“Wrong! Wrong! Wrong again!” the other kids cheered gleefully. Rung didn’t have to fight against a pout; he was used to this happening and could keep his own disappointment and sadness off his face from long practice.

“Wrong,” Teacher Broom said disapprovingly. Rung hated when Broom called him Wrong. The other kids at the orphanage had perfectly good shortened names like Thimble or Dustbin. Rung’s name was Ladder Rung, Rung for short, but the nickname Wrong had stuck so firmly Rung sometimes wondered if his teachers even knew his real name anymore.

“This is simply unacceptable,” Broom continued, scrunching his nose and smartly groomed whiskers in unhappiness. Rung hung his head as he was supposed to while being chastised. He wished the other kids would stop giggling at his continual misfortune. “The eighth time you’ve taken this simple test and the room simply isn’t clean, Wrong!”

Rung looked forlornly at the room he had spent the past three hours of the test cleaning. The test bedrooms in this wing of the orphanage were specifically mussed so the students could practice their hands at cleaning. Rung had swept and tidied until the place shone, and he had hidden himself perfectly whenever an instructor came into the room. Yet when it came down to the little things, he was always wrong. The books on the waist-high bookshelf were not in alphabetical order, nor had he color-coded them. Rather, Rung thought it more prudent to put the ones with the creased spines, obviously read much more often, on the top shelf within easy reach. The books that still smelled like the press they had recently come off were also put on the top shelf, because, clearly, the owner would want to find the new reads with ease.

Rung knew what his instructors wanted: alphabetical organization by author, genre, and if possible, cover color. Unfortunately, Rung couldn’t do it. He tried, test after test, but that bookshelf always ended up his way. He couldn’t manage to do it the way the teacher wanted no matter how much he attempted to organize the damned shelf. He couldn’t help it!

“And the desk!” Broom went on as Rung picked up on the next bit of the teacher’s rant. “How could you leave that stack of papers in such disarray?” Broom sighed. “Wrong, you are to go to your bed and contemplate what you have done wrong. Do not bother coming to dinner.”

“Yes, sir,” Rung said softly, knowing he had already missed lunch for another fault during class that day. Breakfast was a long time away.

Rung rounded his shoulders and walked through the crowd of students who had gleefully watched his punishment session. He ignored the jeers with long practice and managed not to gasp in pain when Needle shoved him into the wall on his way past.

The room where he slept housed six of the boys around the age of eighteen, and Rung was relieved none of them were present when he pushed open the door. He noticed his blanket was missing again when he walked past his bed on the way to the full-length mirror across the room to look at the new bruise forming on his shoulder. Needle’s shoves were never soft, and Rung hadn’t been braced this time.

The bruise was purpling, but it wouldn’t be too bad. The mirror gave him an unvarnished image that Rung tried to overlook as he inspected his shoulder.

Brownies were relatively short creatures, the tallest topping five feet if they were unlucky. Being small meant it was easier to hide when the owner of the home they were cleaning unexpectedly entered the room they were in. Brownies were short and skinny. Rung was skinny, certainly, but he had gained bulk that sat on his shoulders despite always going hungry, and he was around five feet six inches in height.

Brownies had a layer of short fur covering their entire bodies. The fur was always some sort of shade of brown that would camouflage them well against the wooden walls of the majority of the homes they serviced. Rung’s fur was a light tan color, not brown at all. He was human-colored, as Needle had so kindly pointed out when they had first seen pictures of the creatures who owned the houses that someday all good brownies would serve.

They had all declared that his father must have been human, which was something truly terrible, for it meant the human Rung’s mother was serving had seen her—a mother who had died not long after Rung’s birth. Parents were supposed to teach their children how to clean properly. When a brownie did not have parents, he or she was sent to the Orphanage for Cleanliness and Deportment, where the teachers would make the orphaned brownies into productive members of society.

And that, perhaps, was what was so wrong with Rung. He would never be a productive member of society if he couldn’t learn to clean correctly.

Rung sighed and turned away from the mirror. If he went to sleep, he wouldn’t think about his growling stomach. Also, if he was asleep by the time the rest of his roommates returned from dinner, they might give him his blanket back when they saw he wasn’t available for whatever torture they had thought up this time.

Rung curled up in bed, hoping to quiet his empty stomach, and sighed. He would have to try harder to satisfy his instructors, but that could wait until the morning.

*

Rung woke, still hungry, and with the knowledge that the room was also empty. No one had bothered to wake him for breakfast, but Rung hoped there would still be some porridge left if he hurried.

He made it down to the dining hall without being seen—he had eagerly learned that lesson taught to all the students—and snuck into the dining hall to get his breakfast. That day Rung was lucky: not only was there porridge, but there was still a scone left too.

Rung took his bounty to a corner table, keeping his head down as he went. If he were shorter, he could blend in better, but Rung had found that if he pretended not to exist he could still avoid a good deal of trouble.

“Another one?” someone gasped at a table as Rung passed by. “How horrible! To be thanked!”

“An edict,” Broom was saying as Rung brushed past the teacher’s table. “The prince will have no more brownies in his castle.”

“Six of us he’s disgraced, the poor thing,” Rung’s orderliness teacher, Tea Cup, continued. “If he keeps thanking us, there will be no one left to clean for him!”

“You don’t understand, Tea Cup,” the first teacher said earnestly. “The edict states that brownies are not allowed to clean the castle ever again. Prince Lionel will thank anyone who comes within his halls as a matter of course.”

“No!” Tea Cup gasped. “That poor boy!”

Rung moved out of earshot and found a place where he could enjoy his scone and porridge. He had just put his spoon down in his empty bowl when Needle found him.

“So, Wrong,” Needle said with a cruel laugh, “have you heard?”

“Heard what?” Rung asked quietly.

“You’ve failed the test eight times. Once or twice, sure; that’s happened before. But eight? You’ll be tossed out!” he crowed. “But the teachers here can’t send out a brownie who can’t properly clean. I bet they’ll kill you instead.” Needle’s cold smile agreed with his words. He had passed every test with flying colors and was still at the school to get preferential training so he could serve someone of importance. Needle would probably replace an aging brownie at a lord’s manor when he graduated.

“How can you know that?” Rung asked, afraid Needle might have been telling the truth rather than pulling a cruel prank.

“I asked,” Needle said, his tone saying he thought Rung was stupid for not knowing. Needle put on an innocent face before continuing. “‘Teacher Broom, what will happen to that poor Wrong? Someone should help him!’

“‘I don’t know if that is possible at this point,’” Needle continued in a deeper voice that imitated Broom’s perfectly. “‘Wrong’s clearly not teachable. He can’t stay here and take up space another orphan needs, but we certainly can’t send him out into society.’”

Needle’s voice switched back to his own faux innocent one. “‘But what will happen to him?’”

“‘Imprisonment, certainly. He can’t be allowed to roam as he is: an embarrassment to brownie society.’” Teacher Broom’s voice came through despite Needle’s malicious smile. “‘Or worse, if the Council decides it would be too much hassle to care for him indefinitely, he’ll face death.’”

Needle’s evil grin didn’t fade as he loomed over Rung.

“Thanks for the warning,” Rung said softly as he looked into his empty bowl sadly. It was all over now. He would never be allowed to clean again.

“Then what are you still doing here?” Needle asked with what seemed like genuine curiosity in his voice. “Run away before they catch you!”

Rung glanced at Needle, who looked confused. “I guess,” Rung said softly. It might be better to leave now than to be locked up and never allowed to clean again.

“Your blanket is under my bed. Go get it, and I’ll get you some food from the kitchens. Let’s meet by the garden door in five minutes,” Needle said helpfully.

“O-okay,” Rung agreed, and he stood to return his bowl and go find his blanket.

Needle was waiting by the garden door with a small bundle in his hands when Rung got there with his blanket, his few personal items, and a change of clothes.

“Here,” Needle said as he thrust the bundle of food into Rung’s hands.

“Thank you,” Rung replied. He pushed the door open and stepped out into the world, knowing he had to hide quickly because the instructors would be looking for him when they realized he wasn’t in his first lesson.

*

A week in the real world, and Rung was hungry, cold, and tired. He knew he would be found if he settled into a house, so he had been traveling nonstop the entire time. Being on his own like this was frightening, but it was also somewhat exhilarating. Still, Rung knew he had to keep moving in order to find somewhere to keep properly hidden. His goal was to make it to a city. He had been told often enough how human he looked. If he could blend in with the humans, no one from the orphanage would be able to find him.

Rung stared up at the huge wall and the open gates that led into the first city he found on his journey. A brownie’s initial inclination was to hide from humans, but Rung was about to boldly walk into their city.

He took a deep breath, steeled his nerve, and stepped forward. That step was followed by another step as his feet brought him into the crowd of humans and through the massive gates.

A guard was stopping people at random while they passed and asking them questions. Rung hunched his shoulders and pretended he didn’t exist when he walked past. It didn’t work this time.

“Hey, boy!” the guard called. “I just have to ask you some questions before I can let you in.”

Rung froze and slowly turned toward the guard.

“You’re looking for work, then?” the guard asked, not unkindly.

Rung nodded.

“Hng,” the guard grunted. “Well, you’re not the first one I’ve seen today. I’ll give you the same advice I gave the rest of them, yeah? The castle stable and kitchens are looking to hire some boys about your age. Go on up there for work. And don’t be causing a mess in the city, boy,” the guard admonished. “Thieves are not welcome in the capital, yeah?”

“Thanks,” Rung whispered as he turned away to walk in the direction the guard was pointing.

The castle was perfect! The teachers had been talking about some edict against brownies in the castle. Surely they would think that even Rung wasn’t so stupid as to break that edict. If he could stay hidden in the huge building, which he could see on the horizon on the other side of the city, Rung could stay there forever without worry of the orphanage finding him!

Rung went toward the giant stone edifice on the top of the hill and, instead of following the humans inside, found his own way into the building.

*

Rung liked the basement he had found and made his home. There were a lot of basements in the castle; every time a new addition to the gigantic building had been built, a new basement had been put in too. Rung’s basement was in one of the oldest sections of the castle. When he found the area, it was filled with cobwebs and had a rank smell of disuse about it. Rung fixed that and made himself a comfortable living area. All he had to do was sneak into the kitchens every few days for food.

