Beautiful Blood (14 page)

Rosacher waited for her to speak, scarcely breathing, half-convinced that when she gave tongue to her thoughts, it would be oracular in nature…but rather than speaking she sprang for the door, grabbed up a gray cloak from a chair and enfolded herself in it, and fled the apartment. Stunned, caught off guard, he hesitated before chasing after her and she disappeared down the stairs—he did not catch sight of her again until twenty-five minutes later when, after searching through the House, questioning the passers-by he encountered in the corridors, he reached the front entrance where she was pointed out to him by a group of young men loitering on the steps. Visible in the strong moonlight, she had ascended to a platform atop the scaffolding braced against Griaule’s side—it still bore tatters of black bunting from Meric Cattanay’s funeral six weeks earlier—and was scrambling toward the joint of the dragon’s shoulder, using vines to haul herself upward, moving with such agility and grace that he was hard put to believe this was the same woman who had been more-or-less bedridden for months. Ignoring the young men’s catcalls, he ran to the base of the scaffolding and clambered up it, but realized that he could not match her pace and slowed his ascent, using a measure of caution in securing his footing. By the time he had climbed to the platform, she had disappeared into the thickets atop Griaule’s back, yet he kept going, fueled by a sense of desperation, plowing through brush and tangles of vines. As he skirted the limits of Hangtown, the lights of Martita’s fractioned by leaves and branches, he wondered what she could have in mind. Was she driven by delirium? She hadn’t seemed delirious, but rather focused and serene…but she may have gone mad after fleeing their bedchamber. And what was that glow emanating from her body? She hadn’t looked to be glowing any longer, so perhaps it had been a flaw in his vision, some mental defect brought on by stress. Be that as it may, her reaction to the blood had been completely different from his, that much was certain, and he feared for her.

He checked the ledge beneath the wing and called out to the shadows deeper in. Nothing, no response. He proceeded farther along the dragon’s spine. If she were headed for the plain below, he might never find her. He shouted her name and listened to the winded silence that came back to him. The brush grew thicker and his step faltered when he moved past the point where the spine began to slope downward. Only the boldest of scalehunters ventured beyond this area—he remembered old Jarvis telling him that something big lived in the thickets above the haunch, some kind of animal, possibly a bear, that could tear you apart—remains of its victims had been found and there had been a handful of sightings, albeit fleeting and unreliable ones. Of course that had been years before and it might be that the animal had gone elsewhere or had died, but Rosacher had learned it was unwise to disregard such warnings, because more often than not the consequences of flouting them proved severe. The moon, silvery and almost full, was at its zenith and in its light he could make out palm crowns on the plain below, but not their trunks. A thin mist veiled the brilliance of the stars. Insects chirred and a nightjar cried. Rosacher felt as alone and frightened as he had on that long-ago night when he had drawn blood from Griaule’s tongue, yet he pressed forward into the thickets, made wary by every rustle, every shadowy twitch and tremble of leaf or twig.

Another quarter of an hour brought him to what was essentially a bald patch on the dragon’s back, an oval area some fifty or sixty feet across, and perhaps much larger than that (he couldn’t judge how far it stretched down the slope of Griaule’s side), scantily covered in dirt and weeds, but free of brush. He stepped out onto it and understood the reason for the lack of vegetation. Some idiot had cleared it away—within the past year, he guessed—and attempted to pry loose the enormous scales, shattering them into dozens of pieces that shifted under his weight. The danger associated with trespassing in places like this was that Griaule might mistake you for a scalehunter come to violate his body, and though Rosacher believed the dragon capable of distinguishing among humans and had evidence aplenty that Griaule recognized him for who he was, that belief was nothing he cared to rely on in this situation. Best, he decided, to go to Martita’s, have a glass of ale and think things over. Perhaps he could prevail upon the scalehunters there to assist him in the search. And then he spied Amelita. She stood facing away from him, her figure obscured by the gray cloak, so low on the dragon’s side, some twenty yards distant, that if she took another step or two forward, she would be unable to keep her footing.

“’lita!” he shouted.

