dwarf. A little way in front of them, two iron boots were cooling from white heat in a puddle of molten sand.

Metal went plink.

Lady Sybil reached up with heavy gloved hands, patted out some patches of burning oil on her leather apron, and lifted off her helmet. It landed on the sand with a thud.

`Oh, Sam ..: she said softly.

`Are you all right? Young Sam is fine. We've got to get out of here!'

`Oh, Sam. ..'

`Sybil, I need you to take him!' Vimes said, speaking slowly and clearly to get through the shock. `There could be others out there!'

Lady Sybil's eyes focused. `Give him to me,' she ordered. `And you take Raja!'

Vimes looked where she was indicating. A young dragon with floppy ears and an expression of mildly concussed good humour blinked at him. He was a Golden Wouter, a breed with a flame so strong that one of them had once been used by thieves to melt their way into a bank vault.

Vimes picked him up carefully.

`Coal him up,' Sybil commanded.

It's in the bloodline, Vimes told himself as he fed anthracite into Raja's eager gullet. Sybil's female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons as made it back from endless little wars. The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel.

Vimes flinched as Raja burped.

`That was a dwarf, wasn't it?' said Sybil, cradling Young Sam. `One of those deep-down ones?'

`Yes:

`Why did it try to kill me?'

When people are trying to kill you, it means you're doing something right. It was a rule Sam had lived by. But this ... even a real stone killer like Chrysoprase wouldn't have tried something like this. It was insane. They will burn. They will burn.

`I think they're frightened of what I'm going to find out,' said Vimes. `I think it's all gone wrong for them, and they want to stop me.'

Could they have been that stupid? he wondered. A dead wife? A dead child? Could they think that would mean for one moment that I'd stop? As it is, when I catch up with whoever ordered this, and I will, I hope there's someone there to hold me back. They will burn for what they did.

`Oh, Sam...' murmured Sybil, the iron mask falling for a moment.

`I'm sorry. I never expected this,' said Vimes. He put the dragon down and held her carefully, almost fearfully. The rage had been so strong; he had felt he might grow spikes, or snap into shards. And the headache was coming back, like a lump of lead nailed just over his eyes.

`Whatever happened to all that, you know, hi-ho, hi-ho and being kind to poor lost orphans in the forest, Sam?' Sybil whispered.

`Willikins is in the house,' he said. `Purity is as well.'

`Let's go and find them, then,' said Sybil. She grinned, a little damply. `I wish you wouldn't bring your work home with you, Sam.'

`This time it followed me, 'said Vimes grimly. `But I intend to tidy it up, believe me.' They shall bur- No! They shall be hunted down to any hole they hide in and brought back to face justice. Unless (oh, please!) they resist arrest ...

Purity was standing in the hall, alongside Willikins. She was holding a trophy Klatchian sword, without much conviction. The butler had augmented his weaponry with a couple of meat cleavers, which he hefted with a certain worrying expertise.

`My gods, man, you're covered in blood!' Sybil burst out.

`Yes, your ladyship,' said Willikins smoothly. `May I say in mitigation that it is not, in fact, mine.'

`There was a dwarf in the dragon house,' said Vimes. `Any sign of others?'

`No, sir. The ones in the cellar had an apparatus for projecting fire, sir.'

`The dwarf we saw had one too,' said Vimes, adding: `It didn't do him any good.'

`Indeed, sir? I apprised myself of its use, sir, and tested my understanding by firing it down the tunnel they had arrived by until it ran out of igniferous juice, sir. Just in case there were more. It is for this reason, I suspect, that the shrubbery at Number Five is on fire.'

Vimes hadn't met Willikins when they were both young. The Cockbill Street Roaring Lads had a treaty with Shamlegger Street, thus allowing them to ignore that flank while they concentrated on stopping the territorial aggression of the Pigsty Hill Dead Marmoset Gang. He was glad he hadn't fetched up against young Willikins.

`They must have come up for air there,' he said. `The Jeffersons are on holiday.'

`Well, if they're not ready for that sort of thing, they shouldn't be growing rhododendrons,' said Sybil matter of factly. `What now, Sam?'

`We're staying the night at Pseudopolis Yard,' said Vimes. `Don't argue.

'Ramkins have never run away from anything,' Sybil declared.

'Vimeses have run like hell all the time,' said Vimes, too diplomatic to mention the aforesaid ancestors who came home in pieces. `That means you fight where you want to fight. We're all going to go and get the coach, and we're all going down to the Yard.

When we're there I'll send people back to pick up our stuff. Just for one night, all right?'

`What would you like me to do with the visitors, sir?' said Willikins, with a sidelong glance at Lady Sybil. `One is indeed dead, I am afraid. If you recall, I must have stabbed him with the ice knife I happened to be holding, having been cutting ice for the kitchen,' he added, poker-faced.

`Put him on the roof of the coach,' said Vimes.

`The other one also appears to be dead, sir. I'd swear he was fine when I tied him up, sir, because he was cursing me in their lingo.'

`You didn't hit him too hard, did-' Vimes began, and gave up on it. If Willikins had wanted someone dead, he wouldn't have taken them prisoner. It must have been a surprise, breaking into a cellar and meeting something like Willikins. Anyway, to hell with them.

`Just ... died?' he said.

`Yes, sir. Do dwarfs naturally salivate green?' `What?'

`There is green around his mouth, sir. Could be a clue, in my opinion.

`All right, put him on the roof of the coach too. Let's go, shall we?'

Vimes had to insist that Sybil travel on the inside. Usually she got her own way and he was happy to give it to her, but the unspoken agreement was that when he really insisted, she listened. It's a married couple thing.

Vimes rode beside Willikins, and got him to stop halfway down the hill where a man was selling the evening edition of the Times, still damp from the press.

The picture on the front page was of a mob of dwarfs. They were pulling open one of the mine's big, round metal doors; it was hanging off its hinges. In the middle of the group, hands gripping the edge of the frame and muscles bulging, was Captain Carrot. Gleaming, with his shirt off.

Vimes grunted happily, folded up the paper, and lit a cheroot.

The shaking in his legs was barely noticeable now, the fires of that terrible rage banked but still glowing.

`A free press, Willikins. You just can't beat it,' he said.

`I have often heard you remark as much, sir,' said Willikins.

The entity slithered through the rainy streets. Confounded again! It was getting through, it knew it! It was being heard! And yet every time it tried to follow the words, it was thrown back. Bars had blocked its way, doors that had been open locked themselves as it approached. And what was this? Some kind of low-class soldier! By now it would have had berserkers biting their shields in half!