Chapter Text
“Sybil, he kissed me.”
This was not what she had expected to hear when her husband came home late and dishevelled from his shift. So much anguish in Sam’s voice as he stood before her, wringing his hands. The left shoulder strap of his breastplate was loose, she noted. There was a red welt on the side of his neck. Chafing?
Or… something else?
“And I kissed him back, and we were… we were… I’m sorry!” Sam sucked in a desperate breath, air hissing through his teeth. “But he started it, he did!”
Something cold and hard settled in her stomach. Here she was, in her nightgown, wig off. She felt naked and vulnerable, and he hadn’t even left his sword in the designated room, the one with the lock, the one she had asked him to use for weapon storage. Young Sam was just starting to crawl, but it wouldn’t be long until he’d be taking his first tottering steps, and, honestly, was it so much to ask her husband to keep dangerous weapons out of their bedroom and away from their baby?
“You were what?” she prodded, the way she used to prod burn blisters when she was a girl, knowing they might burst and get infected but unable to stop herself.
He shook his head, not meeting her eyes. “I put a stop to it before long. Told him it couldn’t happen again.”
“And has it happened before?” Her voice was icy. She surprised herself with it. She felt she already knew the answer, could see it in the way he held himself, chin down, shoulders hunched. Like a swamp dragon caught in a sack of coal. Guilty as sin.
“Once, about a fortnight ago. I didn’t tell you because…” He raised his eyes, a pleading, helpless expression on his face. “Because it seemed like bloody insanity, like he’d lost his mind, finally. I thought, it’s Snapcase all over again, this; I thought next thing we know his godsdammed terrier will be opening the council meetings–”
“He’s dead, Sam,” Sybil interrupted.
“What?”
“His dog, Wuffles. He died, Sam. Not long after our son was born.” Saying it took some of the heat out of her belly because it made a twisted sort of sense, didn’t it? Sam seemed to see it, too, because his brow knitted into a frown. “He was very old,” she added, “You knew that.”
“I didn’t know he’d died. I suppose I hadn’t seen him in a while, but he wasn’t always in the office… I didn’t think about it…” Sam sank onto the ottoman at the foot of their bed and put his head in his hands. “Gods, I’m a bloody idiot.”
They had veered off track. This was an admission of guilt, of a betrayal, a breach of his vows, and now they were talking about the demise of a geriatric terrier?
“You kissed him back,” Sybil prompted. She wanted the anger to return, to not feel this hollow ache at the sight of her husband slumped over under the weight of the realisation that he was quite literally another man’s dog.
His pet.
His comfort?
And what was he to Sam? Master? Idol?
Where did that leave her?
“That is what you were telling me, isn’t it? That you kissed Havelock.”
His head snapped up at the name, and suddenly she regretted using it. The Patrician, she should have said.
But he was Havelock, wasn’t he? He was still the boy who had refused to dance with her when he was fifteen and she was thirteen. He’d slipped away into the shadows, and she’d stood in her corner, the foolish fat girl, and she’d smiled because crying in public was for pretty girls.
Their tears would earn sympathy, whereas Sybil’s - Sybil’s anything, really - only got her mockery.
“Do you love him, Sam?” she asked, hating the waver in her voice. Again, she felt as though she knew the answer. Things had shifted between Sam and Lord Vetinari over the years. She had felt it, and so, no doubt, had Havelock. Vetinari did not indulge in risky ventures. He did not make his move until he was certain of the outcome.
Her husband gave her a wide-eyed, glassy stare reminiscent of a wild animal turned hunting trophy. Yes, Havelock already had him in his grasp.
“No,” he said, but it was more disbelief at the cruelty of it than denial of the fact. “No, Sybil, I love you: you and Young Sam. You are my family. I don’t want– I– I told him to stop.”
“Why are you telling me then? If it’s truly over?”
He had the gall to look betrayed. “Because you’re my bloody wife! Because I want to be honest with you! If you– If it were the other way around, I’d want to know!”
Bitter laughter bubbled from her lips. “If I went and snogged Havelock, you mean? I should tell you? Perhaps I ought to go and do that then, so we’re even!” But he wouldn’t want her, would he? She bunched the fabric of her nightgown in her hands, battling the urge to strangle something. The thin cotton pulled tight over her body, leaving very little to the imagination.
