THE PERILS OF SMOKING OUT BACK

The Patrician's Palace, formerly known as the Winter Palace, was not, on the whole, known for its architecture. It was certainly a significant building in the city and out of it; the famed Listening Monks remembered it for the fact that, during Vetinari's rule, at least, it was home to the fourth most silent(a) place on the Disc - the Oblong Office. And mimes everywhere recalled it fondly as their means of escape from the pains of the mortal world as they climbed out of Hell's flames by invisible ladders and reflected that here, at least, there are no scorpions. But not for its architecture, no. It was a box with pillars stuck on, never a particularly awe-inspiring sight. Even so, it wasn't that bad. It certainly didn't deserve the names it was being called by one notorious Commander.

In fact Vimes wasn't particularly angry at the solid stone in front of him: he was only mildly irritated with the world in general(b), because it looked like Nobby stolen his cigar case. Again. He wasn't sure why. It wasn't as if the corporal would be able to pawn it off anywhere; all the pawnshop keepers knew Vimes, to their chagrin. Probably some scheme to finally get himself a girl, Vimes thought, sympathetically. Nobby was cursed, among other things, with eternal optimism.

Which was all very well, but the upshot was that Vimes had no cigars. This wouldn't, normally, have been so utterly terrible since he could have stopped by one of the little tobacco stores on his beat, but today was not normal.

Today Vetinari had pulled a Sudden Democratic Moment on him, without even the decency to give him a bloody warning. There he'd been, standing in the midst of a bunch of Guild leaders with the growing urge to bite down on something, Downey's neck for preference, and he hadn't had his cigar case.

I'm sure you see the problem here.

In any case he'd been forced to beat a hasty retreat into the relatively fresh air of the courtyard directly behind the Rats Chamber. He was expected back in there in a few minutes.

"Bloody buggering piece of..." he muttered, glaring at the door he was expected to make his way through in a few minutes.

It opened. Vimes stared blankly at it for a moment, then realized that the reason it had opened was not because "bloody buggering piece of" were the magic words, but because someone was opening it. The someone was, in fact, Miss Adora Belle Dearheart, looking murderous.

Vimes, who had encountered Miss Dearheart before, considered that possibly going back in now would be a better option than facing her, but then the door closed. Ah well. He had updated his will recently, he was pretty sure...

Dearheart was looking at him. "Oh. It's you."

"Just so," he said. She nodded once at him, turned to look at the rest of the city, and lit a cigarette.

Vimes didn't like cigarettes, the damn titchy things. The smell of smoke made him think of cigars, though, which was not helpful.

He found that his gaze was being irresistibly drawn to the unfortunate cigarette, which Miss Dearheart was chewing as if she had a personal grudge against it.

"Do you have a problem?" her voice cut in to his thoughts.

"Yes," he said frankly. Then he waited. Eventually even she succumbed to the silence.

"Which is?"

"N-I don't have my cigar case with me," he said, deciding not to go into the embarrassing details of Nobby's little heist.

"Oh," she said, looking ever so slightly mollified. Clearly she'd been expecting him to complain about the smoke. Hah! As if he would care.

There was a pause, filled with what would have been an extremely awkward silence were it not for the quiet but steady flow of invective from Vimes' general direction. As it was, it was merely awkward.

The awkward lack of silence was interrupted by a small yet persistent noise. Or rather, by small yet persistent noises.

"...bingle bingle bingle..."

Vimes blinked. "What... I thought I left you inside!"

He appeared to be talking to his pocket. Miss Dearheart watched in faint bemusement.

"You did, Insert Name Here!"

"Where -"

"Down here, Insert Name Here!"

"Wh-oh. I see." He shot her a look, which she returned steadily. "Well, what is it, then?"

"His Lordship says to come back inside."

"How did - never mind! Never mind! Don't tell me!" he interrupted hastily when he saw the imp open its mouth; then he disappeared back inside, followed soon after by Gooseberry.

Miss Adora Belle Dearheart, a.k.a Spike, observed this all with mild interest. And shrugged.

(a) It was beaten by, in order, from loudest to softest, the following: The deepest and oldest of the dwarven mines under Uberwald, the temple of the Sender of Eight (up until it was destroyed by a lost tourist), and Mistress Weatherwax's bedroom when she was Out Borrowing.

(b) Keep in mind, however, that his mild irritation with the world in general was at that moment being concentrated on a mere building. It was a wonder it didn't explode, really.

--

"Nobby!" Vimes hissed as he shouldered aside yet another member of the crowd(a).

"Yessir?" said the ape-like corporal, looking guilty on principle and slouching to attention.

