Born and Raised

[Adeen Pinebarrow]

The crash of metal on stone, and two rat guards jumped alive.

They drew their truncheons and blitzed past doorways, alcoves, and barred windows revealing the arena below. A white mouse at the windows watched the exhibition fights, but otherwise the base tier of The Crater stood empty. The guards paid the slave no mind and continued down the hallway for a beast out of order, or yet another assassin.

Pieces of the culprit scattered along the hallway?s end: a tin plate with apple slices fallen from a windowsill.

The first guard scratched at his nicked ear and laughed too long and too loud.

"Oy, little jumpy," said Nick. "Scaredy Drubbins and the big bad apple."

"Could've been another rat after Nire..." said Drubbins. "And you jumped too!"

"Only after you, mate. You want first honors? Give the fruit a good smack for scarin' yah."

Drubbins shoved Nick into the wall. Another taunt turned into another shove. And onward the wheel spun until both guards wrestled across the floor, churning the apple slices into sauce. A shadow detached from an alcove a few yards away. The mouse at the window, and the guards in their brawl, noticed nothing as it passed. Golden vines and poppies glittered along its crown as the creature ascended the once guarded stairwell and into the sun.

Adeen remained crouched when she reached The Crater?s top tier. From so high up, the fighting pit below looked like a dibbun's toy set come alive, the roar of the crowd more a fog of whispers than an imperative. She opened her journal and checked a makeshift map as she nibbled on apple slices. The Crater wound circular given its nature, but many of the tiers cut away or funneled into dead ends.

Below, the wrestling guards argued their way back to their post at the stairwell?s bottom. Adeen holstered her journal and skulked away.

Nire called the guest holdings "suites," and the majority were carved into the Eastern, topmost tier. A loudmouth ferret in the kitchens called them prime napping and rutting spots, if you had the coin for the guards. A butcher in the underbelly called them fancier jails. Adeen saw no lovers or cells, but only rows of uniform oaken doors fixed into polished stone.

With care and soft stride, Adeen pressed her ear against each door she passed. The first affirmed the kitchen ferret's ill mind as the sound of rhythmically creaking wood filled her ear. She spat upon the doorway and tried the next, but found only silence. Near all the doors offered no hint of their contents until the very last.

The cheers of high voices, the innocent pitch of honesty and joy, greeted the vole. Young ones giggled with glee as their stumpy paws scrabbled along the floor. Adeen's throat clenched, and for a moment she knew the Bastion alleyways, the sand once afire now cold with moonlight, their beautiful, still faces.

No. Why is this happening? Why now?

A slip of her paw behind her back. Adeen gripped the rondel's hilt, secured beneath her vest above the base of her tail. The memories vanished, and the echoes of joyful laughter became the crack of wood and the screams of an embattled hare.

Adeen opened the door and slipped inside.

Pulped grass and acid, summer rain and candied cherries; the reek of youth assaulted Adeen. Their caretaker, who never rose above a stoop, ambled from behind a makeshift play tent. Marik picked up a hog babe, playfully shook loose a few pastries hidden in its coat, and laughed with the other dibbuns.

Not a one of them noticed Adeen for all their chores and merriment. Though she need only clear her throat, she could not move or speak.

Marik startled on noticing Adeen, and placed himself before his charges. A string of an ottermaid stood at the back of the pack, her face the slope of a farm lass who enjoyed moving rocks as much as drinking sweet sap. A wilting lily adorned the front of the otter's dress.

Adeen found her voice and bowed in greeting.

"Apologies, sir. I did not wish to interrupt. I-if only all chores were such fun, aye?"

The dagger above Adeen's tail heated against her back. Seconds churned into decades, but the young marten visibly warmed.

"Interrupting would've done this troublemaker a kindness." Marik squeezed the cheek of the pastry-smuggling hog by his side, and gestured at Adeen?s journal. "I see you're here for a chore as well."

"Indeed. I'm Adeen Tullus, scribe for Master Borean. He trusts his guests are well, and sent me to make sure."

The partial lie rolled easy off of Adeen's tongue as she imagined the lynx asking for hostage inventory, as he did for wine barrels and ingots.

"Doesn't sound like Nire..." Marik twisted in place, as though engaging in difficult mathematics. "I?d let him know if something was wrong."

"Ah, yes." Adeen studied the stones between her footpaws. "You've caught me. I am Nire's scribe, but I'm here on my own behalf."

She paused with purpose, and reaped a soft "Oh?" from Marik.

"I rode the same train as most of these pups. We kept each other warm on the long journey."

