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

Chapter 9

COECCIAS WAS WAITING further down the street, leaning against a wall and watching a group of boys scuffle around a leather ball. He looked up with a slight chuckle at Liam's approach.

"It should be branded on your front, Rhenford: 'Take no surprise; I may do anything.' Branded in bold letters, or sewn into your clothes in characters of red."

"What do you mean?"

They started off, leaving the boys behind and heading by tacit consent towards the Point. Coeccias ticked his reasons off on thick, blunt fingers.

"Firstly, you discount the player, and throw your weight behind the merchant. Y'ignore the player whiles we talk, to gawp and stare at his sweet sister. Then, of a sudden, you turn on the player again and fasten your teeth into his throat. You warrant him a motive and an opportunity, and show a familiarity with his affairs I'd have never guessed at. You fair prove him the murderer. And then—then you ask his pardon and go your way! You as much as say 'Y'are a killer, sirrah,' and then leave him at large!"

"You didn't argue," Liam pointed out, and the Aedile threw up his arms in exasperation.

"Oh, no, nor call you the wooden fool y' are, nor clap Lons in as I should! I've grown as wooden as you! And yet I give you my service. That of value I have in this I have from you, and all I see you do makes you out a bloodhound. Y'have an acute nose, Rhenford. Perhaps I'll just give you rein and follow you to the murderer."

Liam shrugged uncomfortably under the praise, and glanced around the street before dropping his gaze to his boots, not looking at Coeccias.

"You could also follow me nowhere."

"I'd wager not. Y'are strange in thought and manner, but I'll be led by you in this, Rhenford, and I doubt not but it'll be to my profit."

They lapsed into silence, Coeccias satisfied and content, Liam wondering.

He had as much as said Lons was a murderer, and all the clues pointed that way. The knife, the debt, the timing almost everything indicated Lons, but he was reluctant to accept that. For one thing, he was afraid his dislike had colored his judgement, that his connection with Lady Necquer made him anxious to find Lons guilty. For another, there was Lons himself—Liam simply could not find murder in the self-involved actor's character. Pride and arrogance, yes, but it seemed the sort he had often found in cowards, men who shrank from blood. And lastly, there was Lons's sister. Rora had taken a powerful hold on his mind, and he found it difficult to remove her. She was an amazing presence, he thought, and though he had felt something cold and disdainful in her, she drew him, her image fluttering around inside his head.

Now that he had warned Lons away from Lady Necquer, he was inclined to find his murderer elsewhere, and he favored the merchant prince. Marcius's motives were muddied, and the evidence did not single him out, but he had the sort of strength of will and capacity for violence that Liam expected to find in a killer. And his threats, even veiled and obscure ones, had the ring of truth.

Liam told none of this to the Aedile. Instead, he thought it out, eyes fixed on his feet as the two men made their way south through the city. Other considerations sprang to mind. He remembered Lady Necquer's comments on the Teeth, and heard now a note of morbid fascination he had not noticed at first. She had been so afraid of them and the danger they presented to her husband that she had agreed to sleep with the man who could remove them.

And Tarquin had been responsible for it; could she be suspected? Or her husband? A series of questions formed themselves in his head, almost involuntarily, that he would ask her that afternoon. He felt instinctively that she was not involved. but her husband might be, if she had told him about Lons's courtship. That Necquer should strike at Tarquin and not Lons was strange, and argued against the suspicion, but the questions interested him in and of themselves, and he resolved to ask them.

"Your face's dark as the sky," Coeccias said finally, with a gesture that took in Liam's wrinkled brow and the cloudy sky. They were back in the neighborhood of the White Grape, and a pall of black hung over the sky.

"Thinking about murderers and rainy days make for a depressing combination."

"Truth, they do. Would a drink help?" The painted signboard of the White Grape hung further down the street, swaying slightly in the stiff, storm-bringing breeze from the sea.

"I think so."

A bottle of the tavern's watered-down white wine sped away the time, and Liam looked up from the dregs to hear the bells announce that it was time for his daily visit to Lady Necquer. He stood up from the table with mixed feelings. Coeccias reminded him of the next day's work, looking for the barmaid Donoé, and they agreed on an hour to meet

It was strange, Liam reflected as he walked towards the rich quarter, how Coeccias's attitude had changed. Only a few .hours earlier the Aedile had been highly suspicious of him because of his abrupt departure from the theater the evening before. Now Coeccias was practically giving up, throwing the weight of the whole investigation on Liam. Had his questioning of Lons been that impressive?

He was not entirely comfortable with the idea of himself as a sort of human bloodhound. He did not picture himself as particularly astute where people's darker motivations were concerned. If he were like that, he could not imagine why people accepted his presence; he knew that he would not want to be with someone who could smell out his deepest secrets.

Yet people did accept his presence. Tarquin had spoken freely around him, the Aedile shared meals with him. Lady Necquer actually seemed to look forward to his