Fanuilh

by Daniel Hood

  "Stop fussing," he muttered as Necquer tried to roll his head away, and managed to shove his finger down the merchant's throat. Necquer's teeth closed momentarily, and then his mouth and throat opened, and vomit gushed out, lukewarm and thick on Liam's hand and arm.

  As he held the spewing merchant, mechanically urging him to get rid of the contents of his stomach, he looked vacantly out the window.

  Fanuilh killed her. No recriminations, no heaping on of guilt. She could never reveal what he had done, what he had allowed to happen.

  He could not decide how he should feel, and, for safety's sake, felt guilty.

  Chapter 15

  BOULT RETURNED QUICKER than Liam had expected, but without the Aedile. Coeccias, he explained, had gone to get Viyescu, and sent him back to help, if he could.

  There was little for him to do. Necquer had gotten rid of everything in his stomach but was wracked by dry heaves, and his breathing was still labored. Liam held him around the waist and shrugged at the Guardsman, who set himself to brushing the broken glass and wood into a pile with his foot. The window had no shutters, and the rain still blew in.

  Taking the lantern, Boult edged towards the windowsill, and risked a soaking by leaning far out. He dangled the lantern below him, turning his head this way and that. When he ducked back in, Liam was looking at him.

  "She lit not on the ground," the Guardsman said in simple explanation, with yet another shrug.

  The idea horrified Liam, but he did not let it show. What would Fanuilh do with her?

  Coeccias arrived then, followed by Viyescu, who was carrying a bulging satchel. He did not seem in the least surprised when he saw Necquer's state, but darted ahead of the Aedile and took charge of the situation. They laid Necquer out on the bed at his orders, and then Liam stood aside as the druggist removed several flasks and twists of paper from his satchel.

  Concentrating on Necquer, Viyescu kept his head down, as though unwilling to recognize the others around him. Liam kept his eyes and thoughts on the merchant as well, though he spoke a little to Coeccias.

  "Boult explained?" he asked without turning his head.

  "Some, not all. The maid, though? l'd've never credited it, had you told me before." There was a note of admiration in the Aedile's voice, as if he thought Liam had suspected Rora all along. It set Liam's teeth on edge, but he only grunted noncommittally.

  In order to get his antidotes down the merchant's throat, Viyescu needed him upright, and he called Liam to help him. He spooned semiliquid pastes into Necquer' s slack mouth while Liam held him behind the shoulders.

  Boult had returned to looking out the window, and suddenly called for Coeccias. The Aedile went to the window, and their voices were drowned out by the rain. Viyescu took the opportunity to speak.

  "Hierarch Cance," he said in a voice so quiet Liam almost did not hear, "I needs must beg your forgiveness for my sins." He did not look up, staring rigidly at the spoon he was inserting between Necquer' s teeth.

  Liam had been expecting something else, and it did not help that he had almost forgotten the name he had used. How could the apothecary still think he was a Hierarch? But it seemed he did, because he waited for a moment, and when Liam did not answer, went on, tight-lipped.

  "There're things I've done, Hierarch. I'm sure you know—the woman and I—I beg your forgiveness. The woman and I ... "

  Not able to stand anymore, Liam spoke, more harshly than he meant to.

  "Save this man and all is forgiven." It sounded silly to him, melodramatic and, worst of all, unpriestly. He cringed, but Viyescu merely paused, and then nodded.

  "My thanks, Hierarch," he said after a moment. "Uris grace you," he added. He gave the merchant a few more mouthfuls, and then motioned for him to be let down. Then he waved Liam away and set to checking under Necquer' s eyelids and taking his pulse.

  At the window, both Coeccias and Boult were leaning out, careful of the jagged glass still left in the sill. The Guardsman was pointing something out. Liam wandered over as the two men· pulled their heads back in.

  "Something?"

  "The maid," Coeccias said. "Caught on a gable, I think." Liam blanched. Fanuilh had not taken her, of course. It was ridiculous to think he could have. Still, the thought unnerved him. He asked if he could go, and Coeccias nodded after a moment's thought. He and Boult could handle getting her up, or they could get another member of the Guard.