Rung was somehow even able to keep his need to clean and organize at bay whenever he was sneaking about. Initially, he had spent days cleaning his new home and doing it in such a way that a human would not notice the changes unless he or she walked all the way into Rung’s basement. He had then occupied himself with making new furniture. If his wooden bed and side table were more ornately carved than any other bed in the castle, at least the time spent smoothing the wood into exotic shapes had helped keep Rung from reorganizing the spice rack in the kitchens whenever he ran out of food.

And the best part was that Rung was never wrong in his own home. His blankets were tucked into his bed based on comfort. The soft wool blanket in which he enjoyed curling up at night was first rather than a top sheet as he had been taught at the orphanage. Rung didn’t even need to organize his food stores alphabetically or by color and size.

It was wonderful and freeing to finally be able to live as he wanted. Rung very firmly ignored the fact that he was lonely, and that the knife rack should really have the bread knives closer to the cutting board and the paring knives closer to the sink so that the poor chef and his assistants would stop blindly grabbing for the wrong knife when they were cooking.

Rung had escaped to the castle to find a safe haven, not to clean. If he cleaned and was discovered, bringing further shame to his race, he would be tried and executed. So Rung forced himself to ignore the knives. He tried to find something new to dust or carve for his home instead.

Ultimately, he knew he would fail. He was still a brownie after all, even if he was Wrong.

The day came when he was sneaking through the kitchens. He walked past the balding chef mixing some sort of marinade for the night’s dinner and into the pantry. Rung loaded a day-old piece of bread into his recently woven basket, added some smoked meat, and wished he had a way to keep milk or eggs fresh as he bypassed the cooler.

Once he had taken all he dared, Rung retraced his path out of the kitchen. One of the assistants was cleaning chicken at the sink; the meat was probably going to be paired with the marinade the chef was finishing up. The assistant cleaned either a leg or thigh in the water flowing from the pump and took a knife to remove fat and excess feathers.

As Rung watched, the knife the assistant was using fell to the floor. With a curse, the young man tossed the dirtied knife onto a counter and reached for a new one. Only the knives weren’t organized the way they should have been.

The bread knife was sharp and serrated and in the wrong spot. The assistant wouldn’t lose his finger, but even stitches and time to heal would not be enough to repair the damage. As blood splattered onto the cleaned bird and the assistant cried out in pain, Rung ran from the room.

He could keep himself to out-of-the-way places, like the kitchen, unused guest rooms, and other disused basements, Rung thought to himself as he rushed back to his basement. He wouldn’t anger anyone if he stayed in those places where he wouldn’t be noticed.

Resolute in what he would be doing in the morning, Rung put away his food and got into bed. That knife rack would be organized, perfectly, so no one else would ever cut themselves by accident again.

*

The Lord Seneschal asked the Lord Steward to stay behind after their weekly organizational meeting. Once the room emptied, the Lord Seneschal pulled the other man into a quiet corner away from where a passerby could overhear.

“There’s a brownie in the castle, Rufus,” the seneschal, Gerald, murmured quietly.

“I’ve been wondering, Gerald. All the wool and wood going missing, it couldn’t be anything else,” Rufus, the steward, replied in an equally soft voice. “Weird sort of brownie though. Within the first day, the last one got into all my papers and began organizing them by date until I couldn’t find a single one. The wool went missing weeks ago.”

Gerald nodded. “This one’s keeping to itself for some reason. Hasn’t caused any ruckus with its cleaning yet. I’ve had reports that some things have been moved around the kitchen. After that poor boy cut his finger, the knife rack was put to rights. The chef swears by how it’s been organized.”

“No!” Rufus gasped. “The last brownie organized them by size and sharpened all the knives that are purposefully kept somewhat dull for different types of cooking. The chef would have killed the creature if he had gotten his hands on it. Maybe it isn’t a brownie, especially since the chef actually likes something that’s been done.”

Gerald shook his head. “It’s a brownie. Go into the green guest wing, and you’ll have no doubt.”

“The wing that was put into disuse when we had to fire most of the maid staff for stealing? No one’s been in there for over a year!”

“And that is what’s so peculiar. This brownie clearly has the same need to clean as all of its kind, but it’s really trying to be helpful and stay out of the way.” Gerald sighed and ran a hand through his graying hair. “And what is more perplexing is that a brownie would dare come to the castle after the edict.”

“The poor thing must be hiding from something,” Rufus said with a sharp nod. “Why else would it not advertise that it’s here by cleaning everything in sight? So do we tell Prince Lionel his edict’s been broken?”

Gerald shook his head. “The creature isn’t causing any harm, and after what he did to clean the green rooms, I’m inclined to let him stay. As long as he does nothing to alert Prince Lionel that he’s here, I think we should just ignore him.”

Rufus looked relieved. “I was hoping you would say that. My wife just got this wonderful new blanket from somewhere—she won’t say where—that keeps her warm enough at night that she doesn’t wake with aches in her legs. With all the evidence of a brownie…well, the creature made my wife complain less!”

The Lord Seneschal echoed the Lord Steward’s laughter as they left the room to go back to their duties.

*

Rung’s nose twitched as he held back a sneeze through sheer force. He had found a set of secret passages two days ago that had fallen into such disrepair that Rung knew no one would ever notice his presence. The only issue was that the main passage ran along a set of bedrooms, and the human occupants would easily overhear any loud noise he made.

The urge to sneeze passed, so Rung returned to his careful sweeping. He would finish clearing the layer of dust and cobwebs from the passage this afternoon, and tonight, after his dinner, he would sneak to the well to draw water for mopping.

Rung gathered another five feet of dust into a pile, uncovering a wood floor in desperate need of polishing—another job he was looking forward to—when he heard the sound of someone swearing in one of the bedrooms up ahead. Rung abandoned his broom and crept forward. He found one of the spy holes in the wall and uncovered it slowly to mitigate any squeaks. He hadn’t yet had the chance to oil any of the spy holes or secret doorways, but he would. Rung pressed an eye to the hole and glanced into what looked to be an office. He must have reached an area of the castle that had suites of rooms.

There was a young man inside the room rifling through a desk so covered in papers that it didn’t surprise Rung to see him having such difficulty finding whatever document he was searching for. The man looked to be about Rung’s age, but he was considerably taller, as well as fully human, with shoulder-length brown hair and finely tailored clothes. He was someone of high station to have such a nice suite of rooms and fine clothing, but Rung couldn’t understand why the place was such a mess! The papers on the desk were the least of the issues: there were books scattered across the floor, clothes in need of washing or ironing in random piles, and a general sense of untidiness about the room. Why clothing was even in the office Rung would never understand, but he assumed the bedroom and dressing room would no doubt be in equally disgraceful shape.

The man swore again, louder this time, and Rung winced when he saw that a hidden inkbottle had been accidentally tipped over. The cap had clearly not been properly fastened, and ink was slowly leaking onto the many piles of papers.

The man threw his hands into the air in exasperation. “I give up!” he growled. “The report clearly doesn’t exist. The captain will have to rewrite it for me.”

The man stomped out of the room, slamming the door and leaving behind a desk dripping ink onto the floor. Rung took one look at the mess and swallowed. He wanted so badly to fix it, but he knew he shouldn’t. He was only allowed to hide in unused passageways and clean unused rooms. Cleaning this man’s things was completely against the rules Rung had set for himself. Yet he couldn’t look away from the dripping ink slowly staining the carpet an ugly black.

Maybe he could just take a quick peek, see that the mess really wasn’t so bad. Once he knew his touch wasn’t needed, Rung could back away and leave the mess for someone else to clean.

With that thought firmly in the forefront of Rung’s mind, he made his way to the secret entrance that led into the office. A panel next to the fireplace popped open with a squeak Rung couldn’t suppress. He froze in the opening for a second, listening for the sounds of movement from outside the closed office door. He heard nothing.

First, before he even moved farther into the room, Rung investigated the secret doorway. A brownie always had to have an avenue of escape prepared ahead of time in case humans suddenly appeared. There was a simple design of vines and small flowers carved into the wood along the wall. Rung quickly found the latch hidden in one of the carved swirls. Pressing the latch would spring the door open, allowing Rung to escape to freedom swiftly.

With his escape route completed, Rung felt comfortable walking over to the desk. He walked around a pile of two, or maybe three—it was hard to tell pieces of clothing apart in the mess—sets of dirty riding leathers, a pile of clothes that still smelled like fresh laundry but was unfolded and wrinkled, and a pile of clothes that desperately needed washing. Each pile was carefully separated from the other. Even the books seemed to have been left around the room with a sense of organization: the ones closer to the desk had to do with matters of state, the ones left by the lone armchair beside the fire were pleasure reading, and the ones tossed near the doorway pertained to very specific subjects and had probably been used for research and left by the door with the intention of returning them to the library at some future point.

Rung reached the desk and glanced over the papers. He wasn’t surprised to see that there was some organization on the desk as well. The papers pertaining to the castle itself were scattered across one corner while papers about laws and the running of the country covered the entire left side of the desk. International papers held court in the final corner, and in the center of the desk, all these careful piles had met and mixed. The ink had almost totally destroyed all the papers about the inner workings of the castle.

The carpet under the desk wasn’t ruined yet, but it would be if left uncared for. Rung bent down and chanted a small cleaning spell over the area. It was just a little ditty they had taught at the orphanage that made stains easier to remove. It didn’t replace good scrubbing, just made the effort needed a little less. Rung could return that night and still be able to remove the stain.

He could also do quite a lot to make the man’s life a little easier. He wouldn’t disrupt the organization style already in place, but if he added a bookshelf by the door for library books and built a small table with a bookshelf underneath to go with the armchair by the fire…well, the man wouldn’t feel the need to leave his books all over the room. Plus, if Rung were to relocate the desk to the far corner of the room, he could put in two bookshelves along the walls behind the desk and tuck a small set of shelves directly into the corner to connect the bookshelves. That would open up the room considerably and remove the sense of untidiness Rung felt pervading the space.

It would have to be done quickly, in one swoop, but there was good wood on the woodpile right now. It could be done.

Rung bit his lip as he surveyed the room one last time before heading to the secret entrance. It was totally against the limits he had set for himself, but Rung couldn’t just abandon the man living here to disaster.