"Do you have my cigar case on you here?"

"What?!" said Nobby, eyes bugging out.

"Do. You. Have. My. Cigar case," he ground out, and ducked a wildly swung arm. Things were getting a little heated in the room set aside for the What Exactly Is A Golem Standard Anyways Committee #1362.

"Nossir!"

"Damn it! Where did you put it, then?"

"Sir?!"

"The cigar case!"

"I dunno sir!"

"What do you mean, man(d)? Look, I know you pinched it, it's all right, I'm not going to -"

"I didn't pinch nuthin', Mister Vimes!"

Vimes realized that everything Nobby had just said had been punctuated with exclamation, which was 1) uncharacteristic and 2) worrisome.

Because if he wasn't mistaken, excessive punctuation was an indication that Corporal Nobbs was not, in fact, lying. At least, not completely and cognizantly.

"So you are saying, just to be clear on this, that you did not, on your honor as someone who wishes to survive my future wrath, nick my cigar case at any point in time during the past twenty-four hours?"

"Nossir!!"

Two of 'em. Bugger.

Just then, Lord Downey opened his mouth to speak...

(a) He might have felt better about it if he'd known that the member in question was Mr. Slant, who out of sheer boredom(b) was considering regaling Vimes with a Lawyer Joke(c).

(b) A difficult thing to attain, when dead, but Slant managed it.

(c) It is a scientific fact that unless one has completed law school, it is impossible to enjoy or even comprehend the reasoning behind the multitudinous Lawyer Jokes.

(d) On the balance of probability. Sort of.

--

"You again?" said Miss Dearheart, blowing smoke at him.

Vimes didn't bother to answer that.

--

"Tell me, is there a reason you keep coming out here for about five minutes and then go back in for about five minutes and then come back out for about five minutes, or is it just, oh, I don't know, a nervous twitch?"

"Probably the latter."

--

"You said something earlier about a cigar case, Commander?"

"Yeah. I did."

It was a good stony stop-asking-questions-lest-you-be-messily-devoured-by-huge-polka-dotted-rats voice, but was rather wasted on Miss Dearheart.

"Interesting" was all she said in response then, but you could tell she was plotting something. Worse than bloody Vetinari, Vimes thought, and tried to suppress the more murderous options that were coming to mind.

--

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"How did you lose it?"

"Up until... how many times have I been out here?"

"This is the fifth time."

He blinked. "You were keeping track?"

Her expression dared him to comment. "Er. Not that that isn't fine entertainment for any young women looking to keep from committing various illegal and quite deadly acts against the general public, of course," he said, and was satisfied to see amazement flicker across her face for a moment, although he was aware that he wasn't helping in the general area of murderous options (though whose were whose none could say).

"Did you just say that?" she managed, after the aforementioned moment of astonished hush.

Vimes caught her eye, then shrugged and went on, since he was, after all, Vimes, and he did, after all, have a reputation to uphold. "Yep."

She shook her head wonderingly. Then something seemed to strike her. She stubbed out the cigarette on the stone railing and said, like one pronouncing a very strange sort of doom,

"You changed the subject."

"I did?"

"The cigar case."

"Ah. Right. To be honest, I've no bloody idea."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Hmm," she said. "I take it that is the root cause of your nervous twitch, Your Grace?"

He glared at her. Miss Dearheart, if he was not much mistaken, smirked.

--

"You seem to be chewing a pencil, Commander," she said, by way of re-greeting.

"Well done," he said, removing it briefly.

"Possibly more to the point," she said, "where did you get it?"

"Nicked it off your Mr. Lipwig."

"He's hardly my Mr. Lipwig, as I'm sure you know. And why did dear Moist -" Vimes had a sudden coughing fit, which Adora Belle Dearheart ignored with considerable aplomb "- have a pencil on him, exactly?"

"Don't know. Don't want to(a)."

It was a very badly chewed pencil.

A pause, underlined by the faint noises of teeth against wood and Miss Dearheart lighting yet another of her countless cigarettes.

"I'm not lending you one, you know," she said, exhaling blue smoke and brandishing a flaming dog-end at his head. Vimes ducked.

"I wasn't going to ask," he replied, standing up with as much dignity as possible and straightening his armor(b).

"Of course not." She stared at the low-hanging, fat red sun for a moment before adding inconsequentially, "Nicotine is nicotine, you know."

"Er, yes?" said Vimes. "You're right, it is."

"I've never understood the attraction of cigars, to tell the truth," she reflected. "Rather odious things, really."

"You've never had a really good cigar," said Vimes cheerily. Cheerily for a man deprived in a way that was both cruel and unusual, anyway.

