‘And then, on the other hand, we have yourself, dear lady: you speak for all your … folk in Bonk^[2] and most agreements made with you are, well, quite agreeable … But the dwarfs, what a calamity. Just when you think you’re talking to the leader of the dwarfs, some wild-eyed grag will pop out on the landscape and suddenly all bets are off, all treaties instantly become null and void, and there is no possibility of trust! As you know, there is a “king” – a dezka-knik^[3], as they call him – in every mine on the Disc. How does one do business with people like this? Every dwarf his own inner tyrant.’

‘Vell,’ said Lady Margolotta, ‘Rhys Rhysson is managing quite vell in the circumstances and ve in higher Uberwald …’ now her ladyship almost whispered, ‘are very much on the side of progress. But, yes, how can vun vin vunce and for all, that is vhat I vould like to know.’

His lordship set down his glass carefully and said, ‘That, alas, is never totally possible. The stars change, people change, and all we can do is assist the future with care and thoughtful determination to see the world at peace, even if it means ushering some of its worst threats to an early grave.

‘Although I’m bound to say that subtlety and careful interrogation of the things the world puts in front of us suggest to me that the Low King – whom, as protocol dictates, I called upon before coming here to meet you – is forming a plan right now; and when he makes his play we will throw everything in to support him. He is taking a very big gamble on the future. He believes that the time is right, especially since Ankh-Morpork is now well known to have the largest dwarf community in the world.’

‘But I believe his people don’t like too much modernity. I must admit, I can see vhy. Progress is such a vorrisome thing when one is trying to maintain peace in the vorld. So … unpredictable. Can I remind you, Havelock, that many, many years ago, an Ephebian philosopher built an engine that vas very powerful, scarily so. If those people had persevered with the engine powered by steam the nature of life now might have been very much different. Don’t you find that vorryink? How can ve guide the future when von idiot can make a mechanism that might change everything?’

Lord Vetinari dribbled a last drop of brandy into his glass and said cheerfully, ‘Madam, only a fool would try to stop the progress of the multitude. Vox populi, vox deorum, carefully shepherded by a thoughtful prince, of course. And so I take the view that when it’s steam engine time steam engines will come.’

‘And what do you think you’re doing, dwarf?’

Young Magnus Magnusson didn’t pay much attention at first to the senior dwarf whose face, in so far as it could be seen, was definitely grumpy, the kind of dwarf that had apparently never himself been young, and so he shrugged and said, ‘No offence, O venerable one, but what I think I’m doing is walking along minding my own business in the hope that others would be minding their own. I hope you have no rat with that?’^[4]