edited by David Steffen
Summer had been unseasonably hot, rats taking refuge in the covered canals where the drunk and homeless hid, and the rat-catchers had unleashed schipperkes, dogs that hunted with flared noses and bared teeth, and then Nicolaas, who had only ruled for a year, abdicated as Rat King.
It fell to Hannes to resume the throne he had so recently vacated in favor of his offspring. He was angry, his bodies hissing and clacking teeth, a promise of violence. Nicolaas was in hiding, so Hannes’s anger fell on Teodoer, for Teodoer was Nicolaas’s closest friend and Hannes had no better target for his outrage. Teodoer cowered, his bodies trying to hide behind each other. Hannes’s command to Teodoer was as simple as it was impossible: find Nicolaas. Return him to his ordained place.
It is difficult to find a rat that does not wish to be found, even a rat king like Nicolaas with a surfeit of bodies linked by their tails. Teodoer roamed the city, careful to avoid the areas frequented by dogs or rat-catchers or, worse, the rat-baiter. He talked with other rats, singletons unaffiliated with any member of the rat court, but even they had heard of Teodoer’s unsolvable task and feared Hannes’s anger when Teodoer unavoidably failed and so would not speak to him.
Teodoer too was afraid. If he failed to deliver Nicolaas to Hannes in a timely fashion, the King who was and now was again could demand his dissolution. His tails would be unlinked and individual bodies scattered, the awareness that was Teodoer fading like blood in rain, the water red, then pink, then clear.
Desperate, Teodoer released some of his bodies so he could search the city more rapidly. His bodies squeaked protest, for to be alone was to be prey, but it was a necessary sacrifice. Teodoer felt himself dim as they left, carrying away enough of his awareness to remain part of him, but he had not risen in the court by shying away from what was necessary.
The rumors Teodoer brought back to himself were mist and smoke. Rats across the city gossiped about Nicolaas; the machinations of the court were entertainment as well as news, the court dependent on the labor of singletons who in return received the court’s guidance and protection. But the gossip had no substance. None of the claimed sightings of Nicolaas had the ring of truth.
Nevertheless, Teodoer investigated them, a fruitless endeavor. And then he heard of how the rat-baiter had died.
Rat baiting was new, brought by Englishmen who had settled in the city and found it too lacking in cruelty. A pit was built; dogs were trained; rats were caught. After, the bodies were tossed behind the building, a furry pile of lives cut short in fear and pain.
Rats had approached the court, and the courtiers and King Hannes had made a show of their concern. They wished to put an end to rat-baiting, of course, but feared the repercussions should they act against humans. In truth, they found in rat-baiting a useful method to keep singletons obedient. It forced them to seek the shelter of the court’s protection. The most promising rats were forcibly added to King Hannes and his courtiers. Teodoer had some among his bodies who had fled the rat-baiter. Other singleton rats worked to fulfill the court’s wishes. So it remained, even when Nicolaas ascended to the throne.
But now the man who organized the fights was dead—rat poison, slipped into his nightly wine. He had been dead long enough for rats to chew his face, the humans said.
A rumor, wispy as the others. But Teodoer scented Nicolaas’s involvement. Nicolaas had fought for the court to act against the rat-baiter, to no avail. Even a Rat King’s powers have limits. Eventually Nicolaas had given up the fight.
But poison spoke to intelligence and intent, and the bites were an announcement meant for other rats. And so it was that Teodoer made his way under gloom of night to the rat-baiter’s home.
The house was a hovel, tight and dark. Crumbs of food littered the floor. Teodoer took pleasure in scavenging them, feeding his bodies on the dead man’s spoils. He sniffed the discarded wine cup and ran twitching whiskers over the bed where the rat-baiter had thrashed out his life. Scents of Nicolaas, a musk he had grown up with. His friend had been here.
