Night Watch by Terry Pratchett Read Free Book Online Page B

said the woman, handing him a badly styled coat and a pair of antique boots. “I wouldn’t like you to be attacked by anything. A sudden loss of memory, for example.”
    Vimes snapped, but very gently. His face hurt and there were plenty of other bruises everywhere, and he was dressed in a suit that smelled like a privy. He’d go up to the Watch House, get cleaned and changed and make a quick report, and head on home. And this young lady could spend a night in the cells and then be handed over to the Seamstresses’ Guild. They came down heavily on extortion like this. It was bad for the trade.
    “All right,” he said. And pulled the boots on. The soles were paper-thin, and they were too tight.
    Dr. Lawn waved his hands in a general gesture of dismissal. “He’s all yours, Rosie. You leave that patch on for a few days, Mr. Keel, and with any luck you’ll have a working eye. Someone took a slash at you with a sharp knife. I’ve done the best I can, and the stitching is good, but you’re going to have a nasty scar.”
    Vimes raised his hand to his cheek yet again.
    “And don’t pick at it!” Lawn snapped.
    “Come on…John,” said Rosie. “Let’s get you home where you belong.”
    They stepped out. Water was dripping from the eaves, but the rain had eased.
    “I live up past Pseudopolis Yard,” said Vimes.
    “Lead on,” said Rosie.
    They hadn’t reached the end of the street before Vimes was aware that a couple of dark figures had fallen in behind them. He was about to turn, but Rosie clamped a hand on his arm.
    “Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you,” she said. “They’re just coming with us for protection.”
    “Whose? Yours or mine?”
    Rosie laughed. “Both,” she said.
    “Yes, you just keep on walking, kind sir, and we’ll be as quiet as little mice,” said a shrill voice behind him. A slightly deeper one said, “That’s right, dearie. Just be a good boy and Aunty Dotsie won’t have to open her handbag.”
    “That’s Dotsie and Sadie!” said Vimes. “The Agony Aunts! Well, they bloody well know who I am!”
    He turned.
    The dark figures, both wearing old-fashioned black straw hoods, stepped back. In the gloom there were a number of metallic noises, and Vimes forced himself to relax a little. Even though they were, more or less, on the same side as the Watch, you never quite knew where you were with the Agony Aunts. Of course, that’s what made them so useful. Any customer disturbing the peace in one of the local houses of good repute feared the threat of the Aunts far more than he did the Watch. The Watch had rules. And the Watch didn’t have Dotsie’s handbag. And Sadie could do terrible things with a parrot-headed umbrella.
    “Come on,” he said. “Dotsie? Sadie? Let’s not mess about, eh?”
    Something prodded him in the chest. He looked down. The thing had a carved parrot head on it.
    “You must keep walking, kind sir,” said a voice.
    “While you’ve still got toes, dearie,” said another voice.
    “Probably a good idea,” said Rosie, tugging Vimes’s arm. “But I can tell you’ve impressed them.”
    “How?”
    “You’re not bent double and making bubbling noises. Come along, mystery man.”
    Vimes stared ahead, looking out for the blue light of Pseudopolis Yard. Somehow, it’d all make sense there.
    But when he got there, there was no blue light over the archway. There were just a few lights upstairs.
    Vimes hammered on the door until it opened a crack.
    “What the hell’s going on here?” he demanded of the nose and one eye that was the visible totality of the occupant. “And get out of the way!”
    He pushed the door back and strode in.
    It wasn’t the Watch House, not inside. There were the familiar stairs, right enough, but there was a wall right across the charge room, and carpets on the floor, and tapestries on the wall…and a housemaid holding a tray, and staring, and dropping the tray, and screaming.
    “Where are all my officers? ”