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In retrospect, Sam Vimes might be inclined to say that he honestly manages his best. He survives and stifles his initial reaction of grabbing his nose and pinching it after he marches into the Oblong Office. He does not flinch (although he really wants to!) when Vetinari moves from the window to the desk and the olfactory cloud of death follows him, threatening to sway even closer to Vimes. The Commander stares at his usual spot behind the Patrician, dispassionately delivering the first part of the report and putting his iron will not to change his facial expression from “carefully wooden” to “ye gods, take me out of here”. No, he says, Captain Carrot works well. Two unlicensed thieves were caught, as well as one licensed assassin but he was quickly released. No, it was impossible to somehow avoid yesterday’s traffic jam. No one expected drunken dwarves to still be sober enough not to cause a collision. The sluggish tempo of the vehicles behind the dwarvish wagon was perfectly justifiable. No, sir, we could not just arrest them, they did not break any law.
“Oh, very well,” Vetinari drums his fingers on the desk. Vimes tries not to breathe, because if he tried to do it through his mouth, he would end up giving out an alarming wheeze. He starts to get dizzy. “It might require an addendum to the traffic laws. A possibility of setting up the lowest speed limit in the vein of ‘no slower than…’. That’s unexpected.”
The Patrician’s voice suddenly comes from further away. “Sir,” Vimes manages. The more he stays in the room, the worse the stench gets. It is worse than the city and that is a feat!
“Touching upon unexpected developments. What about your… trainings … with Captain Angua?”
Ah. That. Trainings. On how to manage his newest bloody condition.
In his wildest dreams, Sam Vimes would have never guessed that at the tender age of fifty, he would be forced to learn how to live as a werewolf. But then again, he would have never guessed he would be a duke, and yet, here we are.
“About… that…”
“Commander?”
“S… Sir…”
“Vimes?”
Vimes’ vision is blurry as if he tried to see through the fog. Instead of properly seeing the motion of the movement, he rather hears the creak of the Patrician’s chair as he gets up. The air pricks his lungs with needles. The aforementioned wolfy instinct howls at him to escape the Palace and plunge his whole head into the Ankh in a willing display of inhumation.
“Vimes, what’s wrong?!”
“I’m… I’m going to-“ gurgles Vimes, “sir, I’m going to puke.”
“Not on the carpet !”
The sharpness of the tone makes it a command, both canine and humane parts of Vimes hear it as a command. Vimes bolts from his spot and crashes through the Office’s door, his throat constricting and inviting the first taste of bile into his mouth. He stumbles blindly forward, covering the lower half of his face with his hand.
“What is happening?!” Drumknott’s voice is alarmed and thin.
“Wiphow!” he yells, muffed, from behind his hand and points at the nearest window in the hall. “Ophem phe wiphow!”
Drumknott is efficient. Before Vimes has a chance to gurgle again and bristle in effort to swallow down, his ears are hit by the metallic ting of the latch, and soon, he is gently pushed towards the fresh air. Vimes nearly dives through the window outside. (Unwise, as the Oblong Office and the hall leading to it is located on the highest level of the Palace. Vimes has yet to learn the new limits of his untransformed and transformed bodies, but he is sure that in either form, he would still end up flat as a pancake in the gardens below).
He makes a sound he did not know was possible to produce and gasps, pumping the fresh air in and out of his lungs with the loudness and the efficiency of a completely new dwarvish industrial pump, the new model, imported. He tries to squeeze as much of himself through the window frame as possible… which is not that much. It is mostly just the head and a bit of his shoulders.
“A typical werewolfish behaviour, I presume,” the voice of Vetinari behind him is icy.
“It’s the smell.”
“Pardon?”
“How honest can I be?”
A moment of silence. “Fully, Commander.”
Vimes steadies himself on his feet and reaches out to grab the wooden frame window for support.
“Sir. You reek ,” he growls, looking over his shoulder. Growling comes very easily now. “It’s worse than the Ankh during a heatwave.” He turns his head to the outside and sniffles, his nostrils flare. The air carries the usual acidic and stuffy smell of the city below. It is like roses in comparison to what he has experienced in the Office. “I don’t know what anti-werewolf measure you’ve employed. But bloody hell! Employ just half !”
Another moment passes in silence.