He finished cleaning the secret passage over the next few days. Rung spent a good bit of time with his eye pressed to the peeking hole of the messy office while he worked. The man would spend hours meticulously reorganizing the layer of papers on his desk only to knock one stack over in his haste to grab something later in the day. Nothing ever really seemed to be accomplished either, since any papers he wrote on inevitably burrowed to the bottom of a stack and were lost.

The man even held meetings in his office. Rung had watched the Lord Seneschal pick his way delicately across the floor, grimacing at the ever-increasing piles of dirty laundry and jumping when he accidentally stepped on a book and slid forward a few feet. The captain of the guard had refused to enter the room at all, much to Rung’s disconcertion. He thought that a man who spent his days sweating and riding smelly horses should have been very used to walking through a big mess.

The furniture Rung planned to sneak into the room began piling up in the secret passage. He had both bookshelves and their corner-shaped connecting piece right next to the secret door. The bookshelf for the library books was pushed along the wall to make room for Rung to walk. Only the proposed side table for the sitting area was incomplete, but Rung still didn’t feel right about fixing the office just yet. He had realized two things while watching the man these past few days.

First, if Rung didn’t find a proper way to organize that desk, all his efforts to get the office clean would be superfluous. Having the books organized did not mean the productivity of the office would improve as well.

Second, Rung had noticed that the piles of laundry seemed to be increasing. This made the office smell a little unpleasant, and it perplexed Rung to no end. Why would an office be the appropriate place to leave dirty clothing?

Rung decided that he needed to see the rest of the suite of rooms before he finished fixing the office. If he could figure out what was wrong with the dirty laundry basket in the bedroom, perhaps he could also save the office from drowning under piles of stinking clothes.

There wasn’t a secret passage into the rest of the suite, though—Rung had checked. That meant he would need to sneak through the office, out into the sitting room beyond the doorway, and into whatever other rooms were attached to the sitting room. He was good at sneaking—that was what brownies did best—but being sneaky and being stupid were two different things. First, he would need to make sure he wouldn’t be caught.

Rung would have to keep his ears open while he was about the castle. Hopefully something would occur to ensure the set of rooms would be empty. Until then, he would continue with creating a compact, easy-to-use filing system.

*

Rung relaxed in his bedroom, very pleased with the day’s efforts. Yet another disused corridor was finally spotless. This particular one had been far back in the winding castle, up on the top floor, and it had very clearly not been touched for at least two generations. The hardest task had been finding a way to remove all the dust without attracting attention. Dust flying out the top-floor windows into the back gardens would have drawn too much notice, as would a sudden increase of the size of the midden pile. But Rung had figured it out in the end.

Now he could take a well-deserved rest in his new chair. He had built it himself out of scrap wood that would not be missed. When he had been moving things to the trash pile, he had noticed four old cushions with stuffing hanging through the ragged shreds of cloth and had taken those cushions home. With some new cloth covers and some fluffing, those old cushions were now the best part of his new chair.

It was a great place to relax after a hard day of work. Rung particularly liked to whittle while sitting in his chair. The piece he was working on now was a horse standing strong with its head held high. It would look lovely on one of the shelves behind the desk in the office he was remodeling. From the number of dirty riding outfits that littered the office floor, he knew the occupant liked horses.

Taking the time to relax and de-stress that night was also important because there was some sort of hullabaloo in the grand ballroom the next night. It was someone’s birthday, and this birthday was important enough to have hired musicians and set the kitchen into a cooking frenzy. Rung had almost been seen in the kitchen earlier that day because of the number of people and flurry of activity going on there.

What the craziness meant was that everyone of any sort of import in the castle would need to attend, including the occupant of the office. The office and attached rooms would be empty for hours. Rung wished he could take this opportunity to start moving in all the completed furniture so he could finally clean the office, but he knew he couldn’t make any further moves toward cleanliness until he was certain his efforts would permanently stymie the growth of the disaster. If there was something wrong with the bedroom that needed to be fixed first, or something in one of the other rooms, Rung needed to know about it before he put his beautiful new furniture in harm’s way.

Rung sighed and put down the small knife he had carefully been running over the emerging horse’s body. The urge to just go into that office and start scrubbing was growing every day, and Rung was getting a bit twitchy about it. No one should be forced to live under such horrifying conditions, and Rung now had an opportunity to do something about it. Only he couldn’t. The office and the connecting rooms needed to be cleaned and reorganized in one swoop—doing otherwise would not solve the problem.

Rung gently put the horse aside and headed over to his bed. He would go to sleep and force the twitching need to clean aside. He had to focus so he could be prepared for tomorrow night. Rung slid under his covers and resolutely shut his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t dream about the growing piles of dirty clothes.

*

Rung slipped through the secret doorway into the office and cringed. Technically, there was still a path to the door amid the piles of filth, but it was narrow and quickly vanishing. Rung felt the need to fix it run through his fingers, just the littlest bit. He put his hands in his pockets instead.

The door to the rest of the suite was cracked open. Rung crept silently along the pathway to the door, and then he carefully peeked through the opening and froze in shock. He was clearly looking into the outer sitting room. There were two more doors in the walls, one of which was too sturdy to head anywhere but into the castle while the other door was similar to the one Rung hid behind.

However, what made him freeze in place was the total lack of mess. There were two couches situated around a coffee table, carefully organized shelves of books and knickknacks along the one wall without a door, and absolutely no signs of dust or debris. Someone cleaned this room often; yet why was this room kept up while the office, quite clearly, was not?

The room was empty, so Rung pulled the office door open just enough that he could slip his body through. He didn’t close the door as he stepped from dirty carpet to clean, just in case he needed to make a run for the secret entrance. Fighting with the door in his flight would not be optimal.

Rung took a closer look at the coffee table and the ornate miniature stone statue of a man holding his sword in the air. From the way the cleaning polish had been rubbed into the wood of the table, Rung could tell that the castle maids were allowed into this room. Why, then, were they not allowed into the office? It just didn’t make any sense to Rung.

The other door was closed. Rung put his ear to the surface as he had been taught back in the orphanage and listened for a long time. There weren’t any sounds of movement, nor did he hear any breathing that could indicate a person asleep. Cautiously, Rung turned the handle and pushed the door open.

This time, the sight that greeted him was much more expected. There was a bed somewhere in the mess, Rung assumed, but it was totally covered in a disarray of blankets and sleeping clothes. Along the far wall was an open armoire with unfolded clothes spilling out of the shelves onto a large pile on the floor. Those clothes might actually have been clean, but the clothes and other belongings, like a rusted set of armor scattered across the rest of the floor, were definitely not. There wasn’t a clear path through the debris in this room. Rung did what the man who lived there must do every night: picked his way over the mess, stepping only on clothes without anything underneath that would make him lose his footing and send him sprawling. Rung really did not want to fall onto what must have been months of dirty clothes.

Rung picked through the piles, trying to ascertain just what furniture was actually present in the room. There was a bed and an armoire, plus an armor stand in the far corner by the dirt-encrusted windows. Next to the armoire was a doorway that led to a tiled washroom and changing area. The washroom wasn’t vile, but it could still use a good scouring. Someone obviously took a scrub brush to the bathtub every so often. The changing area had more clothing strewn about, except these were mostly nicer outfits and jewelry. The set of shelves for the velvet-lined boxes was full, but the boxes were left open and empty. Rung was careful not to step on anything priceless as he poked through.

The issue was clear: there was simply no receptacle where dirty clothes could be left for the maids to take to the laundry and there was also insufficient storage space for the clothes once they were cleaned. Rung needed to carve a hanging rod for the changing room where the nicer items of clothing could be hung neatly and easily. He also thought the jewelry issue could be resolved if the boxes were labeled. It looked to Rung as if the owner had actually tried to put the ruby cufflinks—still attached to a dirty shirt—away, but could not find the proper box and so had put the shirt on the shelf instead.

The main room would need a storage chest for the excess blankets. Rung knew there was enough available wood for him to build one. However, there was no possible way for him to build another armoire, which the room sorely needed. There had been a nice pair of large-sized armoires in one of the rooms in the wing he had just finished cleaning, though, now that Rung thought about it. He could move both of those in and take out the small one. All he needed to do was add some carvings to the wood so they would match the bed, which had been masterfully carved at one point in time. The bed did need a polish, but that couldn’t be done until the rest of the room was fixed up first.

Rung closed the bedroom door behind himself very firmly, resisting the urge to go back and gather some of that discarded clothing so he could start washing. The pristine sitting area mocked Rung as he moved through the space. He firmly kept his mind on the two large baskets he could begin weaving immediately, one for dirty clothes in the bedroom and the other for the dirty clothes in the work area. Since the man clearly got undressed often there, a basket would probably be beneficial.

After Rung returned to the office, he pushed the door back to where it had been before he moved it. No one would know he had ever been poking about when he left. The path through the clothes led by the desk, and Rung couldn’t help sneaking a look. The piles of papers had grown. Rung could see one page marked “urgent” beneath a large stack of papers titled “library appropriations”: a paper that needed to be seen to immediately beneath something that should have been at the very bottom of the to-do pile.

Rung’s fingers twitched again. He could move just that one urgent paper to the top where the man could see it, just the one to help him out a little. Rung’s hand reached out and found that paper, but he knew he couldn’t move it without moving the stack on top. So he picked up the library stack and put it aside. The urgent paper was easily visible, but there wasn’t any knowing what Rung had just inadvertently hidden instead by shifting the stack of papers. He picked up the stack again and was glad he had. Another urgent paper was now visible beneath a short report on the stables.

Rung bit his lip. It would be so easy to temporarily fix this. Urgent papers organized by date and necessity. Other papers organized by relevance and the date the information needed to be completed. It could be done, and it wouldn’t take long. With the party going on downstairs, no one would ever see him.

Rung’s hands trembled while he bit his lip, trying to fight the urge but knowing he was failing. He let out a sigh and set to clearing off the desk. It might get him in trouble or get him thanked, which would be equally awful, but it had to be done. It had to be.

*

The Lord Seneschal and the Lord Steward met outside the office door and grimaced at each other. Luckily, the door was closed so the occupant couldn’t see them.

“Shall we brave it, Gerald?” Rufus asked with trepidation in his voice.

“We must, Rufus,” Gerald replied with his fear also made quite clear. He reached forward and knocked politely before pushing the door open.