As he followed Nicolaas’s winding trail along buildings and through corners of storerooms where rats had gnawed openings, excitement gave way to caution. Nicolaas would not welcome Teodoer’s presence, as close as they had been. Would their friendship keep Nicolaas from pulling apart Teodoer’s bodies and adding them, and aspects of Teodor’s mind, to his? It was a danger when a lesser displeased a greater, and though Nicolaas had fled the Kingship, he was still the greatest of them all.
Teodoer reached the city’s outer fortifications, crumbling mason allowing passage into a cavernous space. He paused outside. He wanted to risk but one body, and argued with himself about which one and how much of his awareness to leave in that body. Too little and the body would no longer be him; too much and he might lose that part of himself to Nicolaas were he to take the body. Eventually he reached agreement. Teodoer poured himself into the quickest and sneakiest of them. She unwound her tail and scampered ahead. Teodoer bided his time, fears growing—would she be caught? Had he sent her to become part of Nicolaas?—until she returned, eyes bright, nose twitching, and rejoined her tail to the others, completing him again. Knowledge flowed into him.
Nicolaas wished to talk.
Teodoer’s shock grew upon seeing Nicolaas. His friend and one-time King was still groomed neatly, as befit royalty, but he’d grown more numerous, and several of his new bodies were unworthy of him. One’s eyes had a milky film. Another was so ancient that her black fur was patchy and thin. “My lord.”
Nicolaas bruxed, the quiet grinding of teeth signaling contentment, as if he was relaxing in his royal crawlspace and not hiding in the city’s outer walls. “Hannes sent you, of course, and of course you could not refuse his command. But I will not return to the court.”
“My lord,” Teodoer repeated, still reeling. He and Nicolaas had been close, spending so much time together after Hannes had made them that Hannes had laughed that they would become one, half a joke, half a warning. The Nicolaas he thought he knew would never have sullied himself with lesser bodies.
A singleton limped through the masonry hole. His back foot dragged—bumblefoot, by the smell. He had the audacity to approach Nicolaas, head low, with soft squeaks of supplication. Teodoer recoiled to see Nicolaas allowing the rat to link tails. Nicolaas’s other bodies closed their eyes. “Fresh from a barge. Welcome to our city.”
Multiple of Nicolaas’s bodies had spoken in unison, unsettling and wrong. “Stop it!” Teodoer snapped. “Stop this perversion, restore yourself, and take back up your throne and your duties.”
“I continue my duties,” Nicolaas said with one voice. For the first time he sounded like the commanding King he had been. “Better than I could at court. You tracked me from the rat-baiter’s?” At Teodoer’s nod, Nicolaas continued, “In one night I did more to make rats’ lives better than I did in my entire year as King.”
“Untrue!” Teodoer said, unwilling to hear his friend diminish his accomplishments. “You improved the court. With time you would have done more.”
“With time.” Nicolaas sneezed as if scenting peppermint.
“And debasing yourself will help?”
Nicolaas reared up with a terrible scream. Teodoer flattened his bodies to the rough ground. He should have been more temperate. His lone hope was that Nicolaas would leave him enough bodies to remain himself.
Three of Nicolaas’s bodies pulled their tails free and nipped at the remaining bodies’ necks to chide them. To Teodoer’s amazement, Nicolaas quieted. With remonstrative squeaks, the three bodies rejoined Nicolaas, who said, “I am sorry. Old habits.”
Nicolaas had returned to speaking with multiple bodies. Teodoer squeaked in distress. His friend couldn’t even hold himself together. “You’re unwell. Please, let me help you.”
“I am more myself than I have been since I became King.” Nicolaas drew close, bodies nestling against Teodoer’s, as they had done since they were young but had not since Nicolaas became King. It brought memories of happier times. “I will explain. If you cannot understand, then none can. After, you may decide if I am mad.”
