Weasel Presents (11 page)

It was down Feller Street, wasn’t it? No, perhaps Riverside Alley. He had been sure he’d known where it was, but each side street he turned down led only to shops he’d visited once or twice in his life, and the Reckless Knave was nowhere in sight.

Another half hour of searching found him in a small open park that he was sure was nowhere near the tavern. At least it was a nice, sunny day, so when he sat on a bench to think, he stretched out, closed his eyes, and basked. The warmth of the sun felt good on his fur, especially with the slight breeze.

“Lord Ikling!”

Helfer’s eyes flew open. Blocking the sun was the silhouette of what appeared to be a six-foot-tall weasel. The scent resolved quickly. “Vin?”

“You were dead asleep, you were.” Vinstrier flowed off the railing that had given him the illusion of extra height, around to sit on the bench. “What’cha doin’ out here?”

“I was looking for a friend,” Helfer said. He stretched, ruffling his fur where he’d been sleeping on it. “And I was not sleeping. Just enjoying the sun.”

“You call it what you want,” Vin said. “I seen corpses enjoyin’ the sun more than you was. What friend you lookin’ for? Maybe I seen him.”

“Maybe,” Helfer said. “V--Lord Vinton. Red fox.”

Vin made a show of considering. “Red fox, eh? Dressed all fancy?”

“Maybe.” Helfer leaned forward. “Seen anyone like that?”

“Well,” Vin said, “Maybe I have, maybe not. Hard for me to remember all the folks what I seen in a day, don’tcha reckon?”

Helfer sighed, and slipped a silver from his purse. “This help your memory any?”

Vin leaned toward Helfer. “Mmm, it might,” he said, “but my mem’ry’s a funny thing. Sometimes money helps, and sometimes it just don’t.”

There was a familiar gleam in his eye. Helfer felt an answering stir in his sheath. Couldn’t help it. It was a weasel thing. “Oh,” Helfer said. “So you’re thinking you keep this particular memory under your tail?”

Vin grinned. “Or in me muzzle. Got to be in one of the two, don’ it?”

“Dunno,” Helfer said. “How many do you have?”

“Oh, I got memories all over,” Vin said, leaning back and stretching his arms across the back of the bench. “I got mem’ries I keep in taverns what don’t know I been there. I got mem’ries kept in the bosoms of lovely young ladies. I got mem’ries kept under tails all over this city.”
Helfer laughed. “You’ve been busy since I last seen--saw you.” Vin’s language was contagious sometimes.

“Just up to the usual,” Vin said. “You know what Weasel wants.”

“No mystery unsolved--”

“--an’ no doorway unexplored.” Vin folded his arms. “So how come you don’t let me in the palace no more?”

Helfer spread his paws. “King’s out of fancy goblets. Soon as he gets more in, I’ll let you know.”

Vin snorted. “Only did that the once, I apologized for it too, but you always mention it.”

“I had to replace it.”

“Didn’t
have
to.”

“By buying it
back
from--”

“Pff,” Vin waved a paw. “Ancient history. What if I promise I won’t steal?”

Helfer laughed. “Should I believe the sun if it says it won’t come up tomorrow?”

“I mean it! I just want to sniff around.”

“What happened to that kitchen girl you were seeing?”

Vin shrugged. “Met another mouse. Don’t want to see me no more. Couldn’t get me in anyway. I tried once, her papers didn’t work. Can’t find any other weasels what work there. But this friend o’yours, the fox, he’s a lord, is he?”

“Of course,” Helfer said. “You think I associate with anyone but nobility?”

“I think you ’sociate with anyone got a tail to lift.”

“Not true,” Helfer said.

“Fine, anyone with a tail to lift and a nice pair between the legs.”

“Still not true, but closer.” Helfer grinned. “So did you see the fox or didn’t you?”

“Ah ah ah,” Vin waggled a finger, grinning back. “My mem’ry still needs some proper joggin’.”

Helfer considered the proposition. Vin wasn’t a bad lover, and the memory of Norbert was already fading into the multi-species haze of ‘previous bedmates.’ “Well, do you know where the Reckless Knave tavern is? I might find him there first.”

“What, and lose my chance of payment?” Vin grinned. “Come on, I don’t usually have to talk to you bed. I had a slow night, all pent up now, I am. You’ll have a good time.”

“No doubt of that,” Helfer said. “Just wondering whether I should indulge so early in the morning. It’d ruin the rest of the day. I’d have nothing to look forward to.”