“Ah, gentlemen,” Prince Lionel said genially. He was sitting behind his desk, clearly inured to the general stench of the room and the piles of things that generated the terrible smell. Prince Lionel was remarkably sober. After the grand ball last night celebrating Lionel’s twentieth birthday, most residents of the castle were nursing hangovers. Prince Lionel was not.

“Your Highness,” Rufus said as he and Gerald bowed. “You summoned us?”

“Yes,” Prince Lionel replied. “You see, I’m afraid I must hand you a bit of a mystery. Last night while I was at the ball, someone snuck into my office and rearranged all my papers.”

Both Rufus and Gerald looked appalled. “Our apologies, Your Highness,” Gerald murmured. “I shall have the culprit apprehended and arrested.”

It was well-known around the castle that daring to touch Prince Lionel’s things was a firing offense. Prince Lionel had grown up with maids and nurses constantly touching him and moving his things around without his permission. They liked to take advantage of the fact that they had the opportunity to manage Prince Lionel’s life so completely, and they had done so without first consulting the young Lionel about what he wanted. Lionel hadn’t taken it well from his nurses as a child; now he couldn’t stand having anyone in among his things, even just to clean.

Additionally, the brownies that kept moving into the castle always zeroed directly in on the messiest room in the castle, Prince Lionel’s, and cleaned it. It drove him particularly mad to walk into his bedroom or office to see everything suddenly spotless. Suits were organized into their separate parts, jackets hung apart from their accompanying pants, which made it nearly impossible to rematch the two. Papers were alphabetized by sender and made even more incomprehensible when the crabbed writing on the papers from the captain of the army was rewritten very neatly with absolutely no indication included of who had originally penned the document, because the man never bothered to sign them. Prince Lionel had been incensed and had promptly banished all brownies from the castle after the sixth one tried to “help.”

“No, no,” Prince Lionel said thoughtfully. “I do want you to locate the individual, but I was thinking I could hire them as my secretary.”

“Your secretary, Your Highness?” Gerald asked sharply.

“Yes! Come look at what they’ve done!”

The Lord Steward and the Lord Seneschal both moved closer to the desk and looked at the organized piles of papers.

“It’s been set by what I need to do first, not by any alphabet,” Prince Lionel explained. “I need to get the garden budget done before I can authorize adding the new pond my mother wants, and whoever cleaned this put those papers exactly in the order I needed them. It’s marvelous!”

Gerald caught Rufus’s eye, who nodded back. “We will start searching at once, Your Highness,” Gerald said. “We will bring you the maid or manservant responsible immediately!”

Both men gladly left the office and took deep breaths of the clean air in the sitting room.

“This brownie really is a bit of an odd one,” Gerald murmured as they moved into the castle hallway. “Cleaned the red wing that was closed up during King Lester’s time seventy years back. It’s so pristine we could use it to house our most distinguished guests right now if we wanted. Yet he hasn’t so much as touched any of the rooms that are occupied.”

“Probably saw this room and couldn’t help himself, the poor thing,” Rufus agreed, knowing from his experience with the last few brownies in the castle that Prince Lionel’s rooms were enough to send the creatures into palpitations. “But the creature managed to actually help Prince Lionel! We need to do something to encourage it. If it can touch Prince Lionel’s things without issue, maybe we can get it to do something further? Those rooms…” he finished without needing to give a description. Gerald could easily fill in the blank himself. His echoing grimace was all the confirmation Rufus needed.

“More good wood out by the woodpile,” Gerald said thoughtfully as he held his office door open for his friend.

“Wasn’t there a set of knives gone dull the chef wanted to have replaced? Good ones that could be sharpened by a careful hand?” Rufus asked.

“Yes! Those can go to the top of the trash pile, and I’ll bet you they’ll vanish within a day. Can you think of anything else we might have?”

They put their heads together and began to plan. This brownie might actually help the situation with Prince Lionel, and they were going to give it every possible opportunity.

*

Rung hummed quietly to himself in the room he had appropriated for his workshop. The knife he was holding slid along the wood of the armoire he was carving, copying the whorl in the design he remembered from the bed frame. He had chosen a good pair of furniture pieces to reappropriate; both had thick wood to carve into and were large enough to hold all the clothing that would eventually be cleaned up.

Rung blew the wood shavings away and studied his work. It was almost perfect. The design matched what Rung remembered from the bedroom almost exactly; however, the carvings of wolves howling up at the ring of a moon weren’t quite right. Rung remembered they had full, winter-length coats, but he could not recall whether their tails had been pointed up or down.

He needed to return to the bedroom to have a closer look at those designs.

Decided, Rung began to clean his workspace. He carefully swept up all the wood shavings and polished every piece of furniture so that there weren’t any splinters or loose bits of wood remaining behind. He pulled out his cart, a sturdy thing he had put together in order to move all the heavy pieces of furniture around the castle.

Aside from the wolf tails, Rung was finished. He loaded the wide blanket trunk onto his cart, checked the hallway to see it was empty, and headed out to the nearest entrance to the secret passageways. He could easily finish the carvings in the secret passage, and it would be that much sooner he could begin cleaning that awful office and bedroom.

When Rung got to where he was storing all the furniture for the office, he unloaded the trunk and peeked through the spy hole. The man with the lovely brown hair was bent over his desk, snarling at the disarray of papers. Rung was dismayed to note that his careful organizing of the desk had barely lasted a week. The owner of the office was buried under unimportant forms again while the important ones vanished.

Rung shook his head with a sad sigh and left. He checked the office after every item he carted down the secret hallway, but the man still struggled through his duties. Finally, after Rung had begun to wonder if he would need to wait until the next day, a polite knock sounded on the office door.

“Enter!” the man called. The door creaked open, and a young man in a servant’s uniform poked his head around the frame.

“Your Excellency,” the youth said with a small bow, “your honored mother wishes to speak with you.”

The man sighed. “Of course she does. Is she in her solar?” he asked as he put down the paperwork he had been ineffectively filling out and pushed his chair away from his desk.

“Yes, sir,” the servant said with another bow. Both humans left the office moments later. Rung listened while the owner of the office walked through the sitting room and into his bedroom for a long moment before returning to the sitting room. The thump of the heavy door leading into the castle as it closed told Rung it was safe to explore.

The secret door opened silently, and Rung crept out into the mess of an office. The path through the mire had gotten thinner over the past week; Rung knew he had to hurry his plans to get this place fixed up before there wasn’t a path at all. Still, he took a quick moment to shift some papers into proper order on the desk before taking that path—he couldn’t help himself after seeing the man struggle for so long.

The sitting room outside was as immaculate as always, but the bedroom made Rung cringe again. It took him only a quick moment to study the carvings on the bed frame. The tail was pointed triumphantly upward; this wolf ruled the hill he stood on.

Rung made sure to close the bedroom door as he stepped back into the sitting room. When he turned around, he stopped short and dove behind a chair. He wasn’t alone!

“Oh, come out of there,” a familiar voice said pleasantly. Rung was used to hearing jibing tones from Needle, so the nice request threw him.

Needle was standing in the perfect sitting room with his hands on his hips as he surveyed the area.

“This isn’t as bad as I was told it would be,” Needle said thoughtfully. “I suppose you’ve managed to keep this clean, then?” he added, and now Rung heard the familiar hated scoff.

“Why are you here?” Rung asked instead of answering.

Needle sneered. “I got special commendation at my graduation. A graduation that would never have happened had you stayed at the orphanage,” he added coldly. “But when you ran off, they could finally give us our degrees without worrying about the embarrassment of needing to find somewhere to send you to.”

Rung blinked, confused. “You said they were going to kill me?” he asked.

Needle laughed. “Of course I did. I am the best brownie to ever go through their training. I wasn’t about to let my future suffer because of filth like you, Wrong. I got you out of the way, and now look at me! Special assignment to the castle, specifically to help the poor prince. And what with the other benefits from those who requested my presence here, this job will keep me on the very top of brownie society! I just didn’t expect this room to be clean already.” Needle shrugged. “Makes it easier, I guess, but first I have to get rid of you. Can’t have you destroying my future again.”

Needle advanced toward Rung, and Rung couldn’t help backing away. All those childish pranks back in school—stealing his only blanket, knocking him around, and everything else Rung had endured—none of it had prepared him for the idea that Needle would lie and connive in order to get ahead.

Rung squeaked and dove to the side when Needle lunged forward. While Needle had the proper small and wiry build for a brownie, he was more used to fighting than Rung. It wasn’t long before Rung couldn’t dodge in time.

Rung’s back hit the floor with a cracking thud, and Needle’s fist hit his face seconds later. Rung felt his teeth cut his lip, blood already dripping down from his nose, and he knew the carpet would need a very deep scrub to get the blood out. When Rung cried out and clapped his hands to his face, Needle shoved away from him. Rung never saw the foot that hit his left forearm, sending an ominous snapping sound into the air, or the knee that cracked some of his ribs.

Needle was laughing as he backed away from Rung’s huddled form. “You understand now?” Needle crowed. “I belong here, and you don’t!” He turned away with a sneer and threw open the nearest door—the one leading into the bedroom. “Oh, so this is what they were talking about,” Needle breathed. “Well,” he added with a smirk over his shoulder at the crying Rung, “I’m off to work!”

Rung whimpered, both from the pain and from the knowledge that Needle was going to destroy everything. He was going to touch things and move them around, and the owner of this suite was going to hate it.

But there was nothing Rung could do right now. His broken arm throbbed, and he sobbed as he rolled over onto his one good hand and his knees. Blood dripped from his face onto the carpet, leaving a trail as Rung crawled his way toward the office. He needed to get away before the owner returned. Brownies were never caught, and he wasn’t going to be, no matter how hard Needle tried.

It felt like hours before he finally made his painful way through the slightly ajar office door and through the tangled piles of clothing. It was agony to reach upward and press the catch for the secret door, but he got it open. He didn’t have the strength to close it behind him again, but everything was already ruined, so what did it matter if a human found all the furniture he had so meticulously been working on?

Rung knew he passed out several times before he finally made his way to his basement room, where he had a small stash of bandages for any carving accidents. He used some to stop up his nose, and whatever was left he wrapped around his broken arm. He knew it was ineffective, but there wasn’t anything else he was capable of doing.

It took the very last of his strength to crawl into bed. His good arm was able to pull the covers over his head, but before he could start sobbing again, he passed out from the pain.

*

For the second time in just over a week, the Lord Steward and the Lord Seneschal were summoned to Prince Lionel’s office. They hurried through the castle hallways, meeting up just outside the suite door.

