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

"Y'are, Master," she cried, and her hands flashed spontaneously to his knees.

Much higher than before, he thought with alarm, and though he tried to move them, could not. She tried to bury her head in his lap, beginning to weep in earnest, but he managed to fend her off.

I can't let this happen.

"I pray you, Master, bespeak the Aedile as you can! You know you can turn him off that track! I'd do anything to prove Lons honest!"

Anything? No.

She managed to get her head onto his lap, and continued to plead, though her sobs were muffled.

This is so wrong, he thought, and tried to stand up, which was a mistake;

Rora came up with him, and somewhere in the confusion of rising, her lips met his. The cider and conversation had left him flushed and hot, his lips dry, and hers felt cool and moist, tasting slightly of salt from her tears.

Damn cider, damn Coeccias, damn Lons and Poppae Necquer. I'm making a mistake.

"I'd do aught," she whispered, her voice suddenly low and throaty in his ear.

Damn me.

Sometime later, she stirred beside him on the pallet, and then, even later, Liam rolled over and found her gone. The cider, too, was gone, and his head was clear enough to allow him to curse himself soundly.

"Damn, damn, damn, damn," he chanted into the darkness, with his hands knotted behind his head. He had made a mistake, he knew, and tried to console himself by cursing Coeccias' s cider and thinking about how· long it had been since he was with a woman. It did not work. Would she expect him now to leave her brother alone? That was ridiculous, of course; Lons had had every reason to kill Tarquin, and despite his alibi, everything pointed to him. There was no way he could convince Coeccias otherwise without some new piece of evidence, and it was entirely unlikely that one would come his way. If only Marcius had done something, or if Donoé had told him a different story, then he might have supported his belief that Lons was not the killer. As things stood, though, there was no other conclusion.

But Rora would not see it that way, naturally. With his foolish, stupid, damnable drunken acquiescence, he had as much as told the tearful, pleading innocent that he would help her brother.

Innocent? Her perfume lingered, and he imagined his blanket and mattress still held a hint of her warmth. Naive, perhaps, but not innocent. She had been ... amazing, he thought guiltily, so that even a half-drunk man might look back on the experience and shake his head in wonder, and regret that it was over. And doubly regret that it had happened at all. Kansallus had only partly guessed about Rora. No virgin, certainly.

Liam groaned out loud, trying to express the mix of sensual reminiscence and self-condemnation, or at least drive it away.

Poised over him at one point, she had looked down on him, flushed and deeply involved in what she was doing to him with her body, her hair in wild disarray.

"You're going to get fat," he had murmured, running his hands over her silky, sweat-damp skin.

"Too much wine," she had laughed. 'You know players .... " The rest was lost, spoken into his throat as she arced downward to begin again.

The memory was so vivid that Liam had to sit up in bed and rub his eyes to keep from actually seeing it.

It had been so long that he only wanted to revel in it, but he could not allow that. He had to do something, anything, to avoid remembering, or it would only strengthen his guilt.

He had effectively pledged to help her brother, and racked his brain for a way to do it. He went over the investigation point by point, rethinking every clue, reexamining each possibility. Was there something he and Coeccias had missed? Some old idea they had put aside that might be dusted off?

The sky outside his window had taken on the deep royal blue of predawn before he thought of even one thing he might check. Viyescu's hooded woman, and her desire for new poison. It was almost surely pointless, but the druggist had for some reason thought it worth telling. And there was Coeccias's report of Viyescu's nervousness and, more important, his own strange meeting with the druggist. What if the mystery woman had threatened him? What if they had gotten closer to the truth with Viyescu, and then passed it up for the easier explanation that Lons afforded? What if, what if. Since Marcius had not seen fit to confess, it was the only thing he could imagine as a possibility, however slim. He decided to visit the apothecary again, to ask the questions he should have asked before, and just then noticed the color of the sky.

It was far too early to go to Viyescu's, he knew, but he was afraid to sleep, afraid that Coeccias would arrest Lons before he could unearth a new clue to protect the player, and his sister. He shifted uncomfortably on the pallet, wondering how to occupy the time before he could go to Northfield and, worn out by the hard cider and his exertions, fell instantly asleep.

Panicking, Liam woke all at once, jumped up from his pallet, and ran to the window. The sun was still low; he had only been asleep for a few hours. Still, he felt a tremendous pressure to be out and on his way to Viyescu's. He stripped and splashed the entire contents of his washbasin over his body, then dried himself patchily with his blanket.

Lying directly in front of his door was a folded piece of paper, pure white and of good quality, one of the sheets he had bought on his arrival in Southwark. Sunlight from the window slanted onto it, and he frowned as he knelt to pick it up. It was too far into the