Page 32 of The Shadow of Breninsol
It was as if their conversation was as mundane and innocent as talking about the weather.
“Witches have done more for us than we realise and what thanks have we shown them? The Purge where we hunted them until there are no more. Bring them back, I say,” Scraggly Beard said. Eleanor felt increasingly uneasy with his rising voice and the conversation’s direction. This type of talk was dangerous…wasn’t it?
There had been a time when witches had been hunted and feared. Now, no-one around this group seemed fazed by theirconversation. What had changed? When did people discuss witches openly without facing the full force of the city and king’s guard? Granted, they were in the Barrow and the king likely didn’t care what was being said in the seedy part of his city…but still, there’d be some sort of repercussion for this dangerous talk. Wouldn’t there?
“And do what? Would they be any better than the king?” The scarred man huffed into his mug.
Scraggly Beard next to him seemed to consider his friend’s question as he scratched at his wiry beard, making it somehow untidier. “Can’t do any worse.”
Eleanor snorted into her beer and begged to differ.
“Witches are long gone. No use wishing for something that isn’t around anymore.”
“Mark my words, lad, witches are among us, and they have been for some time,” Burly Man declared.
The man continued to rub at his beard. “Pfft. Flew over the Three Sisters, did they?”
“Not bloody likely,” mumbled the scarred man.
Eleanor’s ale went cold in her throat at the mention of the mountain range that ran along the length of Solas. It’d once been average sized mountains, until the Witch Queen’s final act damned her people, and she had used her immense power to raise the Three Sisters. Eleanor gritted her teeth. There was no use in thinking about the other side. This was where she lived now, and it didn’t matter which side of the mountain she was on. It was all the same country. More ale helped her forget the sullen thought.
“If witches are among us, then why haven't we seen any?” the man with the now bedraggled beard asked.
“Why does anyone wait for anything? They're waiting for something. Something big and whatever that is, we want no part in it.”
The younger man snorted. “Like what, old man?”
“Dunno, but mark my words, it’s something we can’t even understand. Something beyond our mortal understanding.”
A crack sounded from elsewhere in the pub and Eleanor tightened her hand on her beer, images threatening her. She drained the mug to push those unwanted memories away, but she didn’t need to start a fight here. She liked this pub.
Eleanor stood and put a hand on the table to steady her.Shit.The beer was stronger than she’d realised. Staying away from any of the lower beams, Eleanor passed the table that’d grown crowded with people gambling. Someone flung down some cards in annoyance at some unlucky bastard’s loss. She dipped her head and pushed open the pub’s wooden door, the night air momentarily shocking her with the contrasting briskness from the smoky, stifling pub.
Despite slipping twice on the wet cobbles, Eleanor ascended the slope to the street above and wove through the dark Barrow streets in search of a livelier, noisier pub.
Eleanor kept an ear out for anyone foolish enough to follow her, but there were no footsteps hurrying after her. Eerie nocturnal sounds emanated from the well-populated area, with distant shouts from domestic late-night quarrels, and dogs barking. Eleanor shook her head to clear the distant screams, that were carried on the wind from the Sanatorium in the Exchange andreached her ears in the Barrow. There would be a death tonight and she didn’t need an echo of an extinct spirit’s mournful song to remind her. If magic had still existed like it had once thrived, she would have expected to come across the eerie blue lights of corpse candles floating outside a house and trail the way to the graveyard. That deeply buried part in her mourned that she’d probably never see such a sight in her lifetime. Eleanor sucked in a sharp cold breath, to clear her head of the thick beer.
Eleanor took a path from the streets and through the dark alleys. These back passageways were narrower than the main streets but varied in width. Some paths were spacious for three people walking side by side, while others were only wide enough for one person. Their main purpose was to give a rear entrance to properties. But Eleanor had spent time mapping the alleys throughout Breninsol, and even though it would take her all night, she could traverse from the depths of the Barrow to the peak of the Centre. She rarely encountered anyone in the alleys, but when she did, their footsteps rebounded against the narrow stone walls, which gave her enough of a warning to change her course.
Empty washing lines criss-crossed from windows above, ready to be filled with fresh laundry in the morning. Time and weather faded the illegible painted writing on the stone walls, weeds sprouted in certain crevices, and missing cobblestones had left muddy patches. Eleanor pulled her cowl over her mouth and nose to not smell the mixture of piss, mildew, and beer, and picked up the pace of her brisk walk to a run. The sound of her boots echoed and followed her in the unnerving silent din of the night.
In no time, she reached the midst of the Barrow, where a continuous flow of people entered and exited pubs, and various establishments were open at odd hours. She kept King Streetto her right as she navigated the narrow back streets and their various twists and turns with ease.
Over time, the city had grown up and built on itself, especially in this part of Breninsol. Formerly spacious residences were now a cramped and higgledy-piggledy collection of haphazardly arranged buildings, varying in size and form. Some houses had been hastily constructed, finished them with crooked windows, doors, or roofs, and mixing stone and wood in their construction. While others had been shoved between well-built buildings, looking like they needed the neighbouring buildings to hold up their drunken structures. Those who knew where to look saw the marks of time.
At the mouth of a side-street, Eleanor halted when a violent crash of shattering glass broke through the night’s rolling rumble. A two-storey pub stood on the corner of a crossroads, with a large paint-flecked sign on the front of the building, proudly declaringThe Grape. Beneath the sign, littering the cobbled streets, lay the source of the smashing sound.
The pub’s size revealed its age, predating most of the buildings on the street. The pub must have been inherited over the generations, evident from its unchanged state. It must be a profitable establishment, not only because of the number of patrons Eleanor could see were inside, but also because of its prime location. The Grape sat at the cross-roads between the heart and the fringes of the Barrow. To travel any further meant entering the Exchange, where the markets and merchants were located. If Eleanor continued along this street, she’d come to The Ladies Grace.
A clear ringing jeer spilled through the broken window, and light from the pub’s murky upper windows helped to illuminate the street. Then the pub’s door slammed open, punctuating the yelling from inside. Two men practically fell out of the door, their boots crunching on the smashed glass.
“You what?” one of the men slurred and then stumbled.
“You heard me. Night Hag scum,” his opponent slurred equally back.
Eleanor smiled to herself that she’d found the fight she wanted. Despite their intoxicated state, their size would give them an advantage, and there would be two of them. They’d have the numbers. Before she could move, the arrival of more men outside interrupted the men’s drunken slurs; some came to support their comrades, others to form a cheering crowd.
“Don’t hurt your hands, Hob.”
