Constable Auxin Fiddyment

It was hard to slip back from the bar into the cell. Nobody saw him, but it was the sort of cell where you never knew if you'd come out alive again.

Auxin could only hope that the war was, as rumoured, about to be over the same day as he'd been thrown in this cell. If he stayed in here much longer, for a start, his parents would find out.

And that was when the enormity of what he'd done hit him. Not just the fact that by warning the Klatchans he could be done for treason, but that he'd used his father's business to do it. If Lord Rust didn't kill him, Fiddyment Senior just might...

The door opens to some more guards. Oh good, another kicking, albeit not as bad as the first one. He makes sure to make overdramatic groaning noises, because there's nothing like being brave to make someone kick you more, but doesn't name any co-conspirators since there weren't any anyway.

It seems to have taken a long time but he hears the door open again and from his position on the floor sees two pairs of feet stride through the door in heavy boots. There are three quick thumps, and the three guards lay sprawled on the floor, clutching their noses.

"All right lad?" Commander Vimes peers at him, smoking a cigar. Captain Carrot bends down to help him up.

"Sir!" Auxin attempts to salute, somewhat unsteadily.

"Good. War's over, go with Carrot and get cleaned up."

"Thank you sir. I think I'm being done for treason, sir." Auxin says, nervously.

"Ah." Vimes stubs out the remains of his cigar. "In that case we better remove you from the training program..."

Auxin swallows hard.

"...And promote you to constable." Vimes continues. "You should probably take the rest of the evening off."

Auxin breathes again.

"Thank you sir."

***

He's not sure whether he's more happy with the end of the war or the promotion, but Auxin's heart is still pounding a little as he approaches the shop. What will his father have found out?

He goes in through the door. His youngest brother Root is playing on the dark shop floor, as always, and doesn't seem any the wiser. He looks happy, if anything.

"Did you beat the bad guys today?" he asks Auxin.

"Yeah, think I did." Auxin grins tiredly at him.

"Good. Algae's home." Root adds, sort of casually. "With all his arms and legs and everything."

Auxin heads up the stairs to find his errant 14-year-old brother, who ran away to join the war. He finds him chopping vegetables for Mum, and gives him a nod.

"What do you think you're playing at, boy?"

Auxin looks around at his father with a feeling of dread.

"Sir?"

"You're late. Go and restock the potatoes. They've been selling well."

Things aren't good in Ankh-Morpork.

The Watch is currently investigating the shooting of a Klatchan prince, which means that all the ordinary criminals are using the time to try and sneak crime through while the Watch is busy.

Lance-Constable Fiddyment finds going to work is still, however, easier than being at home right now. One of his younger brothers, Algae, has signed up to fight in the regiments, at just fourteen. Between his father complaining about who is going to man the shop, and his pregnant mother fretting about his safety, it's been pretty tense. So far, searching during working hours hasn't revealed where Algae is hiding out to 'train' for the army.

Half way through his shift, Auxin spots his youngest brother Root dragging along the delivery cart, and feels a pang of guilt.

"Dad's going to have to hire that donkey again." he says, coming to take some of the strain off the nine-year-old for a minute. "You can't pull all this on your own, Root, take smaller loads."

"Have you found Algae yet?" Root asks, stretching his arms.

"Not yet. I'm still looking though." Auxin says. "Maybe I can take some of the deliveries on the way to work tomorrow.

"I hope the new baby is a girl." Root says. "Then she can do all the cleaning so I don't have to help."

"That's not right." Auxin says. "You should meet Sergeant Angua, I bet she doesn't do all the cleaning. Anyway, the baby will be a baby for years and years, you'll have nearly left home by the time she's old enough to help you much."

"If we ever get to leave." Root says.

"He can't keep us there forever." Auxin reassures his brother, though he doesn't feel entirely sure of that himself. "We'll just have to get Herbert to get married, then he can take over the shop."

He reaches the corner and sees Captain Carrot. He hurriedly hands the cart back to Root, before approaching his Captain and saluting.

"Sorry sir, he was struggling and..."

The Captain waves a hand. "All part of your civic duty. Your brother isn't back yet then?"

"No sir." Auxin admits.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Carrot sighs. "I'm afraid things are rather bad, and we need you to all come along to a meeting. Vetinari has resigned, and Lord Rust is demanding we round up all the Klatchans."

Auxin stares up at him in horror. Carrot continues.

"Mr Vimes and the rest of us seniors have resigned in protest. We're going to do a handover to Corporal Stronginthearm." He looks at Auxin's face and smiles kindly. "I wouldn't worry too much, I'm sure Mr Vimes will think of something and we'll all be back in no time."

Auxin doesn't feel so sure. All his mind can work on is how he is going to keep Alik's family safe. Would resigning in protest prevent them being rounded up? He already knew they didn't want to go to Klatch; Alik and Sara were born here, this was their home and business. They couldn't be the only ones either.

