More Tales from the Guilds Ch. 06

"Oh, yes! I will, I promise. Thank-you, thank-you so much. We'll—we'll go take a bath together. She'll love that."

And he turned and ran up the stairs to the bedrooms, a yapping puppy at his heels and a squeaking dragon overhead.

"Well done, dear," Vimes told his wife.

She nodded gently. "I really don't see that I had any choice. Did I?"

"No."

That night, Commander Vimes went to his son's bedroom door just before retiring to check on him. It had become his custom ever since Sammy graduated from having Where's My Cow? read to him, to reading all manner of things to himself. Cracking the door Vimes looked inside to see the boy sound asleep with Rolf, the puppy, curled up on the bed at his feet—and Twyla the dragon asleep under the bed—on Dribble's old carpet. After a few moment's reflection the Duke of Ankh turned, went down the hall and unlocked a closet. He removed a rolled up carpet and silently placed it next to Sammy's bed. The boy, his father thought, had somehow earned it.

As he walked back to his own bedroom, Vimes pondered. Years before, when he first encountered Sybil, he thought that swamp dragons had been one of those odd, aristocratic hobbies only the nobs favored. How could she manage to be so fond of something that inadvertently set fires and occasionally (too frequently!) spontaneously exploded? Over the ensuing years, though, the dragons in their own peculiar way had managed to 'wurm' their way into his affection, too. Yes, they weren't the easiest of pets to manage. But at times, when things went south and his family was threatened, it was the dragons that drew a line in the sand proclaiming, "You. Shall. Not. Pass!" And now Sammy had one of his own. It was well.