“Do you know what this is about?” Rufus wondered.

Gerald shook his head. “Do you think the brownie did something again?” he asked.

“Probably,” Rufus agreed. He reached out and pushed open the door. Both men stepped into the sitting room and stopped short.

Prince Lionel was standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed over his chest and a deep scowl on his face.

“Call in the hounds,” Prince Lionel snarled.

Rufus sighed and shot his counterpart a quick look. He didn’t really want to hunt for the poor brownie. He stepped over to Prince Lionel and blinked at the scene in front of him.

There was blood on the sitting room rug, droplets of it leading from one larger puddle through the open office door. The bedroom door was also open, but inside there was a floor and a neatly made bed. None of the mess remained. The office was still a disaster, however.

“I returned in time to stop the menace,” Prince Lionel snapped. “He hadn’t gotten to my dressing room yet, but my bedroom has been totally destroyed. I want this creature found before he touches my office as well.”

Rufus looked back at Gerald, who also had a quizzical look on his face.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Gerald murmured as he glanced at the immaculate bedroom.

“Of course it makes sense!” Prince Lionel snapped. “There is an obnoxious brownie in the castle, and I want him found and removed at once!”

“Maybe there are two?” Rufus asked Gerald.

Gerald nodded. “That might explain it. And they were fighting, hence the blood.”

“Explain. Now,” Prince Lionel said in his most officious tone.

“Your Highness,” the Lord Steward began, “we believe there are two brownies currently in residence in the castle. One has been here for months, quietly cleaning the disused rooms and making the kitchen staff quite happy. We believe this brownie is the one who organized your desk last week.”

“This brownie has never shown any inclination toward meddling in someone’s belongings,” Gerald agreed. “He somehow managed to enter your office and all he touched was your desk? Impossible, I would have thought, but that is all this brownie has been doing.”

“This,” Rufus added as he pointed to the clean bedroom, “is not our brownie’s work. A second one must have come here, seen the mess, and started cleaning.”

Prince Lionel listened to their explanation with a stony expression. “Or,” he added in a scathing tone, “the brownie you have allowed access to my castle for so long has finally shown its true colors. Find it—or them, if you still think there are two—and bring them to me.”

Prince Lionel stomped off into his bedroom. Rufus could see him walk directly to his bed, grip the covers and sheets tucked under his pillow at the head, and yank the entire ensemble down the bed and onto the floor.

The Lord Steward looked over at the Lord Seneschal, and they both sighed in agreement. They quickly left Prince Lionel’s suite and called out the search parties.

*

Gerald went with one hunting dog as it followed a scent trail from Prince Lionel’s rooms into the castle hallways. The troop of guardsmen following weren’t wearing armor because the sound of the metal parts clanking would alert the brownie. Rufus stayed with the dog that was sniffing at the blood in the carpet. The animal followed the trail into the office where Rufus and his contingent of guards found an open door in the side of the fireplace.

“Did anyone know this was here?” he asked the lieutenant, who just shook his head in equal surprise.

The dog led them through the door and into a hallway that must have been traveled by the brownie—it was perfectly clean. It was also filled with furniture. Bookshelves and dirty clothing baskets, armoires and hanging rods—it looked like the brownie had a system almost ready to go to fix Prince Lionel’s mess rather than just clean it. The solution was what Rufus expected from the friendly brownie.

The dog led them through the secret passageway and back into a disused wing of the castle that had also seen recent care by the brownie. They went down three flights of stairs until they were in the oldest of the basement sections.

Rufus had an idea of what signs to look for as the dog led them unerringly through the twisting basement rooms. There were still spider webs in the corners, but it was obvious the webs had been purposefully left there to cultivate the illusion that the basement was untouched. The walls and floors were too clean and the door hinges in too good repair for this to be anything but a brownie hideaway.

Finally, they rounded the last corner and were met with a wooden door left partially open. The door was the equal to any gracing the king’s personal rooms. There were fanciful carvings across the entire surface that made the guards with Rufus gape at the extravagance.

The lieutenant finally gathered his wits and pushed open the door, his other hand on his sword. Rufus followed behind.

The bedroom was well appointed with a bed, a clothing chest, and a rocking chair that were just as beautiful as the door. In the middle of the bed, buried under the covers, was a breathing lump.

Rufus waved the lieutenant away. If this was the good brownie, he didn’t want to scare it. He drew the blankets down with a gentle tug and gasped at the black-and-blue creature huddled there. There was blood staining the bandages pressed to his nose, and his left arm did not look right. Those injuries plus the bruising indicated this brownie was highly disliked by someone.

“Call a doctor immediately!” Rufus said to one of the waiting guards. The man saluted and spun away, heading back into the basement at a quick jog.

“What should we do, Excellency?” the lieutenant asked, clearly upset by the broken image lying unconscious in the bed.

Rufus sighed. “Leave him be. The doctor will attend him, and when he is better, we will bring him to Prince Lionel. Just hope that the Lord Seneschal can find the bastard brownie who caused these injuries.”

“So there are two of them?” the lieutenant asked curiously.

Rufus nodded. “I believe so. You can tell from how elaborate this room is that this poor fellow has been here for months, and not once has he interfered in such a manner as I saw today. There must be a second creature; it is the only explanation.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand why I must travel so quickly to the basement!” Rufus heard the crotchety doctor hiss, his voice echoing from a few hallways down. That was quite the defense mechanism; being able to hear anyone encroaching from a long way off gave the brownie ample time to scurry away. If only he weren’t unconscious at the moment.

Soon enough, the doctor was being led into the bedroom. The man was older and deserved his fame as the head doctor. The second he saw his patient, the doctor stopped complaining and got to work.

Rufus flinched when the doctor reset the broken arm, and the brownie moaned and sobbed despite still being unconscious. The rest was just bad bruising, possibly cracked ribs, and a few cuts on his face.

The doctor had just finished wrapping those hurt ribs when the brownie finally stirred and blinked his eyes open. He squeaked in fear when he saw he wasn’t alone and would have tumbled off the bed to run and hide if he hadn’t put his injured arm down first. The resulting cry of pain kept the brownie in one place for long enough that Rufus could rush forward.

“You’re safe,” Rufus told the whimpering creature, who was switching between clutching his splinted arm and staring wildly at all the humans surrounding him. Now that the brownie was awake, Rufus could see there was an odd discrepancy to his features. The brownie could probably pass as a human, his layer of fur was so light and thin, and his facial features almost seemed more human in appearance than brownie—he totally lacked a set of whiskers and had a full, human-sized nose instead of a snub one. Maybe this was a half-breed?

“Can you tell me your name or what happened?” Rufus asked gently, careful of startling the brownie again.

The creature hung his head. “I’m Ladder Rung,” he whispered, “and I’m sorry I couldn’t stop Sewing Needle from messing everything up.”

Rufus smiled grimly, glad to finally have concrete proof that there were two brownies in the castle and this one was innocent of any wrongdoing. Hopefully he would be able to convince Prince Lionel of that.

“If you’re feeling able, do you think you could come speak with Prince Lionel about what happened?” Rufus asked politely. The brownie still cringed and ducked his head.

“Don’t let him thank me,” the creature whispered, but he was carefully climbing out of his bed and shuffling over to Rufus.

“Ladder Rung, I want to hire you. If that was your work we saw in that secret passage, then I want to assign you permanently to cleaning up after Prince Lionel.”

Rung ducked his head, trying to hide a blush. He shuffled slowly after Rufus as they and the guards finally left the basement to return to the castle proper.

*

Rung followed silently while he was led out of the basement and into the castle. He had been caught, and the cold shivers running up his spine told him he was about to be thanked. He had finally made a real home for himself where he was safe and comfortable, and Needle had to ruin it! The thought almost made him sob aloud.

He avoided the curious looks of the castle residents as the group of guards surrounding Rung and the Lord Steward walked through the main hallways. They stopped outside of an unfamiliar door, but when it opened, Rung knew exactly where he had been taken. The sitting room they walked into was almost immaculate, but Rung could still see the bloodstains dotting the rug. Someone had given the stains a scrub, but it had been totally ineffective. Rung’s fingers twitched as the desire to go find a proper cleaning cloth and attend to that stain crossed his mind.

Instead, he was herded toward the office. The steward knocked on the door politely before opening it. Rung let out a relieved breath. The office had not been touched, which meant the owner of the rooms had returned before Needle could do too much damage.

“Your Highness, we found the good brownie,” the Lord Steward said politely.

Rung bowed his head, his ribs aching too much to allow a proper bow, before looking up at the man who owned this office—at the prince—and froze. Logically, seeing all the wolf carvings in the furniture when the symbol of the ruling family was the wolf ascendant should have tipped Rung off. Or the fact that not only was the clothing strewn about so fine, but there was also such a multitude of it that the cost would have been debilitating for anyone of a lesser station. Rung should have easily been able to guess whom he had been trying to clean up after. Maybe he had just not wanted to think about it, because if he had taken the time to put all the facts together, he would have been forced to abandon his efforts to clean these rooms.

Prince Lionel was the one who had declared the edict refusing all brownies entry into the castle and could therefore thank Rung at any moment, but that wasn’t the real reason Rung stood in frozen surprise. Prince Lionel wasn’t just regal; he was beautiful. His brown hair offset a pair of vibrant green eyes set in a face that was so symmetrical Rung wanted to carve it.

“Y-Your Highness,” Rung forced out when Prince Lionel quirked an eyebrow at Rung’s blatant staring. Rung felt his face going red and ducked his head.

“I’m to believe that you are the brownie who has been poking about my desk?” Prince Lionel asked.

Rung nodded miserably.

“And you are the brownie who has taken the time and effort to build all those marvelous pieces of furniture out in the secret passage?”

Rung nodded again, ducking his head farther away from Prince Lionel’s scrutiny.

“You did say you wanted to hire a secretary,” the Lord Steward added when Prince Lionel continued to stare at Rung.

“So I did,” Prince Lionel murmured musingly.

Rung lifted his head slowly, glancing up at Prince Lionel through his eyelashes. Did this mean he wasn’t going to be thanked?

A loud commotion sounded from the sitting room. Rung could hear more guards swearing and Needle’s voice threatening them. The entourage pushed into the office.

