Below the level they were on was another, mirroring the one above, just… slightly dingier. There were taverns, and laundries and bake shops and all sorts of things any city had, but the light was ever so slightly dimmer, the stone that the 'buildings' - could one call them buildings if they were not built but hollowed out? - were carved out of was rougher as though whoever had excavated had just not bothered polishing it down as they had above. The stairs at this point doubled back to another flight down, this one fairly well lit and still wide enough for six or seven dwarves to walk side by side down. This in turn led to yet another level, this one even less refined than the one above, stinking of rotting flesh and ammonia, the telltale sign of a tannery. The stairs ended there, and the two of them were forced to walk across the length of the city, the porous stone of the promenade red-brown beneath their boots. The reason for this became apparent as they passed by the great tannery, boasting nearly hairless hides stretched on frames as far back into the side of the cavern as Ten could see, and passed by what must have been an abattoir. They could not see from the outside what creatures were within, but from the steady trickle of red from underneath one double door, the fate they awaited was clear. Pigeon stopped to sniff at the blood, but resisted the urge to roll in it, for which Ten was grateful. At the far end, underneath where they had entered the city, Ten was disappointed to see that there was not another staircase, but that they would have to walk the entire perimeter to get to it.

"Certainly not built for convenience," Zevran muttered as they took the hairpin turn, which brought them past chandlers and soapmakers and their telltale smells of rotting animal fat and various chemicals - likely also of animal extraction. Ten hoped that the smell would be less overpowering as they reached the next level, which was even less well lit. Those hopes were dashed as they emerged on what looked to be the lowest level of the city and, from its smell, also where the whole place's sewage was dealt with. This one, at least, boasted a bridge over the great chasm - whose bottom they still could not see - in the center, and let them miss spending twenty or so minutes walking through the thick of it. To the left was a passage that led out of the main part of the city, to what looked like a different cavern entirely. The air through there, thank the Maker, was less foul and, as they proceeded, they saw that each footstep was kicking up a good amount of dust.

"Can't miss it," Ten murmured to herself.

The tunnel opened up after a few dozen yards, and she could see that the neighborhood was nestled into a cavern that looked small only because of the sheer size of the one they had just left.

While she certainly had never been to this place, or really anything like it in her life, something about Dusttown felt familiar. They way everyone took a look at them, said nothing, then went back about their business, unlike the denizens of the upper levels who had downright gawked if not accosted them the way the girl Dagna had. That was it. The mark of a people who just had too much going on in their own lives to deal with anything strange.

Unclear on what exactly they ought to be doing, they settled on sitting down on the base of a fountain in what looked to be the center of town, and watched. The fountain itself was worn, but looked oddly fine, boasting carvings of intricate patterns and featuring the nearly obscured faces of dwarves Ten imagined were at one point quite important. She sat there and observed, watching a group of women gathered around a stream of water that cascaded down the far side of the canyon, gossiping while they filed tin tanks and buckets. It was as though there were a parade of them, in and out of the structures carved into the cavern, over to the stream, then back, buckets balanced on heads and shoulders. On closer inspection, what Ten had taken for 'buildings' like those upstairs looked to actually be parts of a larger structure. Probably fine houses, hacked up into flats as the population expanded and grew more destitute. Tunnels scurried away from the center in every direction, clearly dug to alleviate the pressure at a time when the place was bursting at the seams, though it seemed that time was no more, given the number of windows without any light in them. The square, though, was busy. She could hear the telltale clank of hammer on anvil somewhere in the distance, smell the yeast of bread being baked or beer being brewed - or both - on the still air as well. Perhaps it was a slum, but it was alive, and functioning.

Pigeon let loose a low, almost imperceptible growl. Not turning her head, but paying attention to her peripheral vision, Ten saw a gaggle of children, the tallest of whom might come up to her waist, standing at the other end of the fountain. Ha. They think they're going to pick my pocket. Adorable. She pet Pigeon behind the ears and bade her stay still.

She pretended not to see them, knowing that the kid was in for a rude awakening. If he was lucky all he'd get is a bite from sharp mousy teeth. If he wasn't, who knew. Ten was a little bit curious as to what the witch might try, though she hoped that since she was in a pocket that was, currently, flat against the outside of Ten's left thigh, that it wouldn't involve fire, electricity, or anything caustic.

It was, indeed, just a bite. The kid yelped and jerked his hand back, sticking one finger in his mouth. Ten turned slowly and cocked her head at him. "Next time ask nicely," she said, taking a coin from where she'd stashed a fair few in her bodice, and flipping it at him.

"Sorry miss," the kid mumbled.

One of his friends, this one missing two front teeth grabbed the coin off the ground. "Wait, this isn't real money."

"That's a surfacer coin," another, whose head had been shaved haphazardly and was growing in in patches of varying lengths, "I saw one once. My pa said he got it as a tip from a Grey Warden on his way to the Deep Roads."

