Beautiful Blood

by Lucius Shepard

Martita looked up into a corner of the room as if receiving intelligence from that quarter. “That woman,” she went on. “Ludie. She were up here looking for you. Her and some of the militia. She said she’s worried about you, but I never trusted that one, so when Jarvis found you hanging off Griaule’s side, I figured to let you decide about things. If you want me to let her know you’re here, I can…”

  Rosacher clutched her arm and shook his head, signaling “no” in as emphatic a way as he could manage.

  “I thought as much. She pretended she were desperate afraid for you, but what I took from her manner was she wanted to make sure you were dead.” She patted his hand. “Don’t you worry. You’re safe here.”

  He was not so confident about this as she appeared to be, but neither was he inclined to debate the point. Weariness overtook him and, if the conversation continued for longer than that snippet, he could not later recall it.

  For the better part of a week Rosacher was in and out of consciousness. One state came to resemble the other. His sleep was littered with vivid dreams that were extraordinary in nature—in them, dressed in a black hat and coat, he traveled throughout the Carbonales Valley, often to different portions of the dragon’s body, even visiting Griaule’s internal regions, and there he would speak with various and sundry (he could not recall much detail from these conversations, but had the impression they were significant). By contrast, his waking periods were drowsy and muddle-headed, enlivened by the stirrings of arousal he felt whenever Martita visited him. He recognized she must be giving him mab to treat his pain and this accounted for her newfound allure; but knowing that did nothing to diminish that allure. Though thicker and less dainty than the women he was accustomed to having in his bed, he did not find this off-putting. She seemed epic in dimension and he pictured her image carved bare-breasted and forward-looking on a ship’s bow, or sculpted in battle dress at the head of an army, and imagined himself lifting away her bronze breastplates and pressing his lips to the bounty beneath. Toward the end of the week, when she came to clear away the remains of his supper, he pulled her close, fondled her and nuzzled her neck. She allowed him a free hand for several seconds and then went to the door and called downstairs to her assistant, Anthony, telling him to tend to the counter. When she removed her clothing, her skin gleamed as if a sun were embedded in all that whiteness. He understood that what he saw now differed from how he had once perceived her, yet he did not question his response to her and soon was lost in the soft turns of her body. She straddled him, her hands braced on his shoulders, her braids lashing his chest. Through lidded eyes he observed the quaking round of her belly, immense, pendulous breasts shaped like summer squash jouncing together, slack features pinked from exertion, these sights orchestrated by the rhythmic slapping of flesh—she seemed a divine animal in human form and he gave himself over to the act, drowning in her, devoted to her pleasure as he had been with no woman before. Afterward, lying torpid amid the rumpled bedding, he watched her buttoning her trousers and realized that, while he did not feel love toward her (he doubted he would ever know that emotion), he had no sense of disdain such as customarily attended his liaisons with unimportant women. Instead, he had an urge to make a joke or be playful in some way, but he was uncertain of his instincts in this regard and kept quiet.

  “If you’re strong enough to give me a bounce…” Martita cinched her belt. “You’ll soon be wanting to get up and about.”

  She went to a closet, took out a black suit and a slouch hat, and laid them on the foot of the bed.

  “Try these on when you’ve a mind,” she said. “Mister Doans wore that suit whenever he went to town. It can take a bit of letting out if needs be.”

  Rosacher tried to pull her down onto the bed again, but she fended him off, saying she had to get back to the bar or else Anthony would rob her blind.

  “I’ll look in on you again this evening,” she said. “Get some rest and we’ll see how you’re feeling then.”

  After she had left he examined Mr. Doans’ suit and hat—they were identical to those he had worn in his dreams, and identical also to those worn by the man with the horrible cough and the bandaged face who had come to him in a dream on the night the Church’s assassin had invaded his bedroom. He knew what Martita would say were he to bring the subject up. She’d tell him that Griaule’s ways were too subtle for men to comprehend and would advise him not to waste time on matters that were beyond him. The usual drivel. And yet, he told himself, although he had backslid from this viewpoint on several prior occasions, the usual drivel was becoming ever more difficult to discount.

