'—be trouble,' said Vimes. And it'll spread to Ankh-Morpork, he added to himself. At the moment it's only riots.

'Who'll become King if he abdicates?'

'Albrecht Albrechtson, as everyone knows.'

'And that will be trouble, too,' said Vimes. 'Civil war, from what I hear.'

'The King says,' said Dee quietly, 'that he is minded to step down nevertheless. Better any king than chaos. Dwarfs do not like chaos.'

'It's going to be chaos either way, though,' said Vimes.

'There've been rebellions against kings before. Dwarfdom survives. The Crown continues. The lore abides. The Scone remains. There is... a sanity to come back to.'

Oh, my gods, thought Vimes. Thousands of dwarfs die but that's all right if a lump of rock survives. 'I'm not a policeman here. What can I do?'

'This hasn't happened!' shrieked Dee, his nerve cracking. 'But everyone knows that foreigners from Ankh-Morpork do not mind their own business!'

'Ah, you mean... given that you don't want people to know about this... it would look bad if you appeared to be too excited, but you can't be blamed if a stupid flatfoot pokes his nose into things?'

Dee waved his hands in the air. 'This wasn't my idea!'

'Look, the security you've got here would disgrace a children's piggybank. I can think of two or three ways of getting the Scone out of here. What about the secret passage into this room?'

'I know of no secret passage into this room!'

'Oh, good. At least we've ruled out something. Go and wait by the boat. Corporal Littlebottom and I have to talk about some things.'

Dee left reluctantly. Vimes waited until the dwarf was visible in the glow of the candles beyond the weighbridge.

'What a mess,' he said. 'Locked-room mysteries are even worse when they leave the room unlocked.'

'You're thinking that Dozy might have worn bags of sand under his robes, aren't you, sir?' said Cheery.

No, thought Vimes, I wasn't. But now I know how a dwarf would solve this.

'Possibly,' he said aloud. 'Grubby white sand can't be uncommon. You'd add a bit of sand every day, yes? Just enough not to trigger the scales. Finally you've got... How much does the Scone weigh?'

'About sixteen pounds, sir.'

'All right. Dump the sand on the floor, shove the Scone under your robes, and... it might just work.'

'Risky, sir.'

'But no one thinks anyone is really going to try to steal the Scone. Would you try to tell me that four guards sitting in that little guardhouse on a twelve-hour shift will be alert all the time? That's enough for a hand of poker!'

'I suppose they rely on the fact that they know when a boat comes up, sir.'

'Right. Big mistake. And you know what? I bet that when a boat's just gone down that's the time they're least alert. Cheery, if a human could get in here they could get into the Scone Cave. They'd have to be nimble and a good swimmer, but they could do it.'

'The guards on the gates were pretty keen, sir.'

'Well, yes. Guards always are, just after a theft. Smart as foxes and sharp as knives, just in case anyone wonders if it was them who dropped off to sleep at the wrong time. I'm a copper, Cheery. I know how dull guarding can be. Especially when you know that no one is ever going to steal what you're guarding.' He scuffed the sand with his boot.

'They were looking hard at every cart that went in or out this morning. But that was because the Scone had been stolen. It's at times like this you get very official, very efficient and very pointless activity. Don't try to tell me that last week they opened every barrel and prodded every load of hay. Even the stuff coming in? Can you see Dee? Is he looking at me?'

Cheery peered around Vimes.

'No, sir.'

'Good.'

Vimes walked over to the tunnel, pressed his back against a wall, took a deep breath and walked his legs up the opposite wall. Then he eased his way out over the plates of the weighbridge, inched along with feet and shoulderblades and, wincing at every protest from his knees, eventually dropped down. He walked across to Dee, who was talking to the guards.

'How did—'

'Never. mind,' said Vimes. 'Let's just say I'm longer than a dwarf, shall we?'

'Have you solved it?'

'No. But I have an idea.'

'Really? Already?' said Dee. 'And what is that?'

'I'm still working it out,' said Vimes. 'But it's lucky the King told you to ask me, Dee. One thing I have found out is that no dwarf will give you the right answer.'

The opera was near the end as Vimes slipped into the seat beside Sybil. 'Have I missed anything?' he said.

'It's very good. Where have you been?'

'You wouldn't believe me.'

He stared, unseeing, at the stage. A couple of dwarfs were engaged in a very careful mock battle.

All right, then. If it was politics it was... well, politics. There was nothing he could do about politics. So, think about it as a crime...

What was the simple solution? Best to start with the first rule of policing: suspect the victim. Vimes wasn't quite sure who the victim was here, though. So suspect the witness. That was another good rule. That meant the late Dozy. He could have walked out with the Scone days before he 'discovered' the loss. He could have done just about anything. The way the thing was guarded was a joke. Nobby and Colon could have done it better. Much better, he corrected himself, because they had devious little minds and that was what made them coppers. The guards of the Scone were honourable dwarfs, the last people you wanted to entrust with anything. You wanted sneaky people for a job like this.

But it made no sense. He'd be the prime suspect. Vimes wasn't well up on dwarf law, but he figured there was not a huge friendly future in store for a prime suspect, especially if no other solution was forthcoming.

Maybe he'd snapped after sixty years of changing candles? That didn't sound right. Anyone who could put up with a job like that for ten years would probably run in their groove for the rest of eternity. Anyway, Dozy had now gone to the great big goldmine in the sky or deep underground or whatever it was dwarfs believed in. He wasn't going to be answering any questions.

He could solve this, Vimes told himself. Everything he needed was there, if only he asked the right questions and thought the right way.

But his Vimish instincts were trying to tell him something else.

This was a crime—if holding a piece of property to ransom was technically a crime—but it wasn't the crime.

There was another crime here. He knew it in the same way that a fisherman spots the shoal by the ripple on the water.

The fight on stage continued. It was slowed by the need to stop after every gingerly exchanged axe blow for a song, probably about gold.

'Er, what's this all about?' he said.

'It's nearly over,' whispered Sybil. 'They've only performed the bit concerning the baking of the Scone, really, but at least they've included the Ransom Aria. Ironhammer escapes from prison with the help of Skalt, steals the truth that Agi has hidden, conceals it by baking it into the Scone, and persuades the guards around Bloodaxe's camp to let him pass. The dwarfs believe that truth was once a, a thing... a sort of ultimate rare metal, really, and the last bit of it is inside the Scone. And the .guards can't resist, because of the sheer power of it. The song is about how love, like truth, will always reveal itself, just as the grain of truth inside the Scone makes the whole thing true. It's actually one of the finest pieces of music in the world. Gold is hardly mentioned at all.'

Vimes stared. He got lost in any song more complex than the sort with titles like 'Where Has All The Custard Gone (Jelly's Just Not The Same)?'