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Chapter 45. Scarlet Letter, Scarlet Cord

by Pearl

Well I recall his parting words
Must I accept his fate
Or take myself far from this place
The dark of night was swiftly fading
Close to the dawn of day
Why would I want him just to lose him again
We'll rise above the scarlet tide
That trickles down through the mountain
And separates the widow from the bride

Stellaris curled up in the luxurious captain's bed and listened for the cabin door to open, and then the sound of pawsteps crossing the room, and then the shift of weight in the bed beside her. Troaz loved her. She knew he did. He called her his pearl. But the young vixen knew immediately that the calloused paw that caressed her arm did not belong to the captain. She gasped and rolled over to find herself staring into the face of the first mate, a weasel named Half-tooth.

"Now don' ye worry, missy. Ye jus' be still an' quiet an' let ol' Halfy 'ave 'is fun."

"NO!" Stella backed away from him as far as she could on the bed that was built into the wall of the cabin. "Go away! Leave me alone! Troaz'll kill you for this!"

Half-tooth laughed, a sound which mingled with the laughter of other beasts. They were looking through the still open door of the cabin. And there with them was their captain. He wasn't laughing like the rest of them. He looked solemn, angry, but he closed the door and left her to her fate.

One after another they came, it must have been half the crew, the vixen stopped counting after the first three or four. At first she struggled, screamed for Troaz, but her voice became horse and her fighting, useless.

Finally when she had given up hope, a strong paw came and lifted a rat off her by the scruff of its neck. "Out! She's had enough!" The captain threw the steersbeast out and locked the cabin door. He went to his desk and sat there with his head resting in his paws.

"Why did you let them do that?" she asked in a small and frightened voice, nothing like the usually loud, boisterous alto that had entertained creatures all over Mossflower country.

"I'm the captain. It's my ship. I can do whatever I want," was his harsh reply. It didn't sound like he wanted this at all.

"But I'm carrying your kit."

Pearl awoke, if she had even been sleeping, as the visions of seasons old events faded into the present. She tried to move only to find that she was tied paw and footpaw to the bed - Marcion's bed. The squirrel was sleeping in an armchair across the room.

She had been so stupid to think that he would just deliver Sandy to her as soon as she gave herself up to him. He didn't even seem to know that the kit was in the custody of his soldiers. He would continue to take what he wanted until he got tired of her and then he would have her killed.

The vixen only hoped that her distraction had been enough to allow Rekkua, Brull and Zula to get the captives free. Maybe they had Sandy with them, too. Pearl let this thought encourage her. Sandy, the kit of her heart, her one chance to redeem herself of past wrongs, could even now be on her way to safety. That would make all this worth it.

Paws pounded in the corridor outside the room and voices began to call out. "The prisoners have escaped!" "Fire!" "Get Marcion!" "The vermin are escapin'!" "The prison's on fire!"

The squirrel jumped up from his chair but he didn't reach the door before it sprang open. There stood Emma, panting as if she had run a great distance. "The vermin we had locked up for questioning, sir. They've escaped!"

"What? How did this happen?" Marcion yelled and ran past the wildcat without waiting for an answer.

Emma watched the woodland leader recede down the hallway, then rushed into the bedroom and began to untie her former employer. "Did he hurt you?"

"Only my pride." Pearl sat up and rubbed her wrists. "But I gave up on that a long time ago." She couldn't stop the flood of questions from pouring out of her. "What's going on? Why are you helping me? What happened to my friends? Where's Sandy?"

The catmaid shot a look at the still open door. She hissed at the vixen, "Shhh. There will be time to answer everything after we get out of here." She took the cord with which Pearl had been tied up and with one end still secured around a bedpost, threw the rest out the third story window. It didn't quite reach the ground. They would still have to jump a short way.

It was no time at all before the agile cat was over the sill and on her way down the lifeline to safety below. The vixen was a little more hesitant to trust her well-being to the thin cord.

"Ms. Pearl, come on," Emma called up to her. "We don't have much time."

Those cobblestones were awfully far down. Pearl tried to look anywhere but at the dizzying drop. She caught sight of the smoke pouring from the nearby prison. "Fates! I hope they made it out safe."

"I'm sure they're fine. Please, come now before anybeast sees us!"

"Seasons, help me," the vixen breathed, clambering over the sill and clutching the cord in her paws. Her footclaws dug into any purchase they could find on the smooth surface of the brick building. Pearl had dressed quickly but she hadn't bothered to put on her shoes in her haste. She tried desperately not to look down as the catmaid below called up encouragement. After what seemed like a long time, she came to the literal end of her rope.

"It's not far now, Ms. Pearl. Jump."

But she couldn't jump. The fox's paws were clamped fast around the rope with fright. "I can't!" she squealed.

"Yes you can." Emma's paw touched her footpaw. "I'm right here. You don't have far to go."

"Indeed," Pearl looked down and saw that the space she had left to drop was actually less than that she had jumped from Nakat's tower down to the roof of his mansion. She took a deep breath and let go but landed badly on her ankle. "AH!"

The wildcat was at her side in an instant. "Are you well enough to walk? We gotta get outa here."

"I think so." The vixen accepted the younger female's silent offer of help and leaned heavily on her former employee as they began to travel away from the rising smoke. Pearl couldn't help but peer back at the inferno.

"I'm . . ." Emma stopped a moment and gazed in the same direction as the vixen. Then she looked at the madam herself. "I'm sure Sandy wasn't in there when it went up."

"You mean they got her out?" Pearl couldn't contain her excitement at the words. She didn't realize she was digging her claws into the catmaid's arm.

"Yeah . . . sure . . . Ms. Pearl you're hurting me."