Nicolaas’s explanation, given as he led Teodoer by canals and along walls, made no sense. He had of late been issuing invitations to any singleton who would listen. They were free to join him for a time, and just as free to leave when they wished. A recipe for contagion and madness, Teodoer thought. It took careful balance to maintain yourself as new bodies joined. The court thoroughly examined rats to make sure only the most impressive ones joined a courtier. It was why duels between courtiers, though rare, often ended with the victor taking bodies from the loser, spoils from the fight. Another courtier was a fertile source of worthy bodies and, no matter how hard they tried to keep their mind out of those lost bodies, knowledge of that courtier’s schemes.
The two of them sheltered beneath a cart near the port. The air smelled of the sea and carried on it the creak-slap of boats nestled tight together. “Most who join me are newcomers,” Nicolaas said.
“Of course they are!” Teodoer squeaked. No city rat would debase themself so, and if they did, then the court would destroy them.
At Teodoer’s distress, Nicolaas began to groom him, feet and blunt snouts moving over him, soothing and cleaning fur. Despite Teodoer’s fear for Nicolaas, the ministrations calmed him. “There is so much to be done to help rats—all rats. The court has lost sight of that, if indeed they ever knew it.”
Nicolaas and Teodoer had long argued about how to change the court to better serve rats. Nicolaas had burned like a hot fire, ready to change the court or turn it to ashes. Teodoer had counseled a slower approach, one less likely to rally courtiers to resist them. Teodoer had been afraid for his friend when he became King, and whether the courtiers would rise in opposition. He needn’t have worried. Nicolaas had been constrained by the court, as well as the firm guidance of Hannes, who directed Nicolaas with words and, when needed, nips. Nicolaas had let his ambitious plans give way to the pragmatic and the possible, or so Teodoer had thought. Instead, he had run away to enact his most ambitious plan ever.
When Nicolaas completed his grooming, content with the state of all of Teodoer’s fur, he pointed his noses towards the distant dock. “The world is so much larger than we knew, Teodoer. It goes on and on. I wonder if it has an end.” Half of Nicolaas’s faces turned to Teodoer. “I would show you for a moment, if you would let me.”
By giving Teodoer one of his bodies. Tension ran through Teodoer, carried from tail to tail to tail. He was of too many minds. Some of him wished to flee Nicolaas’s invitation. Others wanted to attack. But more, deep down, were curious.
Nicolaas had kept himself despite his new bodies. One could not hurt. Teodoer nodded, quickly, before his minds could change again.
Nicolaas regarded himself in silent consultation, until the bumblefoot rat tugged free its tail and offered it to Teodoer. Teodoer held very still, as if a cat stalked him, as the rat wove its tail into his.
Nicolaas saw the rat’s history. The scurry and leap onto a boat from a dock whose smells were so unlike the ones Teodoer had known that he could scarce believe they were real. Hiding below with others, having chewed a hole in a sack that carried food he had never before tasted. Traveling from city to city, each one more different and fantastic than the last. And now here.
He also saw how rats lived on boats and in other cities. None had courts, or even rat kings. Instead, they scavenged and fought and loved and died in complex arrangements that were a plank thin enough to flex but thick enough to hold them all and keep them peaceful and safe. For the first time in Teodoer’s life, he wondered why the court existed.
The bumblefoot rat withdrew his tail. It was like drawing out a splinter, relief that left an ache. Teodoer couldn’t speak. It was no small thing to have glimpsed the world.
“That is why.” Nicolaas allowed the bumblefoot rat to re-join him.
Teodoer found his voice. “I can’t tell them. About you. About what you are doing. About what I—” He stopped as if, by not speaking it aloud, his transgression would not exist.
“You must. Not about what you did or what you saw, but about me. Hannes will have it out of you. And word is spreading. Not all of my rats have come from newly-arrived boats.”
“You can hide!”
But Nicolaas shook his many heads. “They will find me, unless I give up what I am doing, and I will not.”
“Then we fight!” Teodoer said with the zeal of the newly-converted.
“We would lose. And nothing would change.”