"And never will," Dearheart retorted. She sounded far-off. Vimes wondered whether he should go back to picturing the obligatory Rust-onna-stick, but thought a few more moments of distraction could be eked out of the spiky woman before him first.

"'s a good pencil, really," said Vimes, fiddling with it clumsily and almost dropping it twice before giving up on any future as a world-famous Writing Utensil Juggler if the job, the Dukedom and the trust fund all gave out.

Miss Dearheart raised a delicate eyebrow. "Nicotine is nicotine."

"Yes, you said that already. I thought you were intent on not lending me one?"

"Not if I can get out of your way extremely quickly without doing so, no."

"Ahaha."

"Some of it smells better than the rest, however," she continued just as he was about to give up and risk entering again. Something of a non sequitur, to say the least.

"What does?"

"Nicotine."

"Oh, for gods' - look, well, some nicotine doesn't grow strange black lumps on vital bodily organs!!" he snarled. What the comment lacked in wittiness, he thought, he'd made up for with punctuation.

Fortunately, his Dis-Organizer chose that moment to signal that his presence was 'required' - as if he knew what a standard was, let alone a golem one! - and he was able to make his escape with the (almost certainly temporary) last word.

(a) Almost certainly true. If Vimes had ever discovered Vetinari's neglect of the sanctity of Drumknott's pencils for the sake of keeping tabs on the criminality levels in Lipwig's mind on any given day, it would no doubt have given him an apoplexy.

(b) Which should not, technically speaking, have been at all possible, but then, neither was rumpling a helmet, yet Vimes did that every day. He was a busy man, he didn't have time to pay attention to the laws of physics.

--

Some minutes later, Vimes was dangerously near the makeshift podium and had a glazed look in his eyes.

Perhaps, then, it was fortunate, all in all, that a large portion of the room chose that moment to explode.

Well. Explode wasn't the right word, actually. Implode would be nearer to the mark.

As if in slow motion, Vimes saw the rafters fall in, followed in short order by the ceiling. Fragmented, worm-eaten wood flew out in a cloud of dust and smoke and debris, all propelled by the force of the whatever-it-was towards the sea of humanity just behind it. Most of the room was obliterated by that cloud, though the individual beings were moving fast enough to escape it, as far as he could tell. But most of all was the noise: deafening, and shattering(a), and almost incomprehensible in its sheer volume.

On a cosmic scale, it was not that loud. On a local one, it severely impaired eardrums all 'round.

By the time it had rumbled down to a level over which mere human voices could be heard, most of the attendees had fallen to their knees. Some of them to other people's knees, but still, there was a general downwards theme to it all. There was also a general air of "hands covering the back of my head in a way that might be construed as a defensive posture? What hands?" hanging over the room as the inhabitants thereof realized that the noise had, in fact, died down. Some were getting to their feet.

Then a lonely voice issued forth from the great pile of rubble, sounding nearly as loud as the explosion in the ensuing silence as it said:

"Er."

It was followed by the sad, bedraggled, and somewhat charred figure of none other than one Ponder Stibbons.

"What the hell was that?" said Vimes, waving aside some lingering tendrils of haze and staring at the scene of destruction before him which seemed, for some reason, to be centered around the salad bar.

"Er," said Stibbons again, and then, "well, er, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Sir. Er."

"How on the gods' flat disc could exploding part of the council hall ever seem like a good idea?"

"In fact, sir, I've hypothesized that counter-dimensional pressure created a brief evacuation of internal support, causing an immediate -"

Ponder had a survival instinct, though a meagre one, and the look in Vimes' eye suggested very clearly that he should perhaps cut down a little on his fascinating theories. "- which is to say," he finished, "it was an implosion."

"And?"

"We did not actually 'explode part of the council hall'. Sir."

A vein twitched in Vimes' forehead. It was a large-ish vein, and was very purple, although it didn't stand out as much because of the color the rest of his face was turning. Ponder, already short, shrank another few inches.

"Could you just tell me, in very simple, non-magical terms," Vimes said, slowly and distinctly, "what happened?"

Stibbons told him, with some well-advised edits to the tale, of course.

(a) Fifteen windows broken by the higher range.

--

"Is it just me," said Ridcully conversationally to the salad bar, "or are Sir Samuel's trousers glowing blue?"

"It's just you," said the Dean from his place at the peak of a small mountain made entirely of dishes he'd already licked clean, and swallowed a crouton.

"Actually, sir, there does seem to be some sort of occult radiation..."

"A-HA!" said the Archchancellor. Something seemed to strike him. "Huh, occult radiation coming from His Grace's trousers, eh? Never thought he was the sort."

