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Once, on this street, a barricade stood.
He was there, twice over-- although it feels, in the cold light of time, much more than merely twice. It sticks with him in the way these things always do, namely: almost not at all, in the searing flashes of blood over cobblestones, and the screams that men make when their tongues no longer remember such complex things as syllables, and gunpowder burning black circles across the corners of his eyes. It was Glorious, or so people have told him, people who were not there and did not see what trained soldiers can do, have done before, and, he is achingly sure, will do once more someday, as all things repeat again, given enough time. He lifted his sword and lifted his sword, words his weapons until the pavement shook beneath booted feet marching towards the People’s Republic that never got to rule a single day, and he kept lifting his sword and did not let it go no matter what. That was the lesson learnt that day: never drop your weapon. He hadn’t, but he saw what remained of those that did. Another lesson: a weapon you do not know how to use will get you killed. Another lesson: never turn your back unless you know your mate’s behind you. Another lesson: there will always be another king, no matter how many you kill, and regicide’s in your blood, son-- so you’ll kill so very many, and you’ll want to kill so many, many more.
On this street, in another time, in another life, Sam Vimes died.
On this street, in the dark and the cold, Sam Vimes grinds a cigar beneath his boot-heel and reads the scars that history made on the stones of his city, writ in his hand and many others, and knows, as always, that everything is just a matter of time, as all things, inevitably, are.
They gave him a shield.
To most, this wouldn’t matter. He knew what came before because he was there, when a watchman was a weapon and a blunt one at that, not even something to aim and fire but to light like a match and toss, disdainful, into a corner, once the tiny flicker had burnt itself out, because all that mattered was that the earth was scorched and some frightened people knew better-- or, more accurately, their betters. He knew because he was there, biding time he didn’t even know he was biding, waiting for something that, by all rights, should never have come. He was a street kid from the Shades, who said ain’t and couldn’t be cured of it, who drank and kept his mouth shut but did not want to, who’d seen the dream of a city where freedom -- and not a king -- reigned die on the same streets that’d birthed it, who’d learnt too young and scared and certain that he didn’t have a future and that nobody was ever going to lie to him and tell him that he did. They gave him a shield and they told him that all was well, and he pretended he believed it for twenty long years. They gave him a shield and he tried to stay out of the cold and to see only what he needed to and know only what he must. They gave him a shield, and it wouldn’t have mattered to anyone else but him, but he swore the oath and it took twenty long, long years, but blood, even in Ankh-Morpork, is forever-- and, and, and, as they say, will out.
It ought to itch in him, to stand in the palace with all those painted eyes watching him. Each and every one the eyes of men he would have hated if he’d known, and plotted to kill without a second thought, ought to itch that after their gazes lift, heavy with history and blood his hands never spilt but would if they could, because the law, the law is for everyone and for ever—to, after that, bend his knee.
Although his knee, truth be told, is never bent, and Vetinari would not ask him to—armour is not made for kneeling, after all. His lordship has long been very clear on the matter, anyway: he is not a king, nor shall he ever be. Kings, you see, believe in stupid things, like eternity and the great chain of being and the divine right to rule. Vetinari is not a stupid man, but, instead, quite the opposite. Power is power, but nothing in life is eternal, and a Vimes stands at his shoulder, and no Vimes has ever sworn fealty to a king. The Patrician is a thing of flesh and blood and the city streets, even if he does not sometimes seem so—and so his bulldog answers his call, does not bend his knee, keeps his hand on the hilt of his sword and lets something which, although it is not quite freedom, ring: No man is above the law. Not in my city. Not even kings, or the sons of kings. Not even the Patrician. Not, and don’t you ever forget it, my boy-- not even me.
They call him his Grace, words as foreign to his tongue as, well, most foreign tongues, if the truth be told, (and--), although he can scrape by in Street Dwarfish, if he must, and only a few people get offended, and usually the ones he meant to offend. Grace is not something which has played much of a hand in the life of this or any Vimes, and gods have never looked kindly on a king-killer’s prayers. (Do not doubt that what hangs, heavy, like a stone, in the chest of Sam Vimes is the soul of one who would lift the axe when no other man would step forward to do his duty, for this if nothing else: Sam Vimes never has.) They call him a word he’s never known and curse with him with a blessing he’ll never receive, and it twists in his stomach every time.
Sam Vimes is not a man who knows gods, nor seeks to. Sam Vimes is not a man who knows gods, not a man to seek more power than he’s known and can grasp with his own two hands, for the world is wide and dark and dangerous, and he’s seen quite enough of that already. Sam Vimes is not a man who knows gods, nor, when it comes down to it, kills them, either, but a man who knows his city and his law, one and the same, as they always must be, and Sam Vimes does not know gods, and shall never kill them, and does not know grace, and rarely knows favour—but the law’s the law, mate, and it’s the highest power because it must be, it is written on the fabric of the universe and no wash will ever get it clean, now put down the knife and come quiet, or the extent of it’ll be something you find out.
