`The mine falls to us by default?' said Vetinari.

`Apparently, sir. I believe the term is "eminent domain".'

`Ah, yes. That means naked theft by the government,' said Vetinari.

`But the grags bought the freehold, sir. They're hardly going to contest it now.'

`Quite. And the dwarfs really can make watertight tunnels?'

`Oh, yes. The trick is almost as old as mining. Would you care to step inside? I'm afraid the elevator is not working at the moment, though.'

Lord Vetinari inspected the rails and the little carts the dwarfs had used to shift spoil. He felt the dry walls. He went back upstairs and frowned as a one-ton slab of iron came through the wall, whirled past his face, passed through the opposite wall and buried itself in the street outside.

`And was that supposed to happen?' he said, brushing plaster dust off his robe.

An excited voice behind him shouted: `The torque! It's impossible! Amazing!'

A figure climbed through the wall, holding something in one hand. He rushed up to Captain Carrot, vibrating with excitement.

`It spins once every 6.9 seconds but the torque is immense! It broke the clamp! What powers it?'

`No one seems to know,' said Carrot. `In Uberwald-'

`Excuse me, what is this about?' said Lord Vetinari, holding out a hand imperiously.

The man glanced at him and then turned to Carrot. `Who's this?' he said.

`Lord Vetinari, ruler of the city, may I present Mr Pony of the Artificers' Guild?' said Carrot quickly. `Please let his lordship see the Axle, Mr Pony.'

`Thank you,' said Vetinari. He took the thing, which looked very like two cubes, each about six inches on a side, joined together on one face, like a pair of dice joined at the sixes. In relation to the other, one turned - very, very slowly.

`Oh,' he said flatly. `A mechanism. How nice.'

`Nice?' said Pony. `Don't you understand? It won't stop turning.' Carrot and Pony looked expectantly at the Patrician, who said:

`And that's a good thing, is it?'

Carrot coughed. `Yes, sir. One of these drives one of the biggest mines in Uberwald. All the pumps, the fans that move the air, the trucks that haul the ore, the bellows for the forges, the elevators ... everything. Just one of those. It's another type of Device, like the cubes. We don't know how they're made, they're very rare, but the other three I've heard of have not stopped working for hundreds of years. They don't use fuel, they don't need anything. They appear to be millions of years old. No one knows what made them. They just turn.'

`How interesting,' said Vetinari. `Hauling trucks? Underground, you say?'

`Oh, yes,' said Carrot. `Even with miners in.'

`I shall give this some thought,' said Vetinari, avoiding Mr Pony's outstretched hand. `And what could we make it do in this city?'

He and Carrot turned questioning faces to Mr Pony, who shrugged and said, `Everything?'

Plink! went a drop of water on to the head of the very, very late King Bloodaxe.

`How long are we going to have to do this, sarge?' said Nobby, as they watched the line of visitors shuffle past the dead kings.

`Mister Vimes has sent for another squad from home,' said Fred Colon, shifting from one foot to the other. It seemed quite warm when you first came into the cave, but after a while the clamminess could get a man down. He reflected that Nobby wasn't affected by this, being blessed by Nature with natural clammy.

`It's starting to give me the creeps, sarge,' said Nobby, indicating the kings. `If that hand moves, I'm going to scream.'

`Think of it as Being There, Nobby.'

`I've always been somewhere, sarge:

`Yeah, but when they comes to write the history books they'll-' Fred Colon paused for thought. He had to admit, they probably wouldn't mention him and Nobby. `Well, your Tawneee will be proud of you, anyway.'

`I think that's not to be, sarge,' said Nobby sadly. `She's a nice girl, but I think I'm goin' to have to let her down lightly.'

`Surely not!'

"fraid so, sarge. She cooked me dinner the other day. She tried to make Distressed Pudding like my ol mum used to make.'

Plink!

Fred Colon smiled all the way from his stomach. `Ah, yes. No one could distress a pudding like your ol mum, Nobby.'

`It was awful, Fred,' said Nobby, hanging his head. `As for her Slumpie, well, I do not wish to go there. She is not a girl who knows her way around a stove.'

`She's more of a pole person, Nobby, that is true.'

`Exactly. An' I thought, ol Hammerhead, well, you might never be sure which way she was lookin; but her buttered clams, well ... He sighed.

`There's a thought to keep a man warm on a cold night,' Fred agreed.

`An, y'know, these days, when she hits me with a wet fish, it doesn't sting like it used to,' Nobby went on. `I think we are reaching an understanding.'

Plink!

`She can crack a lobster with her fist,' Colon observed. `That's a very portable talent.'

`So I was thinking of speaking to Angua,' said Nobby. `She might give me a few hints on how to let Tawneee down gently.'

`That's a good idea, Nobby,' said Fred. `No touchin, sir, otherwise I shall have to cut yer fingers orf.' This was said, in a friendly tone of voice, to a dwarf who'd been reaching in awe towards the board.

`But we'll still be friends, of course,' said Nobby, as the dwarf backed away. `So long as I can get into the Pink PussyCat Club for free, anyway, I'll always be there if she needs a helmet to cry on.,

`That's very modern of you, Nobby,' said Fred. He smiled in the gloom. Somehow, the world was back on course.

Plink!

Wandering through the world, the eternal troll ...

Brick headed after Detritus, dragging his club.

Well, he wuz goin' up in der worl' an' no mistakin'! Dey said it hurt if you come off of der stuff, but Brick had always hurt, all his life, and right now it wasn't too bad at all. It wuz, like, weird der way he could fink to the end of a sentence now an' still remember der start of it. An' he wuz bein' given food, which he wuz gettin' to like once he stopped frowing it up. Sergeant Detritus, who knew eveythin' had tole him if'n he stayed clean an' smartened up he could rise as high as Lance-Constable one day, makin' heapo money.

He wuzn't too sure what had been happnin' to cause all dis. It

looked like he wasn't in der city any more, an' dere had been some fightin, and Sergeant Detritus had showed him dese kinda dead people and smacked him aroun' der head an' said `Remember!' an' he wuz doin' his best, but he'd been smacked aroun' der head a hole lot harder many, many times and dat one was nuffin'. But Sergeant Detritus said it wuz all about not hatin' dwarfs no more and dat was okay cuz really Brick never had der energy to waste hatin'. What dey had been doin' down dat hole was makin' der worl' a betterer place, Sergeant Detritus said.

And it seemed to Brick, as he smelled the food, dat Sergeant Detritus had got dat one dead right.

Trolls and dwarfs had raised a huge roundhouse in Koom Valley, using giant boulders for the walls and half a fallen forest for the roof. A fire thirty yards long crackled inside. Ranged around it on long benches were the kings of more than a hundred dwarf mines, and the leaders of eighty troll clans, with their followers and servants and bodyguards. The noise was intense, the smoke was thick, the heat was a wall.

It had been a good day. Progress had been made. The guests were not mixing, that was true, but nor were they trying to kill one another. This was a promising development. The truce was holding.

At the high table, King Rhys leaned back in his makeshift throne and said, `One does not make demands of kings. One makes requests, which are graciously granted. Does he not understand?'