“It’s a little…sharp, don’t you think, dear?” Vimes tried, voice echoing around the deserted throne room.
He disliked King’s Landing out of principle, it was all right there in the very name. Sybil was in her element however, although it was hard to think of a time when Lady Sybil wasn’t in her element. The world morphed to her, fitting snugly around her form until it settled around her as though she’d always belonged. He’d watched many a time as she’d made rich lords and ladies feel like strangers in their own grand homes and now—
“I mean who on earth builds a throne out of thousands of swords. I know Vetinari is a bastard for symbols and metaphorical meaning, but this really takes the pis—I mean tart.”
“Yes, the whole place could do with a bit of a spruce up, don’t you think?”
Oh yes dear, thought Vimes, the manic edge to his thoughts threatening to well up and bubble over into hysterical laughter. I dare say if you got some curtains measured up you could hide the view of half a burning kingdom, no problem…
He didn’t belong here. Neither of them did. But who could have ever predicted that that bloody dragon would return? I could, said a little voice in the back of his head. It had been waiting for all of this to end. Not necessarily the dragon of course, but for the careful world he and Sybil had built to shatter in a shower of fire and smoke and then the ice would pour back into his veins and Sam Vimes would cease to exist, because whatever man had existed before had died somewhere in an Ankh-Morpork gutter a million miles away…
What was it the old wizard had said? Something to do with stories and narrative need? About fitting into the holes of the pantaloons of the multiverse?
It didn’t matter now…all that mattered was that they were here now, summoned by whatever need had pulled them here and—oh yes—he looked up at the open hole where the palace roof ought to be. Three dragons looked down, as attentive as kittens with a ball of string. He tried not to think about the sound of their claws scraping over the stone or the way their eyes moved to follow him if he strayed too far from Sybil.
They’d shouted it through the streets, even as they burned. Mother of Dragons…breaker of chains, first of her name Her Grace, Lady Sybil Deirdre Olgivanna Ramkin-Vimes, The Duchess of Ankh …and Queen of the Iron Throne…
“I know what you’re thinking, Sam.”
“Do you, dear?” Same asked, letting his eyes drift from the dragons to her reassuring form, her blue evening gown streaked with soot, wig only just slightly askew.
“You’re thinking you want to go home…and I can’t say I blame you, but until the wizard chaps figure this out, I say we make the most of this… there’s a whole city out there Sam Vimes. You saw the mess of it when they opened the gates, you saw what those awful people did to their people…”
Vimes was vaguely aware of an audience gathering at the giant doors that hung on their hinges. Fine looking people, or at least people who thought they were very fine, rich robes singed and ruined in only the way a dragon burning your city can do. And all of them cautiously livid. There was something reassuringly familiar about that.
“Yes, dear. They do what all ruling classes do.” He turned his attention to the gathering crowd. “They piss down and call it plumbing.”
An old man wearing chains opened his mouth to protest, “I beg your pardon—“
“Yes you bloody should!” snapped Vimes, reaching for the cigar behind his ear that wasn’t there and beginning to pat down his pockets. “Call yourselves a tyranny? My gods what a shambles. Vetinari would have a fit at the state of this place. An absolute fit.”
Another woman, slightly older than Sybil, and almost as regal, turned what could only be defined as a look toward him. “And you both are, sir?”
“Oh do forgive me,” he said, with manic faux politeness, his ducal façade slipping into place like an anvil on thin ice, “hadn’t you heard? I would have thought that mob was awfully clear. This is the Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, First of her name Her Grace, Lady Sybil Deirdre Olgivanna Ramkin-Vimes, The Duchess of Ankh and Queen of the Iron Throne. And I’m her husband—“ Commander Vimes City Watch…the words died on his lips as new words funneled in through the back of his head, poured down by the cosmos in rich vibrant hues as the world finally knit together around him. He grinned and several people backed away.
“They call me, the Kingslayer. And I’m her Guard.”
Sybil smiled, that soft genteel smile that could light up rooms and made people feel warm inside. Overhead the dragons spat white hot plumes of flame, making everyone within a twenty foot radius feel very warm indeed.
“And you lot—” Vimes said, finally managing to pull a cigar from somewhere in his dented armor, holding it up to the still sizzling air and letting the tip self-combust into before taking a long heady drag—“have got some bloody explaining to do.”
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