"You're surfacers?" the luckless pickpocket asked, wrinkling his nose and climbing up on the base of the fountain to get a good look at the strangers.

"I… ah… thought that would be obvious," Ten said, leaning a little bit back, uncomfortable with how close the kid's face was getting to hers.

"You know, us not being dwarves, and all," Zevran added when the child was still clearly not understanding anything.

"What are dwarves?" asked the toothless kid.

Ten and Zevran looked at each other. Well, is it that strange? He's never met anyone who's not a dwarf, has he. Probably never laid eyes on anyone outside this neighborhood. If I'd lived somewhere with only elves, never seen a human or a qunari in my life and nobody explained to me how the world is divided, would I think of myself as an elf? Probably not. I'd be a person. Everyone else would be a person until someone told me otherwise.

"It's what we surfacers call you," Ten said, trying to be diplomatic.

"Us in Dusttown?"

"No, you in Orzammar."

The pickpocket stepped back, thankfully, his face processing. For the first time, Ten noticed that what she had taken for a smudge of the ubiquitous and eponymous dust was a tattoo on the kid's right cheekbone. She couldn't really describe the design if you'd asked her to. It didn't look like any sort of runic writing, though she imagined that it was a symbol signifying something. She glanced over the others, and they all had that same one, below their right eyes. Zevran had noticed it too, she saw him absently fingering the ink on his own cheekbone.

"How's he a surfacer?" the pickpocket asked, pointing at Zevran, "He's got ink on his face, like us."

"These mean something else," Zevran replied, running a hand down the markings which traced the left side of his hairline from temple to chin.

"What do they mean?" asked the skinheaded kid.

"I do not know," Zevran admitted, "They were my mother's markings. I got them in her honor."

Ten filed that information away

"Well your mother was casteless then Or she escaped the Legion of the Dead. Nobody else has ink on their face," the pickpocket said.

The kid with no hair rolled their eyes, clearly the brains of the bunch. Ten had seen and run with little gangs of delinquents like these. There was the ringleader, she assumed that was the pickpocket, and then there was the strategist, the one who whispered in his ear. When she'd been a kid, Ioan had been the ringleader, Ten had been the brains, and first Morran, then Morran and Soris, then the both of them and Shianni for good measure had played the role of the toothless kid hanging back, "There's no casteless on the surface, stupid."

"Well, it's not exactly the same, but there are certainly parallels," Ten said, "Did someone put you up to picking pockets? You're what, seven?"

"I'm nine!" the pickpocket declared.

Privately, Ten had guessed eleven, but, as she had learned over the past six months, she was not always very good at guessing how old humans were, and so she certainly had no idea how to guess at the age of a developing dwarf.

"Right. You know, doing that around here isn't a very good way to make money," she said.

"How would you know?"

"Because I used to pick pockets," she said, "It's only worth it when people have gold and are too dumb to protect it. And the thing about the Dusttowns of the world is that the only gold the powers that be allow in here is what the honest folk make in wages, so there ain't much and folks clutch it tight."

"Have you been to Dusttown before?"

"Close enough," Ten said, "I'm from a place like this. Far away. On the surface. But, some things are the same everywhere. There just isn't enough to go around here. The real money, the real gold is with the people outside, and they make sure that as little as possible trickles in, and then rely on all of you to be too busy robbing and cheating and murdering each other over it, so you won't band together and go after the folks as have the keys to real hoard. What does your dad do, kid?"

"He's a nug herder," the pickpocket said.

"And how much does he make?"

"The boss pays him five silver an hour," the pickpocket said.

"Do you get to eat the nugs he herds?"

"No."

"I hear that one. What were you going to do with what you took from my pocket?"

"I was going to bet on the deepstalker fights and make a hundred gold so my mam could stop working in the cesspits and we can eat something more than slime mold," the pickpocket said.

"Blech. Slime mold," the toothless and skinheaded kids said in unison, spitting into the dust of the road.

"I do not know this term. What is slime mold, manita?" Zevran asked.

"I don't know but those are the two grossest words in existence so when used in tandem the result cannot be very nice," Ten replied, and then turned back to the kids, "What are the deepstalker fights?"

"Exactly what it sounds like, miss," the toothless kid said, "Two of the baddest deepstalkers you can find, you set em against each other, winner takes all?"

"And… ah, what's a deepstalker?"

"Come on, I'll show you," the pickpocket said, "For another gold coin."

"Here's three. One for you, one for each of your friends," Ten said, holding out the proffered pieces. Each kid snatched theirs from her palm. The bald kid took hers - or his? - and bit it, grinning when she realized it didn't matter what king's profile graced the surface, gold was gold was gold.

"All right, come on."