  10

  His scars were permanent and they were not the kind of scars that lent an exotic accent to a man’s features. The skin covering the left side of his jaw and neck had been rendered reddish brown and displayed a coarse, rippled look, as with overdone bacon, and the backs of his hands were much the same, although the effect was not so pronounced. On discovering that the majority of Martita’s patrons bore such scars, he became less self-conscious, yet nonetheless he wore high collars and often gloves, and was prone to incline his head to the left in an attempt to hide the worst of the scarring. A lingering ague caused by the flakes’ poison left him weakened, and he decided to wait until he regained his strength to avenge himself upon Ludie. In truth, vengeance was no longer his first priority. During his recuperation he came to recognize that sooner or later he would have to deal with Ludie and Breque, though not to square accounts—he could live without retribution. His survival was the important thing and if sparing them was less risky than killing them, then that was the course he would choose. He doubted, however, that this would prove to be the case.

  He woke each morning with the intention of cutting short his usage of mab, but when Martita brought him the pastilles he swallowed them without hesitation—he was insufficiently motivated to quit taking the drug. Five weeks had elapsed since Arthur’s attempt to kill him and he couldn’t recall ever having been more content. He enjoyed the rough, comfortable atmosphere of the tavern, and liked the way he felt about Martita, and he wanted to do nothing that might affect those relationships, at least until he had time to assess this situation more fully. What did it matter if his contentment were the product of chemicals? Under normal circumstances was not happiness induced by a temporary imbalance of one kind or another? But by far the most compelling reason for using mab was that he no longer dreaded falling asleep—in addition to its palliative benefits, he had stopped losing years and, while he could not be certain that this state of affairs would continue, or that mab was the critical variable involved (it might be, he reasoned, that his sense of lost years was due to some mental affliction, now passed), he was reluctant to change any of his behaviors for fear of a relapse.

  He took to helping out in the tavern, working behind the counter during the days—this allowed Martita to leave him in charge and keep the place open whenever she had business in Teocinte. In the afternoons, with the sun slanting through the windows, gilding the rough planking, the patrons encased in distinct beams of light, dust motes whirling above their heads, the kinetic representation of their illuminated thoughts, the smell of cooked apples (dragon apples, grown in a stunted orchard sprouting from Griaule’s back, valued for their medicinal properties), all the peace and sweetness of the place…it was so quiet, so quaint and homey, so unlike any environment Rosacher had known, it charmed him and he basked in that charm, in that ruddy, glowing space, recognizing it for an illusion, knowing that people could ruin any such space with their bloody-minded urges, yet embracing the illusion for as long as it would last. Not long, as it turned out. Before two months had passed, the confines of his new life, giving Martita a daily bounce and having superficial, simpleminded (for the most part) chats with the patrons and handling the ordinary business of the tavern…they began to chafe at him. Mab prevented the chafing from growing too pronounced—it manifested as a nagging sense of dissatisfaction that he could have easily ignored; but Rosach
er was not a man who overlooked imperfections and he picked away at this mental sore each day until the only thing that would reduce the aggravation was another pastille.

  While talking one afternoon with Jarvis Riggins, the elderly scalehunter who had rescued him from beneath the dragon’s shoulder, Rosacher expressed this very dissatisfaction. Jarvis wore his usual costume of leather trousers and a sleeveless canvas shirt; his arms, cheek, and neck were festooned with tattoos, the majority being tiny representations of green-and-gold scales that signified important finds. The largest of his tattoos was all but hidden by his shirt, a dragon rampant, a portion of the head showing above his collar. He sat facing away from the window, his cloudy nimbus of white hair backlit by the late sun into a flaming halo, his scarred, crumpled face in shadow, a visage so ruinous it might have been an element of terrain that, when seen from a great elevation, resembled a human caricature. He inquired if Rosacher knew where he was and, without waiting for an answer to his question, asked another: “Do they have herds of mile-long dragons where you come from, boy? They must…else how can you live here and not realize you’re walking around on top of a miracle?”