Marik leaned in closer as the hook of Adeen?s whispers sunk in.

"I only wished to see them again."

Marik danced in place, as it seemed martens often did when thinking, and then called his herd to assembly. He knelt and spoke too low for Adeen's hearing. The hoglets, the Monster's daughter, and many others turned from Adeen to Marik and back. A ratmaid on the far right shook her no. One by one Marik directed his inaudible questions, and one by one they shook their heads no.

Adeen's ears turned red as the marten asked Fable. Adeen dug through her side satchel until she found the lily stitching. One flash of the half-finished flower, one catch of the small otter's eye, and Fable nodded her head yes. Her naked enthusiasm infected the hoglets beside Fable, and they joined in their big sister's agreement.

Marik waved Adeen over.

"Thank you." Adeen tugged at the slave collar on her neck. "There are few comforts here, as you know."

"Aye. The guards wouldn't like this, but how can I say no to this face?"

Marik picked up a hoglet and spun him away, scattering the young ones to their own devices. Fable alone remained, and she fixed on the lily stitching in Adeen's paw. Adeen took her time. She guided Fable towards one of the unattended beds, spread out her journal and inks on top, and hoisted Fable up beside. Only then did she press the stitching into the young otter's paw.

"...who are ye?"

"I'm your mother's friend." Adeen opened to Minerva's entry. "She sent me to check on you."

The needle and white thread hung from the patch of cloth, and Fable stitched with unsteady paws. She poked once, then again, and when the needle would not push through she tried pulling. A twitch of surprise as Fable jabbed her paw. The old rhythms set into place, and Adeen produced a handkerchief from her kit. Fable would not look her way, but let the vole press, clean, and wrap the stab with a ribbon.

"Would you like help?"

Adeen sat upon the bed with Fable and ran her paws underneath the ottermaid's own. Fissures and ink turned the pink of Adeen's paws into granite, rubbled further besides Fable's pristine webbing. With ease, with care, they worked the stitching together. The otter focused on keeping the petals straight, the vole struggled in keeping the flower a lily and not a poppy.

Adeen wriggled away as they finished the first petal and knelt before her book once more. The cloud dagger dug against her back, against her cloak, but she ignored the weight.

"Is mummy okay?"

"She was safe and well last I saw her. I wish to keep it that way."

"Why?"

Adeen did not take the farmer's daughter for inquisitive, yet Fable asked her questions with all the weight of a seasoned tracker.

"I..." Adeen fought the 'was,' and smiled through their screams at the back of her mind. "...am a mother too. I'd do anything for my young. Same as Minerva."

Fable stopped stitching, as though tasting a bitter candy in the vole's words. Consideration turned into the screwed face of confusion. Confusion drew a sheen over the child's large, reflective eyes. Adeen placed a paw upon Fable's knee and stopped the tide.

"I wanna go h-home."

The old mechanisms took over. Adeen's quill scratched in the journal, and Fable's name received a sheath of lily petals as the vertical rung of the F. The ottermaid leaned close and watched the vole's art spawn flora. Every letter received a flower, or a vine, as exact and crisp as the hem of Adeen's hood. The scribe pressed on as the enchantment held tight, and rescued the child from the brink.

"Then let me help." The quill tip all but punctured Minerva's page as the vole readied. "I will make an escape plan, but first I must know your mother better. Is she strong? Is she fast? Has she ever been hurt?"

"I dunno..."

"I'm no stranger, Fable." Adeen tapped the stitching with her quill, dotting the white thread with black ink. "Your mother trusted me to give you this flower. She'd want me to know."

"Well..."

Fable wrung the stitching in her paws.

"Mummy doesn?d like fishin?. She likes onions an? carrods, an?..."

The child's acquiescence drew a sweetness across Adeen's tongue. Her quill skittered across the journal. Page and margin filled as Fable spoke of their farm, of her father, of the filigree on the fireplace poker. Adeen stopped mid speech and admired the wealth of knowledge, of opportunities that'd keep herself and others safe.

Yet, between the lines, she spotted tiny characters almost too close for reading. Fable's glowing report washed away, everything washed away, as the vole leaned down and read the unintentional words.

ThreeForCanen

Two. Fourteen. More. Like festering boils they jumped from the pages of notes, onward throughout the entirety of the journal until Adeen lost count. But with each repetition she saw the vole's silver-tinged muzzle twisted in triumph, the indifference of Granz as he studied clouds, their beautiful faces immobile within a vegetable crate.

One arm reached backwards with care and stealth. The leather of the dagger's grip fit eagerly into Adeen's paw. A rattled sigh primed.

