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

room to have been shoved beneath the door; Rora must have left it. There was no name on the outside of the paper, and he opened it as if it might contain a dangerous animal.

Wincing, he read the short note through twice. The writing was crude, the letters poorly formed, the spelling atrocious, and the message painful.

I know you won't fail me, Master, not now. Pray you, bespeak the Aedile on my sweet brother's part. I swear his innocence!

Growling, he almost crumpled the page, but instead threw it towards the table. He did not wait to see it flutter to the ground like a wounded dove, several feet short of the table. He hurried passed the shrinking drudge and out into the street, buckling his belt as he went and haphazardly tucking his breeches into his boots. Outside, the sky stopped him for a moment. It was a fine morning, just cold enough to chill the wet spots left by his uneven toweling, and the vault of the sky was unbroken blue, pale and bright. A line of black clouds, however, like waves in the sky, were building up far out over the sea, and he knew that by afternoon the day would be shattered by storms.

It made little difference to him. He was concerned with his own stupidity, and the obligation he had foolishly assumed. He found he was grinding his teeth, and he strode through the streets like an ill wind, cursing himself. Beggars, seeing his clenched fists, did not try to stop him, but he did not notice.

Gods, let the druggist have something.

Liam was grasping at straws, and knew it, but when he allowed himself to consider the fact his mind dropped back to the night before, and to what he had tacitly agreed. So he tried to reorder what he knew, and cast about for new constructions that would, if not find another murderer, at least clear Lons.

Viyescu turned white beneath his untamed beard and began shaking when Liam entered. Dismissing it as the product of his own undoubtedly grim appearance, Liam crossed to the counter.

"Hierarch," the druggist whispered anxiously, "what brings you here again?"

"I spoke with the Aedile yesterday, and he gave me some news from you."

"Yes, certainly, but surely there's no need to—"

Liam cut the strangely distressed apothecary off. "The woman who mentioned Tarquin came back?"

"Yes, Hierarch." Viyescu was subdued, accepting questions much more easily than before.

"And asked for more santhract?" Viyescu nodded. "You didn't sell her any?"

"I've said, I don't sell it; it likes me not."

"But she frightened you?"

Startled, Viyescu goggled at him.

"She frightened you. The Aedile said you looked frightened."

"Oh," he hemmed, "it was naught; I just—"

"Did she threaten you?"

"Perhaps she spoke some in anger, but it was naught, if it please you, she—"

The apothecary was lying, Liam felt sure; the woman had threatened him, but he did not want to admit it. Liam let it go.

"I see, I see. I've just one more question for you, then." Viyescu was visibly relieved, and Liam wondered at his change of attitude. His stem, puritanical righteousness was gone, as well as the subtle hinting of their meeting the day before. Viyescu clearly regretted having said—or having begun to say—anything. "Santhract is used only to .. . terminate pregnancies, correct?"

"Yes, Hierarch."

"And then only in small doses?"

"Yes, Hierarch."

"What if someone was given a larger dose? Could it kill a man, say?"

Sweat broke on the druggist's brow, and Liam had to try hard to keep calm. What was making him so nervous?

"Could it?"

"I have so heard," Viyescu stammered softly. A hot stab of hope and relief went through Liam. He had latched onto something.

"How much did the woman want?"

The druggist leaned forward with wide eyes, as though he had not understood the question.

"I'm wondering if she wanted enough to kill a man," Liam explained.

"But—but Master Tanaquil was stabbed, was he not?"

Liam shrugged, as though the question meant nothing. "It doesn't matter, of course—you don't sell santhract; it likes you not, eh?" Here was something much more than he had hoped for, and he could not avoid lacing the question with acid irony. Viyescu shook his head instantly.

"And of course, you still don't know who this woman is?" Viyescu shook his head again, obviously unwilling now to speak, not trusting his tongue.

Liam did not care. New ideas crowded out the druggist's worried face, a hundred possibilities spun half out of the few small revelations he had gotten and half out of his guilty need to exonerate Lons.

"Of course," he murmured. "Thank you, Master Viyescu. Your help will not go unnoted." He turned and left the druggist behind his counter.

The black line of clouds was noticeably closer but Liam paid them no attention, his thoughts fully occupied with the web of suppositions he was weaving. He ambled out of Northfield back towards his garret, staring with unseeing eyes at the cobbles. Beggars let him go again, frowning at the tall, distracted figure.

What could the poison mean? And what had Viyescu so upset? It must have to do with Tarquin, or the druggist would not have sent the news to him through Coeccias. So the woman and her poison must be connected with the wizard's death. That was a thorny problem, because if Donoé's story was to mean anything, Tarquin could not have gotten the woman pregnant, and besides, he had been stabbed, not poisoned.

A thousand new questions rose from that. If Tarquin had not gotten her pregnant, who had? And why was the wizard involved? Could the murderer be a person he and Coeccias had never considered, namely the hooded man who came to the unknown woman's sometime lodgings?

Too many new questions. The neat fabric of their solution seemed likely to unravel beneath the weight of his new thoughts. And to further complicate matters, he suddenly wondered if Rora might perhaps have been far less innocent than he thought. The encounter could easily have been planned as a sort of blackmail, to try to tum him away from Lons.

She