The vixen let go quickly. "Oh, Em. I'm sorry. I never meant to . . ." Something dawned on her and she stared hard at the wildcat. "I thought you were dead. Then Dirano said that he saw you, that you were well and that . . . you turned him over to the woodlanders."

All pain forgotten, Emma's face lit up with pride at the accusation. "Well you always said he was trouble, and you were right. He never loved me. It was all an act. I was just another toy to him. So I knew I had to get back at him and the Heirs provided the perfect opportunity. I . . ." She lost some of her bravado and smiled guiltily at her employer. "I knew you would send somebeast after me so I had to make it look like I had died. I didn't want you to get hurt, Ms. Pearl. You've done so much for me. You took me in off the street when I didn't have anybeast or anything. You taught me how to take care of myself and be independent."

Pearl thought of the things that she had taught this female. It was true that the girl would never go hungry as long as she had her looks and 'talents' but at what cost? Em was only about Zuzu's age when the vixen had found her all alone and begging for bread. If she had it all to do over again she would never . . .

"I did what I thought was best at the time." The madam frowned.

"You saved my life. What else could I do but make sure that your enemies couldn't hurt you anymore? It wasn't just Dirano I brought to them." The catmaid seemed to be searching hard for the older female's approval. "I told them about Nelda Higgins, too."

"You what?" Pearl blinked. She had no idea that her girls were even aware of the old resentment that ran between the two vixens.

Emma's smirk reminded the older female powerfully of herself in younger, more arrogant seasons.

"Right after I led them to Di, I sent the woodlanders to raid the Golden Brush."

Pearl rubbed at a spot between her eyes where a tension headache was just beginning to throb. She thought of poor Zula who had been dragged from her home in that raid. Then along with the little vixen she pictured Rekkua and the Sheriff and her other friends who had gotten mixed up in this terrible mess. She turned away from Emma and looked back at the fire.

The wildcat seemed to sense the vixen's change in mood. "Where were you supposed to meet back up with them?"

"I. . ." Now that she thought about it Pearl couldn't recall there being a discussion about what would happen after the escape. "I don't know. I was too concerned with them finding Sandy and . . . and my part of the bargain . . ."

"Well maybe they went back to Sarkleyet's. That's where you met them, isn't it?"

The vixen never wanted to encounter the mad marten ever again and she really couldn't imagine Brull or Rekkua wanting meet up with him either. Still, where else would they go? Neither of them were familiar with the town. "Yes. I suppose we could start there."

The two females met few creatures on the streets as they raced away from the blaze and toward the mansion on the outskirts of the town. The going was slow with Pearl limping on her sore ankle and Emma helping her along. They kept to the shadows, watching so closely for pursuers that they didn't at first notice the grizzly remains fixed to the gate of the estate.

Emma screamed.

Pearl, for all her squeamishness, couldn't seem to drag her eyes away from the mangled, bloodless body of the cat.

"Dirano," she whispered. She may not have liked him, but she would have never wished this fate on anybeast.

"I never wanted to . . ." the catmaid stepped forward and reached out a paw to touch the cold paw of her former lover. "I only wanted to teach him a lesson. I never. . ." There were tears in her eyes.

"You loved him." The vixen observed, placing a paw on her protégé's shoulder. Then she reached up and pulled down a note that had been pinned to the male's stained, blue coat. She read over it quickly and then passed it to Emma. Regret at having kept the two of them apart stabbed her like a physical pain. "He loved you, too. His final words . . . He spoke of you."

The catmaid clutched the bit of parchment to her heart. "What deranged beast would have done this?"

"I don't know." Pearl turned away from the scene. Her gaze was turned toward ships in the harbor, but her thoughts were far away. She was remembering another male, hanging not from a gate like this one but instead from the yardarm of his own ship. She never knew if Troaz had hung himself or if his crew had finally mutinied as they had been threatening to do.

There were plenty of deranged beasts in the world and the vixen had had the unfortunate opportunity to cross paths with too many of them.

"What exactly did you say to him?"

The voice that came from the other side of the gate sounded somewhat familiar to Pearl but she couldn't place it. "Em, come on." She dragged the younger female away only a moment before the timber door swung open.

The gruff answering voice was even more familiar than the first. "Just what I told you I was gonna say, Antonio, that we weren't going to play his game anymore and if he tried to force us we'd . . ."

Pearl didn't allow the wolverine to finish his statement. She hurtled out of her hiding place, disregarding her twisted ankle, and wrapped her arms around the big beast. "You're alive. We saw Dirano and I feared the worst."

"Yeah, well." Aras awkwardly dislodged himself from the vixen's embrace. "We didn't all make it out of that jungle."

"What do you. . ." The Madam's gaze traveled quickly over the beasts who were on their way out of Sarkleyet's gate. There was Rea and the stoat and even the snake . . . "Sybil! Where is she? What happened?"

None of the questers seemed to want to answer the question. They looked around at each other mutely until the serpent reared up and spoke. "Miss Sybil was taken by the same creature who . . ." She flicked her tongue in Dirano's direction.

Suddenly, a dark shape flew past Pearl and began attacking the wolverine.

"How could you? What did you do to him?" Emma broke down into sobs beating her paws against Aras's chest.

"Whoa now! It wasn't me." The gentle giant grabbed the wildcat's wrists and held them out so she could do no further damage. "It was a crazy sable called, Castille."

"Castille? Never met him but I've heard the name. Nasty piece of work, that one."

None of the gathered creatures had noticed the male fox sidling in among them.

"Do I know you?" Pearl asked him, thinking he did look somewhat familiar.

The fox grinned. "Well Ms. Pearl, your friend Brull calls me Pretty Ears and you'd certainly be welcome to do the same."