Not that Sam seemed to notice.
They hadn’t really been intimate since the birth. She was afraid, for one thing. For another, there had been the talk with Dr. Lawn. The clinical explanation of what might happen if she were to conceive again. It had rather dampened her spirits.
But wasn’t this a story as old as time? Husband loses interest in wife after childbirth? Husband goes and finds something else? A mere plaything, if one is lucky. A shiny new toy. How many of her friends had been through it? Had smiled indulgently, conspiratorially, said things like Oh, as long as he’s careful.
And her own father, well… But he’d loved her; he’d never wanted this for her! Or would he have understood her husband? Would he have told her to pull herself together, to not cause a scene?
Boys will be boys.
Gods, would Young Sam one day break his wife’s heart as well?
But women cheated too, she reminded herself, only the repercussions were much worse. Lydia Venturi had been all but exiled after her affair with the gardener had come to light. Meanwhile, her Francis was chasing skirts all over the Disc, and none of his friends would dream of excluding him from any of their hunting trips or guild alumni meetings, no, quite the opposite.
“Be honest, Sam,” she said, “with yourself at least.”
He continued to stare up at her, making her feel large and towering - suffocating. She took a step back.
“It’s not— He told me it was about…” He sighed, shaking his head. “Do you remember when you were giving birth to Young Sam?”
She felt like laughing again; instead, she held his gaze and said, with exaggerated calm, “No, I have quite forgotten. Do remind me, please.”
Panic flashed in his eyes. “Gods, I didn’t mean– I meant… when I was away… when I told you later what had happened. The lightning at the University tower, that magical… accident or whatever you want to call it.”
Sybil studied his poor bewildered face. He so wanted her to understand, and yet she felt she couldn’t, not really. “You told me you lived through the Glorious 25th again, as your own sergeant.” Even now, she still couldn’t fully grasp this. So much had happened, and the first few times he’d tried to explain, she’d been so tired, so wrapped up in her new baby, nothing else seemed to matter. The story was so convoluted, her memory of that awful time so fuzzy.
It had only clicked when, suddenly, out of the ether, that face had swum up, the strange man with the eye patch bursting into her home, and she had found herself looking at that very same face (sans eye patch, but with a fresh scar where it had been). The whole thing had given her a headache.
To her, Sergeant John Keel had only ever been a name on a grave she sometimes tended as a favour to her husband, not much different from Elizabeth Vimes. She certainly didn’t want to think of it as Sam’s grave.
“Vetinari was there too, he told me.”
She frowned. “What? He was caught in the same storm?”
“No, I mean as a boy, like you were, as a girl, I mean, except he was watching me - John Keel - from afar. Or not that far.” Sam dragged a hand across his face, rubbed at the scar across his eye. “Told me he was supposed to save John Keel’s life the night of the 25th, that he’d been too late, and it haunted him. That Keel had shaped him, but it had turned out that he himself had shaped Keel by shaping me. It was some kind of twisted cycle. Made my head swim, to be honest.”
Sybil scoffed. “He shaped you, did he? And that, what? Means you’re his? And what was he trying to tell you? That he fell in love with himself?”
“No.” Sam looked hurt. “It’s deeper than that. I can’t say it the way he did, but–”
“Is it?” she snapped, “Is it deep, Sam? Is it meaningful, what you have? Tell me again how you’ve shaped each other!”
“Sybil–”
“No, Sam! I have shaped you, too, and so have Carrot and Nobby Nobbs and Fred Colon! The bloody noble dragon shaped you! Will you be going around kissing all of them next?”
He gaped at her, and she continued, “And so did Sergeant Angua, by the way, when she saved your bloody life that time you nearly expired from a stab wound to your gut!” The time you almost died, would have left me widowed and pregnant because you had to chase the madman with the knife yourself, and then you did it again while I was in labour!
She bit down hard on her lip to keep the words from spilling out.
“I’m not denying that,” mumbled Sam, chastised. “It’s just what he said.”
“Yes, well, he would. I imagine he would say anything for the privilege to kiss you without having to admit he's just a lonely, miserable man who's lost his dog and desperately wants something else to warm his bed."
