wizards.
   "I suppose," he said, "there wouldn't be another copy of this book around, would there?"
   "Oook." The Librarian shook his head.
   "And you wouldn't happen to know what's in it?" Vimes sighed.
   "What? Oh. Four words," he said wearily. "First word. Sounds like. Bend. Bough? Sow, cow, how . . . How. Second word. Small word. The, a, to . . . To. Yes, understood, but I meant in any kind of detail? No. I see."
   "What're we going to do now, sir?" said Carrot anxiously.
   "It's out there," intoned Nobby. "Gone to ground, like, during the hours of daylight. Coiled up in its secret lair, on top of a great hoard of gold, dreamin' ancient reptilian dreams fromma dawna time, waitin' for the secret curtains of the night, when once more it will sally forth…" He hesitated and added sullenly, "What're you all looking at me like that for?"
   "Very poetic," said Carrot.
   "Well, everyone knows the real old dragons used to go to sleep on a hoard of gold,'' said Nobby. ' 'Well known folk myth."
   Vimes looked blankly into the immediate future. Vile though Nobby was, he was also a good indication of what was going through the mind of the average citizen. You could use him as a sort of laboratory rat to forecast what was going to happen next.
   "I expect you'd be really interested in finding out where that hoard is, wouldn't you?" said Vimes experimentally.
   Nobby looked even more shifty than usual. "Well, Cap'n, I was thinking of having a bit of a look around. You know. When I'm off duty, of course," he added virtuously.
   "Oh, dear," said Captain Vimes.
   He lifted up the empty bottle and, with great care, put it back in the drawer.
   ...
   The Elucidated Brethren were nervous. A kind of fear crackled from brother to brother. It was the fear of someone who, having cheerfully experimented with pouring the powder and wadding the ball, has found that pulling the trigger had led to a godawful bang and pretty soon someone is bound to come and see who's making all the noise.
   The Supreme Grand Master knew that he had them, though. Sheep and lamb, sheep and lamb. Since they couldn't do anything much worse than they had already done they might as well press on and damn the world, and pretend they'd wanted it like this all along. Oh, the joy of it ...