Chapter Thirteen #2
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 Street to 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 declaring The 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.”
“We need you for the Scrimban trials.”
Eleanor listened for the signs of the city guard arriving to break up this drunken brawl, but she didn’t hear a group of horses coming charging towards them, nor the heavy in-time stomping of a patrol.
She only heard the drunken insults thrown at the men in front of her and the constant noise coming from Barrow’s main street.
Perhaps it was too far into the Barrow or too late for the guards to care about what happened on the streets?
Such a crowd should have alerted them, yet she heard nothing.
Hidden in the shadows of the back street, she waited and watched the unfolding quarrel, remaining certain that the city guard could appear at any moment.
A faint dripping sound drew her attention from the drunken slurs being flung back and forth between the two men and their respective supporters, to the slowly drying black paint on the wall opposite her.
As Eleanor read the writing, she felt the hollow pit beckon inside her and swallowed uncomfortably.
She pushed off the stone wall, and realised someone had recently painted it, judging by its wetness and the fresh scent of paint she'd only just noticed.
Eleanor glanced up the alley, confirming that there was nobody was around; whoever painted this must have already left in a direction opposite to where she had just arrived from.
It was nothing new, having already witnessed this kind of writing in Breninsol, but she still expected the city guard’s full force to descend upon her.
She’d seen the writing on a wall when she’d first arrived in the city, which had said “protect yourselves”, and she’d foolishly thought it had referred to being vigilant.
However, upon hearing the gossip tonight, she had this unerring suspicion this writing was about witches.
Tonight’s wall writing was a new phrase.
It was a variation of what she'd previously seen and dismissed. As she read it again to commit the phrase to memory, realisation sunk in and a coldness washed over, so cold that if magic had existed like it once had, she’d have thought ice was running through her.
It wasn’t written in Solacian. It was a strange mix; the first part was in Solacian, but the main word was her native language.
The language, like her kind, had been stamped out and eradicated.
It was a language that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore, just like magic.
It’d barely taken a king’s reign to see to that.
Anyone caught speaking this ancient language during the Witch Hunter King’s reign was immediately declared a witch and killed.
Despite all the horrors and pains to eradicate this language from the world, she was now reading it hastily painted onto the backstreets of Breninsol.
Protect your glow.
Shouts and yells brought her attention back to the drunken altercation happening in the street. The situation had escalated to include the pub-goers who were ringing them and goading from both sides.
Eleanor shook herself as if that’d help to shake off the strange choice of words painted on the wall.
It doesn’t mean anything. There’s a reasonable explanation for this: just someone messing around, making a joke.
Yet, a small inner voice recalled Linnet’s necklace with the Air symbol and the candid conversation she had just overheard in Rummers.
The writing on the wall simply strengthened Eleanor’s resolve to have a proper fight.
She still had time, she knew her mark wouldn’t be leaving the pub yet.
Her pace faltered as she went to join in with the drunken pub fracas.
Two cloaked figures left the pub and avoided the chaotic fray that she was still tempted to join.
That wasn’t enough to stop her mid step, but the grip the larger figure had around the smaller cloaked figure’s arm was.
Eleanor wouldn’t have thought anything of it, except for the pair’s timing of leaving the pub, using the confusion of the tussle to their advantage.
Even though she couldn’t see their faces, their mannerisms showed through their cloaks.
They were hunched over, attempting to appear small and inconspicuous, while the smaller figure struggled to pull away from the larger one.
As the couple turned into the side street, a glint of silver in the larger figure’s free hand caught the pub’s lights.
Eleanor sighed, knowing she couldn’t join in the random brawl now. She stayed tight to the walls of the neighbouring buildings and slipped through the shadows after the pair.
As she passed the intensifying fight unnoticed, she heard the definitive crack of a bone breaking.
A garbled, howling rage that only an inebriated person could make followed her as Eleanor trailed down the darkened back street.
She was careful to remain on silent feet, avoiding the broken and discarded bottles and glass.
The pair had stopped further down the alley, which made her slow her pursuit and kept close to the wall.
The smaller figure’s cloak had slid off her head, uncovering the grimy face of a girl who stood with her back to the wall. Eleanor struggled to hear what the cloaked figure, larger and taller, was saying as yells and shouts filled the air behind her.
Eleanor edged closer, keeping herself low and tight to the wall, and stayed in the cloaked assailant’s blind spot for as long as possible.
“I told you. I don’t know,” the girl whimpered.
Eleanor couldn’t hear the response. It was muffled by their hood pulled low over their head, much like her own.
The situation gave her no indication the girl entered the dark alley willingly, the girl’s shaking hands and voice revealing her unwillingness to remain in this situation. Especially when she heard the response from the smaller figure as a small “ please. ” It was all she needed to hear to act.