“You know, we've got to find something better,” said Vimes, as he unwrapped the message. “Every time we send a message to Constable Downspout he eats it.”

“Well, he are a gargoyle,” said Detritus. “He fink it lunch arriving.”

“Oh,” said Vimes, “his lordship requires my attendance. How nice.”

Lord Vetinari looked attentive, because he'd always found that listening keenly to people tended to put them off.

And at meetings like this, when he was advised by the leaders of the city, he listened with great care because what people said was what they wanted him to hear. He paid a lot of attention to the spaces outside the words, though. That's where the things were that they hoped he didn't know and didn't want him to find out.

Currently he was paying attention to the things that Lord Downey of the Assassins' Guild was failing to say in a lengthy exposition of the Guild's high level of training and value to the city. The voice, eventually, came to a stop in the face of Vetinari's aggressive listening.

“Thank you, Lord Downey,” he said. “I'm sure we shall all be able to sleep a lot more uneasily for knowing all that. Just one minor point… I believe the word ‘assassin’ actually comes from Klatch?”

“Well… indeed…”

“And I believe also that many of your students are, as it turns out, from Klatch and its neighbouring countries?”

“The unrivalled quality of our education…”

“Quite so. What you are telling me, in point of fact, is that their assassins have been doing it longer, know their way around our city and have had their traditional skills honed by you?”

“Er…”

The Patrician turned to Mr Burleigh.

“We surely have superiority in weapons, Mr Burleigh?”

“Oh, yes. Say what you like about dwarfs, but we've been turning out some superb stuff lately,” said the President of the Guild of Armourers.

“Ah. That at least is some comfort.”