She hated herself for saying it as soon as the words had come out of her mouth. Sam gazed at her warily. He did look like a kicked puppy.
She wiped at her eyes and was relieved that the tears had stayed unshed. But she felt raw and helpless in her anger. He had come to her with a confession, she reminded herself. He had not tried to hide his transgression.
“What happens now, Sam? You’ll see him at every Watch briefing, every council meeting. You’re the Commander of the Watch, he is your Patrician. Will you pretend nothing happened? You kissed him back.”
Before he could reply, another thought occurred to her.
“Did you tell him you were going to confess everything to me?”
“No, I just told him that nothing could ever happen again. That it was over, whatever it was. That I was going home.”
“But he knows. He knows you. And he didn’t try to stop you.” Which means he wants this, she thought, he wants me to know.
It sickened her.
And he knows me, too, has known me longer than he has known Sam, so he probably thinks he knows exactly what I will do.
And what would she do? What was there to do? She herself didn’t even know.
You don’t see me as a threat at all, do you, Havelock?
The women of their generation had been raised a certain way, had been taught to endure quietly, to plaster on fake smiles and let their husbands do as they pleased. It went hand in hand with the legalization of the Guild of Seamstresses. You were to separate a man’s pleasure from his duties.
But which is which? Are you pleasure or duty, Havelock? And what am I?
Since the birth of their son, Sybil’s life naturally revolved around the baby. Sam had stayed home for the first two weeks, but he’d quickly become restless. He simply couldn’t do what a mother could, and he’d been quite scared of the infant at first. This was getting better as Young Sam grew from the fragile little newborn he’d been into the sturdy, chubby-cheeked baby he was now.
“Did I drive you away, Sam?” she asked. “Did I do something to make you feel unwelcome in your own home?”
“What? No!” He held up his hands like she imagined a cornered criminal would. “No, Sybil, you didn’t do anything wrong. You were lovely, you’ve always been lovely! Better than I deserve. You’re a wonderful wife, a wonderful mother!”
“You haven’t touched me since the birth, Sam.”
“Wh– No, that’s not true!” She could see his mind work through his memories, searching for proof she was mistaken. Finding none, he blushed.
“I’ve touched you. Held your hand, hugged you, stroked your back, kissed you…” he mumbled.
“You know that’s not what I mean,” she said sadly.
“It counts, though,” he muttered, “where would we be if the only thing that counted was… that?”
“It’s not,” she conceded, “but I suppose it’s made me wonder if you still want me like that. Or if you’d rather–”
“I do. I do want you.” He gazed at her, his eyes filled with sincerity, but there was shame there, too. “Only…” Sam drew a shaky breath that made her dread what was going to come out of his mouth next. “I’m scared, Sybil. I almost lost you. I did lose you. And then I made it back, and you were…” He trailed off, gaze dropping to his feet. “I sat out there in the hallway, waiting, and I couldn’t do anything, and I knew if you… I knew there’d be nothing left for me without you.”
Well, if Havelock had done anything, he’d proven that this blatantly wasn’t true. But even without him, there’d be the Watch, there’d be the city.
“Mossy talked to me after,” Sam continued, still unable to meet her eye. “A little less delicately than he put it to you, I think. Man to man. And I’d told him before… I told him to save you no matter what. And I love that baby, I do, but–”
The words, his gaze lifting from the floor, eyes red-rimmed and suddenly hard, went through her like a hot blade.
“Do not finish that sentence, Samuel Vimes! Don’t you dare!” she hissed, her heart clenching at the thought of anything happening to the child sleeping in the nursery. Now, the tears did spill. One rolled down her cheek and clung, trembling, to the bottom of her jaw.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said miserably. “For all of it. Whatever you want me to do now, I’ll do it. I’ll never see him again, if that’s what you want. I’ll retire.”
She stared at him, momentarily baffled. This offer she had not expected. Not even Havelock could have seen it coming.
“You don’t mean that,” she sniffed.
“I do,” he said, his voice hollow but certain. “I’ll write the resignation tonight. I’ll be a full-time dad. I’ll breed dragons if you want me to. I’ll do charity projects, anything.”
