Lady Sybil was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Sam, I know you’re going to be busy what with the backlog and everything, but can I ask a favour?’

‘Anything, dear.’

‘When they have the line to Uberwald running, I’d love to go to visit the Queen, and most of all I’d like a holiday by the train. And Young Sam’s mad about trains, you know. He’s nearly filled up his first notebook already.’

‘Well,’ said Vimes, ‘you know if I have a holiday I walk into a crime.’

Lady Sybil finished her egg and said, ‘Jolly good, dear, you’ll like that.’

Harry King was not entirely surprised when Drumknott arrived at the compound the following day and said, ‘His lordship commands you and Lady King to present yourselves to him within the hour.’ And the secretary winked uncharacteristically at Harry, and his wife when he told her was, according to her, all of a tizzy at the news.

‘The palace in one hour! How can a girl look her best inside an hour?’

‘Come on, Duchess,’ said Harry. ‘You look a treat as always and getting younger every day.’

‘Oh, you teaser, Harry King!’

But Harry said, ‘The coach is here and clean as a whistle and his lordship believes that punctuality is the politeness of Princes and that applies to you, too, young Emily. I expect your boy wouldn’t want you to be late. That’s not the railway … way.’

Harry hadn’t told his wife what to expect, preferring to keep it as a surprise, and so as the coach arrived at the palace, his wife nearly had another tizzy to contend with because there were the great and good of Ankh-Morpork, and presumably some of the silly and nasty as well, just to see Harry King being turned into a Lord. Lord King of the Permanent Way. And in the wonderful ceremony that followed, Lord Harry’s old Dutch did indeed become a Duchess.

Dick Simnel was made a knight, and a master engineer too, courtesy of the Chief Mining Engineer himself, and now stood hand in hand with the beaming Emily. Commander Vimes, resplendent in his ceremonial pantaloons and looking furious about them, was already burdened with every title it was his lordship’s pleasure to bestow, but was given another medal anyway, struck in sorortanium and featuring Iron Girder herself. In fact there was a medal for every watchman who had been on the train, and every crew member, goblins included.

Later, there came the inevitable interview in the Oblong Office with Drumknott at a side table taking notes.

‘I understand, Mister Lipwig,’ said the Patrician, surveying the city below them from the window, ‘that there were some remarkable events along the journey.’

Moist kept a straight face but around his neck he felt the prickle of a phantom noose.