Vin shrugged, getting up from the bench. “Don’t want to force you into nothing.” He swung his little tail back and forth enticingly, walking with deliberate slowness and waiting for Helfer to follow.

5

The sun was getting rather warm, and Vin’s rear was nice and shapely under his too-tight pants, and so why not? Helfer got up, stretched, and padded after the other weasel. Once Vin heard him coming, he chuckled and sped up, weaving through the crowd but checking periodically to make sure Helfer was following.

Of course, there wasn’t much danger of Helfer losing Vin in the crowd, especially since Vin wasn’t trying to lose him. He kept his eye flicking between the bodies and kept the other’s pale yellow tunic and black-tipped short tail in view in the gaps the crowd allowed him. He rarely spent this much time outside the palace, and almost never this far from it, so he found himself staring at various people as they wandered by him. Didn’t that one guy notice the big hole in his tunic? Ugh, even without a fox’s nose he could smell that raccoon and where she’d been rooting with her filthy paws. That sharp squirrel’s muzzle reminded him of a thin, hungry Ullik, the palace Exchequer. As he dodged around them, he glanced around the dirty buildings and wondered where Vin was leading him, because he could be pretty sure he hadn’t been to this area before.

And then, down one side street, he saw a noble’s doublet, a fox’s russet tail. He stopped as it disappeared into one of the shops. Someone bumped into him from behind and cursed, but Helfer just slipped out of the way. He spared one glance toward Vin, unable to find the weasel in the crowd, and then dodged out of the crowd and down the side street. The prospect of a mystery that was hopefully not political made his whiskers twitch and his paws dance across the stones of the street. He stopped in front of a little row of three shops: a pawnshop, a bakery, and a groomer. Through the open doors, he could not see the fox in any one of them. Scent was no help, as out here in the street the mixed scents of the crowd obscured any individual, at least to his nose. He paced between the shops and finally let his stomach lead him into the bakery.

The fox wasn’t in there, but a set of small honey rolls were. Chewing, he stepped back out onto the street and found himself nose to nose with Vin.

“Hungry?” the other weasel said. “Coulda said somethin’, I woulda stopped.”

His mouth full, Helfer held out the last honey roll, and Vin took it. “Awright,” he said. “Back on our way?”

“Just let me check in this shop,” Helfer said, stepping toward the pawnshop. If the fox hadn’t gone into the bakery, surely he must have gone in here.

“Lookin’ for new toys?” Vin followed Helfer inside, licking his fingers.

Like the bakery, the smell of the pawnshop overwhelmed any scents of its customers. Unlike the bakery, the smell was not appetizing. Shelves and racks crammed with hundreds of items exuded the scents of wood, stone, brick, and their former owners, combining into a thick haze that made Helfer’s head swim. Used to the clean air of the palace, he had to steady himself for a moment before continuing in. Behind him, Vin patted his shoulder. “Bit ripe, innit?”

“Bit.” Helfer rubbed his nose and walked past a shelf of small metal keepsake boxes, resisting the urge to look at the decorations on each one.

“What’cha lookin’ for, then?”

“A fox,” Helfer said in a low voice. The shop appeared small, but as he couldn’t really see the back wall, it could’ve been fifty feet long for all he knew. He didn’t think there were many people inside, so he was hoping to hear the fox. It occurred to him that the maze of shelves muffled noise so effectively that the vulpine could be right on the other side of the wooden rack and Helfer might not hear him. The deadened air seemed to trap sound as he and Vin spoke.

“You think someone mighta pawned one?” Vin peered around at the shelves and took down a set of wooden cups, cracked, but with a pretty grapevine design around them. He blew dust from them and turned them over. “Anyway, why you need a fox for? You got a willin’ weasel right here.”

“Not for that.” Helfer shook his muzzle to clear it from the dust in the air.

“Oh, that one you were lookin’ for?” Vin replaced the cups on the shelf, his muzzle dipping to look at the other items. They were in the ‘goblet’ section, it seemed. Vin picked up a simple pewter goblet and twirled it idly. “Whyn’t ya just ask me nice? More fun than pokin’ around this rubbish.”

Hard to argue with his logic. Helfer gave the other weasel a grin. “Just let me poke around here a little more.”

