Daniel Polansky - The Builders

Bonsoir was a stoat, thats the first thing that needs to be said. There are many animals that are like stoats, similar enough in purpose and design as to confuse the amateur naturalistweasels, for instance, and ferrets. But Bonsoir was a stoat, and as far as he was concerned a stoat was as distinct from its cousins as the sun is from the moon. To mistake him for a weasel or, heaven forbid, a polecatwell, lets just say creatures who voiced that misimpression tended not to do so ever again. Creatures who voiced that misimpression tended, generally speaking, not to do anything ever again.

Now a stoat is a cruel animal, perhaps the cruelest in the Gardens. They are brought up to be cruel, they must be cruelfor nature, which is crueler, has dictated that their prey be children and the unborn, the beloved and the weak. And to that end nature has given them paws stealthy and swift, wide eyes to see clearly on a moonless night, and a soul utterly remorseless, without conscience or scruple. But that is natures fault, and not the stoats; the stoat is what it has been made to be, as are we all.

So Bonsoir was a stoat, but Bonsoir was not only a stoat. He was not even, perhaps, primarily a stoat. Bonsoir was also a Frenchman.

A Frenchman, as any Frenchman will tell you, is a difficult condition to abide, as much a privilege as a responsibility. To maintain the appropriate standards of excellence, this superlative of grace, was a burden not so light even in the homeland, and immeasurably more difficult in the colonies. Being both French and a stoat had resulted in a more or less constant crisis of self-identityone which Bonsoir often worked to resolve, in classic Gallic fashion, via monologue.

And indeed, when the Captain had seen him some six weeks previous, Bonsoir was in the midst of expounding on his favorite subject to a captive audience. He had one hand draped around a big-bottomed squirrel resting on his knee, and with the other he pawed absently at the cards lying facedown on the table in front of him. Sometimes, creatures in their ignorance have called me an ermine. His pointed nose trailed back and forth, the rest of his head following in train. Do I look like an albino to you?

There were five seats at the poker table but only three were filled, the height of Bonsoirs chip stack making clear what had reduced the count. The two remaining players, a pair of bleak, hard-looking rats, seemed less than enthralled by Bonsoirs lecture. They shifted aimlessly in their seats and shot each other angry looks, and they checked and rechecked their cards, as if hoping to find something different. They might have been brothers, or sisters, or friends, or hated enemies. Rats tend to look alike, so its tough to tell.

Now a stoat, Bonsoir continued, whispering the words into the ear of his mistress, a stoat is black, black all over, black down to the tip of hishe goosed the squirrel and she gave a little chucklefeet.

The Swollen Waters was a dive bar, ugly even for the ugly section of an ugly town, but busy enough despite this, or perhaps because of it. The pack of thugs, misanthropes, and hooligans who thronged the place took a good hard look at the Captain as he entered, searching for signs of easy prey. Seeing none, they fell back into their cups.

A swift summer storm had matted down the Captains fur, and to reach a seat at the bar required an ungainly half-leap. He seemed more than usually perturbed, and he was usually quite perturbed.

You want anything? The server was a shrewish sort of shrew, as shrews tend to be.