Weasel Presents by Kyell Gold

Dereath was doing with him, Helfer thought. The rat was opportunistic at everything, including sex, and had no doubt spent the night with him. The resulting image made him squeeze his eyes shut and try to imagine Norville’s pretty behind again. By the time he’d done that, the pair were past him and the stair was clear. Poking his head outside, he made sure nobody was looking and then bounced on the balls of his feet to the top of the staircase, elated at having avoided the unpleasant rat and his lecherous companion.
    Since kithood, he’d been able to take the stairs two at a time without touching the banisters, and he still took a childlike glee in bounding down to the horrified looks of any of the old lardbuckets trudging up. Today that joy was doubled by the pent-up energy he hadn’t spent on his run, bringing him to a breathless, skidding halt in the great hall. He spun around the post with its white wolf’s head and waved to two footservants carrying laundry down to the basement before padding quickly into the north wing.
    The morning was truly under way now, the palace waking up. In the game room, he saw two bears, Lords Boursin and Alacris, playing chess, and before he even rounded the corner to the music room, he could hear the painful flailings of Lord Mynoch on the harpsichord.
    That probably meant that the steward was not, in fact, there with him. Helfer paused, reviewing his conversation with Jerish and realizing that at no point had the mouse ever actually said that Alister was down here. Helfer had only thought of Mynoch because he knew from talking to Jerish that the old stag, despite his atrocious musical ability, had a keen sense of decorum and politics, and Alister made time for him more than any other Lord. To confirm his suspicion, he peeked his head around the corner of the music room, and sure enough, the old stag was sitting alone in the music room, pounding away at the keys of the battered instrument. As Helfer watched, he began to bellow, “She was a doe of beauty rare / Her breath as sweet as summer air” so far off key that the weasel turned and fled with his paws over his ears.
    Grumbling, Helfer realized he didn’t have much choice but to return to Alister’s office. He jogged up the stairs, feeling that at least he’d have gotten his run for the day in, and walked back down the hallway he was getting heartily sick of seeing. He had important things to be doing: investigating the local pubs for ales and meads and cute behinds, napping in the late summer sun, deciding on a new set of clothes for the next state dinner, and so forth.
    The pleasant litany of things he could otherwise be doing was brought to a screeching halt outside the steward’s door, where he heard Jerish talking to someone. “He was here before. I don’t know where he is now.”
    Instinct brought Helfer up short, heart pounding. He knew that the next voice he was going to hear was Dereath’s, though he couldn’t have said how, because he could smell nothing but Alister’s scent all over this section of hallway. One paw pressed to the chilly stone wall, he waited, praying to Weasel to be proven wrong.
    On this occasion, his Ancestor turned a deaf ear. “He can’t be that hard to find,” the rat’s voice snapped. “As the first name on the list, I would have expected the Royal Steward to be more assiduous in attempting to locate him.”
    “He did locate him,” Jerish said, adding “sir” as what seemed like an afterthought. “But you know how he is. He left again.”
    There could be little doubt they were talking about him. Helfer turned and padded as quietly as he could down the hallway, into the room he’d hidden in earlier. He eased the door closed and took a good look around for the first time.
    Facing west, the room had been dim half an hour ago and was barely lighter now. It was not one of the more desirable offices in this part of the palace, which explained its vacancy. The large oak desk in the