Vin stayed behind him and muttered, “Rather let you poke around
here
,” but otherwise didn’t object. Helfer ignored the small sounds of Vin examining every little thing he passed and focused on looking around corners for a russet tail. The shopkeeper, a pudgy mouse, stood up more alertly when he saw Helfer, whether because he recognized Helfer as a noble or simply because Helfer was a customer, the weasel couldn’t tell. Helfer was about to go ask him about the fox when he noticed a curtain hanging across a doorway at the back of the store. He motioned to it, and the mouse nodded. “Uncatalogued merchandise, please feel free to look around.” His high voice carried clearly. Perhaps the store was empty after all. Helfer drew aside the curtain and walked into a dimly lit back room.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the hazy light, coming primarily from a small skylight. The musty smell was stronger here in the back, where the items on the shelves were crammed in with no rhyme nor reason that Helfer could see. He rubbed his watering eyes and walked around the first set of shelves. “Anyone here?” he said.

Nobody responded. He felt Vin’s little paws slide around his stomach. “Just the two of us,” he breathed into Helfer’s ear. “Don’t that make you right happy?”

Helfer flicked his ear. “Must’ve been a really slow night.”

“Promises to be a hot day.” Vin ground his hips up under Helfer’s tail. “What’cha say?

Helfer turned and started to shake his head. “What, here?” His protest was muffled by Vin’s muzzle, pressed against his. Before he could react, the other weasel was full-body pressed to him, his little tongue sliding against Helfer’s, and by that time, the kiss was too enjoyable for Helfer to really want to do anything about it.

“I can barely breathe,” he said when their muzzles parted.

“Stands to reason,” Vin said. “My tongue was right in the way. Didn’t seem like you minded.” His paw danced along the bulge in the front of Helfer’s trousers.

“What if he comes back here?”

Vin rubbed harder, feeling the response. “Ah, I know ’im, he doesn’t leave the counter. Who’d mind the store? Don’tcha worry.”

Helfer sagged back against a shelf, bracing himself as Vin’s touch brought his sheath to hardness. “What if another customer comes back here?”

“This time o’ the morning?” Vin grinned. His fingers teased at the waist of Helfer’s trousers.

Helfer sighed. It wouldn’t take long, of course, and maybe they could have a follow-up in an actual bed in a private room somewhere. “All right,” he said.

That was all Vin needed to hear. In a moment, he’d unfastened the catches of the trousers and pulled the cotton fabric down, exposing Helfer’s sheath to the dusty air. Cupping the base in one of his small paws, he set to licking, small flutters of his soft tongue making Helfer moan and squirm against the wooden shelf. As Vin’s tongue traveled up his shaft, he shifted his paws on the shelf and knocked something over with a dull thud, making his fur prickle.

Vin, unconcerned, didn’t stop. Helfer’s tail lashed against something, back and forth. After the brief thought that he hoped his tail wasn’t getting too dusty, Helfer forgot about that in the wash of sensations. Vin’s fingers pressed in at his base, rolling his sac against the warmth of his paw pad, and began to suck in earnest, moving up and down enthusiastically on Helfer’s rigid member.

Helfer squeezed the wood of the shelves, feeling his body tense and shiver. Right in the middle of a tense moan, noise erupted from the front of the store. The clomping of at least two pairs of boots broke the silence, and a rough deep voice said something, answered by the mouse’s high treble.

Vin paused, cocking an ear, then bent back to attend to Helfer, who had already started to pull his pants up. “What are you doing?” Helfer hissed. “Those are palace guards.”

“Nah, jus’ the Bashers, vicious bastards.” Vin kept his paw on Helfer’s sac even as Helfer was trying to pull his trousers up over it. “They come raid the shop for stuff what’s been taken from its rightful owner without proper protocol. Confiscate what they likes.”

“Why are they here now?”

“Dunno. Need new boots?”

Above them, a creak. Helfer looked up in time to see a russet tail disappearing through the now-open skylight. Vin followed his gaze. “Ah, we had an audience.” He chuckled. “Well, we can finish up in privacy, eh?”

“Those are palace boots,” Helfer said. “What if they’re looking for him?” He pointed up.

Vin shook his head. “You don’t live on the street, Hef. I tell ya, it’s the Bashers.”

6

Helfer finished pulling up his trousers, shaking Vin’s paw free from his sheath. “You’re turnin’ me down?” Vin said, rocking back on his heels.

“Sorry,” Helfer said. “Another time? I need to find that fox.”

Vin sat on the floor as Helfer clambered up the shelves toward the skylight. “You ain’t finished with me. If you want me to tell you what I know, you’re climbin’ the wrong pole.”

Helfer glanced down, paws on the skylight. “I’ll be back,” he said, just as the clomp of boots grew louder and the curtain to the back room was shoved roughly aside.