The Lord Steward gently pulled Rung off to the side of the room as the Lord Seneschal stepped forward.

“Found the culprit, Your Highness,” the Lord Seneschal said with a bow. “This is the one who dared clean your bedroom.”

Prince Lionel stepped forward and loomed over Needle’s much smaller form. “Do you know the laws and edicts of the country in which you reside?” Prince Lionel said in a hard, officious voice. “Do you?” he added sharply when Needle just glared.

“I know the laws,” Needle sneered.

“And the edicts?” Prince Lionel pressed.

“And the edicts!” Needle yelled. “Now, let me go!”

Prince Lionel ignored Needle’s outburst. “So you do know that I have declared an edict that no brownies are allowed residence in this castle?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Why, then, are you here?”

“Because this place is filthy. I needed to clean it!” Needle answered with his usual snarl. “You’re disgusting.”

The two guards holding Needle in place shook the brownie in retaliation. Needle hissed at them.

“He said the Orphanage Council sent him here,” Rung said, softly but firmly. Needle was finally the one in trouble; Rung wasn’t about to let him get away this time. His broken arm throbbed in agreement.

“The council?” Prince Lionel asked. “That’s foolish, because I sent a copy of my edict directly to that council. They know better.”

“They got paid better,” Needle finally sniffed. “We send someone in to keep Prince Lionel’s rooms cleaned, the edicts are dropped, and we can move entire families into the castle. No more homeless brownies.”

“That’s interesting to know,” Prince Lionel replied calmly.

“Is Sewing Needle telling the truth?” the Lord Steward asked Rung.

Rung nodded. “I think so. Needle said that someone had requested him to clean here.”

“Fine,” Prince Lionel said firmly. “Sewing Needle, thank you very much for your service to me, to the castle, and to the crown. We appreciate your efforts to the utmost.”

Needle seemed to shrink into himself as the words of thanks were spoken. He glared up at Prince Lionel. “What about Wrong?” Needle snarled, sounding devastated and petty at the same time. “Wrong deserves to be thanked too.”

Prince Lionel looked down at Needle with a frown. “You are something else, brownie. I will be writing a letter to your council about your horrible conduct and disposition. They never should have allowed you to graduate from the academy.” Needle shrunk in on himself even more, but his sneer never faded from his face.

Prince Lionel turned toward Rung. “Is Wrong your real name?” he asked gently.

Rung shook his head, but it was the Lord Steward who replied, “Ladder Rung, Excellency.”

“Very well, Ladder Rung,” Prince Lionel began. Rung could feel his shoulders rounding as the thank-you was about to be said. “I would like to hire you on a temporary basis as my personal secretary and manservant. If your improvements are effective, that hiring will become permanent.”

Rung could feel his jaw drop in surprise. Instead of a thank-you, he was being hired? Needle looked equally shocked.

“You’ll hire the half-breed failure who dropped out of school because he couldn’t do anything right?” Needle gasped. “I hope you suffer,” he added.

Prince Lionel nodded to the guards holding Needle in place. “Escort that miscreant out of the castle and out of the city,” he said. Rung watched as Needle was dragged out of the office.

“You want me to clean for you?” Rung finally gasped once the noise from Needle’s unwilling departure had faded.

“Clean, organize, anything you can think of. After the way you’ve cleaned my desk, I think you’re necessary,” Prince Lionel explained.

“Even with my arm like this?” Rung asked, giving Prince Lionel another chance to back away. Hiring Rung, Wrong, to do something might end up being a disaster.

“I want you, no one else, and until your arm heals, you’ll have servants dealing with anything heavy or strenuous.” Prince Lionel turned to the Lord Steward and the Lord Seneschal. “See that my orders are carried out.”

Prince Lionel walked past Rung on his way out of the office, totally ignoring the small path through the debris as he stepped on clothing and books alike on his way. He nodded to the Lord Steward and clapped Rung on the shoulder before leaving the room.

“So,” the Lord Steward asked, sounding excited, “what do you need a servant to do first?”

Rung blinked at the Lord Steward in shock for a moment before his wits returned. He had permission to clean this disaster and, broken arm or not, he wasn’t wasting a single moment.

“There are two large laundry baskets in the secret passageway,” Rung explained.

Servants were called quickly. One held a basket while another servant and Rung gathered the dirty clothing from the office and dumped it inside. When one basket was full, it was carried down to the laundry and emptied. It took five full baskets before the floor was cleared of dirty clothing.

Two male servants began dragging the bookshelves in next. Rung happily directed the servants where to place the shelves and which books went where. One servant heard that the shelves put by the door were specifically for books to be returned to the library, and he went ahead and took those books there directly.

It only took a few hours before the office was immaculate. The desk had been moved to the corner, and the three shelves behind it made the space look very official. The new side table was next to the armchair, and a tea set had been unearthed and placed on top. All the pleasure-reading books were now safely on the shelves beneath it. The office was now both an official and a comfortable space that would be easy to keep organized. All the old furniture needed to be polished and dusted, but overall the improvement was palpable.

They moved into the bedroom next. Needle had cleaned the space properly; there was nothing wrong with him in that area. The floor was empty of clothing, but Prince Lionel had stripped his neatly made bed at some point. Rung had two footmen bring in the trunk first and set it at the foot of the bed. While Rung filled it with all the blankets Prince Lionel had purposefully removed from his bed, three maids emptied the old armoire. After the footmen had carted that piece of furniture out of the room and the two replacements back in, Rung and the maids carefully reorganized all the clothing inside.

They moved to the changing room, where one maid was set to the task of matching jewelry with jewelry box and then affixing the labels. The footmen installed the hanging rod while the other maids began carefully hanging the expensive suits. Rung was glad when another maid began scrubbing the bathroom without needing him to direct her.

“You did all this in one afternoon?” Prince Lionel’s voice called from the bedroom door.

Rung stepped out of the changing room and nodded. “Yes, Your Highness,” he murmured. “But it’s not done yet. I need to dust and shine, and the carvings aren’t quite complete yet.”

“And you think all these changes will help keep these rooms clean?” Prince Lionel asked sharply, wincing slightly as all the maids, footmen, and manservants finally finished their tasks and left the back rooms, bowing and curtseying to Prince Lionel as they left the bedroom. “I don’t like having people going through my things uninvited,” Prince Lionel explained.

“Um,” Rung began, worried for a moment that Prince Lionel included Rung in that distinction. It was clear, though, that for some reason Prince Lionel had no problem with Rung’s presence. “If you put all your dirty clothes in the baskets by the door, all a maid has to do is take it first thing in the morning. She won’t have to do more than open a door, and she won’t have to touch anything. I’ll take care of keeping up after the rest of it.”

Prince Lionel glanced around his bedroom before moving into his office. Rung followed behind, worrying his sore lip between his teeth as Prince Lionel studied all the improvements. “There is still something missing in here,” Prince Lionel said finally.

“Sir?” Rung asked, looking around to see what Prince Lionel could possibly mean.

“My secretary needs a desk as well. Find one that will suit you, and have it brought here in the morning. Your job will be to keep my papers organized and to take care of anything trifling that needs my signature but shouldn’t be taking up my time.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Rung said with a happy nod. It didn’t matter what tasks he was set; Rung had been specifically asked to clean up after the messy prince. What could be better?

“And call me Lionel, since we’re to be working so closely together,” Prince Lionel added.

“Yes, Lionel,” Rung replied. “I’m Rung. Nice to meet you.”

*

Rung loved his new job. Every morning, he received the day’s mail and sorted it according to a very strict formula. All the mail that was formal correspondence stayed on Rung’s desk. He would read it and write a proper reply on behalf of Prince Lionel. The personal letters and the project letters giving Prince Lionel more information or requesting information from Prince Lionel went into a specific spot on Prince Lionel’s desk. Any letters that were marked as urgent or that Prince Lionel was waiting for were put on top of the stack. Any other letters were sorted based on urgency and whether Prince Lionel was the only one capable of taking care of the issue.

Rung also took direct delivery of all paperwork. Much of it he could actually fill out on his own and then have Prince Lionel read through and sign afterward. The rest he put into their places on Prince Lionel’s desk.

Not only was the entire process much more organized, but Rung had also greatly decreased the sheer number of papers on Prince Lionel’s desk simply by taking care of many of them himself. Prince Lionel was very appreciative.

There were some drawbacks to the job, of course. Rung was continuously thanked whenever he interacted with most humans, which made him very twitchy. Prince Lionel and the Lord Steward had hired him, and he had very succinctly been informed that only thanks from one of them actually constituted a dismissal. Still, any thanks was one too many by Rung’s brownie sensibilities.

It was also very disconcerting to be visible all the time. Brownies were prized for their ability to fade into the background and be unseen; sitting at a desk in the middle of an office where everyone who entered saw him made him flinch toward hiding underneath the desk until the visitor was gone.

These problems made Prince Lionel laugh though. Every time he saw Rung eyeing the space beneath his desk he chuckled, which made Rung blush. Still, he found spending so much time with Prince Lionel to be a lot of fun. He could organize the office work to his heart’s content, and he could have a very pleasant conversation with a man who was quickly becoming a friend at the same time.

When he wasn’t buried under piles of disorganized paperwork, Prince Lionel liked to smile and chat about nonsensical things that made Rung laugh. For the first time in his life, Rung knew he had a friend. He particularly cherished the evenings when Prince Lionel would relax with a pleasure book and Rung could clean around him. Rung’s efforts to solve Prince Lionel’s cleanliness issues had been largely successful, but there was always something fun to pick up or scrub during the evening. Rung even got to finish his carvings on the furniture once his arm healed. It wasn’t back to full strength just yet, but his carving abilities hadn’t suffered because of the break.

At night, he could scurry unseen down into his basement bedroom, climb into bed, and go to sleep with the knowledge that his skills weren’t wrong.

Rung loved it. He should have known from long experience that it wouldn’t last.

*

“Well, this is nice, at least,” a voice called from behind Rung when he stepped into his bedroom late one night two weeks after his arm had finally healed. Rung spun around and saw Teacher Broom studying the carved front door to Rung’s bedroom. “An interesting setup you’ve created, Wrong,” he added as he followed Rung into the room.

Rung took a deep breath and straightened his spine. He was the personal secretary and manservant to Prince Lionel. No one else could say they had ever held the position for any significant length of time, but Rung had been working hard for months. There wasn’t any reason Teacher Broom couldn’t get his name correct, particularly since Rung was no longer a student.

