The next morning the little squirrel was back, bearing some colorful wooden boxes and an expression that was far too cheerful for that time of day, in Agg's opinion. (Of course, since rats were nocturnal, nine AM was the rat equivalent of three in the morning, so Agg might have been being a little unfair).
"Not you again," Agg groaned in response to Lucian's quiet "psst." "Didn't your mother tell you to stop consorting with the big, scary rat?"
Lucian didn't seem to have heard. "I brought this for you," he announced proudly, passing the rat a box.
Agg stared at it.
"It's a tissue box," Lucian explained. "You open the top, and, well, tissues come out. I'd have brought you some nightshade too, but we're out, and I don't know if woodlander medicine works on rats.
"So..." he continued, as Agg promptly put the tissues to good use, "tell me about yourself."
"I'm a rat," Agg said. "I bludgeon people to death, steal their money, and wash the day down with a cappuccino or two. What more do you want to know?"
"Do all rats hate to baths? Do you sleep in hordes? Is it true you can smell blood from five miles away?"
"Are all squirrel brats this inquisitive?" Agg mocked. "The bath thing is only really a problem in my family. I think it's genetic." He brightened. "If you think I'm bad, you should see Grandpa Drak. Just show him a picture of a of a tub and he starts shivering in fright. No, most rats have grown suh-fih-sti-kated."
"And the hordes?"
Agg raised his eyes to the heavens as though pleading for patience. "Don't be ridiculous. Hordes! Really! We're no longer in the medieval ages, for Vulpuz's sake. It's only the traditionalists like Great-Uncle Rottooth that live in hordes nowadays. And do you know how bad those things are for your health?"
"I can imagine," Lucian said faintly.
"Great-Aunt Nan's told me they spend thousands of gold pieces on doctor's visits each year. Good thing they rule their horde, too, or they'd probably have some problems. Honestly. Hordes..."
Lucian nodded, passing Agg the second box of tissues. "All right. And the smelling?"
"Let's just say," Agg said haughtily, "my nose is twenty times better than that wretched, puny thing on your face. All rats have wonderful senses of smell. My brother claims he can even smell Gran's croissants from twenty miles away, but I think he might be exaggerating." He sniffed. "That's why soap annoys ordinary rats, even ones that don't have an aversion."
Lucian seemed to be hanging onto every word. "What else can rats do?"
"Well..." said Agg slowly, "I can predict the future, in a sense. At least, I can tell how long you're going to live when I look at you. Except that only works when I've got a club in my hand and you're laying prone in front of me."
"Really?" Lucian said in amazement. "How?"
"I just know it," Agg said. "It's a skill rats are born with."
"What is it?"
"What is what?"
"My life expectancy."
Agg closed his eyes and sneezed again. "No club, see? You ask too many questions. Go away."
Lucian left. But he continued to come back to chat for a few minutes each day whenever he could spare the time. Agg assured himself that he only looked forward to these visits because of the tissues Lucian brought him. His anticipation for Lucian's daily visits certainly had nothing to do with this small amount of company – woodlander company, of all things! – brightening his otherwise lonely and soap-filled existence. No, of course not. The idea was enough to make him vomit. A rat wanting to spend time with a woodlander? Really!
Agg did, however, manage to learn some things about Lucian in the weeks that followed. Such as the fact that his father had abandoned Lucian and his mother when the dibbun was only three seasons, leaving his Mum to live off welfare until she got a job at the factory down the road from the abbey (Agg could relate – rats were notorious for having dysfunctional families); how he was too busy to attend school; how the other children made fun of him for his ratty, tattered clothes. Of course, Lucian didn't complain outright. It was more what he didn't say that clued Agg in. Not that Agg was interested in the affairs of a wretched woodlander youngling – oh, no. It was just something to pass the dreary hours between twilight and morning, when he should have been out raiding with his friends.
went from being a twoshot to something significantly longer.