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

his sister confronted the evil duke who had hounded them throughout the play, beating off his minions until they faced the villain himself. There was a long, tense display of swordplay between Lons and the duke, filled with flourishes and narrow escapes, and the crowd gasped and shouted over each pass.

Duel or no, Liam could not take his eyes off the princess, who spent the scene pressed against the proscenium arch, watching in palpable anxiety. Her sheer dress disarrayed to display just enough, her breast heaving with intense fear, she was perfect—or so she seemed to Liam. He believed her completely, and was only vaguely aware of it when Lons finally triumphed. Blood spurted high, more magical illusion, and the hero let fly with a well-chosen epithet on his evil foe, but Liam was watching the princess.

The crowd shouted and cheered madly, but the victory was only conveyed to Liam by the princess, by the delicate way she turned her head at the death blow, and the noble way she forced herself to look on the bloody corpse.

How often he had seen people look on the dead like that! While the rest of the audience noisily celebrated the conclusion, he sat enthralled and deeply impressed. She was magnificent; looks and figure aside, she was amazing, an artist such as he had never suspected the theater to hold. He doubted Lons had carried off his reaction to the death nearly as well.

She was—

Vision died, the theater went black, and for a split moment he thought the illusion-maker must have failed. Then he knew he was blind. His hands bunched convulsively, fiercely gripping the cloth of his breeches. He strangled a scream, and groaned instead.

His breath came in quick hisses, and he knotted the cloth above his knees over and over again.

Calm.

The thought crashed down on his fear, but the terror of blindness rose up again and he groaned a second time ...

The hero is the minstrel.

... and then a third, as the blackness swirled and resolved itself into the stage and the theater, and Coeccias's face. The beard and the reflected illusion-maker's light hid his concerned look in a diabolical mask, but Liam barely noticed.

"Truth, Rhenford! What's amiss?"

"The minstrel," he grated, lurching to his feet in the haze of anger that washed away his paralyzing fear. "The hero is the minstrel," he finished, and bolted out of the box towards the stairs, brushing off Coeccias's hand.

In the street he marched grimly towards his quarter, oblivious to the rain.

"Bastard," he muttered. "Damned bastard in my head." He ground the curses and worse between his teeth, bringing them in and flinging them silently at the dragon.

Blinded me! The bastard!

Fanuilh did not respond, but Coeccias's heavy hand on his shoulder brought him to a stop.

"Truth," he said,— honestly confused, "I knew not whether to stay or follow. What's possessed you, Rhenford? Is that minstrel Tarquin's assassin?"

"No, no, I don't know," Liam scowled fiercely, unable to explain. "I'm not sure."

"ls he or no? What know you?" The Aedile's voice sank into suspicion, and he cocked his head to look at Liam from the side. "What aren't you telling?"

"Nothing," Liam hastened to assure him, trying to hold onto his anger. "There's just something I've remembered. I don't know whether it'll mean anything. You'd think it ridiculous." Coeccias started in heatedly, but Liam cut him off. "I've just got to check on it. Look, have one of your constables find out where Lons lodges, and meet me tomorrow at the White Grape at noon. We'll go over and see him."

He winced when he realized he had said Lons's name, because there was no way he could have known it. Coeccias must have caught it too, but Liam did not give him a chance. He swung around and ran off into the rain.

"Rhenford!" He heard the Aedile bellow behind him, and then: "Damn!" But the curse sounded resigned, and he kept on, trotting through the rain.

In the hopes of dredging up his dying anger, he deliberately recalled the sight, or lack thereof, of complete blindness. He had been hung over and ill the first time, in no condition to appreciate the experience. It had been different in the theater. The complete absence of visual input—even the normal phosphorescence of closed eyes—had been terrifying, and the damned. beast had inflicted it on him without a moment's hesitation.

By the time Liam reached the stable, the bells were tolling midnight, and be had given up on rebuilding his. anger to its first flaming height. Still, he pounded on the door until the night lad woke and grudgingly let him in. A silver coin wiped the sleep from the boy's eyes, and by saddling Diamond himself Liam improved the lad's mood tenfold.

Driven by the last of his ire, he made the cold, wet trip out to Tarquin's, and shuddered as he led his mount down the narrow path in the cliff, imagining the belltowers in Southwark ringing one o'clock.

The sea was. an indistinct mass to east and west, though a pier of golden light stretched out from the wizard's home, spilling warm and golden from the glass front over the sand and across the water in a spike to the horizon. The beach was firmer underfoot than usual, condensed by rain. He felt a stab of anger rise up as he stamped into the quiet, well-lit house, tearing off his clinging, damp cloak.

Fanuilh lay in the same position on the table in the workroom, calmly gazing at the door through which Liam stalked.

I will not do it again without asking, the little dragon thought at him, and though the block in his head was as empty of tone as ever, he imagined how it would sound if spoken. As if they had discussed the matter, calmly, and reasonably come to the conclusion the dragon thought to him.

Liam was not pleased by his imagination, and his anger briefly and pleasantly flared.

"You're damned right you won't do it again, you bastard! Because if you