And then her cowl clinched at her throat.

"'Scuse me, love. Need to have a word with Mrs. Tullus."

A strong grip seized Adeen's scruff and heart, and hoisted her like a sack of grain. Adeen woke from her trance as Hapley, The Crane, opened the nursery door with his free paw, chucked her into the hallway, and closed it behind.

Adeen tumbled into the oaken door across the hall, her journal clutched under one arm, somehow held safe despite the ambush. Her mind screamed for drawing the rondel, but her heart ceased between beats. The Crane spoke first, low as distant thunder.

"Slaves are not allowed here." Hapley closed the little space between them. "Tell me what you're doing or join the exhibition below."

"The Monster." Lies, truths, and distractions fought for purchase, but the words flowed free before Adeen decided. "She wished to know her daughter's condition."

"And you broke the rules to do so?"

The question needed no answer, but Adeen nodded all the same. The fox leaned down and Adeen braced for punch, or a stab, or-

"What happened to you?"

Adeen's chest hallowed. His inflection had not changed over the years, Adeen realized. In those summer days of feasts and orchard games, he'd say the same when she entered the infirmary covered in brier and gatehouse ink. Candied ginger wafted from the healer in those days, for his belt pouch always full of treats for good dibbuns.

Hapley carried no sweets now, or nettles in his headfur, but Adeen trembled as time caught up once again.

"I do not know. I only wished to help; I only wished to move on. But every time I think I'm safe I can't...I can't..."

The fog of distant cheers filled her pause, the exhibition games at their climax of blood and steel. Hapley spoke up when Adeen dissolved into hiccups and sharp inhales.

"I understand." Hapley put one paw on Adeen?s shoulder. "Not your crimes, or what you're thinking, but the weight. This place bleeds you, and no kindness is without cost." The fox unconsciously scratched at his halved ear.

"W-what do you mean?"

Hapley opened his muzzle, stopped, and tried again.

"Keep yourself safe first. Whatever plans you have, your actions put you under suspicion. Not all the guards are as slow as the Stubtail twins. Others who spot a dagger through your cloak might do worse than pull you aside."

Adeen's heart stopped.

"Linen is too thin, and it hangs on the metal." Hapley considered the frozen vole before him. "Don't worry. You can keep it so long as filth like Hargorn exists. All I ask is-"

The door behind Adeen burst open.

Two ferret slaves, the bed creakers Adeen heard before, exited the vacant suite drenched with sweat. Their revelry died as Hapley gripped them by their collars. Excuses flew, blame lanced between the 'lovers,' the guards who accepted the bribe, and even Vulpuz down low.

Adeen did not stay for Hapley's verdict. As the Stubtail twins clanged up the stairs, she slipped past once more and fled into the clockworks of The Crater.

~*~

Adeen breathed again once she reached the underbelly, her new home.

The Crater's lowest tier, behind and beneath the arena itself, served as a nexus for the ugly beasts in Nire's employ. Scorpion handlers more feral than their charges, butchers of the fallen, and false priests delivering last rites to still-alive losers. All packed into the unnamed strip of shadow and stone in The Crater's underbelly.

While the tiers above were devoid of workers, the underbelly thrived with the bodies of those fallen in the exhibition. Blood and sand caked the slaves who dragged away the dead. Some bodies were tossed without ceremony on carts meant for the scorpion pits. Unknown combatants were stacked by masked beasts on top of a drainage grate. The grate slowly drank what did not spill in the arena, and those with slitting knives passed bet-earned coins as they waited.

All of them eager to play their role, thought Adeen. All of them 'kept safe' so long as others bleed. This cannot be what the healer meant. There must be more than this.

The Crane's advice vanished as Adeen's name cannoned across the underbelly. A vixen, whose fur was all but stripped by alchemical powders, beckoned the vole over. Adeen ignored the drainage grate, the half-playful taunts of 'Scribblin' Widow' from workers she passed, and the stench of iron infecting her senses.

Mortician Muda wore only a mask, a smock, and arm-length gloves. A viridian sheen graced her naked flesh, which matched her eyes and the sprigs of wilted lavender poking out of her mask's muzzle. She hoisted the fallen from the drainage pile and stacked them like so many bricks upon a cart. A mouse with its throat torn out. A squirrel punctured beyond hope. The vixen parted the fallen from their clothes and equipment as one shucks oysters.

Adeen kept a few paces from her boss, who spoke and moved in sweeps.

"Late. You're late. You're late again!"

"My apologies. Nire needed me for a-"

Adeen jumped aside as the hulking vixen dropped her latest body and turned on her.