  Rosacher let out an exasperated sigh. “I’ve had a bellyful of that nonsense. Griaule knows. Griaule will provide. Griaule will answer all of your prayers.”

  Jarvis scraped at a tattooed scale on his wrist with a fingernail. “He answered your prayer, didn’t he?”

  “I’m sorry I told you about that,” Rosacher said. “It’s true. I’ve had moments when I’ve allowed fear to get the best of me. When I’ve been tempted to cling to superstition. But when I look at the world with a rational eye, I see nothing that will not one day be subject to a clear and credible scientific explanation.”

  Jarvis grunted. “It’s like I said. You don’t know where you are.”

  “Well.” Rosacher swiped at moisture on the counter with a rag. “If Griaule’s a god, he’s a wildly erratic one. His actions seem completely random.”

  The old man made as if to speak, but Rosacher beat him to the mark: “And I don’t want to hear any talk of his inscrutable purposes, his mysterious ways. I’ve had a bellyful of that, too.”

  A customer in the back hailed Rosacher and he went to fetch him another pint. The sun shone straight in through the windows of the tavern and the scattering of solitary figures sitting at benches and along the counter with their heads lowered to their mugs resembled figures in a monastic setting, meditating upon some subtle doctrinal issue, encased in beams of dusty light that enriched the reddish color of the boards. Rosacher responded to a second summons and, by the time he returned to his spot by the window, Jarvis was preparing to leave.

  “I’ll stop back tomorrow at first light,” said the old man. “I want to take you out under the wing, show you something.”

  “What is it?”

  “You can decide that for yourself. Bring food and water for the day.”

  Rosacher protested that he might have to work and Jarvis said, “Martita’s been running this place alone since Nathan died. She can manage for a day.”

  “Isn’t there some animal living under the wing that’s supposed to be dangerous?”

  “It won’t bother us none as long as we don’t go in too deep…and I ain’t even sure it’s still there. Been a while since it did for anyone.”

  “What about flakes? If all you’re suggesting is a nature walk, I have no desire to be stung again.”

  “Flakes won’t bother you no more. Once they sting you, they’re done. You could walk into the midst of a swarm and they’d pay you no mind.”

  Unable to think of a reasonable explanation for such behavior, one that would accord with the imperatives of biological necessity, Rosacher asked why this was.

  “Mysterious ways,” Jarvis said.

  +

  At dawn the next day, with a shimmering red sun balanced in a notch between distant hills, Jarvis and Rosacher (burdened by two twelve-foot-long bamboo poles that Jarvis had cut along the way, to the ends of which he had affixed large hooks, offering no explanation other than “…they’ll come in handy…”) lowered themselves on ropes to a spot beneath the dragon’s wing where an ancient wound—a wedge torn from the flesh over which the scales had grown back warped and deformed—had evolved over millennia into a wide ledge that afforded a view of Griaule’s eastern slope and the countryside below. The scales on that side were obscured by tangles of vines and carpeted in lichen that ranged in hue through a spectrum of vivid greens, with here and there edgings of rust and scarlet and pale brown. Dirt and grass mounded high beneath the dragon’s belly, covering much of his legs, making it appear from a westbound traveler’s perspective that this portion of the beast was a natural formation, a cliff lifting from a plain of palms and thorn bushes and tall yellow grasses. Only the wing, drooping down to shade the ledge, scarcely ten feet overhead, its great vanes and struts supporting a considerable acreage of darkly veined tissue, denied this impression. As the sun climbed higher, the sky lightening to a robin’s egg blue with pink streamers of cloud feathered above the hills, it brought to light the abundance of life that flourished upon and about Griaule. Swarms of insects darted to and fro, doing some dervish duty, and occasionally a cloud of flakes drifted into view, causing Rosacher to tense until they passed from sight. Uncountable thousands of creatures too small to make out moved across Griaule’s body, creating a rippling effect, as if he were seeing through a depth of crystalline water. Hawks patrolled the skies, swooping down to take their prey, and flocks of smaller birds—swifts, starlings, sparrows, and so forth—swept up and away, or flew low above the dragon, following the topography of the back for a second or two before vanishing in the direction of Teocinte. The organic complexity of the scene put him in mind of childhood summers spent on the coast, diving down into the translucent water and observing the reef, the strange unity of fishes darting in schools beneath the shadows of sharks, gorgonians and anemones gently waving, many-jointed crustaceans, frail life forms whose curious configurations beggared classification, a myriad trivial interactions joined in a symphony of movement that seemed to reflect the direction of an enormous brain, to be its living thoughts.