He used to think the city was a woman, back when he was young and drunker—well, drunk. She was a cruel mistress, but then he’d had a cruel master, and still did, and if the drink didn’t get him then Vetinari would. He loved the city the way, one day, he would love a woman, because he could do nothing else and wanted to do nothing else, because no man was ever loyal as Sam Vimes, or as stubborn. He did it because someone ought to, and because so few did. He knows better now, or as better as he ever will, knows that his city might be a woman but she is, too, so many other things—the only absolute he’ll ever obey, the only thing bigger than himself that he’d die for, the only conqueror he’s ever known and the only thing by which he’d let himself be conquered. A Vimes has died for Anhk-Morpork before, and history, you see, likes patterns. Ankh-Morpork does not ask, but Sam Vimes pulls himself up by his bootstraps (up and up and up--) and draws himself to attention, answers.
In the square before the palace, a man called Vimes once killed a king.
To every generation is born a man who steps forward when the cry comes is there no one else, because to know the law is to be the law, and to be the law is to take it into your own two hands. Either you believe it or you don’t. Either you’ll do it yourself or you won’t. These things don’t matter, until they do, until you lift your eyes and the crowd stares back, a king kneeling at your feet and the weight of expectations your city’s laid on your shoulders and the weight of an axe in your hand. It’s always about what you can carry, and if you cannot carry it then there’s no shame in stepping back, except for all the shame there is, of course, because you are the law, because that’s what the law is for—to be the one who steps forward. To step forward when a hundred thousand people cry save us and bear the pain and the horror and the fear and never, ever step back. If you are the law you must be the law, and being the law has never been for the faint of heart. If you are the law you do not ever ask them to do something that you would not do, and if they will not do it then that is what your two hands are for. If you are the law then you are everywhere and for evermore, and you tear down the world until the world rearranges itself to your viewpoint. You are the law because someone must be, and because if you are not then other men will come, and when those men come something else comes with them, and the thing they bring is only wearing the law’s clothes. Either you believe it or you don’t. Either you’ll live it or you won’t. Some things are true because they must be true, and because nothing will ever be true again if they are not. The law is for everyone. The law is forever.
In the square before the palace, a man called Vimes proved this to be true when he lifted his hand and let his arm run in rivulets of red. A man who wears his name and the law alike straightens his breastplate, closes his eyes and thinks of blue blood on the cobbles beneath his feet, and feels that fire burn.
They call him Vetinari’s terrier, and they think it an insult, because all men who speak of him in such tones think that most things to be said about him are. They know duty, but not the duty that makes sure your men are still alive at the end of the day, and they know the city, but not the city that he knows, where such men as they would fear to tread, the streets that made him and made doubly sure that a man like Sam Vimes has nothing left to fear from men who do not see him and know him for what he is. They have always wanted fear from him, from Sam Vimes, street copper and street kid and worthless man, so very, very worthless, in their eyes, because men like him are always worthless, and when you kick them, they stay down. He lived his whole life afraid, until the dragon came, because it was expected and he didn’t know any better and because it’s easy to talk about revolutions, but you can’t turn talk into bread. Sam Vimes is not a learned man and never will be, the streets his pages and the cobblestones his lore, and it’s not until Vetinari’s hair is turning to grey so thickly that he’s ceased to dye it that he tells Sam Vimes the meaning of revolution from above, and enjoys the way his bulldog’s eyes flash with satisfaction.
Men like that have always wanted Sam Vimes to be afraid, but he’s cunning and he’s street-smart in a way so literal it’d make their heads spin, and he’s tired, so tired, of being afraid, so they can come for him if they want to, they can have a go if they think they’re hard enough, but for all their might and perseverance and hell-bent arrogance he’ll stand before them and never kneel, he’ll face their armies and if they disrupt the peace they’ll learn why coppers are given big heavy sticks and not swords—that is, if they ever learn, because men like them never do. So Sam Vimes drops ain’ts like fireworks and pulls his lips back from his teeth, and sets about spreading some of this fear around. He is Sam Vimes, the dog Vetinari keeps on a choke chain, with a republic in his veins and a scar through his eye that says clear what happens to those that play silly buggers with him, and he’s the godsdamn law around here, thank you very much. This, more than anything, the one thing they can never grasp and he hopes they never will: when you kick him, he does not stay down.
In the dark and the cold, vengeance was branded into Sam Vimes’s arm like the slash of a knife.
Vengeance was nothing new, not quite an old friend but never something he’d ever quite been able to make his enemy, either. Every copper dreams and then cuts those dreams short, and just because you don’t hit a man once you’ve got the handcuffs on him doesn’t mean you don’t hit him before the handcuffs go on. He’s never liked those who kill for fun, and he likes rapists even less. Everything is about power. If you hit a woman in Sam Vimes’s city, you find out exactly what it means. It does not mean she asked for it, because, in his experience, nobody ever asks for bruises, although some – if never enough – of the ones that leave them find out too late that they’ve asked an unheard question that Sam Vimes has brought the law to answer. Fear is not power. They call him Stoneface for a reason, and there’s many a wife-beater who’s found some stairs to fall down to the cells—although, Vetinari has often noted, the Watch cells do not, in fact, have a staircase—and Vimes lets the Street out, just for that hot second, says yeah, sir, but some can always be arranged.