"Nire? You're not Nire's pet, you're mine. You were given to me." Adeen kept silent and nodded. "Fetch your tools and draw a list: which are feed, and which are Greats. They are one to me, scribe."

Adeen fled. An old holding cell at the back corner of the underbelly served as both bedchamber and workspace for the vixen and vole. Cracked embalming jars, stacked on broken surgical tables, served as scroll holders. Sheaths of papers were pinned beneath in-progress grave markers, carved by Adeen with near-blunt chisels and aligned by chalk-dusted twine. These were the only items Adeen dare touch, for every available space besides filled with tinctures and creams of Muda's design.

Adeen drew her rondel and stuffed it into one of her scroll jars.

Nobeast would look for a weapon in my scrolls, she reasoned. And may it rest there until its use is clear.

Only when the acid in Adeen?s veins ebbed did she start Muda's task. Automatic, immediate, she opened her journal and a fresh scroll upon the tabletop. A quick look through Madder Barrow's section revealed the dead mouse and squirrel as Patrolbeast Envar and Hunter Tanra respectively.

Adeen drew two columns on her scroll. She headed the left as 'Dispose' and the right as 'For Hall of the Greats.'

"Muda wouldn't honor these beasts, but they deserve better." Adeen bit on the feather of her quill. "No, I mustn't. This is what the healer meant. A foolish risk. Senseless."

Yet, her paw strayed to the right side of the page. 'Prowler Envar' and 'Tanra the Terror' appeared on the page. Adeen scrawled false tales of victories won by the woodlander duo. Mouse and squirrel in arms, rangers of Greater Mossflower who followed their prey into the very sands of The Crater. Match after match they faced enemies of old, the mouse a fencer of dazzling speed and the squirrel a pikebeast of infinite stamina.

Adeen realized an arena regular might know the tales as false. She did not care. With a flourish, she underlined their names and breathed free of the powders and rust around her.

Then the cell's door swung open.

"Where are they."

A mouse with curled fur as white as clouds stood in the doorway. She wore the collar of a slave, and leather halfplate cobbled together from scavenged sets. No weapons hung from her belt, and no tail from her rump, but coiled muscle surged down her exposed arms and legs to cloth-wrapped paws. Adeen searched the beast for motive, her memory for a relation.

The mouse at the upper tier windows watching the exhibition, only hours ago.

The mouse Cricken pointed at on her first day in The Drag, who confirmed Adeen as The Widow.

You, you said you were there. They dragged her through Bastion like a feral.

"The list? Muda will have it soon."

"You're not giving Muda anything." The mouse chewed on a sharpened twig at the corner of her muzzle. "Give it to me."

Adeen nodded, yet her tail coiled beneath her cloak. She expected this much from upjumping males, or arena toughs fighting for roster space, but not for a scribe's task. She filled the remainder of her list while browsing through the journal for signs of the white mouse. No entry, no margin notes, no anything. Only the screams of a squirrel labeling the mouse as a Bastion native.

But I?d not seen her on the train, thought Adeen. I cannot recall seeing her anywhere.

"Here you are." The mouse took Adeen's scroll. "We neighbors should stick together. From what part of Bastion did you hail?"

"The cellars of The Endless March, if you?re familiar." The mouse snorted in a mix of amusement and derision as she unfurled the scroll. "I imagine you are. Murdering is thirsty work."

Adeen only dipped her muzzle in acknowledgement. She did not know Bastion?s tavern first paw, but the watering hole housed more off duty soldiers than travelers. The tower turned tavern also hosted Southsward nobility on tour, and, by rumor, many a seedy rendezvous by Duke Granz. A creature of that den would not-

The mouse rapped Adeen?s muzzle with the scroll and broke the train of thought.

"This isn't the list. I remember some of the names, and none of these fit."

"It most certainly is. My notes are accurate and I saw the beasts myself."

"I know you took the lot. Give em back and I'll forgive your pinching."

"I don't know what you mean." The mouse turned full on Adeen, the shadows under her blackened eyes the billow of a storm cloud. "T-take your own notes if you're so sure. I've tools here you can use."

"That's the way, is it. Real neighborly of you."

In the moment, as the mouse picked up an embalming jar and smashed it upside Adeen's head, the vole thought of GUOSIM cutters breaching the foam of The Great Sea. Time caught up, and Adeen found herself sprawled on the floor, the contents of her kit scattered about her with pot shards.

"Where are they."

"Please! I d-don't..." Blood poured from Adeen's cheek and jaw. "I don't know what you mean!"