It came to Teodoer that he had brought death to Nicolaas the moment he stepped into the rat-baiter’s home. His squeaks of distress were piercingly high.
Nicolaas’s bodies enmeshed with Teodoer’s. “Friend, forgive me. I must ask one last, hardest thing. When Hannes orders my death, you must be the one. Do it swiftly, and do not stint on the victor’s spoils.”
He could not take his friend’s bodies. “Nicolaas—”
“It must be you. Only you will show me the mercy of a swift end.”
That end could not be changed as long as Nicolaas held to his decisions, and though Teodoer argued and argued, Nicolaas was unmoved. He would not abandon his project.
It fell to Teodoer to return to court and deliver testimony of what he witnessed regarding Nicolaas. His voice trembled and his tails pulled taut and then slack. The court took his distress to be for Nicolaas’s heresy, a mistake that Teodoer did not correct.
From the throne mound, Hannes rendered implacable judgement just as Nicolaas had predicted: “Nicolaas must die.”
“Let it be me who performs that duty.” Teodoer risked Hannes’s anger in speaking, and the court hissed in surprise, but he had promised Nicolaas. “He has shamed both this court and me. I, who was so close to him, could not make him give up this madness and return.”
“As you say.” Hannes’s eyes glittered in the light that filtered through the boards of the house where the court had made its home. “But I will accompany. Lead me to him.”
Teodoer’s hope that he would be sent alone died. Reprieve was impossible. He would have to kill his friend.
Hannes was silent as guilt behind Teodoer as they crossed the city. Nicolaas waited for them in the fortifications. He dipped a bow as they entered. “Hannes. Teodoer.”
“Dispatch him,” Hannes ordered.
Teodoer trembled, but Nicolaas took the decision from Teodoer by rushing at him. Teodoer reacted without thinking, nipping at Nicolaas’s bodies, flipping them on their backs and putting teeth to their throats to force their submission.
And like that, Nicolaas was gone, tails unwinding, leaving no trace of Teodoer’s friend beyond the now-singletons fleeing for their lives. He encircled two who, despite looking the strongest, had not run as the others had, and added them to his body.
Hannes watched the other bodies scamper. “Are you sure you wish to add any of his to your own?”
“I’m unchanged,” Teodoer said, answering the unspoken question.
“Then come.” Hannes took the lead for the return journey. Before they entered the court, Hannes laid restraining paws on Teodoer. “We will need a new Rat King to continue the court. I am tired, and am ready to unlink tails for good once I have properly trained someone to follow me. I think that should be you.”
Teodoer dipped his heads in humility. “If you think me worthy.”
“We shall see.”
Teodoer said no more, and allowed Hannes to tell the others what had transpired, all the while turning over in his mind how to show Hannes that he was indeed worthy. For he had lied to Hannes. He was changed. He had taken on more of Nicolaas than he had let Hannes see. Nicolaas, clever Nicolaas, had poured all he could into the two bodies that stayed behind. His friend was gone, but his ideas remained, waiting for Teodoer to return them to the city. Nicolaas had decisively won his argument with Teodoer.
After Teodoer became Rat King, he would tear down the court entire.
© 2025 by Stephen Granade
2847 words
Author’s Note: I’ve been fascinated by rats since my youngest kid started keeping them as pets. I started musing about what a rat society organized around rat kings would look like, and what would happen if the Rat King wanted to abdicate. Those musing collided with me wanting to write a story in a more formal, archaic voice than I’d ever tried before, and before I knew it “The Rat King Who Wasn’t” popped out.
Stephen Granade is a physicist and writer from Huntsville, Alabama, the city with a Saturn V rocket in its skyline. Their stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Baffling Magazine, and Escape Pod. Their game, Professor of Magical Studies, is available from Choice of Games, and they co-edit Small Wonders, an SFF magazine for flash fiction and poetry. Find them on Bluesky (@granades.com), Mastodon (@sargent@wandering.shop), and their website (https://stephen.granades.com).
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