The two elves followed the dwarven children out past the edges of what passed for the town square into one of the tunnels off to the side. This tunnel didn't appear to be built up, rather it looked like it had only been recently hewn out of the raw rock. They followed the kids for about half an hour, down, then up, then down, until they came to another cavern. The tunnel spit them out onto a walkway above a tunnel lower down.

"That down there's the Deep Roads," the pickpocket said.

Ten resisted the urge to just sit her ass down. So that's where I'm going to die.

"Deepstalkers ain't dangerous one by one, but in a group, they'll strip the flesh from your bones," the toothless kid said.

Straining her eyes, Ten could make out the shape of creatures scurrying about ten feet below them in the tunnel. In the dark, their silhouettes moved like game birds, their heads bobbing with every step. She could not make out a color, but they looked like they might be a bit larger than a large chicken or a bit smaller than a small turkey, though unlike their cousins, their hindquarters were bereft of feathers, looking slim and muscled.

"And they roam the Deep Roads, eh?" Ten asked.

"Aye," the toothless kid replied.

"But you capture them and make them fight?"

"Folks as have the stones for it raise them," the bald kid added, "Janek Syasko's got a flock a few tunnels over. The meat's all right. Eggs are… tolerable. Pain in the hole to open, but good when you're hungry. Thing is, the males can't stand being close to each other. They'll fight to the death soon as they lay eyes on another."

"How do you tell male from female?" asked Ten. Janek Syasko? She thought about her friend Dima Syasko who bounced at the Pearl. She'd always just assumed he was full human, but now that she thought about it... he wasn't a tall man, five four on a good day, and certainly could shave in the morning and have the beginnings of a respectable beard by night fall. File that one away for later.

"Color of the scales around their eyes. Males are blue, females are brown," the bald kid said, "Can't see it here, but in the light it's plain as plain."

"And the deepstalker fights, anyone can wager on them?" asked Ten.

"Anyone with coin."

"Who runs them?"

"That'd be the Carta," said the toothless kid.

"What's the Carta?" asked Zevran.

"Waste management," said the bald kid, a bit too hastily.

"Private security," the toothless kid added.

"Collections," the pickpocket announced.

Dumbass syndicates giving themselves names. Easy to spot. Easy to break. Good news for me, I suppose.

"Whatever it is, they take care of us," the bald kid concluded.

"Right," said Ten, "Is there a person who does that? You know, maybe comes around with some coin or a… deepstalker roast on holidays?"

"Well it used to be Beraht," said the pickpocket, "But I don't know where he's gone. Jarvia came by with a soup bone yesterday, though."

"Jarvia," Ten repeated, "Is Jarvia a man or a woman?"

"Woman," said the pickpocket.

Oh thank the Maker. Women usually don't get into organized crime for the wrong reasons, after all. I'm sure she and I can at least have a civil conversation, if not strike a bargain.

"And she runs the deepstalker fights?" Ten asked.

"I just said she did," the pickpocket confirmed.

"Where do they take place?"

"After four bells. I'll take you there," said the pickpocket, "For another surface coin."

When Ten had not been much older than the ruffians before them, she had Ioan had snuck into a basement arena underneath a warehouse on the docks where the man she now knew as Don Cangrejo ran a clandestine and highly illegal cockfighting ring. It was a brutal affair, but the crowd - both elfin and human with a few dwarves scattered throughout - was too intent on their bets on the two birds going at each other in the center ring to notice the two children among their number. They'd intended to pick pockets, knowing that folks in a gambling mood would probably not miss a few coins anyway but instead got sucked right into the macabre spectacle. For their troubles, a farmer with a broad Bannorn accent noticed the hollowcheeked urchins, and handed them the corpse of his losing bird on his way out with a smile and a wink. They'd plucked and roasted the unfortunate animal over a trash fire in the alley and devoured the whole thing between the two of them. It must have been bland and gamy, but to two kids who very rarely knew the feeling of a full belly, it had been downright euphoric.

"You can have the coin," said Ten, "But you aren't coming. You are going home to your respective mams and going to bed early. Just tell me where they are."

"Fine," the pickpocket said, "It's down the tunnel just opposite here. They'll probably try to extort you at the door, but you seem like you can afford it."

"Good," Ten said. She handed another coin each to the pickpocket and the toothless kid, who grinned, thanked her, and ran along back towards the main square. The baldheaded one lingered, though, clearly still curious about the strangers.

"So what's your deal?" the bald kid asked skeptically, "You just come down here, taking coins out from betwixt your tits like you've got a vault down there, asking about the deepstalker fights? Now that you're standing, you're obviously a surfacer, but you're not one of the normal ones. Never seen a surfacer with ears like yours."

"Well you're not wrong about it. What do you know about the surface?" Ten asked.

"Not a whole sodding ton," the bald kid said. They weren't that much taller than the other two, but Ten got the sense that they were older. Old enough to use "sodding" in a sentence. "Tell me about it."