The cloak flapped about her, appearing to register a stronger force of wind than the one blowing across the dragon’s back. An updraft, he thought. He shouted again and she turned toward him. At that distance he could not distinguish her features, but her skin had acquired the mousey coloration of the cloak. Tentaively, realizing something was wrong, he walked forward a half-dozen paces, paused, and then went a few paces more. Not only had her complexion gone gray, but a myriad fine lines now webbed her skin, as if she had grown ancient as she fled from him—yet on second glance she did not seem to have aged, but rather that her youthful image had been partitioned into irregular segments like those of a jigsaw puzzle. He spoke her name again, less a shout than a plaintive inquiry. The wind blew more fiercely about her—at least her hair (also gray) billowed and the cloak flapped with increased fury—but Rosacher felt no like increase where he stood and heard no keening or any other windy noise. Cold gripped the nape of his neck, as if it had been seized by a dead hand. He backed away, his heel catching on a loosened fragment, and he pitched onto his side, his temple smacking down hard. He must have blacked out, for when his eyes blinked open he discovered her standing over him. He thought initially that her facial muscles were in spasm, but her expression was neither agonized or contorted—it was her customary stoic expression, reflecting no particular mood or attitude. And then he realized it wasn’t her muscles that were moving—it was the skin, and not just that of her face. Every square inch of skin was rippling the way bacon ripples in a frying pan. Each tiny segment of skin as defined by the cracks pulsed to a separate rhythm, as if they were blistering, about to release a vile fluid. A dribble of sound leaked from him, a whimper born of fear, fear for himself, for her, revulsion. He crawled away, trying to regain his feet…but fell again. Her lips parted, her eyelids drooped and she lifted an arm, a gesture that an opera singer might make in straining for a high note, and something fluttered up light as ash from the back of her hand, something winged—it fluttered in the air above her. Further gray scraps disengaged from her and joined it, accumulating into a cluster, then a cloud that bobbled and danced overhead. Each time a scrap lifted from her body, it left behind a patch of glistening flesh that rapidly darkened and began to pulse. She was dissolving, disintegrating…the process quickened, quickened again, and after two or three minutes more she became unrecognizable, diminished to a stump, a gray stalagmite from which winged things no larger than a flake emerged and arose, forming a whirling mass that encircled Rosacher, penning him in. Possessed by dread, he knew that once she had completely dissolved, these remnants would descend, fasten onto his face and kill him with their stings. But in the end only one of the creatures touched him. It hovered in front of his face for an instant and, his mind bright with terror, he had the impression that its wings were not attached to an insect body, but to a slender white female figure, perfect in every detail, a replica in miniature of his former lover—it brushed against his cheek, imparting a chill sensation, and flew up to merge with the fluttering gray cloud, which then passed toward the south, vanishing behind the bulge of Griaule’s spine.

For several minutes thereafter, Rosacher continued lying where he had fallen. The chill spread across his cheek, yet did not disturb him—on the contrary, the coolness was soothing, as though a salve had been applied. The bizarre manner of Amelita’s death, if death it had been, if she were not reincarnate as a cluster of flakes, left him in an uncertain mood, overcome by sorrow, but also wondering if this might not have been the best possible outcome for her—she had always been unhappy—and not merely unhappy, despondent, despairing—except for moments here and there, and though he ached for her, he experienced an undercurrent of relief that she had been released from whatever pain had been gnawing at her for all her days—but this did not alleviate his own pain. He wept while walking back to Martita’s and had to pause outside the door in order to compose himself. Once inside, seated at a table in the rear, he hated the dim, wavering lantern light, the smell of stale beer, the lively talk and laughter around him, all the dull brown normalcy of the place. He hung his head and tried to calm himself, but his thoughts flurried and he kept picturing Amelita as her living layers peeled away, her mouth open and eyes lidded, an expression that reminded him of how she had looked when they made love—yet it lacked vitality and was absent the sounds of passion, the gasps, the musical sighs, and thus seemed a mockery.

Martita dropped onto the bench opposite, bubbly as ever, and asked what brought him to her door—it had been months since he visited. “You’ll be wanting a mug of the brown, I suppose,” she said, and before he could answer, she put a hand to her mouth. “God! What happened to your face?”

“My face?” he said. “What’s wrong with it? Am I bleeding?”

She told him to wait, ran to the bar and brought back a small mirror that she kept beneath the counter. “You won’t believe this unless you see for yourself,” she said, holding it out to him.

In its clouded surface he saw his old face, his face as it had been before Ludie and Honeyman betrayed him, unmarked by any scarring, marred only by the lines of middle age. And he understood…or perhaps he didn’t understand, perhaps he only hoped he understood why the sting of that tiny creature pared from her life had felt so soothing. Moved by that flawed comprehension, then, he once again began to weep.

