Free Night Watch by Terry Pratchett Page A

the red faded to threadbare orange. Rumor had it that Tilden saluted it every day. There was also a very large silver inkstand with a gilt regimental crest on it, which occupied quite a lot of the desk; Snouty polished it every morning and it shone. Tilden had never quite left the army behind.
    Still, Vimes retained a soft spot for the old man. He’d been a successful soldier, as these things went; he’d generally been on the winning side, and had killed more of the enemy by good if dull tactics than of his own men by bad but exciting ones. He’d been, in his own way, kind and reasonably fair; the men of the Watch had run rings around him, without him ever noticing.
    Now Tilden was giving him the Long Stare With Associated Paperwork. It was supposed to mean: we know all about you, so why don’t you tell us all about yourself? But he really wasn’t any good at it.
    Vimes returned the stare blankly.
    “What is your name again?” said Tilden, becoming aware that Vimes was the better starer.
    “Keel,” said Vimes. “John Keel.” And…what the hell…“Look,” he said, “you’ve only got one piece of paper there that means anything, and that’s the report from that sergeant, assuming he can write.”
    “As a matter of fact, I have two pieces of paper,” said the captain. “The other one concerns the death of John Keel, what?”
    “What? For a scrap with the Watch?”
    “In the current emergency, that would be quite sufficient for the death penalty,” said Tilden, leaning forward. “But, ha, perhaps it won’t be necessary in this case, because John Keel died yesterday. You beat him up and robbed him, what? You took his money but you didn’t bother with the letters, because your sort can’t read, what? So you wouldn’t have known that John Keel was a policeman , what?”
    “What?”
    Vimes stared at the skinny face with its triumphantly bristling mustache and the small, faded, blue eyes.
    And then there was the sound of someone industriously sweeping the floor in the corridor outside. The captain looked past him, growled, and hurled a pen.
    “Get him out of here!” he barked. “What’s the little devil doing here at this time of night, anyway?”
    Vimes turned his head. There was a skinny, wizened-looking man standing in the doorway, bearded and as bald as a baby. He was grinning stupidly and holding a broom.
    “He’s cheap, sir, hnah, and it’s best if he comes in when it’s, hnah, quiet,” Snouty murmured, grabbing the little man by a stick-thin elbow. “C’mon, out you get, Mister Lousy—”
    So now the crossbow wasn’t pointing at Vimes. And he had several pounds of metal on his wrists or, to put it another way, his arms were a hammer. He went to stand up…

    Vimes woke up and stared at the ceiling. There was a deep rumbling somewhere nearby. Treadmill? Watermill?
    It was going to be a corny line, but some things you had to know.
    “Where am I?” he said. And then he added: “ This time?”
    “Well done ,” said a voice somewhere behind him. “Consciousness to sarcasm in five seconds!”
    The room was large, by the feel of the air, and the play of light on the walls suggested there were candles alight behind Vimes.
    The voice said: “I’d like you to think of me as a friend.”
    “A friend? Why?” said Vimes. There was a smell of cigarette smoke in the air.
    “Everyone ought to have a friend,” said the voice. “Ah, I see you’ve noticed you’re still handcuffed—”
    The voice said this because in one movement Vimes had swung himself off the table and plunged forward—
    Vimes woke up and stared at the ceiling. There was a deep rumbling somewhere nearby. Treadmill? Watermill?
    Then his thoughts knotted themselves most unpleasantly.
    “What,” he said, “just happened?”
    “I thought you might like to try that again, lad,” said the invisible friend. “We have little tricks here, as you will learn. Just sit up. I know you’ve been through a lot, but we don’t