"Well, there are casteless there too. I'm one of them," Ten said, phrasing it in a way she thought they would understand.

"But you don't have ink on your face. And his ink's not like ours. How do they know to keep you out of the main city?"

"There are… other things about me that give me away."

"You walk like a casteless," the bald kid admitted, "Like you're always trying too hard to remember to stand up straight."

"How does one become casteless?" asked Ten, "And how do they tell the difference?"

"That's what the ink's for. You're casteless if your folks were. Well my mam in my case. My pa isn't casteless. He's a smith. Lives somewhere… up there," the kid gestured vaguely at the ceiling, "With my wee brother."

"So tell me, how come you are casteless if your papa is not?" Zevran asked. His voice was uncharacteristically gentle. He leaned down to speak with the child, whose head barely came up to the middle point of thigh, and spoke softly, as though afraid he would scare her.

"Well I'm a girl, obviously."

Not obvious at all.

"What does being a girl have to do with it?" he asked.

"Well, duh, my brother inherits my dad's caste and I inherit my mam's," she said, "Isn't that how it works everywhere?"

"We don't really have castes," Ten said, straining her memory for what she'd learned of the local culture. The class lines, while rigid up above, were carved in stone down below much like the rest of the place. An elfin drudge could become a queen's advisor, however unusual it was. But had she been a dwarf… well, she would have had to follow her mother's trade. Which I suppose I did, after all. If she'd had a brother he'd have to be a woodworker like her father, and all of Cedrin's sons would have had to be smiths. Then again, she supposed both her father and her uncle would have been slaves if they'd followed the rules and just accepted their lot in life, "Not in the same way at least. It's more about the sort of job you can have, not the exact one."

"So how do you decide who does what?"

"Some people get to choose. Some people just… slot in where they're needed, I guess," Ten said.

"Sounds messy."

"It can be."

"So what are you, then?"

"I'm in waste management," said Ten.

"Private security," Zevran said.

Realization washed over the bald girl's face and she cracked a grin, "That's why you've got so much gold, isn't it. And why you need to speak with Jarvia. So where are your heavies?"

"We left them at home. Show of good faith," Ten said, "It is, after all, very rude to show up to another person's territory with too much muscle."

"Right. How come you got to leave your… Dusttown?"

"Now that's a long and complicated story. And, to be honest, I don't think you should take the way I got out as any kind of inspiration. There was quite a lot of murder involved."

"Who'd you kill?"

"A few banns," Ten said, "Lords."

"Really!"

"Well it's like I said, there's no real point in robbing your neighbors when they're all just as poor as you. You've got to go after the ones as are keeping you poor in the first place," Ten said, "But that'll be a few years for you, won't it."

The kid nodded, but Ten could see the gears turning behind her dark eyes.

"Now, you'd better run along before your mam wonders where you've gone." Ten produced a final sovereign and handed it to the kid, "And get something nice to eat, all right? A girl can't live on slime mold alone."

The kid nodded, snatching the coin from her palm and scurrying off down the tunnel before the tall stranger could change her mind.

When she was sure she was gone, Ten reached into her pocket and let the mouse that was Morrigan crawl into her palm. She held her up at eye level to her and Zevran.

"So what do you think?" she asked.

The voice, which was certainly Morrigan's, sounded less in her ears than in her head. At some point, Ten had realized that there was just no way that the witch could talk like a human while in animal form, and then concluded that whatever conversation they had while she was a creature must be aided by some kind of magic. "I think it's a good start. After all, you know better than I do that those at the bottom of the barrel know quite a bit more about those at the top than vice versa."

"I'm glad it meets your approval. So how do you want to play this? You're obviously welcome to stay in my pocket and listen."

"I think I'd like to participate," Morrigan said.

"All right," said Ten, and made to put her down.

"No," the witch corrected her, "Not like that. I'm curious about the deepstalker fights."

"That's where we're going, in… a few hours I guess," Ten said, "So I'm going to put you down because if you turn back into yourself in my hand I might just drop you over the edge into the Deep Roads."

"I mean I want to be in the fights," said Morrigan.

"I think she intends to turn into a deepstalker," Zevran said.

"Score a point for the foreigner," Morrigan said approvingly.

"You…. what?" Ten asked. Well, I guess it's not that insane.

"What in our history together makes you think I'm not interested in a bit of bloodsport?"

"Right," Ten said, "But you'll forgive me if I don't really want you transforming into one of those in my hand either."

"I don't know how yet. I've only seen them in passing. The kid said they ate them here, so I suggest we go, procure a dead one, and eat it. Then I'll know exactly how."

Ten and Zevran looked at each other. This is weird right?

Oh I don't know. Why not?

All right, fair enough.

"Sure, why not," Ten said, "I suppose it's close to lunchtime anyway."