Angua balked when the Patrician—old enough that the cane was no longer a statement but a necessity, and Drumknott sometimes loudly announced that Lord Kniepper was to his left, sir, yes, a little further left than that—informed her she was to be named a Duchess.
“Sir,” Angua said, and then found herself drawing several blanks at once, all of them equally unhelpful. She hoped His Lordship’s eyesight was bad enough that he couldn’t see her boggling at him. He was smirking, very slightly, which made her think he could. “With respect, but—why?”
“Tradition, Commander,” Vetinari said smoothly. “The Commander of the Watch, historically, is a ducal title. It seems only right that with the…passing of Sir Samuel, and your own ascendancy to—”
“Mister Vimes was only a duke because he married Lady Sybil!” Angua interrupted, too aghast to care about the breach of protocol. But then Vetinari beat her to it, with such a ludicrous suggestion; she was a von
Überwald, she knew how pedigree worked.* No one got to be a duke except by marriage or blood.**
“Commander,” Vetinari said silkily, “are you contesting tradition?”
“How is it tradition if it’s only been one man?” Angua said wildly, and then, at the look on Vetinari’s face very quickly added, “Sir.”
“All traditions begin with one man, Commander,” Vetinari answered, steepling his fingers before him. “For example, you will remember how, not so long ago, Ankh-Morpork was a dictatorship. They were dark times—but now we embrace a proud democratic tradition.”
Angua blinked, thinking about how just the other day Young Sam had been complaining to her about the fact that there was no mechanism to force the Patrician to listen to the new Witmoot.***
“Yes, sir.”
Vetinari looked at her, and the chilling effect was somehow compounded by the milky-white pupils, and the fact that he was staring somewhere over her right ear. “I insist, Commander von Überwald. Furthermore, Lady Vimes has agreed.”
“Oh, good. Er…agreed to what?”
“That the title of Duke—or Duchess, in your case—of the Ankh should pass with the command of the Watch.”
Angua stared.
She opened her mouth to—then shut it again with a quiet click of her teeth. And then, possibly, stared some more. “I’m sorry, I think I misheard you, my lord,” she finally said, in the same tone of voice she’d once asked Wolfgang where he got all that red paint from.****
“We both know your hearing is excellent, Commander.”
“What would—Young Sam will be the Duke of Ankh, when Sybil passes. That’s how….that’s how it works.” Angua felt as though she’d somehow stumbled into an alternative dimension. The wizards talked about those; Carrot had dragged her to a dinner lecture just the other week by Esk Smith, who’d talked at length about the trousers of time and the starched shirt of twelve-dimensional space. It’d sounded like a lot of silly buggers to Angua, but the wine had been good.
“Mm,” Vetinari said solemnly, a gleam somewhere in his deep-set eyes. “That’s how it worked, Commander—worked, past tense. We must move with the times, you know. And as of—oh, this Sunday, shall we say—the Duchy of Ankh will be a title granted and revoked with the command of the Watch.”
“Why?” Angua asked, though it sounded some very undignified combination of petulant and incredulous. Her hair was almost entirely grey these days, but something about Vetinari made her feel young and very snotty, all of five years old.*****
Vetinari shrugged, and it was so startling that Angua almost missed his next words. “Why not, Commander?”
.
“This is insane,” Angua moaned. The brand new armor clanked when she buried her face in her hands, it was extremely unfortunate. (All she could hear was Vimes’ voice in her head, complaining about the damn shiny dress armor, all the metal eagles and hippos and flourish-y nonsense. But Angua’s armor had molded breasts, so she felt fairly certain she’d won this round.******)
“Don’t be silly, dear,” Lady Sybil said, leaning forward in her chair—Angua could heard it creak—to pat Angua’s hand. “You know how Sam cared for you.”
“Mister Vimes hated being a duke, he’d only ever wish it on his worst enemy,” Angua snapped, and then immediately felt horribly guilty. She lifted her head up, grimaced at Sybil. “Sorry, your ladyship, that wasn’t…”
Sybil was laughing, Angua could see her shoulders shaking with it. The hand covering her mouth was faded to papery white, deeply lined; Angua felt an unexpected pang, the evidence that Sybil was not the indomitable and fearsome woman she had been. It wasn’t as though Angua had missed the last few decades—Young Sam becoming a man, Colon retiring and Mister Vimes quietly preparing to follow; new cadets every year, growing into their armor and even leaving, starting watch-houses elsewhere. There were Sammies wherever there were clacks towers these days, and some places too remote for clacks towers to reach.
