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

His head pounded, and ripples of uneasiness radiated out from his stomach through his whole body. He did not open his eyes for a long while, lying instead on his back on the floor, examining his aches internally.

He noted the dull, throbbing in his ankle, and remembrance flooded in. Slowly, he forced his lids up and stifled a shout. He gasped silently, turning the shout into a longdrawn breath, and did not move.

Tarquin's familiar, Fanuilh, was lying weightlessly on his chest, its wedgelike head curled between its paws. The little creature stirred restlessly in its sleep, dull black scales rippling, leathern wings flaring briefly to settle back against its gently heaving sides.

"Fanuilh," Liam breathed, and the dragon's eyes flicked open. It heaved itself unsteadily up on its forepaws, slipped slightly, recovered its foothold. Liam could see the dragon's neck and belly, covered with yellow scales as dull as the black ones on its back. For a moment, they were both still, Fanuilh's yellow, catlike eyes boring into Liam's blues. A slim tongue flicked out of the sharp-toothed mouth and ran over the dragon's tiny chin, where the scales gave way to a tuft of coarse hair.

We are one.

The thought intruded in Liam's head, like a flash of illumination. It stayed there, his other thoughts revolving around it. For a moment he thought he might have heard it, but it remained, and did not dissipate. It was a thought in his head, but obdurate and unyielding. He tried to think other things, questions, but they could not force it out.

We are one.

Just as suddenly as the foreign thought had appeared, it went, and Fanuilh shuddered and collapsed again on his chest.

Liam lay on the floor for long minutes, unwilling to touch the creature on his chest. Finally, when its breathing grew even in sleep, he forced his hands up and gently surrounded the form. Slowly, with fear as much as tenderness, he picked up the sleeping dragon and placed it beside him on the floor. The scales, instead of feeling hard or metallic, were like ridged cloth, moire or corduroy, soft and warm. As he moved it, Fanuilh exhaled, and its breath was rank and foul.

Like a dead man's, Liam thought, and repressed a shudder until he had put the sleeping dragon down. Then he rolled away and up to his knees, feeling his stomach turn over. His hangover was well out of proportion to the amount he had drunk.

'We are one,' he remembered and shook his head in denial. He stood shakily, and stumbled for the door of the workroom. On impulse, he stopped in the doorway and turned to look at Fanuilh. Sleeping on the floor below him, and not on his chest above his face, the dragon looked harmless, and Liam suddenly bent and scooped up the creature, cradling it against his chest as he looked for a better place to put it.

The worktable nearest the door was empty, and Liam deposited Fanuilh there. The creature did not stir, and, after a moment staring at it, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

He limped blindly for the kitchen, ignoring Tarquin's bedroom, his pounding head and raw throat calling for relief. He could think of nothing but cold water, and perhaps bread, or a hot bun. A type of pastry he had once eaten in Torquay sprang to mind, and his stomach rumbled unpleasantly. The sea, when he saw it through the glass walls of the entrance hall, was shiny pink with the new sun, the clouds of the previous evening gone. Morning filled the hall, streaking the shadows of the window panes across the floor like bars.

In the kitchen, the sourceless light still ruled, banishing shadows. He searched bins and cupboards, hoping only for bread and water. Water he found in a jar by the tiled stove, far colder and sweeter than it had any right to be.

Tarquin's magic, he thought, and grimaced, thinking of the hilt rising from the old man's chest .

He lifted the jar to his lips and drank deeply, washing away bile and roughness, gasping with the intensity of the cold: When he put the jar back next to the stove, he felt heat on the back of his hand and stepped away from the stove suspiciously.

Why not?he thought, and yanked open the metal door on the oven's front. Banked coals lay beneath a metal rack, on which rested four small, round buns, piping hot, just like the ones he remembered from Torquay. Hunger took over from caution, and he snatched one of them, juggling the hot pastry back and forth between his hands until he could drop it on the table.

He picked up the jar and drank again, then put his attention to the bun. It was almost too hot to eat, but his stomach roiled, and he forced a bite down. By the time the taste registered, his stomach was quieter.

It was delicious, exactly like the ones in Torquay, laced with currants and nuts, lightly spiced with cinnamon and something sweet and sticky he could not identify. It was wonderful—and clearly magic. The buns were certainly fresh-baked, not reheated, and the coals were as hot as if they had only been lit for an hour. More magic, he supposed, wolfing down the rest of the bun. He had never connected magic with small things like hot cinnamon buns and ice-cold water. Only things of magnificent proportions—calling forth demons, sinking ships, destroying armies. It made him think differently of Tarquin.

Thinking of Tarquin brought him to the corpse in the bedroom, and he frowned. Snatching two more buns from the oven, he went back to the bedroom.

Tarquin was stiffening; that much he could tell by looking. Dead at least twelve hours, as far as his experience as a surgeon and soldier could tell. He leaned against the doorjamb and stared at the corpse, absently eating some of the delicious bread.

"Murdered," he said aloud, and might have laughed at the obviousness