The Savage

Part 1: Chapter Seven: Meave

Beal wasn't named such until well after the Age of the Conqueror. It was first called Baile nan Tunialean which literally meant, city of tunnels. Tunnels, both naturally occurring and man made, dozens of them traveled out from beneath the port city into the surrounding lands. The Mathairs taught that the first peoples lived in the caverns. As their way of life evolved, they built houses over the openings of the caves they once called home. When shipping trade began the matriarchs collectively chose to change the name of the city and keep the tunnels it concealed a secret from the outside world.

Magic was cultivated to conceal and protect the tunnels. Some families used them to profit their business and smuggle in contraband. Others would use them to sneak criminal family members out. Most used them as root cellars. Houses with tunnel access were passed down as part of family tradition, staying with the same kinsfolk for generations. Very few of these families had survived Meadoc's initial purge of Beal.

The invasion came from both land and sea through the fog of the night. Foreign soldiers in black mail, black boiled leather and black masks covering all but their eyes, swept through the dank town. The homes with tunnel access were targeted. The families were rounded up and corralled into cages on the ships. No one had heard from them since. With those homes empty, they were turned into barracks for higher ranking officers. Not all the homes were taken over, a few were missed.

It was in one of these overlooked homes, that girls of the most common appearance rented their room. It was the attic they stayed in. Consisting of, one narrow bed, a wash stand, a desk and a wood burner. A large window opened out onto a balcony that overlooked the street. One of the girls sat on this balcony, the large window flung wide open, smoking a long pipe. The other, who looked identical to her twin sister, was curled up in the bed, under a thin heavily patched blanket. The twins were willowy, with warm brown hair and hazel eyes, and plain. Everything about the way the twins looked was easily forgettable, which suited them both.

Wrapped in her own blanket, Meave blew smoke rings into the still dusk air. Due to the curfew, the street below was mostly empty, except for a few soldiers, Olcs the Faun people called them. She watched them mill about, looking for people to harass and beat.

From the bed in the corner, Sinead coughed.

Meave rolled eyes, "I'm out on the balcony for god's sake, you can't even smell it."

"I can to! You know it bothers my throat. You're not even supposed to smoke up here anyway." Sinead insisted.

"I'm not smoking in there, I'm smoking out here." Meave pointed out.

Sinead didn't respond, she merely coughed again and covered her face with the blanket.

Grumbling, Meave smothered the red ember in her pipe and laid it at her feet, resuming her vigil. Across the street and two houses down was a Bordy house. It hadn't always been a Bordy house, it had been a cobblers, but that had been before. Before the curfews, before the soldiers went through and slew all the messenger birds, before they outlawed the Duthaichi language, before they began walling in the city and before they started shipping people away.

The shop windows that had once displayed boots and shoes, now had a woman in it, draped in silk, and posing. She leaned against the warped glass trying to entice the soldiers as they walked by. She looked young, perhaps the same age as the twins and they had just entered their seventeenth year.

The house was getting more traffic than usual, Meave observed. Which meant there would be less soldiers on the street.

"Did Sigrite say when he normally visits?" Sinead asked from under the blanket.