`No.'

`Right,' said Sally. She drained her glass. `I don't like these Neck Bolts. Let's go somewhere else and'- she paused -'open your mind to possibiliteesh.'

It was odd, having Sybil in Pseudopolis Yard. It had been one of the Ramkin family houses before she'd given it to the Watch. She'd been a girl there. It had been her home.

Some apprehension of this crept into the chipped and stained souls of the watchmen. Men not known for the elegance of their manners found themselves automatically wiping their feet as they came in, and respectfully removing their helmets.

They spoke differently too, slowly and hesitantly, anxiously scanning the sentence ahead for expletives to delete. Someone even found a broom and swept up, or at least moved the dirt to a less obvious place.

Upstairs, in what had been until then the cash office, Young Sam slept peacefully in a makeshift bed. One day, Vimes hoped, he would be able to tell him that on one special night he'd been guarded by four troll watchmen. They'd been off duty but volunteered to come in for this, and were just itching for some dwarfs to try anything. Sam hoped the boy would be impressed; the most other kids could hope for was angels.

Vimes had commandeered the canteen, because it had a big enough table. He'd spread out a map of the city. A lot of the rest of the planking was occupied by pages from The Koom Valley Codex.

This wasn't a game, this was a puzzle. A sort of, yes, jigsaw puzzle. And he ought to be able to do it, he reasoned, because he already had nearly all the corners.

'Ettercap Street, Money Trap Lane, Crybaby Alley, Scuttlebutt Court, The Jeebies, Pellicool Steps,' he said. `Tunnels everywhere! They were lucky to find it after only three or four. Mr Rascal must have had lodgings in half the streets in the area. Including Empirical Crescent!'

`But hwhy?' said Sir Reynold Stitched. `I mean, hwhy dig tunnels everyhwhere?'

`Tell him, Carrot,' said Vimes, drawing a line across the city.

Carrot cleared his throat. `Because they were dwarfs, sir, and deep-downers at that,' he said. `It wouldn't occur to them not to dig. And mostly it'd be just a matter of clearing out buried rooms in any case. That's a stroll to a dwarf. And they were laying rails, so they could take the spoil out anywhere they wanted.'

`Yes, but sureleah-' Sir Reynold began.

`They were listening out for something talking at the bottom of an old well,' said Vimes, still bending over the map. `What chance that'd still be visible? And people can get a bit iffy when a bunch of dwarfs turn up and start digging holes in the garden.'

`It'd be very slow, sureleah?'

`Well, yes, sir. But it would be in the dark, under their control, and secret,' said Carrot. `They could go anywhere they wanted. They could zigzag around if they weren't certain, they could home in with their listening tube, and they'd never have to speak to a human or see daylight. Dark, controllable and secret.'

'Deep-downers in a nutshell,' said Vimes.

`This is very exciting!' said Sir Reynold. `And they dug into the cellars of my museum?'

`Over to you, Fred,' said Vimes, carefully drawing another line across the map.

`Er, right,' said Fred Colon. `Er ... Nobby an' me found out where only a couple of hours ago,' he said, thinking it wisest not to add `after Mister Vimes yelled at us and made us tell him every last detail and then sent us back and told us what to look for'. What he did add was: `They were pretty clever, sir. The mortar even looked dirty. I bet you're saying to yourself ahah, sir?'

`I am?' said Sir Reynold, bewildered. `I hwould normally say "my goodness".'

`I expect you're saying to yourself, ahah, how were they able to build up the wall again after they'd got the muriel out, sir, and we reckon-'

`Well, I imagine one dwarf stayed behind to make good, lay low, as you hwould say, and hwandered out in the morning,' said Sir Reynold. `There were people going in and out all the time. We were looking for a big painting, after all, not a person.'

`Yessir. We reckon one dwarf stayed behind to make good, lay low and wandered out in the morning. There were people going in and out all the time. You were looking for a big painting, after all, not a person,' said Fred Colon. He'd been very pleased to come up with that theory, so he was going to say it out loud no matter what.

Vimes tapped the map. `And here, Sir Reynold, is where a troll called Brick fell through another cellar floor into their tunnel,' he said. `He also told us he saw something in the main mine which sounds very much like the Rascal.'

`But, alas, you have not found it, 'said Sir Reynold.

`I'm sorry, sir. It's probably long gone out of the city.'

`But hwhy?' said the curator. `They could have studied it in the museum! We're very interactive these days!'

`Interactive?' said Vimes. `What do you mean?'

'Hwell, people can ... look at the pictures as much as they hwant,' said Sir Reynold. He sounded a little annoyed. People shouldn't ask that kind of question.

`And the pictures do what, exactly?'

`Er ... hang there, commander,' said Sir Reynold. `Of course.' `So what you mean is, people can come and look at the pictures,

and the pictures, for their part, are looked at?

'Rather like that, yes,' said the curator. He thought for a moment,

aware that this probably wasn't sufficient, and added, `but

dynamicaleah.

`You mean the people are moved by the pictures, sir?' said Carrot.

`Yes!' said Sir Reynold, with huge relief. `Well done! That's just hwhat happens. And we've had the Rascal on public display for years. We even have a stepladder in case people hwant to examine the mountains. Sometimes people come in with a bee in their bonnet that one of the warriors is pointing to some barely visible cave or something. Frankleah, if there was some secret, I hwould have found it by now. There was no point to the theft!

'Unless someone had found the secret and didn't want anyone else to find it,' said Vimes.

`That hwould be rather a coincidence, hwouldn't it, commander? It's not as if anything has changed just recently. Mr Rascal didn't turn up and paint another mountain! And, although I hate to say this, just destroying the painting would have been enough.'

Vimes walked around the table. All the bits, he thought, I must have all the bits by now.

Let's start with this legend of a dwarf turning up, nearly dead, weeks after the battle, babbling about treasure.

All right, then it might have been this talking cube thing, Vimes thought. He survived the battle, hid out somewhere, and he's got this thing and it's important. He's got to get it somewhere safe ... No, maybe he's got to get people to listen to it. And of course he doesn't take it with him, 'cos there's still likely to be trolls wandering the area and right now they'll be in a mood to club first and try to think up some questions later. He needs some bodyguards.

He gets as far as some humans, but when he's leading them back to the place where it's hidden he finally dies.

Forward two thousand years. Would a cube last that long? Hell, they bob up in molten lava!

So it's lying there. Methodia Rascal comes along, looking for ... a nice view, or something, and he looks down and there it is? Well, I'll have to accept that he did, because he found it and got it talking, who knows how. But he couldn't stop it. He drops it down the well. The dwarfs find it. They listen to the box, but hate what they hear. They hate it so much that Hamcrusher has four miners killed just because they heard it too. So why the painting? It shows what the box is talking about? Where the box is? If you've got the box in your hand, isn't that it?

Anyway, who says it was the voice of Bloodaxe doing the speaking? It could be anybody. Why would you believe what was said?