“Noted,” the voice is devoid of any stronger emotion. Vimes growls again and wants to grit his teeth but his sharpened fangs make that difficult. Eh, tit for tat. “I will remember and adjust for the future. Don’t let me detain you, Commander.”
***
“What do you mean by ‘unpleasant smells’, sir?”
Vimes lights a cigarette – experimentally. The smell of tobacco cigars has grown intense in all the best ways and he has not decided yet if he is truly comfortable with that much intensity. He discards the match, puffs and his gaze falls upon Captain Angua, who is sitting across his desk.
The day of tormenting employers with odd questions while trapping them in offices, he thinks bitterly.
“Any smell that is… invasive. Hard to stand. How do you deal with them?”
“Oh, you mean the scent of blood?” Angua knits her eyebrows and leans back in the chair. “Yes, it’s… problematic. It stirs the survivor, messes up with the general terrain orientation, especially within the labyrinth of city streets. It’s the matter of exposure, I fear, and–“
“No, I didn’t mean that,” Vimes takes a drag, “I mean genuinely unpleasant smells. A normal stench.” Normal is a very relative word here. “Something that causes you to cover and pinch your nose.”
“I…” Angua blinks, lips slightly parted. “I don’t know what to say to that, sir. It’s possible to be overwhelmed by stimuli, but what you are describing…” Her face betrays thoughtful confusion. “Sir, my kind… our kind… does not categorise smells in…” she wrinkles her nose, “in an aesthetic sense. They are not colours, they’re signals. It’s like trying to categorise words based on how pretty they sound or look. It’s an idiotic idea,” she shakes her head and Vimes notices how the lights of the lamps outside dance on the metal of her helmet. His jaw involuntarily slacks a bit. Wowie. There are three candles in the office and he’s still able to see that ? Has his eyesight improved? “Prettiness is not a quality of a word, sir. The quality of a word is its meaning in communication. Same is with scents.”
Vetinari, with his linguistic education, would positively raise both of his eyebrows at such a comparison, and he would definitely outright frown at the insinuation that all words have the same phonetic beauty. Sam Vimes, however, does not possess any major linguistic education, but he appreciates pragmatism.
“So anything like a ‘bad smell’ does not exist?”
“No, sir. At least, not to us.”
Vimes sighed. Scent as information, huh? The only information he gained from the Patrician’s proximity earlier today was to bugger off and clog his nose.
“What about strong emotions, Captain? Fear, anger? Because I swear…” he trails off and realises he does not want to say anything further.
That awareness feels too much like an invasion of privacy. The first day at work after the… Well, it was interesting.
Angua’s eyes gleam as she nods.
“Fear smells… potent. Doesn’t it?” she asks softly.
“That it does. Is it… supernatural stuff or… I mean, bodies sweat under stress, the heartbeat increases, among other things.”
“I’d say a bit of both, sir. But I’m not a wizard.” She tilts her head.
“Me neither.”
The stretched out silence, unlike the one in the Oblong Office earlier today, is comfortable. Sam Vimes has realised it pretty recently but Angua von Überwald’s smiles became a bit wider now, after… Well, they are now two foxes in the same henhouse. Or two wolves in the same Watch. Or two pretty pickles in a jar, or however that one saying goes.
“Sir, if we are on the topic of distinguishable scents…” Angua, avoiding his gaze, coughs discreetly into her fist. “I’d advise to… be prepared if the work leads to the lodges of the Seamstresses’ Guild. The concentration of so many desires in one place might cause lightheadedness.”
Vimes groaned. “Oh, gods!”
“It’s a very… Don’t know how to describe it.”
“Please, don’t,” mumbles Vimes and glances at the end of the cigarette he holds in between his index and middle finger. “I hope I’m lucky enough to have not sniffed it yet.”
“You had to, sir, I’m afraid,” the Captain sighs. “There are some dalliances between members of the Watch.”
“It’s better not be in any way metallic. My own office smells like this!” Vimes lifts the cigarette to his mouth.
Angua seems to mull it over. “No. It’s peppery. Energising.”
Vimes chokes on the smoke with the violence of a dragon.
“Oh, you’ve smelled it! Yes, it is exactly that, sir, I’m afraid. Pheromones.”