  "Will y'attend me at my house? Burus'll let you in. There's still the Uris's Eve fast to break."

  Liam refused, as politely as he could, but the Aedile pressed him to come to the feast the next day at his sister's.

  "There're matters," he had said in a gruff, strangely gentle tone, "that require our discourse, if not this night, then tomorrow." He was obviously concerned about Liam's distracted air and pale face. "Come to my house at midday tomorrow."

  Liam agreed, and left as quickly as he could, ignoring the glance Viyescu threw at him. He sat in the dark on the stairs and pulled on his boots. Miraculously, the broken glass had not cut his feet, but he did not think of this.

  He knew that Coeccias had let him go because he thought him a weak scholar who had never seen blood before. It did not bother him: better to appear a coward than face Fanuilh' s handiwork, and the corpse to which he had unwittingly led the dragon.

  The rain pelted him as he walked slowly back through the Warren, but he only hugged his cloak closer to him. Perhaps the worst of it was that he had not expected anything like this, that the adventure he had so blithely embarked on only a few days before had turned out so very different.

  Unable to face the ride out to Tarquin's in the rain, and unwilling to face what might be waiting for him there, he went to his garret. Mistress Dorcas was not in the kitchen when he entered; he heard her conducting the Uris's Eve meal with the other boarders in the dining room. Relieved, he slipped upstairs, not bothering with a candle.

  He threw off his cloak and sat in his chair in the dark. The window bothered him, however, with the rain pelting it, and he decided to try his luck with sleep.

  His luck held, and he only had time before he slipped off to think one thought three or four times.

  I'll have time to think about it tomorrow.

  A weak, underwater light filled the room when Liam woke. The rain had stopped sometime in the night, and the clouds, now only light gray, had retreated much higher into the sky. It was almost ten, he guessed.

  He was stiff and sore, much sorer than the day before. The tattoo on his chest had begun to tum a sickly yellow at the edges.

  Healing well, he thought, and turned a groan of pain into a laugh.

  Moving slowly, he dressed and packed his few belongings into his seachest. It was light, even with all his possessions in it, but he managed to bring it downstairs only at great expense to his aching muscles.

  The boy from the stables brought Diamond round to the kitchen door, and helped him lift the chest to the horse's withers and tie it tight. The boy's generally merry air and the nonchalant way he accepted a large tip reminded Liam that it was a holiday. It also explained the small number of people in the streets, and the fact that Mistress Dorcas was not up yet. On Uris-tide, she obviously believed she could sleep in.

  This suited Liam well; he did not want to see her. He mounted Diamond slowly and set him to a gentle, easy pace. It took almost an hour to reach Tarquin's house, but Liam was not unhappy with the ambling gait. There was plenty of light, even with the clouds, but he knew even if it had been a beautiful, sunny spring day he would not have wanted to approach the house.

  Fanuilh, however, was nowhere to be seen, and no thoughts crashed into his head as he walked tentatively from room to room, calling the creature's name. Bemused, he went out to the beach and let the trunk tumble off Diamond onto the sand. Then he half-dragged, half-carried it into the entrance hall.

  Feeling he had pressed his luck enough, he left it there, mounted Diamond again and s
tarted back for Southwark.

  He did not want to see Fanuilh, and was glad he had not. He did not want to see Coeccias at the moment either, but he had promised, and there were things that he would have to explain. He purposefully dawdled on the way back, because he did not want to arrive early.

  Coeccias was waiting for him, opening the door himself and ushering Liam in.

  "How was your sleep?"

  "Good," Liam said, surprised to find it was true. "I'm sore."

  The Aedile laughed. "Your friends' 11 be in hand soon." He led the way to the kitchen and put the finishing touches to a positively monstrous cauldron of cider while they talked.

  Liam outlined the story, filling in the details he had learned or figured out the night before. It was remarkably easy.

