Page 53 of The Rut in the Road

Mason looked down at the rat, which had moved on to cleaning its tail. I blinked. I could see gaps in the pink skin of the tail, with bits of whitish bone showing through.

“It does, doesn’t it?” he sounded confused.

“Shouldn’t it be?” I asked, a little worried. A confused Mason was pretty rare.

“Honestly, no idea. I have very limited experience with resurrected animals, and the last one I encountered was… definitely not content.”

“Oh.”

We both stared at the rat, which circled twice, then curled up and lay down in the middle of the dog bed.

“What do I do?” I asked him, not taking my eyes off the rat.

“Well.” He took a deep breath, the let it out. “Decide if you’re going to name him and keep him, or I can try to talk you through how to… send him back.”

I named him Victor.

Archie had, to borrow a phrase from Hart, absolutely lost his shit.

Because I hadn’t just raised a little rat corpse.

I’d raisedVictor. And yes, I’m aware that the name I’d bestowed on the little undead rat wasn’t his actual name. If rats gave each other names, I’d certainly never have figured out what it was, although I’d spent the last several hours very much thinking about how animals’ minds must work—including far too much time on websites that took various opinions on questions of animal feelings and awareness.

Archie’s problem was that Victor was making autonomous decisions.

Apparently, when you raised a corpse, it was supposed to jerkily find the necromancer who raised it and then wait in a kind of stasis for that necromancer to command it.

It was not supposed to find an office and proceed to groom itself the way it might if it were an actual, living rat.

Archie’s freak-out had brought both Ward and Sylvia into the room—Mason was already there, watching Victor-the-undead-rat stretch, then circle and lay back down again, closing his one remaining cloudy eye.

“Um,” Ward said, staring down at the rat.

“This is fascinating,”Sylvia pronounced, and got closer to Victor to examine him.

“It’s not fascinatin’!”Archie yelped.“It’s unnatural!”

“It’s necromancy,” Mason pointed out. “Which, depending on your view, is either unnatural anyway, or natural because magic is natural.” The big orc shrugged. “Either way, while an undead rat is certainlyunusual, it doesn’t seem to be particularly hostile or… corrupt.”

Archie glared at me.“It’s got its soul,”he snapped.“Which I told you not to do.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” I protested. “I didn’tsensea dead rat, I didn’t try toraisea dead rat, and I definitely didn’t try to put arat-soulback into said dead rat!”

“It doesn’t have any of the black that I saw with Picton or Fitzwilliam,” Ward remarked, staring at Victor. “It’s red, mostly.”

I looked down at the rat, frowning. “He’s brownish grey,” I said.

“His magic,” Ward clarified. I had momentarily forgotten that, when he wanted, my boss could see magic. “Or, more accurately,yourmagic that’s reanimating him.”

Archie’s brow furrowed, and he stared harder at the rat.“I’ll be fuckin’ damned,”he breathed.

“About what?” Mason asked him.

“It doesn’t have any corruption,”he said softly, floating closer.

Sylvia stuck out a finger and made as though she were going to put it through Victor—except she made contact, and he squeaked.

So did literally everyone else in the room, even Mason.