Beautiful Blood

by Lucius Shepard

  The thickets buzzed with insignificant life, the tops of the bushes swaying in the strong wind that flowed over Griaule’s back. He pushed into them, proceeding along a partly overgrown trail that led to the dragon’s crest, rising like a shadowy cliff above. He had never envisioned himself with children, yet the revelation that he’d fathered a son, even one stillborn…it was as if a pebble had been dropped into the waters of his soul, one from which ripples continued to spread long after the event, and he could not cease from thinking about the lost potentials of fatherhood. Overcome by frustration, an emotion never rising to the level of grief or rage, affording him no release, he cast his eyes upward. A scatter of stars lay directly above, like a throw of cowrie shells on a fortuneteller’s dark cloth, and he imagined he saw in them a blueprint for action, his life’s path revealed.

  “Richard!” A woman’s voice at his rear.

  Clad in trousers and a waist-length jacket, Ludie stood half in the spiky shadow of a century plant, considering him with a glum expression. Her presence put him on the alert—under ordinary circumstances, she would never set foot on the dragon—and he asked what she was doing there.

  “Protecting my investment,” she said.

  Arthur moved out of the bushes to stand behind her, a long-barreled pistol dangling from his right hand. He slipped his free arm about her waist, nudging a breast with his thumb, and grinned.

  “I don’t know what you two have in mind,” said Rosacher. “But I advise you to think things over carefully before you act.”

  “Oh, we done that,” Arthur said. “We’ve thoroughly analyzed the problem, as you might say.”

  “Ask yourself if you’re capable of running the business,” Rosacher said. “You’ve no idea how complicated it is.”

  Ludie extricated herself from Arthur’s grasp. “This has nothing to do with whether or not we can run the business. It has everything to do with your incompetence.”

  “Incompetence? Are you mad?”

  “In the past year demand has outstripped supply for the first time since we began. Between theft and poor management, our profits are down nearly thirty percent from our peak…which was five years ago. You’ve lost your entrepreneurial instincts, Richard. Your enthusiasm for the game.” She folded her arms. “We’ve struck a new agreement with the council. Breque has assured us he can handle day-to-day operations until we find someone to replace you.”

  “You’re not qualified to deal with Breque,” Rosacher said. “He’ll have you for breakfast.”

  Ludie’s mouth tightened.

  “Why do you think he struck such a deal with you?” said Rosacher. “He knows he’ll be able to outmaneuver you if I’m not around.”

  “I’m not an idiot. I understand that Breque will move against us.”

  “Understanding and doing something about it are different things. You don’t have the focus, Ludie. The discipline. You won’t put in eighteen hours a day when necessary. You’ll be fine at first, but sooner or later you’ll…”

  “Arthur.” She urged the giant forward with a gesture—he covered the distance between them in two steps and seized Rosacher by the collar.

  “I’ll meet you below,” said Ludie, shooting the cuffs of her blouse. She stared at Rosacher without emotion, then turned abruptly and struck out along the path. Rosacher started to call after her, but Arthur clipped him behind the ear with the butt of his pistol and, once he had recovered from the blow, still dazed, his vision blurry, the moon jolting in and out of view, he found that Arthur was dragging him by his collar through sparse vegetation and over sloping ground, over mattes of vines, the same that partially curtained Griaule’s sides. He twisted about, wanting to see where they were headed, and caught a glimpse of the lights of Teocinte spread thick as stars across the valley and recognized they were above the dragon’s shoulder, very near the point where a man would have to hang onto something in order to keep from falling off the side. He flung himself about, hoping to break Arthur’s grip, but to no avail, and as he cast about for some other means of escape the giant stopped and hauled him erect, holding him by the shirtfront at arm’s length. Rosacher felt the chill tug of gravity and clawed at Arthur’s arm, attempting to determine which tactic would be the most propitious, whether to cajole or threaten. Arthur smiled, the merest tic of a smile and said, “Mind the drop, now,” and released him, simply opening his hand. Rosacher gave a terrified squawk and clutched at Arthur’s sleeve. His feet skidded on the slick surface of a scale and, flailing with his arms, he managed to maintain his balance sufficiently so that he did not go somersaulting backwards off Griaule, but rather pitched forward onto his stomach and slid down the dragon’s side, clutching at the edges of scales, his fingers too weak to find purchase, grabbing at vines, entangling his arm in one, more by accident than anything else, snagging another, continuing to fall, but slowly, slower yet, until he was less falling than lowering himself. To his amazement, he realized that he might not die.