***
The next day at 11 o’clock, Sam Vimes stands in the Oblong Office and still has no idea why he has decided on a gamble. Naturally, he mumbled to his morning mirror something about being a copper and having to find the absolute truth. Still, it does not explain why he needs to find it at a potential expense to himself.
He only feels like his whole life depends on this truth and he refuses to back down.
The Patrician sits behind his desk, scribbling on the paper and he does not bother to look up. This time, the delivery of the report has gone without any threats of somebody’s lunch wanting to evacuate itself from the body in panic.
Apparently, both of them share the relief because Vetinari lifts his gaze from the document in his hands and the corner of his mouth curves in a shadow of a polite smile. “You’re looking much better today, Commander.”
Because you don’t stink, Vimes does not say. Of course, the fetor from yesterday is not entirely gone. The Commander has taken a place close to the door, in a very strategic point, keeping a very strategic distance from the desk and the figure behind it. Even from there, his nose catches an underlying trace of… whatever it was that Vetinari had decided to bath himself in the previous day, clothes and robes included. Today, the stuffy stench lingers on Vetinari, an echo of a warning, instead of being an attempt at assassinating Vimes’ sense of smell. The oppressive haze is gone, so the bastard had to order to have the entire room aired and scrubbed. The freshness carries a tang of baking soda and spicy vinegar.
“I am feeling better today, sir. But I’ve come prepared.”
“Oh?” a sharp, black eyebrow raises. “Pray tell, Your Grace. What trick have you learned from Captain Angua?”
“I modified her idea a little, to my own benefit.”
His lips feel dry.
“It’s not complicated. Just battling a strong scent with another one.”
“Ah, an attempt at finding a neutralizer?” Vetinari’s tone is untrustworthily conversational. “A very logical solution, although I’d presume that paying a visit to a local apothecary in your state might have been troublesome.”
“It was, so I didn’t go there.”
Vetinari’s blue gaze fixes itself on the scarf the Commander is wearing around the neck. “A cloth drenched in a certain substance, possibly?”
Vimes’ blood pounds inside his ears. He has an overwhelming urge to run – not exactly away but just to run, to get his body in motion. He moves his lower jaw to relax it.
His hand pulls at the scarf. “It’s not exactly the cloth, sir.”
He frees his neck, digs his fingers underneath the rim of the breastplate and the chainmail, and pulls, tilting his chin upwards as much as it is possible. He takes a deep, deep breath, his nostrils flare in anxious anticipation.
The silence that falls is as potent as the smell of human fear.
But human fear has an alarming quality to it, it is a step away from the scent of blood – it is only a bit milder, a bit more civilised. The term “frozen in fear” has proven to be a heap of dragoncrap for Vimes and a proof of how invalid humane noses are. Fear is hot, like a sizzling piece of metal.
And surely, it is there. The familiar-by-now hot smell of panic, fighting through the artificial odour of the blockade Vetinari so carefully executed to hide behind.
“What is that?” A quiet question.
Vimes breaths– sniffles in. “My collar,” he exhales.
And with that sniffle, his heart threatens to burst out of his chest.
A buddling, growing scent – drop by drop – dripping like hot wax from a candle flame. It drops and drips, thickly, until it violates the disguise and breaks free. The peppery scent.
Angua is right, it is energising.
I didn’t lose my mind, Vimes thinks with no relief. The first time I’d smelled it, it wasn’t just his individual scent.
Vimes still stretches out his neck, exposing a leather ring around it and, incidentally, also exposing his vital arteries to a silver dart or a thin dagger. He extends his index finger and with the tip, he pushes the edge of the collar up. A small, soap-like oval slips from underneath the rim of the breastplate.
“And what is that ?” the Patrician at this point could as well have said the whole sentence in emphasis.
“A cube of hardened anosmiberry paste.” Vimes gulps. “It heats up on the skin and fights off most of the smells. Captain Angua uses it to wash her clothing, to keep her nose sharp, so to speak.”
The peppery scent is now carrying other tones: a mixture of gooseberry essence, probably from washing products - a tingle of masculine sweat - slightly deep smell of ink - some oily herb that is so bothersome to the sensibilities that it has to be a medicine, maybe for the leg. A palette spiced up with tale-telling pepper and heated up with the stress of fear.