"Keep your lies."

The mouse picked a half-carved gravestone and held it over her head. Adeen grabbed the nearest thing and threw wild. The ink pot smashed against the mouse's temple and sprayed black across her eyes. The headstone smashed onto the ground between Adeen's legs, and she jumped up and made for the door as the mouse wiped her eyes clear.

A crowd blocked her retreat. Butchers and slaves whispering bets. All stood as spectators before the match in progress.

Adeen called for help from her boss, from anybeast, but her words melted into bile as the mouse's ink-stained fist smashed into her spine. The crowd cheered as the mouse uncurled and mounted the floored vole.

"You took over my bunk." One punch. "You stole my stash." Twice more. "And now you lie."

Adeen remained conscious of the cheers, of the jeers against the Black Widow and her obviously weak husband, of the concussive force of blow after blow against her face and chest. For only a moment the stars and lyrics along The Drag's bunk shone clear. Yet, this was no child, and the force of its knuckles into Adeen's forehead crushed surfacing questions of Canen, of escape.

The mouse's eyes and brow, slashed and stained with ink, churned as her calm broke into fury.

"Where's my dagger, huh? Where is it!?"

A stoat shouldered through the crowd and tackled the mouse.

They wrestled along the floor, but the mouse's rage was no match for the vermin's experience. Aldridge grappled and threw her into the onlooking crowd, which broke apart and scattered at the collision. The ink-dipped mouse picked herself up and spat at them both.

"You don't know what you're doing," said the mouse.

"Well, that hasn?t got me killed so far," said Aldridge.

"Not yet, but my blade will see your back. By my paw or hers."

Adeen did not see the mouse escape, or even feel Aldridge deliver her onto Muda's cot. For minutes, for months, all Adeen knew was the howl of her wracked body. Once the ringing stopped, Adeen found Aldridge sitting beside her.

She tried rising, but Aldridge placed his paw square on her chest. "Stay down for now."

All concern for the calculating vermin buried with the warmth of his paw.

"T-thank you." The effort of speech made her jaw click, and her wounds reignite, but she tried all the same. "Please. Keep watch."

In time, when the throbbing dulled from its immediacy, Adeen sat up once more. The pain filled her eyes with tears, made her gasp, and yet she rose. Aldridge?s paw came down again, this time behind her shoulder blades in aid.

"I?m taking her to the infirmary," Aldridge called through to the main work area.

Muda, in reply from the grate, spewed forth curses and smashed bottles of liquid in colors against nature's design. Aldridge?s voice, the calm gravity of a priest or a schoolmaster, rebuffed all of the mortician?s ire. The stoat picked Adeen off the cot and carried her out and away without further challenge.

"Will you enlighten me?" Aldridge murmured as he walked along, each gentle pawstep amplified into her torso. "Who did I just save you from?"

Keep your lies.

"I do not know. She claims she lives in Bastion, but I?ve never seen her. Another beast ran mad from Nire?s games..."

"Mad or not, you?d do well to stay out of the shadows." The cross of calculation knit the stoat?s brow. "Speaking of Nire, I wish to talk with him again."

"Why? They?re words wasted on deaf ears."

"For reason?s sake. I do not think that he can be redeemed - but I?ve been wrong before."

"Speak with him, so I may stick him from behind." Adeen's spirit filled with iron, despite the jest. "Then we burn his temple to ash."

"His temple, hm?" A stoat?s smile, but Adeen could not decipher mirth or savagery through her blurred vision. "But the beasts of the Barrow would hunt us down for burning it. The Crater could be useful. A fortress, a circus, a place of music and art and trade. Every beast deserves a second chance. Why not this place too?"

His hopes pulled Adeen within. Chances. She'd offered the mouse a chance at working together. She'd gone out of her way for the Monster, the Crane, the assassin, the fallen villagers. Though the stoat saved her in time, no rescue would've proven necessary if she'd stayed vigilant.

A shard of pottery, still lodged in Adeen's face, dug deeper and affirmed the call.

"Nire, The Crater, and his ilk turned the mouse into what she is..."

Adeen bit her lip for focus, and the fresh flow joined her battered gums.

"...and to what I am. Not again. They will end, and soon."

Aldridge only nodded, and Adeen rested her muzzle against his vest. Clarity reigned, and the pages of her journal flew as performing sparrows through her mind. Sections ripped free, flashed before her, and soon she knew which beast she?d deal with first.

Though the weapon hid far away, Adeen knew the comfort of the dagger?s hilt as she squeezed her paw.

"And I know where I must start."