When he gets home, he waits until dark, then goes up to the attic bedroom and opens the skylight. Not many houses have windows in the roof, but a few years back there was some business with a dragon, and a few shops on this road took the opportunity to replace gaping holes in their roof with a skylight. Alik's family had got one too. They'd got a good deal, and it saved money on candles in the daytime.

He carefully climbs out of the window and crawls across to the window to Alik's bedroom. He checks carefully that Sara isn't in there, then taps gently on the glass to get his friend's attention. Alik jumps, then looks up and opens the window.

"What's wrong with the door?" Alik asks.

"I was just checking out how easy it is to do this." Auxin says, dropping down. He fills Alik in on the plans to round up the Klatchans.

"But the people left in the Watch," Auxin continues. "They're the rookies and the people who never got promoted past corporal. If I could find out what order they're going round the streets, maybe I could warn people the night before. They won't have time to go round twice."

"How?" Alik asks.

"Maybe I could deliver them something." Auxin says. "Like... one potato, that's the cheapest thing we have. But how will I know which houses to go to?"

"Gossip spreads fast." Alik says. "I'll get people to send you some orders for one potato, any day delivery, then you get the date right."

Auxin climbs though the skylight back to his house and thinks. Probably, nobody will have made a list of the streets yet. What if he was to take the initiative and himself write the list? Then he could be quite sure that he could warn people in time.

He goes back down to the basement where he does the deliveries, pulls out a map of Ankh-Morpork, and starts working on a strategy.

His dad destroying his Merchants' Guild notes didn't stop Auxin from reporting back to the captain in the morning. Someone was going around attacking people with Dwarf Bread - the question was, did they want it banning, and if so, why?

It was Alik who gave Auxin his breakthrough clue, when he came from next door with the bread left over at the end of the day.

"Did you say it was Mrs Bunne who was hit first?" he asks, as Auxin picks out some broccoli and picks off a manky bit.

"Yeah, why?" Auxin asks.

"She owns that new bakery." Alik says. "On Cockbill Street. But her sons run it."

Auxin stops. Huh, that's weird. Maybe it's time to pay this woman a visit.

He goes via the watch house to tell the others where he's going. Carrot nods at him.

"I'll ask Detritus to meet you there. He's just finding out who's bought a big oven any time soon. You're all right going on your own?"

"Oh yes." Auxin nods. It's a little old lady, how hard can it be?

He heads back towards Cockbill Street, with the address Mrs Bunne gave them the first time, for a small flat a few doors down from the shop. People are still queuing to buy Dwarf Bread, in fear of the possible ban, so he pushes through them and heads up the stairs to knock on her door.

When the door opens, he comes face to face with the suspect with the goatee. He manages not to recoil in surprise, but instead barges in and with a swift movement, pins him against the wall.

"Come back to get her again, have you?" he demands. "You're nicked."

"Let go of my son!" Mrs Bunne shouts, coming up behind and kicking him in the legs. He loses his grip of the suspect, and suddenly finds it's him being pinned to the floor.

"I think you better leave, watchman." the suspect snarls.

"I get it now." Auxin says, wondering if he can distract him until Detritus pitches up. "You baked the two foot loaf yourself, because you're new to the dwarf bread market. Whoever sold you your new oven didn't tell you that dwarves don't buy two footers, because the ovens cost too much to run, so they're always much more expensive. You were going to make a huge loss, unless the price of Dwarf Bread went up. You faked the muggings to make a run on Dwarf Bread. And who would ever suspect Master Bunne, the baker's son?"

The man has raised the dwarf bread. Auxin knows it's hard enough to bash your skull in, but whether it works through a helmet, is anyone's guess. Through the floor, he can feel the thud of the troll approaching. But there isn't time.

Fortunately, the press-ups and weight lifting has paid off. As the Baguette Bandit raises the loaf, Auxin pushes up fast, and hard, and throws him off. He draws his sword and slices the baguette in half, then gets back on top of his suspect in time for the sergeant to push the door in.

"Like I said, you're nicked." he pants.

It wasn't easy to scrabble back up the edge of the dock as he exited the bar.

The two men that had been holding the glass that Lance-Constable Fiddyment had just burst through gave him a most bewildered look. But then, instinct kicked in and informed them that watchmen do not disappear and bounce back up again, but that this berk has most definitely broken their glass.

Before he gets a chance to catch up with the Dwarf Bread Baguette Mugger, one of the glass men smacks him hard in the nose.

***

"Sorry for losing him, sarge." Auxin says, as they head back to the watch house with the glass man in cuffs. Somehow, he doesn't know how to explain the whole getting-stuck-in-another-dimension thing.

"You got dis one." Detritus offers, giving the glass man a less than gentle prod with his troll finger. "Was a good arrest, you dint stop to bleed." He considers for a moment and then adds. "We got good look at him, we can find him later."

