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It appeared to exa his and flapping its wings occasionally to help with its balance, it trotted away across the plaza and headed towards the-what once had been the Patrician's palace To what once had been the king's palace, too

It ignored the frightened spectators silently pressing theateas shouldered aside with depressing ease The doors the ten seconds before collapsing into a heap of glowing ash

The dragon stepped through

Lady Rah

There was a e to it and there were tears in his eyes, but it was still laughter He laughed and laughed until he slid gently down the edge of the fountain, his legs splaying out in front of hiled, al

"What on earth d'you s! Blow the cy after all! What ho!"

"Have you been drinking?" she snapped

"Not yet!" sniggered Vihed on, knowing that when he stopped black depression was going to drop on hi out ahead of them

after all, it was definitely noble And it didn't carry money, and it couldn't answer back It could certainly do so theht That's the Ankh-Morpork way If you can't beat it or corrupt it, you pretend it was your idea in the first place

Vivat Draco

He becaain It waved its flag gently at hiain now?"

"Why not?" said Vimes "Everyone else will"

From the palace came the muffled sounds of complicated destruction

Errol pulled a broo with effort, hauled it upright After a lot ed to winkle the end of it between the wall and the big jar of la like a bellows, and pushed

The jar resisted for a moment, rocked back and forth once or twice, and then fell over and sstones Crude, very badly-refined oil spread out in a black puddle

Errol's huge nostrils twitched Somewhere in the back of his brain unfaraph keys Great balks of infor inexplicable inforeometric isomerism However, almost all of itErrol

All he kneas that he was suddenly very, very thirsty

So in the palace There was the occasional crash of a floor or thu

In his rat-filled dungeon, behind a door with more locks than a major canal network, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork lay back and grinned in the darkness

Outside, bonfires flared in the dusk

Ankh-Morpork was celebrating No-one was quite sure why, but they'd worked theht, barrels had been broached, oxen had been put on spits, one paper hat and celebratoryhad been issued per child, and it seemed a shame to waste all that effort Anyway, it had been a very interesting day, and the people of Ankh-Morpork set great store by entertainment

"The way I see it," said one of the revellers, halfway through a huge greasy luhtn't be a bad idea When you think it through, is what I racious," said the wo the idea "Sort of, well, sleek Nice and slared at soer revellers further down the table "The trouble with people today is they don't take pride in then policy, of course," said a third, helping himself to a rib "When you come to think about it"

"What d'you mean?"

"Diploht about it And then you could see the about it the other way, in a polite effort to see what the hell he was getting at

"Dunno," said the ot these, basically, two sort of ways of negotiation Hasn't it? Iyou alive, or it isn't Correct ," he added

"That's my point I , you kno arrogant that lot are, suppose he says: ant this, ant that, ant the other thing Well," he said, bea at theo home in ajar"

They tried out this idea for

"They've got a big fleet, Klatch," said thediplomats People see a pile of charcoal come back on the boat, they tend to look a bit askance"

"Ah, then we say, Ho there, Johnny Klatchian, you no like-u-you pretty damn chop-chop"

"We could really say that?"

"Why not? And then we say, send plenty tribute toot sweet"

"I never did like them Klatchians," said the woab-blin' away all the tio "

In the shadows, a match flared

Vimes cupped his hands around the flautter and slouched off down the da that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life