  The flat crack of a gunshot and a bullet ricocheted off a scale hard by Rosacher’s elbow. He allowed himself to slip down beyond the curve of Griaule’s ribcage, out of Arthur’s sight, and hung there, doing a half-spin, bumping against a scale the size of a cathedral door, feeling terribly exposed, as might a criminal escaping prison by means of a too-short rope flung over an outer wall. To this point he had merely been reacting, but now he began to think again, albeit in a fragmented way, unmanned by the sight of Morningshade below, its flickering orange lights tiny as fireflies. The vines had been cut back from Cattanay’s mural, otherwise Rosacher might have climbed across the dragon’s side and then shinnied down onto the scaffolding. He could not descend to the valley floor—the longest of the vines ended hundreds of feet above the tallest rooftop—and thus he began inching across the masonry of lichen-dappled scales, moving vine-to-vine toward the shadows beneath the shoulder joint of Griaule’s foreleg, planning to hide there until morning when he would climb up or, if unable to make the ascent, attract the attention of a scalehunter (areas beneath the joints were prime spots in which to find broken or loosened scales). On reaching the area he wove vines together into a makeshift seat, constructing a virtual cage of vines in which he felt relatively stable. This done, he hauled himself tight against the underside of the joint, securing the cage there, lashing it to other vines. Then and only then did he allow himself to catch his breath and take stock.

  He could see nothing of his immediate surround, not even scales close enough to touch, yet it seemed that here, tucked beneath what was essentially the dragon’s armpit, he could make out Griaule’s scent—a pervasive cool dryness unalloyed by the lesser odors of vegetation and lichens, like that of an abandoned fortress, a mass of ancient stone tenanted by wind and the ghosts of lizards. The dragon’s moonstruck side curved away like a planet armored in scales, each of considerable size save for a section about thirty feet overhead that appeared to be composed of hundreds of irregularly shaped scales four or five inches in width…or perhaps it was a single scale struck by innumerable blows that had left it cracked, divided by hundreds of fine fissures. If this were the case, the culprit would have likely been someone other than a scalehunter—scalehunters were notorious for their superstitions and their lore was rife with cautionary anecdotes concerning men who had attempted to pry loose a scale or otherwise cause the dragon to suffer a minor bodily insult, and how Griaule had exacted his revenge upon them. Rosacher was in the habit of scoffing at such stories, but now that he was more-or-less alone on the dragon, he could not dismiss them. When seen from his vantage, the beast’s magnitude was no longer quantifiable. “Gargantuan” was too modest a term for a creature that was its own domain. He recalled the night he had ventured into Griaule’s mouth, the army of strange insects sheltering there, the way they had moved in unison, and he understood that assigning a mystical value to the experience was not entirely irrational from a phenomenological standpoint. Thinking about Griaule as a magical figure rekindled his anxieties and, su
spended by vines above a five-hundred-foot drop, staring between his feet at the lights of Morningshade, he placed his palm upon a scale and prayed to be kept safe. The prayer was tinged with shame at having surrendered to fear, yet was no less fervent for all that and, though he mentioned no names, was directed toward Griaule. Afterward he chalked it up to a weak moment, yet he felt calmer. He gazed off along the swell of the dragon’s ribcage, soothed by the shimmer of moonlight on the scales, and marveled at his good fortune. Had Arthur pushed him rather than simply letting him go, he would be lying dead and broken in the street below with his every organ ruptured. He was determined to have his revenge and he needed to act swiftly, before his business was imperiled more than it already had been. Further, he would have to do something about Breque. The council had served as an effective buffer between Rosacher and the Church, a function he preferred them to continue for the foreseeable future; yet it might be the time for bold strokes. His position was not as strong as he would have liked (for one thing, he was uncertain how the militia would react if he removed Arthur as their leader; for another he had no idea what steps Breque had taken to protect himself), but he would have surprise on his side and a sufficiency of funds (salted away for just such an emergency). Within a matter of days he could hire assassins and organize their assignments; then he could sit back and orchestrate events. He’d operate out of Martita’s tavern. Should things go awry, he believed he could depend on her to hide him—her dog-loyalty to him had been evident.

  A faint noise interrupted the flow of his thoughts and he saw a lanky figure clambering down Griaule’s side: Arthur. The giant had removed his jacket and his white silk shirt rippled with light. He had wrapped a vine about his waist, using his left hand to control his rate of descent and holding his pistol in the right. He stopped about fifty feet above and scanned the area beneath him. Holstering the pistol, he began traversing the dragon, heading in the general direction of the shoulder joint. There was nothing for Rosacher to do except pray and pray he did, initially to a nameless presence, but as Arthur drew nearer the prayers evolved into fervent pleas to Griaule, begging the dragon to distract the giant, to lead him away or cause the vine to snap. Once he had negotiated slightly more than half the distance between them, Arthur drew his pistol and fired two shots into the shadows beneath the joint, both going wide of Rosacher.

  “Show yourself!” Arthur called. “I promise to end things quickly!”

  Rosacher tried desperately to think of something he could do or say that might extricate him from this situation, unearthing and discarding old strategies. Suddenly he grew weary and sat plucking at the vines that constrained him. It was as if light and energy were emptying from his mind.

  “If you force me to chase after you,” Arthur shouted, “I promise you’ll regret it!” A pause. “Do you hear?”

  Rosacher suspected that Arthur might be afraid of the dark space in which he had hidden; but this did no more than give his spirits a momentary boost.