“My name is Ladder Rung,” Rung said as sharply as he could. He still felt a desperate need to duck his head and cringe, because he had never dared speak back to a teacher in such a direct way. “My familiar name is Rung, and since we have a history, I will allow its use in your case. Now, Teacher Broom, may I ask why you are here?”

Broom stared at Rung for a long moment, his eyes carefully taking in Rung’s smartly dressed form—Prince Lionel refused to have a secretary dressed in secondhand fabrics, so he had supplied Rung ample, high-quality cloth to sew his own outfits—and Rung’s direct glare.

“I see you have grown up finally, Rung. As you must know, every student to pass through the Orphanage for Cleanliness and Deportment is evaluated two months after they first enter the real world and find a home to settle into. We must be certain our teachings are being used to their utmost potential. Your case is a peculiar one, Rung, because of your unfinished schooling and your chosen home.”

Rung nodded. He remembered wondering what happened when a brownie failed their two-month evaluation while he was still at the orphanage but hadn’t thought about it since running away.

“I will be shadowing you for the next few days to ascertain your fitness in taking care of this castle,” Broom added.

“Teacher Broom, please keep in mind that there are more unique circumstances at play than just my lacking a graduation certificate,” Rung explained. “Because of the edict against brownies, I have been officially hired in a visible position that allows me to complete my duties as a brownie while not breaking the laws of the kingdom.”

“I will keep everything under advisement,” Broom agreed. “Now let me inspect your living quarters.”

Broom looked at everything Rung had built for his bedroom and asked invasive questions about where Rung had located certain fabrics and pieces of wood in the castle without being seen and how he had reappropriated the old scraps into something usable and comfortable. Rung thought Broom left impressed with what Rung had been able to create, and he hoped the rest of his work would be just as pleasing to the members of the Orphanage Council.

The next morning Rung pretended he didn’t feel Broom staring at him from wherever the teacher was hiding. He did his usual rounds of the castle, checking that the kitchen didn’t need reorganization and that none of the disused hallways and rooms he had cleaned over the past few months were in need of a new dusting. He moved to the wing of the castle that must have been the royal wing when the building was first constructed. The suites of rooms were large and heavily decorated, but the construction was clearly dated. Bit by bit, Rung was cleaning decades of dust and debris. Once he was finished, he could start working on modernizing the rooms.

By eight in the morning, Rung had completed his daily goal of cleaning. He tidied himself up and headed into the more populated areas of the castle.

“Good morning, Ladder Rung,” Lord Perkinsmythe called as Rung turned the corner into the grand hallway containing the staircase upward toward Prince Lionel’s rooms.

“Good morning, my lord,” Rung responded with a polite bow. Lord Perkinsmythe was a rotund man who lived by the philosophy of whatever he couldn’t have done by someone else didn’t need doing.

“I was wondering,” Lord Perkinsmythe began tentatively, as if he were actually hesitant about asking—he wasn’t in the least bit. “I was wondering if you might be able to bring me the bimonthly financial reports? I believe the ones pertaining to the gold mines and the jewelry businesses under the oversight of my duchy contain the information I am seeking.”

“I’m sorry, My Lord, but I’m afraid you will need to speak with the Lord Seneschal or Prince Lionel about obtaining those documents,” Rung replied as nicely as he was able. This wasn’t the first time some lord or lady had tried to ask a favor or curry a bit of preferential treatment from Rung. “I’m sorry I can’t help you,” Rung added.

Lord Perkinsmythe frowned deeply. “That is very inconvenient. You’re sure you cannot pull a few strings for me? I would be in your debt.”

“Again, I am sorry, my lord,” Rung repeated. He bowed to the still-frowning Duke and hurried off before he was late to work.

“There you are, Rung!” Prince Lionel called as Rung pushed open the door to the office. “I was getting worried.”

Rung smiled shyly at Prince Lionel. “I’m sorry. I got waylaid by Lord Perkinsmythe wanting some papers on gold and jewelry.”

“Please,” Prince Lionel laughed. “One minute late to throw off an annoying noble? That’s an excusable tardiness.” He grinned to show he was joking, which made Rung smile back.

Rung settled in behind his desk and picked up that day’s stack of mail to begin sorting. He now recognized the handwriting of most of the people who wrote to Prince Lionel, so it was easy enough to toss aside items like Lady Fornwith’s most recent attempt at betrothing herself to Prince Lionel without needing to read them.

“It is interesting that Lord Perkinsmythe was the one to approach you about it,” Prince Lionel mused as he flipped through the carefully organized stacks of paper on his desk. “I have the gold mines and jewelry reports here, and I don’t notice anything out of place. I wonder if I was supposed to?”

Prince Lionel was clearly talking to himself, a habit he only had when someone else was in the room to hear him, so Rung tuned him out. Carefully sorting the other missives waiting on his desk was more important.

“Hey, Rung, when you’ve finished with that, do you think you can find the Lord Steward and go into the archives?” Prince Lionel asked. “I think I want to take a look at the reports on gold over the past few years.”

Rung nodded. “I can do that. Give me five minutes to finish sorting this, and I’ll be off.”

“You’re not allowed to think about cleaning the archives, just so you know,” Prince Lionel added gently. “I don’t want you getting lost down there.”

Rung bit his lip and nodded. He could resist the urge if he had to, particularly since he already had a fulfilling job. He set the letters Prince Lionel needed to take care of on the proper corner of Prince Lionel’s desk before heading out to find the Lord Steward.

The Lord Steward was in his office and welcomed Rung inside when he knocked.

“Hello, Rung. How can I help you?” the Lord Steward asked after Rung had taken a seat in front of his desk.

“I had a run-in with Lord Perkinsmythe this morning,” Rung explained. “He wanted me to get him the paperwork on his gold mines and jewelry businesses. Now Prince Lionel wants me to go into the archives to find the reports for the last few years.”

“Lord Perkinsmythe?” the steward asked. “Now that’s odd. I wouldn’t think he would be part of any conspiracy.” He put down the pen he was holding and stood up. “I think we should have a look at more than just Lord Perkinsmythe’s accounts. He may be a duke, but he’s small fish. We need to hook the shark leading them all,” he explained as he led the way from his office down into the archives.

Rung had come down this way once before, when he had first come to the castle and been looking for things to clean. The archives were a dusty, disorganized mess. One perusal through had told Rung that it would take years before he could make any headway into the clutter. Cleaning the rest of the castle first had seemed like a much more practical use of his time.

Scrolls and stacks of papers greeted Rung the second he stepped through the doorway after the steward. There were shelves for scrolls, books, and papers, and those shelves were organized to a degree, but a sense of horrid disarray pervaded despite that. Perhaps it was the inches of dust on top of those shelves, or the feeling that time had forgotten about the secrets contained within, but the archives were in desperate need of care.

They walked to a shelf not far from the door, where the Lord Steward began pulling stacks of papers down. He handed the first stack to Rung. “This is five years ago: the compiled reports on the gold industry for the year.” He continued to pull down stacks until they were both holding every bit of information on gold mines and jewelry sales for the last five years.

They left the archives, and after the Lord Steward had locked the door, they headed upstairs to Prince Lionel’s office.

“Rung, can you take notes?” Prince Lionel asked after the papers had been carefully stacked on one of the shelves behind Prince Lionel’s desk. Both he and the Lord Steward took a year’s stack and began rattling off names and numbers to Rung, who quickly jotted all the information down in shorthand.

After one year was done, they took a break, which gave Rung time to take his shorthand scribbles and write out a proper chart. Each noble family got a row, and each column held their revenue and expenditures by year on gold. After a few minutes, Prince Lionel and the Lord Steward began again.

It only took two hours to finish going through the reports and for Rung to copy all the information onto his chart. Prince Lionel took Rung’s chart but had to turn his head and cough before he could really look at it.

“We need to ring for tea before we can continue this,” the Lord Steward said attentively.

“I’ll go get it,” Rung said, happy to be able to move around after bending over a piece of paper for the last few hours. He hopped to his feet and hurried out the door. The kitchens always had water over the fire for tea.

*

“Scrappy little thing, isn’t he?” Rufus asked after the outer door to the suite had closed behind the brownie.

“I like him, Rufus,” Lionel replied firmly.

Rufus snorted. “A bit too much, I’d wager,” he agreed, gratified to see Lionel blush a bit at the admission.

A knock sounded on the office door, cutting any further conversation short.

“Come in!” Prince Lionel called.

Three adult brownies walked into the office. They bowed and the oldest one stepped forward.

“My lords, we are part of the evaluation committee from the Orphanage Council sent here to investigate Ladder Rung’s performance. We would like to ask you a few questions about his job here. We understand the unique position he is in because of the edict, but proper protocol must be enforced,” the eldest brownie explained.

“Ask your questions,” Prince Lionel said sharply, “but keep in mind that Rung is the best personal secretary I have ever had. Nothing you say will refute that fact.”

“I find that strange to hear, Your Highness,” the brownie said thoughtfully. “We have received letters of the utmost urgency requesting his immediate removal. That, coupled with the statements given by our most promising student, Sewing Needle, led us to believe that Ladder Rung had found some way to blackmail or manipulate Your Highness. As the worst student the orphanage has ever seen, we cannot deny these claims have significant merit. Such a terrible thing must be stopped!”

“Rung should have been the best student you’ve ever had,” Lionel snapped, standing in fury behind his desk. “That Sewing Needle came here and cleaned, but he did it in such a way that he was invasive to my life, which I believe is something you brownies strive to avoid. I thanked Sewing Needle at once—I don’t need interference like his disrupting my duties to the kingdom. Rung is the opposite. He accomplishes his duties as a brownie without getting in the way or causing irreparable harm. If I were you, I would reevaluate the grading system, because that Needle needs a serious attitude adjustment, as I’m sure you read in the letter I sent about his deplorable behavior,” Prince Lionel finished with a snarl.

“What I find particularly compelling,” Rufus added with his own cold tone, “is that neither His Highness, nor I, nor the Lord Seneschal, have been writing any letters to the council. We certainly wouldn’t write anything bad against the one person who keeps His Highness’s duties and obligations so organized. I would be interested to know who exactly is writing to your council.”

