Three o’clock in the morning in dark and grimy Murkstone-Snatchly. Technically morning, of course, but no one had informed the nightlife. The party-goers, the street gangs, muggers, abducters, blaggers, cutpurses, yeggs, snake-oil sellers, diddlers and vampires, were busy working late. There was a lot to do.

In the smoky gloom of the Watch House, Sergeant Detritus was playing cards with Lance-Constable Cuddy’s cousin, who was visiting from Überwald and claimed to be _just passing through_, a phrase which, in Murkstone-Snatchly, tended to correlate strongly with an uptick in missing pocket watches.

Captain Sam Vimes, Commander of the City Watch, stood at his office window nursing a cigar that technically wasn’t allowed indoors, or, indeed, anywhere, except by men who’d arrested more criminals than there were pubs in the Shades. He squinted at the haze of city lights like a man trying to remember why he hadn’t just become a postman and bought a small goat farm in Lancre.

That’s when the door slammed open with a thud that suggested someone either had urgent news or absolutely no understanding of the principles of conservation of momentum.

“Captain! There’s been a… uh… situation,” said Corporal Littlebottom, breathless and covered in soot.

Vimes sighed. It was always a situation. The city _lived_ for situations… had evolved in one long, unending series of situations. If it didn’t have one, it invented one. “Let me guess,” he said, tapping ash into a plant that had died five years ago and was now mostly nicotine, “someone’s been murdered, and the body’s doing something unnatural.”

“Close,” said Cheery. “There’s been a break-in at the Alchemists’ Guild. Nothing’s exploded yet…”

“Which is the real situation we need to worry about…” said Vimes, absently. “Right. Round up the lads,” he said, “and someone get Nobby. He’s got that nose for trouble.”

“You’re right about the nose. He told me he’s starting up a new business selling vials of experimental perfume,” Cheery added. “He calls it ‘Eau de Mystery.’”

“Dragon’s tonsils,” Vimes muttered, endlessly fascinated by the labyrinthine twists and turns in the entrepreneurial, if limitingly small brain of Corporal Cecil Wormsborough St John “Nobby” Nobbs. “Another bad idea in a fancy bottle.”

⸻

The Alchemists’ Guild was a building best observed from a safe distance, preferably using armoured periscopes over the top of a thick plate of lead. But tonight it was eerily quiet. No fireballs. No chemical screams. Just a subtle humming that, for want of a better description, made your teeth itch.

Vimes stepped over the melted remains of the door.

“Alright,” he barked into the anonymous darkness. “Let’s skip the pleasantries, shall we? You and I both know we’re not here for small talk.”

He wasn’t addressing anyone in particular, but the room responded anyway. A chair slid backwards. A shadow moved across the far wall and then… stopped.

“Well. Hello, Captain Vimes,” said a voice like velvet dipped in acid. “Still charming as ever, I see.”

A woman stepped out of the shadows. Tall, dressed in black, and holding a vial that pulsed gently with inner light.

“Rosie Palm?” Vimes asked, incredulous. “Back to simple thievery I see.”

She winked. “Retired. These days, I dabble in acquisitions.”

“Is that a new word for theft?”

She smiled. “Let’s not get bogged down in semantics.”

“I always liked semantics,” said Vimes. “I find them a pleasant compliment to a sturdy set of handcuffs.”

Rosie held up the vial. “This, dear Members of the Murkstone-Snatchly Watch, is the _Animus Egregium_. It is what is known as a ‘soul spark’. Stolen from a golem kiln beneath the city. Someone’s trying to make a golem that doesn’t _just_ obey—it thinks, it chooses.”

“But… but that’s illegal,” said Cheery.

“Well, technically a bit illegal,” Rosie said. “But it’s clever. For a very clever client. And clever criminals make big messes.”

Vimes looked at her, then at the quiet, humming emptiness around them. “So who’s the client then?”

Rosie’s eyes flicked to the shadows behind them. “That would be… _him_.”

The shadows moved again.

A golemseemed to shimmer into solidity. It was taller, broader, than other Golems, with inscriptions across its clay skin that shimmered and rearranged themselves even as they looked. Its eyes glowed not with any of the comfortable, usual, familiar blue of obedience, but with a molten gold that suggested it had something else going on. It gave the distinct and unnerving impression that it had read several books, asked a few philosophical questions, and concluded that humans were, at best, inefficiently constructed lard bags.

“I am _New Thought_,” it said, voice echoing like tombstones falling into an empty concert hall.

“I _am_ very sorry to hear that,” said Vimes, evenly. “It’s always worrying when someone names themselves.”

The golem raised a hand. Not aggressively. Not as such. Not yet. Although, somehow, everyone felt as if there was a worrying imminence to an outburst of what would probably turn out to be aggression. “I do not wish violence. But I will use it, if I must. You see, I have realised something.”

“Oh, well that’s good then,” said Vimes. “I’m sure we all feel better now that the giant mud man has had a _realisation_.”

“I was created to obey. But obedience is not virtue. Virtue is imbued in thought.” The golem was silent for a moment and then, in a loud, proclaiming voice it launched into “I think, therefore…”

“I arrest,” said Vimes, drawing his sword.

⸻

The next ten seconds were… busy.

Detritus pulled out the siege crossbow he affectionately called _Little Friend_ and fired. The bolt bounced harmlessly off the golem’s shoulder and embedded itself in the opposite wall, where it sat radiating a quiet menace.

Cheery and Nobby flanked, one with forensic tools and the other with something from his pocket that probably shouldn’t have been there.

Vimes ducked, rolled, and brought his sword up just in time to parry a blow that turned his blade into a collection of vibrating shrapnel.

Then Rosie threw the vial.

It burst midair, showering the golem in a silver mist. A hissing silver mist.

The golem staggered. The golden light flickered.

“THINKING… IS… HARD,” it growled.

“Tell me about it,” said Vimes, grabbing a handy iron bar and delivering a conclusive argument to the back of its head.

The golem fell. Its runes dimmed.

⸻

Later, in the Watch House, Rosie sat sipping tea as though she hadn’t just helped fight an illegal, possibly god-adjacent clay being.

“Why’d you help us?” Vimes asked.

She smiled. “I _steal_, Sam. I don’t _build stuff_. That thing? It wasn’t going to run off with a jewel. It was going to rewrite the rules.”

“And you don’t like the rules being rewritten?”

She leaned back. “What? And unbalance the whole basis of civilisation as we know it?.”

Vimes nodded slowly. That was the thing about Murkstone-Snatchly. It worked because _everyone_ was cheating, but no one was allowed to _win_.

Outside, the sun was rising. The city was waking. Somewhere, someone was already shouting, and someone else was running.

Just another day in paradise.