Amelita’s death inspired a period of self-reflection in Rosacher that neither illuminated nor provided surcease. Though his love for her may have been tainted, poisoned by his manipulative spirit, his grief seemed real enough. It was a black cancer gnawing at his heart, decaying his thoughts. He did not believe there would be an end to it, and he foresaw a future in which would be forced to dwell beneath a self-woven shroud, mired in a gloom that blotted out life’s exuberant particularity. He shut himself away in the apartment, lying in the bed he had shared with Amelita, the curtains drawn, wanting to deny even the possibility of light, praying that this darkness would somehow keep him connected to her darkness. He had no wish to work, no desire for food or drink, and when he smoked mab, it merely enriched and deepened his personal shadows. He punished himself for becoming angry with her the night she died, for a myriad lesser transgressions, and for being so preoccupied with her, for doting on her now more with greater intensity than he had when she was alive. He then came to hate himself for doubting the authenticity of his grief. He also hated himself for conflating his obsession with the dragon with everything from philosophical questions to practical considerations (would Griaule approve of this or that, etc.) and for having constructed a seemingly flimsy metaphysics about the beast that no amount of speculation or denial could dissolve. He supposed that if he were to look out and see that gargantuan foreleg rising above, he would hate the dragon as well, but he didn’t have the energy to crack the window and prove his thesis.

He passed long hours poring over Amelita’s sketchbooks, searching for clues to her character, and discovered a rendering of a gray winged creature with a woman’s body, with pale skin and small, high breasts and cascading black hair. She had drawn this same creature half-a-dozen times—the last drawing was very nearly a self-portrait and was inscribed with the words, “the aurelia phase.” A few lines of text followed, stating that the creature derived its nourishment from the crepuscular light of pre-dawn and dusk. Amelita’s usage of “aurelia” was unfamiliar to him—he learned that the word was not just a name, but was also used to denote a chrysalis. He had almost convinced himself that the creature was a hallucination, a byproduct of his fright, but the drawing overthrew that assumption and he was forced to struggle with the notion that Amelita had been transformed into a swarm of flakes and that she might pass from this stage into yet another, perhaps more repellent stage. This in turn caused him to wonder whether she had anticipated the transformation, or if Griaule had plucked the idea from her brain and made it into a reality. That thought, and a hundred attendant thoughts redolent of his obsession with the dragon, renewed his self-loathing and sank him to fresh depths of darkness and despair.

Breque visited him from time to time, staying but briefly, and eight months after Amelita’s death he brought with him a thick folder that he deposited on the floor beside him. He sat in a gilt chair next to the bed and appeared to study Rosacher, who lay beneath the peach-colored sheets, clad in a robe that had gone unwashed for weeks. Stubble dirtied Rosacher’s cheeks, his hair was matted, and the bed was littered with open wine bottles (some were only partly empty and as a result the sheets were mapped with purplish stains). Breque cleared his throat and, when Rosacher did not react, he said, “I see that nothing has changed with you. Would you like me to leave?”

“Yes…unless you have pressing business,” Rosacher said. “I’ve been keeping up with the production of mab and the House more-or-less runs itself. If your visit has nothing to do with our enterprise, I’m not in the mood to chat.”

“From where I’m sitting, it looks as though you’re in the mood to fart and scratch your bedsores…but not much else.”

Rosacher said nothing.

“Very well,” Breque said. “I have a proposal for you. It may be pressing, but I’m not sure I’d call it ‘business’.” Breque wrinkled his nose. “It stinks in here.”

“Another reason for you to leave.” Rosacher rolled onto his side to face the wall. “Anyway, I like it—it’s my stink.”

“When’s the last time you allowed someone in to clean?”

“Goodbye,” said Rosacher.

After a prolonged silence Breque said, “We’ve known each other for many years, Richard. We aren’t always on the same side of an issue, but we’ve learned to practice the art of compromise with one another and I…”

“Do you actually think this is instructive?” Rosacher made a disparaging noise. “At any rate, you’re the one who’s compromised, not I.”

“Have it your way. Whatever the case, we’ve helped each other over some rough patches and I dare say we’ve forged a strong friendship.”

“Friendship?” Rosacher turned to Breque. “Don’t make me laugh!”

“Are you asserting that you’re not my friend?”

