Page 21 of The Shadow of Breninsol
The bartender slipped back into the accent she was using while serving other patrons at the bar, which matched theiraccents. The woman seemed harmless enough, but not enough to discount her from posing some sort of threat.
“Fen,” admonished the other bartender behind her in a hush tone.
“What? They think they can come in here—”
“Yeah. They can.” The old man hissed back, giving her a stern look to keep quiet.
Fen mumbled under her breath some more while she continued tidying behind the bar.
“No right,” the man slurred in the middle of the bar, speaking more to his drink than to anyone listening. “You wouldn’t catch me talking to my Nettie like that. Not right.”
The bartender, Fen, gave him a small smile as she finished putting away the mugs. “I know, Wilfred,” she said, throwing the dishcloth over her shoulder and leaned a hip against the bar. “Where is she anyways?”
“Don’t, Fen,” growled the older bartender.
“What? I’m only asking,” Fen replied defensively.
“You know she’s at Moonlight House,” the old bartender said, then ducked out the back.
And that was why Eleanor was sitting on a rickety wooden stool in a noisy pub rather than lying in her bed, alone, and with a bottle of whatever alcohol she got her hands on. She was here for that man, who was slurring his words into his mug. He was the one that was sweet on Linnet, the missing woman from the Moonlight House.
Prior to this, Eleanor had been to two pubs searching for this man. The first pub was in the Exchange, where she expected passable ale, but the reality, as so often happened, disappointed her. The ale had been watered down, criminally so. Eleanor’s only reward was to add a layer of acrid alcohol stench to her mouth and cloak.
The second pub had been closer to the Moonlight House, but it was too quiet a place, with watchful eyes and tight lips among the pub’s inhabitants.
Eleanor had given an exaggerated limp into this place; an apparent injury would hopefully explain away her muteness at the bar. Eleanor gambled by going to Rummers Pub, even though she was sorely tempted to call it a night, but she’d known she had a small window of opportunity to find the man, deep in his cups, drowning out his sorrow for his missing lover. He would soon end up Missing, or more likely, would leave the city, not wanting his memories to haunt him.
As she looked over at the troubled man, she knew he wouldn’t be moving on from this woman. He’d drink to stay in the memories that plagued him, until he woke with only wisps of smoke from his dreams of his lover. He wasn’t getting over her anytime soon. Eleanor knew a heartbroken man when she saw one.
The bartender had taken pity on him and kept refilling his mug. Sitting a few stools down was a man with his worn cloak pulled over his head, showing a hint of light hair. He’d only had two mugs that she’d seen and had been giving the depressed man a respectful distance to grieve, but prompting him with conversation to talk about his lover.
“Nah, not anymore, she’s not,” he mumbled into his drink. “Left, is what they tells me. But I know my Nettie and she’d not leave. Not me. We had a plan.”
“Fred,” the bartender said, her voice both kind and placating. Intoxicated men being sweet on a prostitute was not a new experience for her. Dreaming of running off into the sunset to have their happily ever after.
The man—Wilfred, or Fred to his friends—slammed his fist onto the sticky, nicked wooden bar, drawing a few interested eyes their way. “I tell you. Nettie’s not left.”
Fen had the good inclination to nod her head. “Alright, Fred. If you say so.” That seemed to appease the man before he nodded and returned to his drink.
“What makes you think that?” the hooded man asked.
His accent blended in with the locals of the Barrow and he was the only other inhabitant sharing the bar with them. She couldn’t see the man’s face as he kept his hood up, but his light hair caught the shine from the overhead candles, revealing short blond hair that fell over his forehead. When Eleanor had first sat down, she’d thought the blond man was Wilfred’s friend. However, he kept an eye on a table where two figures sat in the shadows, and Eleanor suspected the idle chatter served as the blond man’s excuse for his presence at the bar.
Tucked away from the warmth of the roaring hearth, the two men, the subject of the blond man's persistent, surreptitious glances, managed to attract her attention. The shadows, in conjunction with their cloaks, effectively hid their faces from view. She sensed their attention was riveted on the group of young aristocrats; their boisterous laughter and the clinking of glasses were the loudest noises in the pub.
As if Eleanor only needed to think of the two shadowed men, she felt a sudden shift from them, as she felt their gaze on her. The hood of the smaller of the two turned, and with a flash of dark eyes, she could have sworn he looked in her direction. Eleanor narrowed her eyes in the darkness of her hood, her spine tingling as the air seemed to tighten around her.
BANG!
The sound of the Wilfred’s drunken fist banging onto the bar snapped her attention back to the reason she was here.
“I knows her. My Nettie wouldn’t leave, not without this.” He slurred as he opened his palm and revealed a small silver necklace that revealed what he’d been clutching close to his chest.
“How did you get it, if it’s so precious to her?” the absent man asked.
“Found it stashed in her room at the Moonlight House.” Wilfred’s slurring was strengthening his accent. If Eleanor had not been familiar with the name of the brothel—pleasure house—she would have mistaken his words for “mouse,” instead of “house.” “Her coins were gone. No doubt the other girls at that place. Can’t blame them for that. They knows asss…ass well as me that she’d been taken. But they didn’t know aboutsss her spot.”
“Who’d bother to take her?” Eleanor was thankful that this man, whoever he was, had somewhat befriended Wilfred. Otherwise, she would’ve needed to talk to him, and that wasn’t something she was in the mood for tonight.