They book the prisoner in for one count of assaulting a member of the watch, then Auxin goes to sponge down some of the blood off his shirt and examine his nose in the mirror. Satisfied that he still might have a chance of attracting romance in the future, he goes to confess to Captain Carrot that he let one get away.

By the time he gets home, Fiddyment's Finest Fruits and Veg is in semi-darkness, apart from a candle lantern in the middle of the shop floor. Auxin lets himself in, stepping round the lantern. His youngest brother Root looks up from his game, which seems to be some sort of marbles using nuts, and gives the sort of nervous giggle given by younger brothers who realise that someone is going to be in trouble in a minute, and it's not going to be them.

"Mum's not going to be very pleased with your shirt." Root says quietly.

"Yeah, well. Dad won't be very pleased if he sees you playing with saleable stock." Auxin says, equally quietly.

"You weight lift the potatoes." Root retorts.

"Yeah, and he don't like me doing that neither." Auxin makes his way towards the stairs to the upstairs flat. The smell of pickles floats down the stairs; Mrs Fiddyment doesn't let any slightly past-its-best fruit or veg go to waste, but bottles it up all year to sell in winter.

It had been difficult for him to persuade his parents to let him join the watch. They complained they needed him here, to carry on supervising the deliveries and restocking the heavy stuff that his younger brothers struggled with. In the end it was Mum who had swung it, with the discovery that a fifth Fiddyment child was on the way, another little mouth to feed. Suddenly the idea of someone earning a living that paid all year round, and wasn't affected by a bad harvest or a plague of grasshoppers, seemed a lot more attractive.

It had gone down badly with his brothers. Herbert, the eldest, resented that he now had to lug around a lot more of the stock rather than doing all the business side. As far as he was concerned, this was why he'd been the one who went to school, and the other three could do the donkey work. Algae had resented having to deal with Herb in a bad mood. Root had been mostly worried that Auxin would get killed, but not wanting to be seen as soppy about it, had nodded vigorously along to whatever Algae and Herb had to say about it.

The Fiddyments lived in two rooms and an attic above the shop. The parents slept in the small bedroom, and the four boys divided the attic between them, building walls between areas with a selection of the winter stock. Auxin had the end with the window, because it was coldest, and because he'd lost a wrestle over it with Herb. To save candles, they tended to stay in the main room as much as possible.

As Auxin enters the room, his father looks up.

"Have you put the spuds out, boy?"

Fiddyment senior called all of his sons 'boy'. It saved time.

"I just need to take my armour off." Auxin says, heading towards the stairs.

"Just a minute." His mother collars him. "Look at the state of that shirt! Do you think we're made of money? Look at that tear! It'll have to be patched, Auxin."

Auxin nods meekly, escapes from his mother and heads upstairs. The idea of telling them that he went to another universe today is laughable.

It'll probably never happen again anyway. Got to be one of these one-in-a-million things.

In Ankh-Morpork, the smallest unit of currency was the elim, worth a sixteenth of a penny, around the value of a very small potato that is only a little bit green. Being a greengrocer, Fiddyment senior actually took rather a lot of elims, and rarely gave them in change. But elims were, in themselves, a valuable commodity, because they cost a shilling each to produce by hand. Fiddyment Sr, being a businessman, had an arrangement with the Royal Mint that for every hundred elims he brought back to the bank, the bank would pay him a shilling, and that wasn't to be sniffed at when money was tight.

So once a month, while Herb was at school, Fiddyment Sr and Auxin left his mother and younger brothers to take a cart of 'vegetables' to the bank.

It was when Auxin was fourteen, one day out of the blue, that they ran into trouble. Riding on the back of the truck, Auxin noticed the two men on horseback that seemed to be closing in on them.

"Dad? I think we're getting robbed." he said, leaning over to nudge his father in the driving seat.

"We're paid up with the thieves guild." his father said, but urged the horses on a little nonetheless. "Besides, they're hardly going to steal potatoes."

Auxin looked back at the men. Definitely getting closer. He looked at the back of the wagon for something, anything he could use to fight them off. The next moment, one of the men on horseback leapt on the cart. He swung the bag of potatoes and knocked the robber over the side of the wagon.

He had just a moment to feel satisfied about this when he was hit roughly from behind by the second robber. As everything went dark, he caught a glimpse of something shiny leaping onto the cart...

"Are you okay? It's Auxin, isn't it?"

Auxin opened his eyes. He had fallen out of the cart onto the ground, and a rather concerned watchman was poking at him.

"Did they get away?" he asked, sitting up.

"We have arrested them for stealing without a licence." the watchman said. "That was a good swing, well done!"

The watchman clapped him on the shoulder, before going back to talk to his Dad. Auxin stared after him.

***

That night, he went up to his father counting the takings, and told him he wanted to be a watchman. His father barked a laugh.

"You think a lanky kid like you would get into the watch? Go and restock the potatoes."

Auxin headed back into the dim shop. He picked up the potatoes, stared at them for a moment, and experimentally lifted them over his head.