Just last month a young woman had marched into Angua’s office clutching a notice from a Borogravian general, asking if they would please train her up as a Sammy, and then send her back post-haste. They had a peacetime law-and-order to be getting on with. (Angua mostly remembered the signature, “Polly” and crossed out, “Oliver” crossed out, and then just “Perks”.)
“He did,” Sybil chuckled. “Sam hated everything to do with it. More proof, I suppose,” she said. At Angua’s curious look, Sybil shook her head, smiling ruefully. “That he loved me. Enough to outweigh the rest.”
Angua decided not to mention the tears in her eyes.
“Why, then?” she asked, gesturing helplessly, and Sybil smiled.
“Havelock has this idea,” she said, and it took Angua a moment to remember that the Patrician had a given name. “That eventually, he’ll die. And it’ll be harder for the various lords and dukes and—suchlike to fight over who will be patrician after him, if they’re all busy with the Witmoot, or trying to run guilds, write for the Times, and command the watch. If it’s expected that they have made themselves useful, in the interim.”
Angua blinked. “I thought Young Sam…?”
“Goodness, no. Havelock’s asked him, of course, but he’d rather community organize and have people pour Ankh-water on his head when he tries to register them to vote. He was the one who suggested we give up the title, you know.”
Angua thought—not for the first time—that Young Sam was an odd sort.*******
“So making me the Duchess of Ankh—”
“Not you, Angua. The Commander of the Watch. When you retire, you will be recusing yourself from the title, and your successor will be knighted in turn. Havelock’s assured me it will all be very orderly. He made provisions for it.”
“Oh, good,” Angua said faintly.
Sybil smiled in a way that, in a less charitable light, might have been referred to as a smirk. “Exactly, Commander. Now, pull yourself together so you can wheel me out. I imagine it’s almost time.”
Angua exhaled gustily, and stood. (The armor clattered, which was still unfortunate. She wondered if she should have tried harder to change it, maybe Cheery could have buffed the nipples out—) Gripping the posts of Lady Sybil’s chair, she pushed her out of the tent, and toward where the crowd had gathered around the makeshift stage.
“Just…” Angua stared blindly ahead, her mind churning over. “Do you think he’d be proud?”
Sybil reached up, and squeezed Angua’s hand very tightly. “Dear girl,” Lady Sybil said. Her other hand was tight around the hilt of the sword—a blunt, ugly thing, standard watchman-issue, and Angua swallowed to see those knuckles so white around the hilt. “I very much think he already was.”
* In several senses of the word.
** The blood did not have to be yours. There were many ducal coronets snatched up from corpses and plunked down on the victorious bastard’s head; saying, “You and what army?” tended to have that effect. But blood was blood, it would out. Especially if you stuck someone full of holes.
***
The name was from the Old Morporkian, meaning a “Meeting of the Minds.” But as Mrs. Crisplock-Worde had written, it was something of a misnomer. While their meetings were frequent, there were very few minds involved.
This made the Witmoot either A Grand Experiment In Republican Representation, or the most ill-conceived band of young gadabouts elected to public office.
Before his death, Vimes had had some very interesting to things say about his son’s preoccupation with “cobblestone-level politics” and “community organizing.” Namely, that communities weren’t meant to be organized (an acceptable level of hectic chaos would do) and if the gods meant Vimeses to get into politics, they wouldn’t have given them axes.
**** Between being a watchman and being a wolf, Angua had a lot of experience talking to people whose grip on the ins-and-outs of reality was tenuous. Some of them were even people.
***** In human years, not dog years. The canine part of her brain put Vetinari in the same category as her Uncle Jorgen, who had once snapped a bear’s neck between his jaws, and still insisted on carrying her around by the scruff of her neck. It was the same sort of—terror and awe, the knowledge that gentleness was a choice. Not a natural state of affairs.
****** Angua could imagine Vimes now, going purple in the face and chomping on his cigar, insisting that his was clearly built for a bigger man, and wasn’t that embarrassing, a deliberate slight—but Angua’s had nipples.
******* Sometimes crossing a purebred with a mix resulted in a stronger bloodline. Other times, all the deliberate inbreeding collided with the bloody-minded perverseness of a mutt, and the result was a ball of wiry-haired crazy that enjoyed savaging bigger dogs. Young Sam was very much the latter.
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