  Rora was pregnant and Necquer would not support her. Kansallus's talk had hinted at a certain pride and vengefulness in her; if anything, he had underestimated them. She had obviously been much more fierce than Kansallus had guessed, even with the evidence of Knave Fitch's mangled ear. And the way she had used Viyescu to get her the poison to murder Necquer and then threatened to reveal whatever had passed between them indicated the depth of the ruthlessness hidden behind her beauty.

  "I don't think she was altogether right in the head," Liam commented, and Coeccias grunted his agreement.

  So she was set on killing Necquer. Lons must have told her about his deal with Tarquin, and she convinced the wizard to switch the spells, in return for some of her blood. Why she chose the illusion spell was not clear; perhaps she did not want to ruin her brother's arrangement, and thought that as soon as the Teeth disappeared, Lons could claim his reward. It would not matter if Necquer tried to enter the harbor the very next day and was smashed to pieces. Perhaps she thought it would be fitting, a sort of double revenge: give his wife to another man and then kill him.

  "She was clearly somewhat mad, for all her cunning." Liam amazed himself with his own tone of voice. He sounded cold and analytical, describing the events from a pitying distance. He wondered how he was able to do it.

  Tarquin had tried to cast the spell she wanted, but it had failed—Rora had had no real virgin's blood to give him—so he cast Lons' s original request, maybe as a kind of revenge. When Necquer returned unharmed, she went to see Tarquin, most likely to upbraid him for not casting the spell, not knowing he had figured out her deception. He threatened to reveal her plot to Necquer, so she killed him.

  "Of course," Liam said finally, talking to Coeccias's expansive back as the Aedile crouched over his boiling pot like a gnome or dwarf from a story, "there's little pure proof. Much of it's only circumstance, and motive. The santhract she put in Necquer' s wine proves something, I guess, and she was pregnant. Really, it just fits best." He paused, reflecting. He knew she had done it. "And Tarquin's familiar certainly thought she did."

  "Truth. Curious, that," Coeccias said at last, rising from the pot. "But I grant you all—she must have done it. There's naught else that makes sense. And I've something from Herione, as well: Rora used to dance for her—just dance, you mind-nigh on two years past. We'll say that's when Viyescu met her, and Necquer as well."

  For a moment, the stout man regarded Liam intensely, as if trying to pry a secret from him; then his features softened into admiration. Liam realized Coeccias had been wondering how he had figured it all out. In telling the story, he had left out both Rora's visit to him and Fanuilh's part. Thinking back, he realized he had sounded like quite the natural investigator, and the cold, confident tone he had assumed had not hurt. It was Luck, again, the Luck he carried with him, that allowed him to handle something incompetently and somehow come out looking all the better for it.

  It made him feel very uncomfortable, and he hung his head to hide his guilty blush. He suddenly thought that he had not said Rora's name once while telling what he knew. He had said "she" or "her." Not her name. It made him feel worse.

  "When do you want to tell Lons?"

  "I've already done it, last night," Coeccias said. He and Boult had brought Lons his sister's body, recovered from the gable where it had lodged in her fall. Liam was shocked by this, but the Aedile hastened to explain. Fanuilh had not been vicious—scratches on her back, and a single bite at her throat. He and Boult had washed away the blood from her face and hands, and covered the wounds pretty well. "The Golden Orb's company parts Southwark tomorrow for the heath, and Lons'll with them."

  There was nothing else to say about the investigation, and Coeccias suggested they go to his sister's. Liam wondered how they would get the cauldron of spiked cider to her house, but it turned out that she lived only a block away, and Coeccias simply filled a smaller pot to bring with them.

  "One of the whelps'll run back for more when we've drained this one."

  Coeccias' s sister was like him, broad and short, with weight to spare but a warm, matronly face. She kissed her brother warmly and made much of Liam. Her husband was a cooper, and they had an uncountable swarm of children. They held Liam, as a stranger, in awed respect, but mobbed Coeccias affectionately at first, and then Burus when he appeared.