She remembered him right before their wedding, when she’d thought retirement was what he wanted, the dull look in his eyes, like a man facing the gallows. “You’d be miserable. Besides, the city needs you.” But the city was Havelock, and perhaps the reason her husband had made this ridiculous offer was that he didn’t think he could resist the Patrician if he had to see him regularly.
How could they go on? Havelock Vetinari only reached for that which he knew to be within his grasp. He did not miscalculate. He had looked at Sam and, after years and years, had seen an opening, an opportunity. Whatever feelings he harboured for her husband, he had seen enough of a response to make a move, and he had not been wrong. Sam had kissed him back.
There was only one way forward.
“I want you to see him again, Sam, and every time you do, you have to make it clear to him: That you’re choosing me and our son. Not him, never him.”
He nodded slowly, a pained expression on his face. “Alright.”
“Good.” She reached out and touched the raw spot on the side of his neck. He didn’t flinch. “Put that sword away, get out of your armour and come to bed, please.”
He got up and went to do as he was told.
*
In bed later, in the dark, Sybil lay awake. A part of her had hoped Sam would initiate something - another part of her had feared the very same. It hadn’t happened. He lay next to her, breathing, shifting, thinking of who knew what.
“I put people on the hurry-up wagon,” he said suddenly, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Back then, under Winder. Took a dollar as a bribe and gave it to my mum. Delivered people to those Cable Street goons and kept my mouth shut.”
She didn’t reply. Her heart was hammering. He never talked about this sort of thing. Well, he did now, and what was she to say?
“Then Sergeant Keel came and taught me better. And one night, we went to Cable Street, and I saw what had happened to those people I’d handed over just because someone’d told me to. Tortured, raped, murdered. I’d put them on the cart and given them up, Sybil. Didn’t even know enough to make anyone sign for ‘em. Just because they were out past curfew.”
He drew ragged breaths. “How am I to touch you now? I saw you there. You were just an innocent girl, and I was already–”
“You were only sixteen, Sam,” she cut him off gently, trying not to imagine what he had been forced to face. Years after Winder and Snapcase, she’d asked herself how involved her father had been. But deep down, she was glad she never had to find out. “You were a boy. A boy who wanted to make a living to support his mother, you couldn’t have known any more than I did.”
“No, I could’ve. I was out in those streets every night. I just had the political awareness of a head louse, I did. I was a twerp. If I hadn’t had a decent man to show me the ropes, who knows what I would have become.”
“You have a good heart, Sam. I don’t believe for a second that you could have turned into a monster. Not you.” She felt for his shoulder. She found it and leaned in, kissing it through the fabric of his nightshirt. He pressed closer. His breath stirred her short hair.
“Vetinari and I spoke about it afterwards,” he whispered, making her stiffen.
It hurt, the ache opening up inside her like a chasm, but she moved into it, holding on tighter.
“We fought about it at first. The job they didn’t have to do. He wanted to build them a bloody statue. I wanted to strangle him. But then he hung Carcer, and he left them alone, just wore the lilac.”
And you love him for it, she thought, for becoming the Patrician the city needed, the kind of ruler they’d fought for. Not another Winder or Snapcase. But someone who wants to make things better for everyone.
How could she compete with that?
She wanted to ask him directly, but there was a cry from the nursery. The kind of cry that made her chest ache and had her out of bed before she even consciously decided to get up.
By the time she returned to the master bedroom, Sam was fast asleep. She crawled into bed beside him, feeling sore, drained, exhausted.
He’d told her once, she remembered, how, if left alone in the interrogation room, the guilty would be able to fall asleep. The innocent, however, would sit stiffly in the chair for hours, wrestling with the injustice of it all.
She closed her eyes and listened to his snores.
He’d offered to retire.
Why?
Because the thought of giving up the city, his duty, his very self, was more bearable than that of having to be in a room with Havelock Vetinari and be forbidden from reaching out?
In the morning, Sam would return to the Watch House, and eventually, he would go to the palace, where Havelock was waiting.
And then what?
Sybil scooted closer to her husband. He lay on his side, his back to her. She wrapped her arms around him. He made a soft noise, but didn’t turn to her.
She closed her eyes. She would keep holding on.
What else was there to do?