Beautiful Blood

by Lucius Shepard

“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 precedes 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. Thus far 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 flatt
ery, 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.

  Come morning, showered and, for the first time in weeks, clean shaven, armed with a hunting rifle, General Aldo’s notebook and a pair of binoculars, he set forth on horseback, riding a bay gelding belonging to the House. He skirted Griaule’s fearsome mouth and passed onto the plain, keeping his distance from the dark green cliff of the dragon’s side, its true contours obscured at the base by mounded earth and grass, and higher up by vines and moss and epiphytes, most of the blooms pale lavender in color, but some few a lurid reddish orange that stood out from their surround like points of flame. His expectations of locating Cerruti were not high, yet as he rode his mood grew less oppressive. Though it was not yet nine o’clock, the sun was a dynamited white glare that cooked a strong scent from the stands of palmetto and broke a sweat on his back and shoulders. He went slowly, stopping now and again to scan the plain with his binoculars. When he drew near the haunch, he searched the landscape more carefully, but saw no house. Oddboy had likely moved on, but Rosacher wanted to be thorough and it was good to be out in the air after such a lengthy sequestration—he decided to continue searching. By mid-day he had traveled the length of the dragon, arriving at a place where the tail was completely buried beneath earth and grass, and there he tethered the bay and made a lunch of cold pork and grapes. It had been years since he’d ventured out on the plain and he had forgotten how extensive it was. Due to the clarity of the air, the low hills that encircled the valley appeared close at hand, yet he doubted he could reach them before nightfall. A fitful breeze stirred the tall yellow grasses, occasionally blowing with sufficient force to lift a palmetto frond, but otherwise everything was still—but it was an ominous stillness. The air seemed to hold a rapid vibration, the sum of the thousand heartbeats of the predators, great and small, that watched him from hiding. While digesting his lunch, he peered through the binoculars, tracking across thorn trees, acacias, more palmettos, shrimp plants, and then was brought up short by the sight of a pair of legs clad in coarse, dirty cloth. Dropping the binoculars, he scrambled to his feet. A man stood barely ten yards away—he was tanned, lean, with brown hair falling to his shoulders, and was shirtless, wearing sandals and a pair of ill-used canvas trousers. In one hand was a game sack figured by reddish-brown stains, and in the other a long-bladed knife. Before Rosacher could react, the man closed the distance between them. He was not so young as Rosacher had thought. Gray threaded his hair and deep lines scored his face, which had not been a pretty sight to begin with—long and horsey, with a hooked nose and squinty blue eyes, the sclera displaying a faint yellowish tinge. The nose had been broken more than once, and a ridged scar ran from the corner of his left eye and down onto his neck. His mouth worked as if he were trying to rid himself of a bad taste, and when he spoke it was in a nasal twang that was pitched an octave higher than Rosacher had anticipated.

  “Man could get himself killed out here,” he said. “You after getting killed?”

  “No, I’m…I’m looking for someone.”

  “Must be someone real important, because you’re taking one hell of a risk.” The man’s mouth worked again. “You’re that Rosacher, ain’t you?”

  “You know me?”

  “Seen you around. How’d you get your face fixed? Once a man gets burnt by flakes, he generally stays burnt.”

  “I’m not sure,” Rosacher said. “It may be…it’s difficult to explain.”

  The man grunted. “I suppose it is.” He waved at the plain with his knife. “I was you, I wouldn’t stay out here much longer. Something’s liable to bite you in half.”

  He started to walk away, but Rosacher said, “Wait! I need to speak to Bruno Cerruti.”

  The man turned. “What for?”

  “Are you Cerruti?”

  “Ain’t much point denying it. What you want?”

  “Did a man named Aldo visit you recently.”

  “Man was out here a few weeks ago with some soldiers. Don’t recall his name, but those soldiers scared the hell out of Frederick. It was a chore holding him back.”

  Rosacher didn’t understand the reference to Frederick, but let it pass, sensing from Cerruti’s truculent manner and clipped speech that he had a limited amount of time in which to make his inquiries and state his business. “What did Aldo want with you?”

  “That’s between me and him.”

  Sweat rolled down Rosacher’s back, beaded on his forehead. “That’s no longer the case. Aldo’s dead.”

  “Huh. Too bad. Seemed like a nice little fellow.” Cerruti spat out a brown wad of, Rosacher assumed, tobacco. “He was right took by Frederick. Said he had somebody needed killing. But the soldiers got Frederick excited and I advised him to leave. He said he’d come back later and we’d finish discussing the matter.”

  Rosacher wiped sweat from his eyes. “Is there someplace out of this heat where we can talk?”

  Cerruti hesitated. “Guess we can head over to the house, but you best leave your animal here. Frederick loves horse meat.”

  +

  Cerruti’s house was several hundred yards out onto the plain—it was almost impossible to see until you were close upon it, because its walls were woven of yellow grass, hardened (Cerruti said) by a paste derived from animal fat, and the roof was fabricated of palmetto fronds. The interior of the place held a rank odor and consisted of two large, windowless rooms separated by a canvas cloth; a second structure lay behind the house, nearly twice as high and missing a fourth wall—a storeroom, Rosacher supposed, yet he could see nothing within it, only blackness. It
was not significantly cooler inside the house, but it was out of the direct sun. In the air was the sickly sweetish odor of a body that had gone unwashed for many days. Crudely carpentered chairs and a table of unfinished planking centered the room. Light came through chinks in the grass that had been made opaque by the paste and cast an irregular diamond pattern over the dirt floor.

  “I was told you lived near the haunch.” Rosacher took a chair and mopped his brow.

  “Moved,” Cerruti said.

  He placed a jug and a platter bearing a dubious-looking chunk of fatty meat and a half-loaf of bread on the table and joined Rosacher. He nudged the plate toward Rosacher and nodded, indicating that he should help himself.

  “I’ve already eaten.” Rosacher shifted his chair forward. “What more can you tell me about your meeting with Aldo?”

  “Wasn’t much to it.” Cerruti ripped a hunk of bread from the loaf. “He said he had somebody needed killing. Some high muckety-muck. Asked if me and Frederick would be interested in handling the job. I told him I didn’t see no reason for it, so unless he told me more, he might as well head on back where he come from. That’s when the soldiers started getting on Frederick’s nerves.”

  “Where is Frederick?”

  “Sleeping. He hates the sun, he does. Don’t hardly ever come out until evening.”

  Cerruti tore off some of the meat with his teeth and chewed.

  “Did he mention who this person was?” Rosacher asked.

  “No. Just said he was a bigwig.”

  While Cerruti ate Rosacher studied Aldo’s notebook, the page on which Cerruti’s name had been written, along with “the hunt” and “Carlos.” He remained baffled, unable to make a connection between Cerruti and those two entries.

  Cerruti wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “One thing I forgot. He said we’d have to travel a week and a day more to get to the place where the killing would be done.”

  Another useless fact—that was Rosacher’s immediate response to this revelation; but as he tried to plot how far in every direction “a week and a day more” would take him (assuming the trip was made on horseback), he realized if he were to travel north and east that would put him within the Temalaguan border, on the edge of the rain forest, the area where Carlos VII, Temalagua’s current ruler, famously pursued his passion for the hunt.