Corporal Littlebottom stood up and looked at him expectantly. She had been sitting next to a box, which cooed peacefully.

“Something's up. Run down to… I mean, send a pigeon down to the Yard,” said Vimes.

“Yes, sir?”

“All leave is cancelled as of now and I want to see every officer, and I mean every officer, at the Yard at, oh, let's say six o'clock.”

“Right, sir. That might mean an extra pigeon unless I can write small enough.”

Littlebottom hurried off.

Vimes glanced out of the window. There was always a certain amount of activity outside the palace but today there was… not so much a crowd as, just, rather more people than you normally saw, hanging around. As if they were waiting for something.

Klatch!

Everyone knows it.

Old Detritus was right. You could hear the little pebbles bouncing. It's not just a few fishermen having a scrap, it's a hundred years of… well, like two big men trying to fit in one small room, trying to be polite about it, and then one day one of them just has to stretch and pretty soon they're both smashing the furniture.

But it couldn't really happen, could it? From what he'd heard, the present Seriph was a competent man who was mostly concerned with pacifying the rowdy edges of his empire. And there were Klatchians living in Ankh-Morpork, for heaven's sake! There were Klatchians born in Ankh-Morpork. You saw some lad with a face that'd got camels written all over it, and when he opened his mouth it'd turn out he had an Ankhian accent so thick you could float rocks. Oh, there's all the jokes about funny food and foreigners, but surely…

Not very funny jokes, come to think of it.

When you hear the bang, there's no time to wonder how long the little fuse has been fizzing.