“Did I hurt your feelings? I’m sorry, I assumed you were joking. Every human interaction I know of is based upon greed…or the desire for security. Which is merely a more pernicious form of greed. By that criteria, you could say that cobras and hedgehogs are friends.”

“If we’re not friends, how would you characterize our relationship?”

“A criminal association leavened by certain social obligations. You’d have to be a fool to think it’s anything more.”

“Then I must be a fool.” Breque crossed his legs and shifted about in the chair until he was comfortable. “I value you as an ally and a friend. And that’s why I’m here. To suggest that you utilize my friendship and heed my advice.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to hear your advice.” Rosacher sat up and made a show of adjusting pillows behind his back. “There! I’m ready to receive the benefit of your vast experience and wisdom.”

“You need to busy yourself. Find something that challenges you and set yourself to overcome it.”

Rosacher rolled his eyes. “Next you’ll be telling me to adopt a puppy and learn to love again.”

“Your period of mourning, if that’s what this is, has damaged…”

“What else would it be?”

“I don’t doubt that you mourn for Amelita. I understand that you loved her. But mourning is a process that should not entail you becoming subsumed by a memory. You’ve never been what I’d call a happy person…”

Rosacher gave a sardonic laugh. “Now there’s a revelation!”

“…but neither have you been especially gloomy. Yet you’ve adopted Amelita’s defeatism, her absolute pessimism, and made these qualities into a kind of memorial.”

“It could be I’ve realized she was right about things.”

“Or perhaps you’re enjoying your misery. Indulging it. Her death provides you with a wonderful excuse for failure.”

“Get out!”

“No,” said Breque. “I don’t think I will. I think I’ll stay right here and watch you drink yourself into a stupor, or however else you plan to spend the day. Perhaps I’ll take notes on your decay. I may want to write a biography on the topic some day, a paper containing my speculations as to whether the rotting away of the soul preceeds the rotting of the flesh, or vice versa.”

 The silence and dimness of the room seemed to combine into a heavy mantle that draped itself about Rosacher’s shoulders. “What do you want of me?” he asked. 

“I’ve brought you a project,” said Breque. “It’s a problem in a field of knowledge about which you know very little, but I’m confident that you can resolve it in our favor. The quality I admire most in you, Richard, is your ability to cut through the fat and get to the meat of an issue.” He picked up the folder and placed it on the bed. “There’s a lot of fat here, but I’m hopeful that you’ll be able to cut through it swiftly.”

“A project, eh?” Rosacher poked the folder with a forefinger, as if he expected it to bite. “Tell me about it.”

“The folder contains plans, maps, and a number of suggestions offered by the former head of the militia regarding…”

“Corley? I wouldn’t trust the worth of any suggestions he had to offer.”

“I’m referring to General Aldo.” 

“Aldo? He’s a competent leader, somewhat impetuous, but an excellent strategist. What happened? Did you demote him? If so, that was not wise.”

“He proved too impetuous for his own good. He took a troop across the Temalaguan border two weeks ago—against my orders—and was killed in a skirmish.”

“Who has taken over command? Mees would be my choice.”

“Mees contracted a severe case of fever when he was last in the south. He’ll be bedridden for several weeks. Thusfar I’ve been unable to find a suitable replacement.”

Rosacher hissed in frustration. “Aldo may have disobeyed orders, but you always pressured him to be more aggressive. This has to be laid at your feet.”

“I readily admit that some of the problem is due to a miscalculation on my part, but now is not the time to assign blame. We have to devise a means of forestalling the combined aggression of Temalagua and Mospiel.”

“What are you saying? They’re acting in concert?”

Breque nodded. “My operatives have reported that they have been planning an assault on Teocinte for the past several weeks. I notified Aldo and this…” He tapped the folder. “This is the plan he had begun working on when he died.”

“What in God’s name did you do to get us into this mess? Mospiel and Temalagua would never have joined forces unless you gave them extreme provocation. There must have been more to it than an ill-conceived foray into Temalagua.”

“It’s as I said, I miscalculated. We can discuss the extent of my malfeasance and what portion of blame attaches to me at a later date. It’s imperative now that we construct a defense against the attack. We have a month to achieve this, possibly less, possibly a bit more.”

“A month.”

“Approximately. Aldo estimated that we might be able to count on six weeks at the outside…unless we’re able to create a diversion that slows down their preparations.”

