Carrot was staring upwards, towards the nearest clacks tower.

'Riot in Cable Street,' he said. 'It's All Officers, sir.'

They broke into a run. You always did for an All Officers. The people in trouble might well be you.

There were more dwarfs on the streets as they got nearer, and Vimes recognized the signs. The dwarfs all wore preoccupied looks and were walking in the same direction.

'It's over,' he said, as they rounded a corner. 'You can tell by the sudden increase of suspiciously innocent bystanders.'

Whatever else the emergency had been, it had been a big one. The street was strewn with debris, and a fair amount of dwarfs. Vimes slowed down.

'Third time this week,' he said. 'What's got into them?'

'Hard to say, sir,' said Carrot. Vimes shot him a glance. Carrot had been raised by dwarfs. He also, if he could possibly avoid it, never told a lie.

'That isn't the same as I don't know, is it?' he said.

The captain looked awkward.

'I think it's... sort of political,' he said.

Vimes noted a throwing axe buried in a wall.

'Yes, I can see that,' he said.

Someone was coming along the street, and was probably the reason why the riot had broken up. Lance-Constable Bluejohn was the biggest troll Vimes had ever met. He loomed. He was so big that he didn't stand out in a crowd because he was the crowd; people failed to see him because he was in the way. And, like many overgrown people, he was instinctively gentle and rather shy and inclined to let others tell him what to do. If fate had led him to join a gang, he'd be the muscle. In the Watch, he was the riot shield. Other watchmen were peering around him.

'Looks like it started in Gimlet's Delicatessen,' said Vimes, as the rest of the Watch moved in. 'Get a statement off Gimlet.'