  Several relatives of Coeccias's brother-in-law soon arrived, bringing huge amounts of food and an army of small children to the feast. The tables groaned under the weight of the food, and afterwards, stuffed to bursting, the whole family gathered around to sing to Burus' s piping. They were merry, and Liam felt out of place. There were things he wanted to think about, and though he would have liked to stay, he knew he could not contribute to their celebration, and left soon after the music began.

  He spent three days alone at Tarquin's, exploring the house and thinking about all that had happened. He slept on the couch in the library and spent the days idly leafing through the books or examining the items in the wizard's trophy room.

  Many times the image of Rora floated in his mind, cursing him, saying all the things he had been afraid she would. She reviled him, called him a betrayer and a fool, a heartless monster. He knew he was not these things, that she had used him, and that he was not responsible for her death. He knew them, but he could not shake a feeling of responsibility.

  At other times he thought of Viyescu, whose darkest, deepest kept secrets he had effectively exposed in the guise of a priest. He hoped that the druggist might have taken his hasty absolution in the attic to heart, but did not think that even that excused his deception.

  And there were Freihett and Poppae Necquer to consider. He would not be able to see them, to deal with the husband or pass an idle afternoon with the wife. What he knew of them, and their awareness of some of his knowledge, would make such encounters extremely uncomfortable.

  Still, what else could he have done? He could not have known things would turn out the way they had.

  In the end, he simply acknowledged that he had not handled the whole thing well, and vowed to leave it at that. In time, he thought, he might well be able to.

  On the second day, Boult appeared at his door, rousing Liam from a book of history he had found in Tarquin's library. The Guardsman had brought a copy of the wizard's will, as proof of ownership. The diffidence and hang-all attitude Liam had liked in the man was gone, replaced with a sort of uneasy respect.

  Coeccias had been telling stories about the investigation, Liam knew, and portraying him as some sort of omniscient seerinto men's souls, whose only weakness was a certain queasiness at the sight of blood. He was surprised to find that he did not mind the picture as much as he might have. He felt a little guilty because the result was more Luck than omniscience, but at heart he was secretly pleased.

  Boult also brought a note from the Aedile. It was very short, scrawled wildly across a piece of paper. In it, Coeccias invited him to dinner the next day, —and mentioned that Necquer had recovered completely from the santhract. Finally, he wrote that Scar, Ratface and their friend had been caught, and were currently residing in the Aedile's jail awaiting judgement.

  Liam asked Boult
to tell Coeccias that he would come to dinner.

  Between all of this, he stood on the beach, or sat on the balustrade of the veranda, and scanned the sky for signs of Fanuilh. The little dragon did not return for three days.

  His feelings were mixed about the creature. It had lied to him when it said it was still too weak to fly, and he knew that it had followed him to Rora. That bothered him, but he reflected that there was little he could have done about it. The dragon could see into his head at will.

  That, really, was what bothered him most, and he thought angrily of their deal. And he had thought of something he had to attend to, with which the dragon might help.

  Wake. Wake.

  On the morning of the fourth day after Rora's death, he was wandering in a dream through the old temple, and the walls were inscribed again with the single word:

  Wake. Wake.

  He woke on the couch, and looked deep into the dragon's glittering cat's eyes.

  "You're back," he muttered.

  Yes, Master. I had to hunt, and I thought you would be angry with me.

  Sitting on its haunches, neck bent, Fanuilh looked like a dog awaiting a well-earned whipping.

  "I was," Liam agreed, putting his feet to the floor and running a hand through his tousled hair. He was much calmer than he had thought he would be. "You didn't tell me you were going to kill her."

  The thought was a long time forming: It seemed appropriate. She killed Master Tanaquil. Another idea formed, very quickly, and just as quickly disappeared. When we joined, it came to me that it was something you would do.

  "Me? You mean you got the idea from me?"

  Yes. You did such a thing once.

  Liam laughed, but it was bitter, the kind of laughter he directed at himself. "Yes, I did. But I was much younger then. Much younger. And I've paid for it as well. He had an insight into the creature's nature, how little it understood of men, and how it must pick and choose its ideas from its master.