“You’ve finally got what you wanted,” Rosacher said bitterly. “A full-fledged war…and against two of our enemies, not one. My congratulations.”

“Whatever their past differences, Mospiel joining forces with Temalagua was an inevitability. So Aldo believed. All the skirmish did was accelerate the timetable.”

A feeling of malaise crept over Rosacher—it was as if he were being lowered into a tepid bath that dulled his senses and heavied his limbs. “Maybe we should put our fate in Griaule’s hands. If he could save a nation from certain disaster, that would be the ultimate proof of his divinity. And if not, we deserve to be slaughtered for our reliance on a false god.”

“That is precisely why I’ve brought Aldo’s papers to you.” Breque leaned forward in his chair, a new intensity in his voice. “Of all the people I have known, you have the strongest connection with Griaule. Over and over again his will has manifested in your life, and each time a miracle of sorts has transpired. I realize you’ve had occasion to doubt this, but I’m certain that beneath your doubt lies an indestructible core of faith. You’ve become Griaule’s chosen weapon against all that threatens him.”

Though Rosacher would have been amused by these words years before, he was flattered by them now; yet Breque had never been much for flattery and his stance toward the dragon was pragmatic—since almost everyone believed in Griaule’s potency, he paid those beliefs lip service. Such was Rosacher’s take on the man, anyway, and this was borne out by the sense that there had been a glint of falsity in Breque’s fervent delivery.

“I never took you for a believer,” Rosacher said.

Breque sat back in the chair. “You may consider me a recent covert.”

Definitely a hint of falsity, perhaps even a degree of smugness, as if Breque felt that he had succeeded in his mission. Rosacher was tempted to deny him his success.

“My belief in Griaule has been predicated to a great degree by having observed you over the years,” Breque said. “I have never been a zealot. Indeed, I am not one now. But I would be an idiot if I were to ignore the evidence before me, evidence that tells me you’re the one man who can resolve this situation in our favor.”

The conversation continued in this vein for several minutes more, with Breque expressing confidence in him and Rosacher demurring. Once the councilman had left, Rosacher decided he did not like being coerced, cajoled by flattery, and let the folder lie for the next three days; but Breque’s words, the councilman’s assertion that he, Rosacher, had been chosen for this work, had taken hold on him and at last he opened the folder, spreading its contents on his bed: maps, details on troop concentrations and where they were deployed, estimates of weaponry available to the armies of Temalagua and Mospiel, analyses of the strengths of their key military leaders. In sum, they painted a bleak picture of Teocinte’s prospects for mounting a successful defense. From his reading of Aldo’s marginal notes, Rosacher discovered that Aldo had favored a pre-emptive attack on Mospiel. Such a strike stood little chance of succeeding, but it would cause confusion amongst the enemy, and where confusion ruled, there a perspicacious general might find a critical opportunity.

Dismayed by what he had read, Rosacher relapsed into despondency and drank a bottle and a half of wine. His thoughts went once more to Amelita, and he was pulled back into a morass of guilt and desolation. But on the following morning, before he could sink beneath the surface of grief, he had a second look through the folder. There was no point in revisiting the assessments of their enemies’ martial potential, so he focused on Aldo’s marginalia and several pages from a journal kept during his foray into Temalagua on which Aldo had scribbled some notes. The notes made little sense to Rosacher, mainly consisting of groupings of two or three words, and sometimes only a single word, but his instincts told him to keep searching. One entry near the end of the journal came to intrigue him: a name, Bruno Cerruti, punctuated by three exclamation points. Written on the page close by the name were the words, “the hunt,” and lower on the page another name, “Carlos.”

The name Cerruti had some resonance with Rosacher, but though he racked his brain, he could not recall where he had heard it; and then, as he was settling in for an afternoon nap, he remembered Jarvis telling him about a scalehunter who lived on the plain near the dragon’s hind leg. The man had gone by the nickname of Oddboy, this due to his eccentricity. He preferred the company of animals to that of men, and so had constructed a thatch-roofed house on the plain where he dwelled alone except for a menagerie of pets, all creatures peculiar to Griaule. Rosacher had never met the man and had not expected to, since Oddboy was a confirmed recluse, but he seemed to recall that his surname was Cerruti. Chances were, the scalehunter was not the same Cerruti, but it wasn’t a common name in the region and Rosacher thought it might be worth a day’s expedition to see whether or not he could be found.