Fanuilh by Daniel Hood (ebook reader with highlight function TXT) 📗

and maybe trail him with one of my men. Mayhap we'll see if he has any pretty, sinful women in his life."

They left it at that, and Liam let Coeccias pay for the meal, arguing that since he would be facing a possibly murderous merchant the next day, he was doing far more than his share of the bargain. While Coeccias laughed over that, he left the quiet inn and hurried home through the rain.

Sleep was not as long in coming as the day before; in fact, it was all he could do not to drop off as soon as he stretched out on his pallet. There were, however, some things he wanted to think through, and he stayed awake for a few minutes, hands laced behind his head, staring at the pitted wooden beams over his head.

Taken together, the day could not in any way be considered a failure. His visit to Viyescu had provided him with an interesting possibility, and a line of investigation he had not imagined. That a woman of any kind could be involved fascinated him, though he found it hard to imagine Tarquin begetting children at his age. The vague memory of the flushed young thing on the beach that summer morning came back to him, and he turned it over in his head for a while.

He let it go with a sigh, thinking that however interesting it was, as a motive for murder it was less than adequate. More important was his new partnership with the Aedile, which promised him far more of a chance at discovering Tarquin's killer than anything he could have imagined. However simple the burly man looked, he was much shrewder than Liam had guessed, and he knew that Coeccias would make a better source of information on Southwark's inhabitants than Lady Necquer, who had enough distractions of her own to worry about.

In a sense, it was more important that he liked the Aedile. He felt at ease with him, able to joke and talk naturally, unconstrained by the notions and proprieties that kept him almost formal around Lady Necquer.

My luck again, he thought.

Pleased with the alliance, he considered the merchant, Ancus Marcius. From Coeccias's description of his highhanded and often brutal dealings, both in business and in private, Liam thought Marcius considered himself more of a trading prince than a mere merchant. The ship he had lost on the Teeth had been only one of many, but rumor had it that he was taking the wreck almost personally, and had even gone so far as to send threatening notes to several of the local temples, demanding more vigilant prayers and services on behalf of commerce.

Liam smiled in the dark at the man's arrogance, and thought that Marcius's own high self-opinion would make it easy to play the meek scholar in search of a position.

Nonetheless, he was not at all sure. that anything of worth would come out of the interview he would have to arrange the next day, unless he could somehow persuade Marcius to take a more than passing interest in him.

Fanuilh, he thought, might be able to help him there. Perhaps there was a spell of some sort ....

With a great and sudden yawn, he turned over and began to let sleep claim him, thinking about the dragon. He wondered why it wanted Tarquin's killer found so much. It would have been natural if the · creature were enraged, or wildly vengeful, or showing anything approaching emotion, but it betrayed no feelings of any kind. In fact, Fanuilh never seemed angry or amused or depressed or anything at all; it was just there, and following its own obscure purpose.

That night Liam had a dream he had not had in a long time, in which he stood helplessly by and watched his father's keep burned to the ground by the host of another lord. The building that was burning, however, was his landlady's, though the logic of the nightmare insisted it was his father's keep, and the miniature dragon flew crazily about through the smoke and flames, suddenly as huge as one of its larger cousins.

When he woke up to the leaden knocking of rain on his window, he dismissed the dream, which had recurred on and off for most of his adult life, along with its strange new additions.

"I thought I'd left that one far behind," he muttered, dragging himself from his warm bed to face the wet and dreary day.

Chapter 6

IT WAS NOT wise of you to tell the Aedile, Fanuilh thought at Liam, after he had brought meat from the kitchen. Soaked to the skin despite his heavy cloak and unhappy at having had to make the ride all the way out to Tarquin's house in the early morning rain, Liam snapped back.

"Well, there wasn't much I could do otherwise! He could have made it very difficult to go on! He's not as stupid as I thought, you know."

Yes, I know.

Irritably shaking out his cloak, Liam went on. "Besides, I would have had to tell him once I found out, wouldn't I? Unless you were thinking of having me search out Tarquin's murderer just for the personal pleasure of knowing. Justice would have to be served, right?"

The dragon's thought formed slowly.I suppose ... perhaps I did not think it out completely.

"Well, I did, and I think I didn't have any choice about telling him, and I think I have a much better chance of finishing this business with his help. And it's done, so there's no use arguing about it."

The dragon did not reply, lying on the table and giving its full attention to the meat Liam had brought. He tried to wring some of the wetness from his cloak but gave up finally, hooking it over one of the shelf uprights.

"Since you're so interested in giving advice," he said, "I don't suppose you have any idea how I can interest Marcius enough to gain a little of his time."

The thought that came back