Guards! Guards!

voice.
    “’Cos they’re legendary. That’s how you can tell,” said Brother Watchtower.
    “Sleeping princesses is a good one,” said Brother Plasterer. “Only a king can wake ’em up.”
    “Don’t be daft,” said Brother Watchtower severely. “We haven’t got a king, so we can’t have princesses. Stands to reason.”
    “Of course, in the old days it was easy,” said Brother Doorkeeper happily.
    “Why?”
    “He just had to kill a dragon.”
    The Supreme Grand Master clapped his hands together and offered a silent prayer to any god who happened to be listening. He’d been right about these people. Sooner or later their rambling little minds took them where you wanted them to go.
    “What an interesting idea,” he trilled.
    “Wouldn’t work,” said Brother Watchtower dourly. “There ain’t no big dragons now.”
    “There could be.”
    The Supreme Grand Master cracked his knuckles.
    “Come again?” said Brother Watchtower.
    “I said there could be.”
    There was a nervous laugh from the depths of Brother Watchtower’s cowl.
    “What, the real thing? Great big scales and wings?”
    “Yes.”
    “Breath like a blast furnace?”
    “Yes.”
    “Them big claw things on its feet?”
    “Talons? Oh, yes. As many as you want.”
    “What do you mean, as many as I want?”
    “I would hope it’s self-explanatory, Brother Watchtower. If you want dragons, you can have dragons. You can bring a dragon here. Now. Into the city.”
    “Me?”
    “All of you. I mean us,” said the Supreme Grand Master.
    Brother Watchtower hesitated. “Well, I don’t know if that’s a very good—”
    “And it would obey your every command.”
    That stopped them. That pulled them up. That dropped in front of their weaselly little minds like a lump of meat in a dog pound.
    “Can you just repeat that?” said Brother Plasterer slowly.
    “You can control it. You can make it do whatever you want.”
    “What? A real dragon?”
    The Supreme Grand Master’s eyes rolled in the privacy of his hood.
    “Yes, a real one. Not a little pet swamp dragon. The genuine article.”
    “But I thought they were, you know…miffs.”
    The Supreme Grand Master leaned forward.
    “They were myths and they were real,” he said loudly. “Both a wave and a particle.”
    “You’ve lost me there,” said Brother Plasterer.
    “I will demonstrate, then. The book please, Brother Fingers. Thank you. Brethren, I must tell you that when I was undergoing my tuition by the Secret Masters—”
    “The what, Supreme Grand Master?” said Brother Plasterer.
    “Why don’t you listen? You never listen . He said the Secret Masters!” said Brother Watchtower. “You know, the venerable sages what live on some mountain and secretly run everything and taught him all this lore and that, and can walk on fires and that. He told us last week. He’s going to teach us, aren’t you, Supreme Grand Master,” he finished obsequiously.
    “Oh, the Secret Masters,” said Brother Plasterer. “Sorry. It’s these mystic hoods. Sorry. Secret. I remember.”
    But when I rule the city, the Supreme Grand Master said to himself, there is going to be none of this. I shall form a new secret society of keen-minded and intelligent men, although not too intelligent of course, not too intelligent. And we will overthrow the cold tyrant and we will usher in a new age of enlightenment and fraternity and humanism and Ankh-Morpork will become a Utopia and people like Brother Plasterer will be roasted over slow fires if I have any say in the matter, which I will. And his figgin. 1
    “When I was, as I said, undergoing my tuition by the Secret Masters—” he continued.
    “That was where they told you you had to walk on rice-paper, wasn’t it,” said Brother Watchtower conversationally. “I always thought that was a good bit. I’ve been saving it off the bottom of my macaroons ever since. Amazing, really. I can walk on it no trouble. Shows what being in a proper secret society does for you, does that.”
    When he is on the griddle, the Supreme Grand Master thought, Brother Plasterer will not be lonely.
    “Your footfalls on the road of enlightenment are an example to us all, Brother Watchtower,” he said. “If I may continue, however—among the many secrets—”
    “—from the Heart of Being—” said Brother Watchtower approvingly.
    “—from the Heart, as Brother Watchtower says, of Being, was the current location of the noble dragons. The belief that they