“Lord Five-Stones was very informative in his letters,” the second-oldest brownie exclaimed. “Ladder Rung is disrupting the proper running of the castle at every turn! We haven’t seen any evidence to dispute that.”

The third brownie, the youngest, looked a little uncomfortable to Rufus’s eyes as his colleagues spoke, but he didn’t speak up in Rung’s defense.

“Regardless,” Prince Lionel snapped, “I will not allow you to take away my secretary. Now leave!”

The three brownies bowed again and quickly backed out of the office. Rufus didn’t hear the outer door open and close, but that wasn’t surprising when brownies were involved.

“Lord Five-Stones, the Duke of Plemont,” Prince Lionel mused. “Now that’s a man whom I would expect to have a hand in this. He’s wanted my father’s trust and the prestige that comes with it for years, but my father has never been duped by false praise and lobbying.”

“The duke’s certainly not above claiming that connection to those who wouldn’t know it for a lie, like those brownies, and he’s been implicated in fraud before,” Rufus agreed, “but we could never prove his involvement before this. But what does writing to the brownie council have to do with whatever is happening with the gold?”

Rung returned a few minutes later with tea and scones. He hurried about the office, tidying up after their intense study session, while Lionel and Rufus went through his carefully compiled chart.

“Every few months?” Rufus murmured.

Lionel nodded. “It would appear so, but it’s not on any real schedule. I wonder why I never caught on to this before. These reports come across my desk every two weeks.”

“Because your desk was a disaster,” Rung answered dryly from where he was sitting at his own desk writing responses to Prince Lionel’s mail.

“That’s certainly true,” Rufus agreed with a laugh at Prince Lionel’s slightly shamed pout. “But every once in a while you would work your way through most of the mess.”

“Yeah, until a brownie moved into the castle and any chance I had of finishing my work vanished under his scrubbing thumbs,” Prince Lionel grumbled. Both Prince Lionel and Rufus stared at each other for a long second after those words faded away.

“That’s the connection!” Rufus gasped. “Whenever you actually got work done, Lord Five-Stones would no doubt send a letter to the brownies asking for someone to come clean. Your office would get into massive disarray thanks to the creature, and he could move forward with whatever embezzlement plans he had!”

Prince Lionel nodded his agreement. “Find the Lord Seneschal. I’m putting you both in charge of this investigation. I want Five-Stones stopped and everyone he’s coerced into helping him uncovered as well.”

“At once, my lord!” Rufus said sharply as he stood. He bowed and hurried out of the office.

“That’s terrible!” Rung whispered from his desk. His head was hanging low over his papers, so he couldn’t look at Prince Lionel.

Prince Lionel stood and walked around his desk over to Rung. He gently pressed a hand onto Rung’s shoulder. “You’ve redeemed your entire race, Rung,” he said softly. “Without you, we never would have figured all this out. You have no idea how pleased I am that you snuck into my castle.”

“Really?” Rung asked with a sniffle as he glanced through damp eyelashes at Prince Lionel.

“Really,” Prince Lionel agreed. “Now, I don’t want you to think about any of those problems any more. I’ve got the best possible people investigating. I need your excellent work organizing my life. Have you got anything for me to sign yet?”

Rung lifted his head and wiped off his wet cheeks. “I’ve got two letters needing your signature, and that stack of papers is stuff only you can take care of.”

“Of course, Rung,” Prince Lionel said with a smile as he took the papers and returned to his desk. Rung smiled back quickly, before turning back to the letter he was writing. How could he convince Lady Fornwith that Prince Lionel had no interest in her marriage proposal and insist she halt her foolish plans without alienating the eldest daughter of an earl?

*

That night, Rung returned to his room deep in thought. He knew he wasn’t supposed to worry about the fraud investigation, but he couldn’t help thinking about the way the brownies were being used so terribly to further the human’s plans. It was horrible, and it was frightening that the brownies would follow a human’s decrees so blindly. The man may have been a duke, but he wasn’t a prince or king—the brownie council wasn’t held accountable to Lord Five-Stones.

“Rung,” Broom’s voice hissed. Rung spun around and found his teacher ducking behind a statue just beyond the entrance to the secret passage that led down to the basement.

“Teacher Broom?” Rung asked, hurrying over to where Broom was hiding.

“Go sleep somewhere else tonight,” Broom said sharply as he glanced around furtively. “Picture Frame and Banister are planning on forcing you out of the castle tonight. You need to stay hidden from them.”

“What?” Rung gasped.

“I’ve misjudged you,” Broom continued softly. “You’ve found yourself a beautiful home where you can clean to your heart’s content. Keep hold of it!” Broom turned and dashed away down the hall, leaving Rung behind to stare after him in shock. The teacher who had so enjoyed failing Rung had just congratulated him? Then Rung remembered Broom’s warning. Picture Frame and Banister were two highly placed members of the council. If they were here, it was only to remove Rung from the castle. He really did need to find somewhere else to stay for the night. Rung could only think of one place the elder brownies wouldn’t dare search: Prince Lionel’s bedroom.

Lionel would be asleep by now. Rung had taken a few hours to do some more cleaning in the old royal wing after work, and it was fairly late. He could easily sneak in and find somewhere to spend the night.

Decided, Rung set off back into the castle. He took the secret passage that exited through the fireplace in Prince Lionel’s office and snuck through the suite until he was pressed against the outside of the bedroom door. He listened through the wood for a long moment but could only hear the sounds of someone sleeping. The door opened silently, and Rung slipped inside.

As usual, one of Prince Lionel’s pillows had fallen to the floor. Instead of putting it back on the bed, as Rung did whenever he cleaned the room, he took the pillow and climbed underneath Prince Lionel’s bed. He curled up in the darkness, listening to Prince Lionel breathe, and fought back a sob. First the brownie council was being exploited. Now they were trying to take him away from the only home he had ever had. Rung didn’t want to leave the castle. He enjoyed cleaning the large building, and he loved keeping up after Prince Lionel, but mostly he wanted to be able to see Prince Lionel smile every morning when Rung joined him in their office.

“Come out from under there,” Prince Lionel’s sleepy voice called, causing Rung to jump in surprise. He quickly scrambled out from under the bed and stood at Prince Lionel’s bedside.

“Sorry,” Rung whimpered. “But Broom told me not to go home tonight, and this was the only safe place I could think of. I don’t want to be taken away!”

A match flared as Prince Lionel lit a lamp. His beautiful, sleep-tousled face came into view.

“Come here,” Prince Lionel said softly. Rung climbed into the bed next to him and felt Prince Lionel’s arms circle around his chest. Rung fell into the warm embrace with a sob.

“I don’t want to be taken away,” Rung hiccupped, pressing his face into Prince Lionel’s nightshirt. “Broom says they’re going to take me away!”

“Those brownies can’t take you away. I hired you, and only I can send you away. My life has never been so organized and clean before. I’ve never been able to tolerate someone touching my things or me. Yet here you are, and suddenly my life works. Why would I ever want to send you away when you’ve given me so much?”

Rung looked up at Prince Lionel and saw the earnest expression on his face. Rung could see honesty in Prince Lionel’s eyes and, perhaps, a touch of love. Rung hoped his own eyes showed Prince Lionel the same emotions in return, because his heart was certainly feeling it.

“Let’s take care of this,” Prince Lionel said finally, kissing the top of Rung’s head. He helped Rung climb off the bed and held his hand as they walked from the bedroom into the sitting area. Prince Lionel pulled the cord to summon a servant.

The main door opened a few seconds later as a servant slipped into the room with a bow.

“Summon the Lord Steward and the Lord Seneschal. Tell them to call out the dogs. There are three unwelcome brownies in my castle,” Prince Lionel said in an authoritative voice despite wearing his nightshirt and clutching Rung’s hand in his.

The search took hours, but one by one the council members were unearthed. Rung was curled up on the couch, trying to get a little sleep, when the knock on the door came.

“Your Highness,” the Lord Seneschal said formally as he entered the sitting room. “We have located all three brownies in question.”

Rung sat up as Picture Frame, Banister, and Broom were escorted into the room.

“You have stated your case to me,” Prince Lionel said formally to the brownies. He had gotten dressed hours ago in order to be better able to coordinate the search. “But you have not heeded my dictates. Ladder Rung is the only brownie welcome in this castle. The fact that you want to forcibly take him away tells me that you care too highly for your own prestige and the might of your council. You have forgotten that my older brother, my father, and I are the only three people in this kingdom who have a final say in such matters. I thank you, all three of you, for your time in this castle, but you are no longer welcome here. See that they are escorted out.”

Picture Frame and Banister walked out of the sitting room with looks of horrified shock on their faces. Clearly, they had never been thanked before, and the fact that Prince Lionel had been the one to deliver it hurt. Broom hesitated after the other two were led out.

“Treat Rung right,” he said sharply. “He’s still my student, and it’s still my job to watch over him.”

“I will,” Prince Lionel said gently. “I’ll watch over him for the rest of our lives, and I know he’ll want to keep cleaning up after me for that long too.”

“Good,” Broom said with a nod. “I do feel bad about all this. Is there anything I can do to make reparations?”

The Lord Steward had remained behind while the Lord Seneschal escorted the other two brownies away. He stepped forward and spoke when Rung remained silent. “If you could send us a copy of all the letters Lord Five-Stones has sent your council, we would be very appreciative,” the Lord Steward said. “If we can use those letters to tie him to a good deal of money missing from our gold revenue, we can clear up a lot of the mystery around why your council thinks Rung is doing a poor job.”

“I’ll do it,” Broom said with a formal bow. He left the room with the Lord Steward following behind.

“Is that true?” Rung asked softly as soon as the door closed behind the Lord Steward.

“Is what true?” Prince Lionel asked. “That with those letters we shouldn’t have any issues proving Five-Stones’ involvement in the mess, and we can end this farce quickly?”

Rung shook his head. “That’s important and good to know,” he replied, “but I meant about you wanting me to clean for you for the rest of our lives. Was that true?”

“Oh, Rung,” Prince Lionel said with a soft smile. He quickly walked forward and pulled Rung into a hug. “I knew from the first moment I saw you, looking so cute and bashful, that you would become special to me. Do you want to stay with me that long? It will mean a lot of cleaning up after me.”

Rung smiled. “I would like that,” he responded with an answering smile.

“Good,” Prince Lionel said. He bent down and gave Rung a gentle kiss on the lips before backing away. “I’d like that too.”