Snuff

off?”
    Sergeant Littlebottom looked concerned. “I’m sorry,
     sir, I think there’s no appeal. Officially Captain Carrot will relieve you of
     your badge at noon.”
    Vimes thumped his desk and exploded. “I don’t
     deserve this treatment after a lifetime of dedication to the city!”
    â€œCommander, if I may say so, you deserve a lot
     more.”
    Vimes leaned back in his chair and groaned. “You
     too, Cheery?”
    â€œI really am very sorry, sir. I know this is hard
     for you.”
    â€œTo be forced out after all this time! I begged, you
     know, and that doesn’t come easy to a man like me, you can be sure.
     Begged!”
    There was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. Cheery
     watched as Vimes pulled a brown envelope out of his desk drawer, inserted
     something into it, licked it ferociously, sealed it with a spit and dropped it
     on his desk, where it clanged. “There,” he said, through gritted teeth. “My
     badge, just like Vetinari ordered. I put it down. It won’t be said they took it
     off me!”
    Captain Carrot stepped into the office, ducking
     briefly as he came through the door. He had a package in his hand and several
     grinning coppers were clustered behind him.
    â€œSorry about this, sir, higher authority and all
     that. If it’s any help I think you’ve been lucky to be let off with two weeks.
     She was originally talking about a month.”
    He handed Vimes the package and coughed. “Me and the
     lads had a bit of a whip-round, commander,” he said with a forced
     grin.
    â€œYou know, I prefer something sensible like Chief
     Constable,” said Vimes, grabbing the package. “Do you know, I reckoned that if I
     let them give me enough titles I’d eventually get one I could live
     with.”
    Vimes tore open the package and pulled out a very
     small and colorful bucket and spade, to the general amusement of the
     surreptitious onlookers.
    â€œWe know you’re not going to the seaside, sir,”
     Carrot began, “but…”
    â€œI wish it was the seaside,” Vimes complained. “You
     get shipwrecks at the seaside, you get smugglers at the seaside and you get
     drownings and crime at the flaming seaside! Something interesting!”
    â€œLady Sybil says you’re bound to find lots to amuse
     yourself with, sir,” said Carrot.
    Vimes grunted. “The countryside! What’s to amuse you
     in the countryside? Do you know why it’s called the countryside, Carrot? Because
     there’s bloody nothing there except damn trees, which we’re supposed to make a
     fuss about, but really they’re just stiff weeds! It’s dull! It’s nothing but a
     long Sunday! And I’m going to have to meet nobby people!”
    â€œSir, you’ll enjoy it. I’ve never known you to take
     even a day off unless you were injured,” said Carrot.
    â€œAnd even then he worried and grumbled every
     moment,” said a voice at the doorway. It belonged to Lady Sybil Vimes, and Vimes
     found himself resenting the way his men deferred to her. He loved Lady Sybil to
     distraction, of course, but he couldn’t help noticing how, these days, his
     bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich had become, not as it had been traditionally,
     a bacon , tomato and lettuce and had in fact
     become a lettuce , tomato and bacon sandwich. It was all about health, of course. It was a
     conspiracy. Why did they never find a vegetable that was bad for you, hey? And
     what was so wrong with onion gravy anyway? It had onions in it, didn’t it? They
     made you fart, didn’t they? That was good for you, wasn’t it? He was sure he had
     read that somewhere.
    Two weeks holiday with every meal overseen by his wife. It didn’t bear
     thinking about, but he did anyway. And then there was Young Sam, growing up like
     a weed and into everything. A holiday in the fresh air would do him good, his
     mother said. Vimes hadn’t argued. There was no point in arguing with Sybil,
     because even if you thought that you’d won, it would turn out, by some magic
     unavailable to husbands, that you had, in fact, been totally
     misinformed.
    At least he was allowed to leave the city wearing
     his armor. It was part of him, and just as battered as he was, except that, in
     the case of the armor the dents could be hammered out.

V imes, with his son on his knee, stared out at the