  Cursing, Arthur descended a few feet and planted a boot on what Rosacher had presumed to be the shattered scale, knocking loose several of the broken pieces—against all expectation they did not fall but hovered beside Arthur, fluttering as though weightless and borne aloft on an updraft. The remainder of the pieces also fluttered up about the giant, laying bare an undamaged scale beneath. They swarmed about him like a leaf storm, almost obscuring him from sight. He screamed; his pistol discharged and he screamed a second time, his legs poking out from the mass of golden fragments that sheathed his upper body, kicking madly, presenting an image that might have been engendered by the brain of a drug-addled artist. Whatever their nature—be they insects or something more obscure—they settled on his hands, neck and face, affixing themselves to the bare skin, so that he came to resemble a man with huge golden mittens and a misshapen golden head thrice normal size that changed shape subtly, now shrinking, now growing distended. Spasms racked his body, yet he screamed no more. He hung there for a second, some reflex permitting him to maintain a grip on the vine that supported him, and then he tumbled away, spinning down against the lights of the town. The insects (Rosacher had determined they were such) came scattering back up from the falling corpse and formed into a cloud that drifted off around the curve of the dragon’s ribs—once again Rosacher entertained the conceit that he was looking off along the curve of a golden planet and observing the curious astronomical object that orbited it.

  Silence and stillness closed in around him and he realized he was trembling. His breath came quick and shallow, and though the night was fairly warm he felt chilled to the bone. He squeezed his eyes shut, attempting to control his body, and heard a thin keening, like a teakettle beginning to boil. Curious, he opened his eyes. An insect like those that had attacked Arthur danced before his face—a long, dark, drooping body suspended between papery gold wings. In panic, he swatted at it and it fluttered off, going out of view. He no longer heard the whining, but as he twisted about in his cage of vines, hoping to catch sight of the insect, it fluttered up from behind his back and battened onto his jaw. He made to knock it away, but did not complete the gesture—a second insect, its wings folded, perched on his middle knuckle. A sting, a pinprick attended by a cold, burning sensation, and his hand cramped, knotted into a fist. Another sting seared his neck. Cold fire spread down into his throat and across his cheek. More stings followed, how many he could not be certain. They blended into a red wash of agony, fire poison acid, a distillate of each combined to produce a fourth and commensurately greater effect. The pain had a noise, a crackling scream that he realized was issuing from his throat. He seemed to be riding atop the noise as if it were a wave, one carrying him toward a black coast that came to cast a shadow across him so deep, he could no longer distinguish movement or color or anything at all. Even his pain was subsumed, although it seemed he brought its memory with him into the blessed dark.

  9

  Ruddy light pried under his eyelids and he heard somebody humming a snatch of a familiar song. A confusion of memories crowded his brain—he could make no sense of them—and a hazy figure moved across his field of vision, clarifying into a lovely Raphaelesque woman clad in breeches and a low-cut blouse. She passed into an adjoining room. He made to call out and that set off a paroxysm of coughing. Once the coughing subsided he felt dazed and out of his depth. Something partially covered his face, interfering with his breathing—he pawed at it and found that the lower half of his face and both hands were bandaged. He sank back into the mattress and wondered where he was. The room was Spartan, a few sticks of furniture, an oil lamp, unadorned walls of newly cut boards, a window covered by an orange shade—yet it had a pleasing aesthetic and the blond color of the unfinished wood glowed with a raw vitality. The bed was not much larger than a cot, though comfortable. As he grew increasingly alert he felt pain in the areas that were bandaged and called out again, cautiously this time, producing a feeble grating noise that initiated another bout of coughing. There was no response, but several minutes later the woman re-entered and he attracted her notice with a hand signal. She sat on the edge of the bed and laid a hand on his forehead, peering at him with a worried look. She asked if he needed anything and he shaped the word “water” with his lips.

  After he had drunk and swallowed the medication she pressed upon him, two pastilles, he took her measure. She might be Martita’s twin, he thought. They were identical in nearly every respect, yet the physical characteristics that made Martita ordinary somehow combined in this woman to effect a regal and voluptuous beauty. She leaned toward him, adjusting the pillows beneath his head, and a silver locket incised with the crude image of a dragon dangled in his face.

  “Martita?” Speaking her name set off yet another spell of coughing.

  “There, now!” She shushed him, putting a finger to his lips. “You’ll be talking soon enough. I know you have questions, though, so I’ll tell you what I can.”

  He nodded.

  “You run afoul of a
swarm of flakes, you and Mister Honeyman,” she said. “You won’t find as many of them this side of Griaule, the Teocinte side, as once there was. Cattanay’s crew crawling all over keeps them away. Flakes likes their solitude. But now and then a swarm drifts over this way and does some damage. You only had a few stings. Most of ’em spent their poison on Mister Honeyman, I reckon. People say they had trouble identifying his remains, he were so disfigured. ’Course the fall didn’t help matters none. Come right through the roof of a bathhouse, he did. Some of the ladies from Ali’s Eternal Reward were lying about, taking their ease with one another, if you catch my meaning, and what with Mister Honeyman bursting in on ’em like that…well, it dimmed their mood, let’s say.”

  Rosacher was greatly relieved by this, understanding from this that he had not lost more years, merely days.