Nothing But Blue Skies by Tom Holt Page B

you’ll see. Meanwhile, if you so much as breathe a word about this—’
    â€˜You’ll feed me to the dragon?’
    Neville scowled at him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Dragons don’t eat people. That’s just a myth.’
    â€˜It is?’ In spite of himself, Gordon smiled. ‘You’re sure?’
    Neville made an uncouth noise with his mouth and walked away, leaving Gordon with his plate of congealed shepherd’s pie and a few things to think about. Most of them were variations on the theme of There-but-for-the-grace-of-God; it was just as well that he’d taken to the bottle as a way of dealing with the nightmares of his profession rather than retreating inside his own head, as Neville had done.
    Staring at the shepherd’s pie wasn’t going to make it edible. Gordon got up, spread a paper napkin over his plate as a mark of respect to the dead, and went back to his office. Even in spite of everything he’d had to suffer for its sake, he still had a spark of lingering affection for his work. Ever since he could remember, he’d had the romantic, idiotic notion of the weather being the planet’s way of showing her feelings - the sun her smile, the rain her tears, mist and fog her stark, bleak moods, snow her mischievous winter grin - and according to the satellite, tomorrow ought to be a genuinely sad day, with legitimate heavy rain instead of the usual crocodile tears that he found so hard to explain or forgive. He could therefore forecast wet weather with a clear conscience; just this once, it had his permission to rain.
    Once again, he passed the door of the Cat’s Whiskers and kept on going. He had no illusions about being cured or having found a better way. One of the lesser reasons why he drank so much was the fact that he quite enjoyed it. He liked the taste of the stuff, the ambience of a properly dark, respectably scruffy lounge bar, the gentle relaxation of feeling his thoughts gradually getting slower and fuzzier. It certainly beat sitting at home alone in front of the telly. (Although the same could, of course, also be said of malaria or, indeed, death.) But the pub would still be there tomorrow; quite possibly the day after tomorrow, too. He’d appreciate it all the more after a couple of days away. In the same way, it made a refreshing change to wake up in the morning without a hangover.
    Gordon was thinking about that last factor and reflecting on how much easier the world was to cope with when you didn’t have a four-alarmer headache as he opened his front door and reached for the light switch; ironic, really, since before he was able to touch fingernail to plastic, someone stepped out of the darkness behind him and bashed him over the head with eight inches of lead-filled hosepipe.
    Â 
    The first thing Gordon saw when he woke up was a goldfish bowl.
    Considering some of the things he’d seen a second or so after waking up (scary monsters with big eyes and horns; scuttling, crawly beetles; his first wife) it was odd that the sight of a small orange fish swimming round and round in a small glass container should have shaken him as much as it did. But this was no ordinary goldfish. This was identical to the one he’d seen on Neville’s website, the one that belonged to no known species.
    â€˜Neville?’ he said, as loudly as his reverberating head would allow.
    â€˜You’ve woken up, then,’ said Neville’s voice behind him.
    He tried to twist round and face him, but found he could-n’t. This turned out to have something to do with the blue nylon rope that surrounded him in coils like a mummy’s thermal underwear and held him firmly in the armchair he was sitting on. Quite a lot to do with it, in fact.
    â€˜All right, Neville,’ he said, looking round the best he could. ‘I know about the ropes and stuff, thanks to the second Mrs Smelt. What’s the goldfish