He finally dares to look back at Vetinari. Elegant calm is displayed on his features, there is not a hair out of place. However, his blue eyes are doubtlessly silvery and the aura of his emotions has overpowered the stench of camouflage.
“How clever, your Grace,” he says, silverly . Vimes fleetingly wonders how his own fear smells. “How absurdly clever. Is it worth it, though? The collar, I mean. You are already affectionally called my Terrier in several songs. Don’t you think that wearing a collar would encourage further mockery?”
There it is, the bottom of the case, the truth, hidden underneath the threats and pepper scent. He’s dug it out.
“This nickname does not mock me ,” growls Vimes.
He pushes the collar down, to the base of his neck, below the rim of the armour, away from the curious eyes. He rewraps the scarf. “I’ve never thought about it as something to be ashamed of.”
Any trace of silver disappears both from Vetinari’s face and from his mannerisms. The heat from his scent starts to dissolve gradually, burning away from within and extinguishing itself.
Vimes’ gaze climbs up slightly above the Patrician’s shoulder, at its usual place, and stays there.
“Ah… Vimes…”
It is definitely the softest-spoken phrase he has ever received from the man and the moment is worth remembering, if only for that.
“Sir,” he replies, curt and determined.
“If I misspoke, it is because I could not assume… to receive so much, Vimes.” It is so close to an apology.
“Sir. Shove it.”
“Gods,” the silkiness of the voice. “Gladly.”
Peppery tones get richer, Vimes feels as if he took a whiff of a well-spiced dish. It is a pleasant smell. It makes him want to… do … things… Like running. Yeah, like running, to work off the energy. He is hot underneath the armour and he is probably red in the face as well.
If after all that Vetinari still decides to cover himself in whatever it was that he covered himself in, Vimes will be just reporting to Drumknott or if forced, he will deliberately stand nauseous on every washed rug until the Palace goes bankrupt.
“I do believe we are stretching the limits of our designated meeting,” Vetinari steeples his fingers, his lips hiding the faint trace of triumph. “You leave me, however, with several matters unfinished. As well as some new developments that require attention, but… I would rather not rush into them head-first, so to speak. It is rare of me to admit that I was caught… underprepared ,” he pronounces the word as if it was opprobrious in some way, “but I did not account for your absolute suicidal bravery, Vimes”.
“It is not bravery,” growls Vimes. Gods, he starts to actually like to growl, why hasn’t he been doing that earlier?
“Then what is it, Vimes?”
“Honesty.”
“Honesty, as simple as that? Very uncomplicated.”
“I don’t know how complicated dogs are, sir,” Vimes shrugs an arm.
Havelock Vetinari’s eyes are the bluest, bluer even than the beautiful flowers painted upon the white tiles in the richer parts of Ankh-Morpork. The smell of pepper, of gooseberry foam, ink and medicine twirl in the air. But the body language of the Patrician remains inscrutable.
“Canines possess the capability of surprising even those who have extensively studied their habits.”
“Well. Woof–woof, sir.”
Vetinari covers his mouth behind his hand in a swift, discreet gesture.
“Don’t let me detain you, Vimes. For now. We’ll have an appointment later.”
“Should I wear the collar?”
Can there be too much pepper? It is hard to imagine, the smell makes his heart leap in joy and click heels.
“No,” Vetinari says, eyes half-closed but so blue. “It will be… counterproductive to what I have in mind. I do need to plan, Vimes. We both need to. In a calm atmosphere, if that is possible.”
Well, this is one point that Sam Vimes does not want to discuss with.
“Understood, sir. Will wait.”
“Perfect.”
Vimes is not sure how exactly he finds the way out because he has no memory of it. The world, which for Sam Vimes through most of the time is closed within the borders of Ankh–Morpork, smells sharply of urine, cheap coins, sludge and in the evening, of fried or boiled food. At first, the olfactory urban batter had caused eye-watering and sneezing, like a seasonal allergy, before he did the first rational thing that came to him and he slept it off. The assimilation went quickly. The piece of the hardened pomade of anosmiberry fulfils its task splendidly, but he will have to find a more practical way to wear it. The collar was more for provocation than anything else.
He can still smell the pepper.
He pushes his helmet deeper onto his head and picks up the pace. He realises in bewilderment that if he had a tail right now, he probably would be wagging it joyfully.
This is going to be a very long day patrol.