Headscratchers / Feet of Clay

• If slavery is illegal in Ankh-Morpork, and this novel establishes that you can be a magically-created lifeform that's incapable of speech and still be protected from enslavement by this stricture, then why are imps (which could always talk) still being bought and sold for use in Magitek cameras, tape recorders and PDAs in so many books to follow?
  • The imps aren't slaves...they like it.
  • Maybe imps aren't considered sentient? They evaporate after a while and have no imagination. They're clearly sentient, but maybe Ankh-Morpork doesn't consider it slavery if they simply don't consider the slaves as people. Considering the horrific lengths people have gone (and still go) to justify slavery of human beings, it would be pretty easy for them to justify imp slavery because "imps aren't people."
• If Angua has to explain to Cheery what a golem is early in the book, how can Cheery later reminisce about having seen them working with arsenic in the Alchemists' Guild in Pseudopolis?
  • Could be that they just called them something different in Pseudopolis, and Cheery was just not familiar with the Ankh-morporkian term for them.
  • Cheery might also have seen golems in the Alchemists' Guild but not known what they were. Seems unlikely, given that she presumably worked there (I don't have the book on hand to double check she actually worked there instead of just dropping in), but they might have been a constant presence she just didn't discuss with other alchemists if she wasn't there for long.
  • Glitch in the timeline caused by the History Monks. It happens.
  • Possibly she assumed they were trolls who happened to look more clay-like than most.
• What's with Vetinari's poisoning symptoms? From my reading on arsenic, it's a heavy metal that accumulates and there's a whole lot of symptoms Vetinari didn't have. Light-headedness is a symptom, so it's plausible that Vetinari could collapse or have fainting spells and just be slightly unusual in his reaction to it — that happens, everybody responds differently to different substances — but... no coughing, even though he was breathing it in? No delirium or confusion? No tingling hands and feet? He was poisoned enough to faint, but not enough to dull his sharp mind, given that he figured out on his own it was the candles? Furthermore, there's long term symptoms of arsenic poisoning because it accumulates in the bones — long after the poisoning, the bones continue to release the built-up arsenic, and this would impact his brain and nervous system. But after he stops lighting the candles and a short recovery time, it's like the poisoning never happened. We've seen Vetinari be impacted long-term by an injury before, when the gonneshot causes him to need a cane, but his wits and brilliance should have been seriously dulled by the arsenic if the poison was a high enough dose to make him so light headed that he collapsed.
  • It's entirely possible that he was hamming up the symptoms after the first time - he cut off half a candle before lighting it, noted he was still sick but not as bad, and continued to act faint to encourage the conspirators to continue their plot and Vimes to tear through half the city. Any aresenic left in his system was gone by the time the mystery was "solved", and Vimes, high off of his victory over Dragon, didn't think of it.
  • His wits were muddled enough to think that the words "soup of the afternoon" and "croutons of teatime" were good writing, so there were some symptoms still displayed, and in terms of physical pain he notes that his hair aches (all these so far within his own internal monologue) and asks Vimes if toenails should throb. Since he's an expert on poisons, he probably has a good idea of the exact amount it's "safe" to imbibe without suffering severe long-term consequences. (And the existing leg injury could help him on the way to the ground—trying to support himself on a rum leg when he's woozy probably doesn't do much for one's ability to stand up without keeling over.)