"Sir!"

"All in good taste, Stibbons, all in good taste. Now, I don't suppose we can get a hack at whatever-it-is? This is an awful bad party, I must say."

"It's a council meeting, sir. It's not meant to be entertaining."

"Really? How queer. Anyway, ever since someone ate all the cucumbers -"

"Hey!"

"- the boredom's been deadly. Nip over and get the wotchermacallit, there's a good lad."

"I think a simple summoning charm will do, sir. Happily, I have stored in my staff -"

"Knob or shaft?" Ridcully demanded.

"Knob."

"Go on."

"Yes, in my staff I have a spell stored which I can eject forthwith."

"Ahem. I see. A summoning spell?"

"A good one, sir. It'll make whatever it is come to us immediately."

"Excellent. Go for it, then."

"Of course, sir. I have to wait until I can get better aim..."

And somewhere, there was a disturbance in the Force, like a thousand missed chances for innuendo crying out in pain...

Then Vimes took something silvery out of his pocket in the hopes of having a quiet smoke out back, and lost it as soon as he'd turned his head for one moment to dodge an elbow(a).

"I have it, sir!" said Ponder, oblivious.

"Oh? Well?"

"It's his cigar case, sir."

"His cigar case? Really? Huh."

"And as you can see, sir, it is indeed glowing blue."

"That's... very strange. Ortn't it be octarine, since we're the only ones as can see the shiny?"

"...something like that, sir. But, you see, the 'shiny', as you put it sir, is of a color characteristic to trans-dimensional objects."

"Bless you!" said Ridcully, thwacking the young man vigorously on the back.

Stibbons sighed. "No, sir, I was saying something. It's from another leg of the Trousers of Time, sir."

"Oh! Why didn't you say so?" Ignoring the stuttered attempts at a response, Ridcully whirled around and bellowed "ALL RIGHT, MEN! OVER HERE! WE'VE GOT A CASE!"

It was a wonder of the nature of Sudden Democracy that no-one but the errant wizards noticed.

They clustered around. They argued. They drew on things with spare pieces of chalk, erasing others' pieces as they went. They drew informative diagrams of multiplexual bifurcation. At one point, the Dean had the Senior Wrangler by the ankle and was swinging.

At last they came to a conclusion. Sort of. There was some necessary circling and warding, the Dean started muttering something that sounded suspiciously like "hut hut!" but the remains of the salad bar were enough to provide them with the supplies and the circle and symbols etc. were completed surprisingly quickly.

"Yep, yep," said Mustrum to himself, looking over the complex pentagram. " Skadoosh(b)! There's no way it can't work."

"Sir, I don't know about that -" Stibbons started, but was promptly cut off by the roof falling in. Among other things.

(a) Not any elbow in particular. Just... an elbow.

(b) The spell could as easily have been activated by making a rude hand gesture - more easily, in fact - but wizards like magic words. Even silly sounding ones.

--

"I see," said Vimes, in a low voice that was somehow even more menacing than the pulsing vein in his forehead. "So you in fact used very serious magic on my cigar case without asking my permission."

"It was showing signs of mysterious occult forces!" said Ponder defensively, never a good idea with the Duke of Ankh. "It could have been very dangerous!"

"I've had it for half a dozen years. It can't be that dangerous."

"That's not the point!"

"You might have told me, at the very least!"

"It was urgent!"

"You said yourself you spent hours arguing about what to do with it!"

"Yes! It was urgent! Under other circumstances it might have taken years!"

"I had to go without a smoke for four hours while listening to Downey! And yes, I know you're behind me, my lord," he said without looking.

The top-hatted assassin looked miffed.

"Sorry, what?" said Stibbons, who looked quite lost at this point.

"Oh, never mind."

At that point, the last of the smog cleared, and Vimes saw for the first time what they had done to his precious cigar case.

It was floating. And glowing even to his unmagical eyes - but greenly, not bluely. And there was a sphere of sickly light hanging in a watery sort of way all around it. There was an oily sheen to its silver surface, too.

"Er," began the young wizard, "we think it might be radioactive, because the explosion may have split a few thaums down the Peppermint quadrant..."

"You would be best advised not to attempt to get it back just now, Sir Samuel," said Vetinari smoothly from where he had materialized a moment earlier. "Not for a week or so, in fact. Isn't that right, Mr. Stibbons?"

Vimes put his head in his hands. And Miss Dearheart, who appeared to have accompanied His Lordship, offered him a lit cigarette in sympathetic silence.

THE END

A/N: This fanfiction does not endorse harmful addictions in any way, summary aside. Really.