Unwanting

[The Mongrel]

I sat on the peak of the old clock tower, watching the lights of Radasanth flicker out one by one. For every house that went dark, a light blinked on in the sky as the stars above woke from their day-long slumber. Mere hours had passed since a motley handful of hooligans had cornered me in a room. I was surprised they’d let me go to think about their offer. I was surprised I’d survived the first minute in that room.

Of course, the last time a group of thugs had cornered me, I’d spent a few months in Concordia, recovering from wounds that should have killed me.

We are the lost and the misbegotten, the friendless, the faithless, and the forgotten. And we have a place for you.

That was perhaps the oddest part of the encounter. A place for me.

A place. Somewhere I could belong. Somewhere… somewhere I was welcome. In all my life, I’d never had that. From my first breath, I knew that somehow, I was wrong. The mother who had borne me wished I didn’t exist. The man in whose house I was reared was not my father, and he made no attempt to act like one. My siblings were distant at best and cruel at worst.

Was there any wonder I’d run away for good before I’d reached full adulthood?

We have a place for you.

Ah, what the hell. I was lost and misbegotten, friendless, faithless, and forgotten anyway. Might as well be all those things with some other bastards. I’d rather they not learn who I was, but even that wasn’t important. I’d rejected Illara Alfheim completely the day I boarded the ship out of Raiaera.

I didn’t know who I was, either.

[The Mongrel]

It didn’t take me two days to learn that Unfounded operated differently than any other gang I’d heard of or observed in Radasanth. For the common ones, entry was a long, intense, and painful process. Initiation broke everything that made an individual and formed him or her into a perfect tool. Their loyalties and hatreds were redefined, their minds trained to think their way was the best way, and by the end, even if it killed them, they wanted in. Others, the supremely organized ones, only accepted family members of the founders. It ensured absolute loyalty, and rather than breaking down an initiate, they simply raised their children to their lifestyle. Criminals from the cradle, they never knew there was another way.

Unfoundlings, as they called themselves, tended to have a different background. Rainbow had been a sailor, but had turned pirate when her ship was overtaken and her choices were join or die. Smiles had wanted to be a healer, and had been in training with the Sisters of Mercy, when her convoy was attacked on a trip between Gisela and one of the surrounding villages. The Sisters had removed her from their order in the aftermath, and her family had not accepted her back. Tinker, the Alerian, had been a slave in his own land, born to criminals and thus into servitude. He’d run when his master had brought him on a business trip to Corone. Mutt was born under stigma in his native Salvar; he’d left because his mother couldn’t handle the outbursts when he’d had too much abuse from the humans surrounding him. Weepy had been branded a traitor in Fallien, and had only just escaped with his life. Cata and Lightning were father and son by relationship, but uncle and nephew by blood. Cata had killed his brother when he’d caught him drunkenly beating little Lightning as a toddler.

They, like me, had found there wasn’t a ready option for them here other than crime. Gradually, they had also found each other. They came to value each other. They were ready to value anyone they brought into the fold, and that meant training. They’d scoped me out for weeks before inviting me. They knew what I was capable of, and they knew how to make me more stealthy and therefore safer.

I’d barely accepted their offer before the training began. Dawn to dusk, I was learning their slang and their hand signals. Cata was second to none when it came to both playing and cheating at cards, and I spent hours seated across from him, Rainbow, and Smiles, learning the trade. I’d thought that I was stealthy enough to relieve a man of his valuables without him noticing. Weepy took my entire belt from me while I thought I was paying attention. Then he taught me to do the same.

Hours stretched to days, and slowly, I started feeling like I was part of something. But it was only a start.

[The Mongrel]

Less than a tenday after I’d first joined, I showed up to training at dawn carrying a satchel with everything I owned. It drew perplexed stares from everyone who wasn’t out preparing for a job.

“Kitten,” Weepy ventured, calling me by one of the generic nicknames everyone got until they’d become full members of Unfounded, “what’s in the bag?”

I shrugged, opening it to reveal a blanket and a change of clothes. “I had a place by the docks to hole up in every night. Coupla drunks started a brawl, and there’s not much left of the building now. Gonna look for a new place tonight.”

Rainbow and Cata exchanged a look and a very subtle gesture. “No need to look, Kitten,” the heavily tattooed half-elf spoke up, grabbing my bag and hanging it by the door. “I’ve got a free couch. You can crash with me. The docks are cheap as shit, but only sailors, thugs, and full-time whores belong there overnight.”

“Even they shouldn’t sleep there,” Weepy interjected from my side, rubbing his hands with a smile. He’d reached to steal my belt while I was otherwise occupied, but I’d rebuffed him with a slap. I was getting better under his tutelage. “We thought you slept near the North Gate, Kitten. When did you move?”

I shook my head slightly, brushing a lock of black hair out of my face. I relocated to the northern part of the city only when ships came in flying the standards of noble Raiaeran households that might recognize me. The northern quarter was far from any Raiaeran mercantile or diplomatic interest, and hiding there drastically reduced my chances of being discovered.

I didn’t expect the Lord and Lady Alfheim to have any interest or joy in my survival. But I’d only been gone half a decade at that point. My older brother would probably have been intensely interested to learn my location. I didn’t desire in the least to be forcibly dragged back to Eluriand. Nor did I want the group I was just integrating into to know the truth of who I was.

“Just can’t afford a safe place, so I never stay put long,” I finally answered. Technically not a lie.

“We’ll keep you close, Kitten.” Cata came up and patted me warmly on the shoulder. “Unfounded looks after its own. You won’t starve or sleep in the streets while even one of us has food or shelter to offer.”

My eyes flicked over to the half-orc and the dark Alerian at the other side of the room. I doubted that offer held true for them. Still, I inclined my head gratefully. That I wasn’t even officially one of theirs yet and they were already treating me with more warmth and care than my own blood ever had meant more than I could ever say.

Rainbow’s couch ended up being lumpy and full of broken springs, but I found that gladly-given discomfort was a hundred times more desirable than cold and grudging luxury.