He remembers the 25th of May. Fear is not power. There are many men who have made that mistake, and he’s met more of them than most. The law is the law, and it stands to answer no matter where you come from, and no matter what you’ve done. Fear is not power, and the law exists so good people do not have to live in fear. Vimes is not good people, but a bastard through and through, a demon tattooed into his skin and blood and the very fabric of his being, but he is not the demon, has learnt his lessons well—as all who stand on the wrong side of a barricade do, and faster than they’d like. Fear is not power. Welcome to Sam Vimes’s city. Keep the law, and you might live to enjoy your stay.
There’s a certain kind of man who likes to remind Sam Vimes where he came from—as if, by some uncertain magic, he’d forgot. Oh, Vetinari has had him draped in titles, and they always sound a little dirty in his mouth, acquire some rust like all the armour he’s ever worn and he keeps them close to his chest until he needs to slam them on the table, badge in hand and the taste of blood sharp behind his teeth. He’d meant it when he said he’d raise the garrisons. He’d meant it when he said that war is a breach of the peace. He’d meant it when he said he’d arrest the Patrician and a dragon and anyone else who thought that the law was to be held high but they were to be held higher. He lives not by the sword, but the law, but sometimes they’re the same thing, especially when the light is fading and time is running out. He’s a lad from the Shades with the wrong kind of twist to his vowels and he’s seen what war does to a city, a street, a man. A war is the breach of a peace, and not least because when the banners are called, it’s poor men who die in them. Vimes remembers where he comes from, by gods, he does. The soles of his boots are worn through and the first time a lord tells him to his face that he’s forgotten where he comes from, he laughs until even Vetinari is hiding a smile.
“Let me tell you about the gang I was in as a kid, Lord Selachii,” he says, and feels that tight shiver that means this is not a conversation he is going to have to have ever again, not as long as lives.
They killed old Stoneface Vimes in the square where he’d dispensed his justice.
It is a great truth of city life, that what goes around comes around, and nothing had ever gone faster or come harder than what happened to Stoneface Vimes, by a very long way. There’s justice and there’s justice, and that last one comes to us all, although many believe that it never will. Sam, the second Stoneface, has known better than most for quite some time that if it does not, then life is not worth living—if it does not, there is no reason to live at all. You do what you can in the middle, and if you look back you’d better know what’s behind you, or, if you’re clever, you ought never to look back at all. There is such a thing as justice, because some things never cease to be true. There is such a thing as justice, because some things are true whether you want them to be or not. There is such a thing as justice, because some things ought to be and, if they are not, humanity should not, either.
The greater, more immutable truth: the city has killed every Vimes who has ever loved her.
Oh, people die of death, as they have always done, but it’s the city that kills them, that whispers that she loves them and maybe, but only maybe, does not lie. Sam Vimes is a copper and he doesn’t like lies, not big ones, not ones that obscure the truth so thoroughly that when you cease to believe them your whole world falls apart, and so he’s always known, always believed in his city like she was a goddess, always hated her like she was the same. He knew it in the Shades, with skinned knees and a knife in his boot and some scars that started too early and healed too late, and he knew it on the 25th May and he knew it when he faced down a dragon and when he stopped a war and when he killed many, many men who wanted him to die in their place. He’s always known, because that is what it is to love a city, a city like his city, to love her and know her and know that although you stand tall right now, we all become ash on the cobblestones, given enough time. His Grace the Duke of Ankh, His Excellency Sir Samuel Vimes, the Blackboard Monitor, the Commander of the City Watch, son and husband and father and friend and bloody-minded bastard and something, something to his lordship Vetinari, he’s always known—and yet.
Sam Vimes stands in a square where a man, many years ago, wrote their shared name in the history books in a king’s blood, and he is the law, because the law has never been anything other than a man standing between one man and a great deal many more men and saying saying if there comes no other, then I will stand to pay the price, saying if justice is not blind, then none of us can see, saying not in my city and not in my name, not now or ever. Sam Vimes stands in his watch house and in his mansion, on the corner of the filthy alley in the Shades where he first broke a man’s arm, and on another, not so distant corner, where a man first died at his hands, and he has paid so many prices, and stood so many times when no other man would dare, and he would not take it back. Sam Vimes stands in the street where a barricade burned, where, in another life and another time, Sam Vimes died, and knows, knows like he knows the law and Sybil’s smile and who watches the watchman, that he’ll die there one day, and yet—and yet, the way he never has, he’s never quite been able to bring himself to care.