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Drumknott stays on for a month after the old Patrician dies. He even speaks to The Times about finding the body - not assassination in the end, but heart, which will no doubt give the cartoonist and street humourists something to be ‘funny’ about. Miss Cripslock asks if a congested heart isn’t a bit odd in such an abstemious man, and is provided with a quote from Dr Lawn to the effect that any medical condition is a mixture of environment and inheritance.
Drumknott stays on a month, just to see the new Patrician settled in. After that he plans to take a holiday for the first time in twenty years, to spend some time in the sun before he finds a new position. Old Charlie Whatsit, Vetinari’s occasional stand in, the one who used to do children’s parties, is going along as well. This is known for a fact because The Times’ junior correspondent happens to be at the station when they buy their tickets, and comes back saying that he can’t understand how Charlie ever got work. He’d taken the jacket of his blue suit off in the heat and you could see how much broader he was across the shoulders than old Vetinari, and although his hair’s going silver he’s obviously years younger.
‘Tanned too,’ he says, ‘where everyone knows the Patrician was so pale that people thought he was a vampire.'
Otto von Chriek, The Times lead photographer – and, incidentally, vampire - who has spent an afterlife studying colour and shape and ways in which the eye can be deceived, looks thoughtful but says nothing.
Drumknott stays a month and ignores the idle rumours that he and Charlie were only waiting for Vetinari to die, that they used to moonlight on the railway so they could see each other without anyone knowing. It’ll all quiet down soon enough. There’s a shiny new leader to obsess about now. A symbol of the golden age most people rarely pause to realise was actually set up by the man who came before him. Drumknott’s contribution won’t even be a footnote of a footnote.
Drumknott stays because he promised to, and he’s not a man to shirk his duty, and because the person who is not Charlie, or Stoker Blake, or any of half a dozen other pseudonyms, and who is very much not dead but has been spending longer and longer periods of time in a climate that doesn’t tie his injured leg up in knots with arthritis, understands that perfectly.
A month, because actually there isn’t too much to do. The city has been set spinning in perfect balance. The Watch and The Times will keep an eye on the new patrician, and each other, and the guilds. Their city is prosperous and well-connected. Its people better fed and better clothed than they have ever been, and fresh talent pours in through the open gates every year. They are as pleased and proud as parents might be.
But now, that last month over, they are content to sit on a sun-warmed balcony with a pleasant breeze blowing in off the sea, to share a bottle of wine without worrying whether it might be poisoned, or if they’ll be operating at less than full speed should something disastrous happen. Content to get their news second hand via the clacks and the post and the paper, and welcome just a few discreet guests into their new home.
Content, most of all, to be forgotten about.