The fizz in Vimes's head subsided. As if awakened by the reference to Sybil, the creditors of his body queued up to wave their overdue IOUs; feet: dead tired and in need of a bath; stomach: gurgling; ribs: on fire; back: aching; brain: drunk on its own poisons. Bath, sleep, eat ... good ideas. But still must do things ...

`How's our Mr Pessimal?' he said.

'Igor's fixed him up, sir. He's a bit amazed at all the fuss. Now, I know I can't order you to go and see his lordship-'

`No, you can't, because I am a commander, captain,' said Vimes, still fuzzily intoxicated on exhaustion.

`-but he can and he has, sir. And your coach will be waiting for you outside the palace when you come out. That's Lady Sybil's orders, sir,' said Carrot, appealing to higher authority.

Vimes looked up at the ugly bulk of the palace. Suddenly, clean sheets seemed such a sweet idea. `Can't face him like this,' he murmured.

`I had a word with Secretary Drumknott, sir. Hot water, a razor and a big cup of coffee will be waiting in the palace.'

`You thought of everything, Carrot. ..'

`I hope so, sir. Now off you-'

`But I thought of something, eh?' said Vimes, swaying cheerfully. `Better dead drunk than just dead, eh?'

`It was a classic ruse, sir,' said Carrot reassuringly. `One for the history books. Now, off you go, sir. I'm going to have a look for Angua. She hasn't slept in her bed.'

`But at this time of the month-'

`I know, sir. She hasn't slept in her basket, either.

In a dank cellar that once was an attic and was now half full of mud, the vurms poured out of a small hole where wooden planks had long since rotted away.

A fist punched up. Soggy timber split and crumbled.

Angua pulled herself up into this new darkness, then reached down to help Sally, who said, `Well, here's another fine mess.

`Let's hope so,' said Angua. `I think we need to go up at least one more level. There's an archway here. Come on.'

There had been too many dead ends, forgotten, stinking rooms and false hopes, and altogether too much slime.

After a while the smell had become almost tangible and then it managed to become just another part of the darkness. The women wandered and scrambled from one dripping, fetid room to another, testing the muddy walls for hidden doors, searching for even a pinprick of light in the ceilings hanging with interesting but horrible growths.

Now, they heard music. Five minutes' wading and slithering brought them to a blocked-in doorway, but since it had been filled using the more modern Ankh-Morpork mortar of sand, horse dung and vegetable peelings, several bricks had already fallen out. Sally removed most of the rest with one punch.

`Sorry about that,' she said. `It's a vampire thing.'

The cellar behind the demolished wall had some barrels in it and

looked as if it was regularly used. There was a proper door, too.

Dull, repetitive music filtered down between the boards of the ceil

ing. There was a trap door in them.

`O-kay,' said Angua. `There's people up there, I can smell

them-'

`I can count fifty-seven hearts beating,' said Sally.

Angua gave her a Look. `You know, that's one particular talent I'd

keep to myself, if I was you,' she said.

`Sorry, sergeant.'

`It's not the sort of thing people want to hear,' Angua went on. `I

mean, I personally am quite capable of cracking a man's skull in my

jaws, but I don't go around telling everyone.'

`I shall make a note of it, sergeant,' said Sally, with a meekness

that was quite possibly feigned.

`Good. Now ... what do we look like? Swamp monsters?'

`Yes, sergeant. Your hair looks dreadful. Just like a great lump of

green slime.'

`Green?'

`I'm afraid so.'

`And my emergency dress is back down there somewhere,' said

Angua. `It's past dawn, too. Can you, er, go bats now?'

`In daylight? One hundred and fifty-five disorientated bits of me?

No! But you could get out as a wolf, couldn't you?'

`I'd kind of prefer not to be a slime monster coming through the

floor, if it's all the same to you,' said Angua.

`Yes, I can see that. It does not pay to advertise.' Sally flicked away

a lump of ooze. `Ugh, this stuff is foul.'

`So the best we can hope for is that when we make a run for it no

one will recognize us,' said Angua, pulling a lump of wobbly green

stuff from her hair. `At least we- Oh, no. ..'

`What's wrong?' said Sally.

`Nobby Nobbs! He's up there! I can smell him!' She pointed

urgently at the boards overhead.

`You mean Corporal Nobbs? The little ... man with the spots?' said Sally.

`We're not under a Watch House, are we?' said Angua, looking around in panic.

`I don't think so. Someone's dancing, by the sound of it. But look, how can you smell one human in the middle of all ... this?'

`It never leaves you, believe me.' The smells of old cabbage, acne ointment and non-malignant skin disease became transmuted, in Corporal Nobbs, into a strange odour that lay across the nose like a saw blade on a harp. It wasn't bad as such, but it was like its host: strange, ubiquitous and hellishly difficult to forget.

`Well, he's a fellow officer, isn't he? Won't he help us?' said Sally.

`We are naked, lance-constable!'

`Only technically. This mud really sticks.

`I mean underneath the mud!' said Angua.

`Yes, but if we had clothes on we'd be naked underneath them, too!' Sally pointed out.

`This is not the time for logic! This is the time for not seeing Nobby grinning at me!'

`But he's seen you when you're wolf-shaped, hasn't he?' said Sally. `So?' snapped Angua.

`Well, technically you're naked then, aren't you?'

`Never tell him that!'

Nobby Nobbs, a shadow in the warm red gloom, nudged Sergeant Colon.

`You don't have to keep your eyes shut, sarge,' he said. `It's all legit.

It's an artistic celebration of the female body, Tawneee says. Anyway, she's got clothes on.'

`Two tassels and a folded hanky is not clothes, Nobby,' said Fred, sinking down in his seat. The Pink PussyCat! Now, fair's fair, he'd been in the army and Watch and you couldn't spend all that time in uniform without seeing a thing or two - or three, now he came to recollect - and it was true, as Nobby had pointed out, that the ballerinas down at the opera house didn't leave a lot to the imagination, at least not to Nobby's, but when all was said and done ballet had to be Art even though it was a bit short on plinths and urns, on account of being expensive to look at, and moreover ballerinas didn't whizz around upside down. And the worst of it was, he'd already spotted two people he knew in the audience. Fortunately they hadn't seen him, which was to say that whenever he'd sneaked a glance their way they were looking in completely the opposite direction.

`Now this bit is really hard,' whispered Nobby conversationally.

`Er ... is it?' Fred Colon closed his eyes again.

`Oh, yes. It's the Triple Corkscrew-'

`Look, don't the management object to you coming in here?' Fred managed, shifting even further down in his seat.

`Oh, no. They like having a watchman in, 'said Nobby, still watching the stage. `They say it makes people behave. Anyway, I only come in so's I can walk Betty home.'

`Betty being - ?'

'Tawneee's actually only her pole name,' Nobby said. `She says no one would be interested in an exotic dancer with a name like Betty. She says it sounds like she'd be better with a bowl of cake mixture.'

Colon shut his eyes, trying to banish a mental conjunction of the bronzed lithe figure on stage and a bowl of cake mixture. `I think I could do with a breath of fresh air,' he groaned.