  After half an hour Jarvis turned onto his side and went to sleep, leaving Rosacher to contemplate the vista without the benefit of the old man’s minimalist conversation…and that, Rosacher assumed, was the point of the exercise: to make him aware of the biotope that Griaule had become, supporting a vast biotic community; to have him experience it and be amazed and let him mistake it for divinity. Well, he was amazed, the view was spectacular; but he perceived in the centrality of Griaule to the biocoenosis not proof of divinity, but rather evidence of the principles expressed by men of science such as Alfred Russell Wallace and Alexander Von Humboldt. And so, armored against magical thinking and superstition in all its guises, he leaned back against a scale and gazed at the dragon’s wing, suspended above like a remnant of a huge broken umbrella. A variety of birds—wrens, orioles, grackles, caciques, and the like—had suspended their nests along the underside of the wing, some of them quite elaborate, and the air was busy with their flights. Hundreds of them perched along the wing’s edge preparatory to soaring up and away in their search for food, and Rosacher became mesmerized in tracking their dartings and swoopings. As he watched his thoughts moved in similarly erratic orbits, passing from topic to topic without apparent logical connection until he found himself considering his business in relation to Griaule, noting mistakes and missed opportunities. Prominent among these was the idea that things would have gone much easier if, instead of scoffing at those who professed belief in Griaule’s divinity, he had embraced them, if he had promoted mab as the sacrament of a living god and held up addiction as an exemplar of religious faith. Why, he wondered, had he not seen this before? Had he done so, there was no telling how far his influence might have spread, how powerful he would have become. Neither the Church in Mospiel, nor any church, for that matter, could stand against a re
ligion that delivered on its promises in the here and now, whose sacrament bestowed rewards that were tangible and immediate, and not some vague post-mortem fantasy. There would have been difficulties—the Church would have been loath to yield up its power, yet yield it they would have. Given that the faith of their devotees could be subverted by the swallowing of a pastille, how could they not?

  As he imagined the world he could have made, picturing himself ruling over the length and breadth of the littoral, perhaps over an even more substantial realm, he recalled staring out a window in his apartment at the lights of Morningshade many years before and seeing in their patterns an answer to his problems so flawlessly simple as to seem the product of a visitation. His current problems were not as severe, but the solution he had extracted from (or had been offered by) the patterns of the birds was, he realized, no less elegant, no less mysterious in its advent…and, he told himself, no less relevant. This was not a missed opportunity. He could still take advantage of it. In fact, it might be easier now that he would only have to deal with a single person: Breque. Ludie would be assiduous in her attention to detail for a while, but gradually she would cede her authority to Breque and give herself over to the pursuit of pleasure. By the time Rosacher was ready to move against Breque, her role would likely be reduced to that of a figurehead.

  Of course he might not have to move against Breque; he might be able to turn him into a complicitor—that was something he would have to explore, but first things first. He needed a building, an edifice the equal of a cathedral and devoted to a similar purpose, yet constructed in such a fashion so that its function would be unclear to the Church until late in the day. Not that their knowledge of his plans would make a difference one way or another. They would rattle their sabers and might, in extremis, be provoked to send an army against Teocinte; but the militia had grown powerful enough to defend the city and, once Mospiel’s troops had a taste of mab, it would be a short war.