Beautiful Blood

Blood trickled from the cut on his jaw and from another on his brow, running down his cheek and neck. A bloodstain mapped the right shoulder of his nightshirt. He took off the shirt and inspected the wounds to his shoulder and collarbone. They were shallow and both had nearly stopped bleeding. His anger had dissipated to a degree, but now it hardened and thrust up from his other emotions like a mountain peak from a sea of clouds. Although he was furious with the Church, who had undoubtedly sent the assassin, the greater portion of his outrage was reserved for himself and for the worlds, the knowledge that he had not conquered in the way he had desired…and for Griaule, the agency ultimately responsible for his travail and disappointment. No blow on the head could have caused this and he could no longer deny that a monstrous lizard ruled his fate. That Griaule had spared his life by sending a messenger gave him no comfort. He was, he thought, being preserved for some more intricate fate and he hungered for something, a spell, a spoonful of medicine, a prayer that would restore his lost years. His thoughts lashed about in frustration.

A tapping at the door diverted him and he yanked it open, preparing to vilify whomever it might be. The maid, her brown hair cropped short, broad-beamed and heavy-breasted, her dumpling face stamped with a common prettiness that would before long slump into matronly, double-chinned drabness…she bore ointment and bandages. As she applied the ointment, going about it with mute animal concentration, he felt an urge to re-establish control, to impose his will, and that urge combined with a less subtle desire. He fondled her breasts, an intimacy that did not cause her to complain. He might have been patting her on the head for all the reaction she displayed. Once she had done with the bandages, he bent her over the sink. She hiked up her skirts and diddled herself, making ready for him. Her bovine compliance irritated him and he spent the next ten or fifteen minutes trying to transform her stuporous expression into one that resembled passion. She hung her head and he ordered her to lift it so he could watch her face in the mirror. At length she closed her eyes and pressed her lips together and yielded up a thin squeal. He sent her from him, telling her to take a coin from atop the dresser, and—his confidence if not fully revived, then braced and polished—he threw on his clothes and went down to the cellar to determine what had been learned from the assassin.

7

 Of all the buildings atop Haver’s Roost, the cathedral was the grandest and most graceful, a serene architecture of swoops and curves that made it appear as if the body of the building had been modeled after some natural shape—a nesting white dove, perhaps. Instead of the dove’s neck and head, a blunt spire arose, forming at its peak the setting for a crystal the size of a small house, the mother of the gem carried by the assassin (these crystals were mined only in the caves underlying the Cathedral of the Lioness in far-off Mospiel, the seat of the church’s authority, and a lavish ceremony accompanied their placement atop each new spire). Rather than looking out of place amid the less ambitious geometries of the government buildings, the cathedral seemed to knit them together, to be the altar before which they, the simple pews, were arranged.

 The morning star had risen and the sky had lightened to a deep royal blue by the time Rosacher and his militia reached the church. He deployed half his men, armed with rifles and under an officer’s direction, to watch the exits of the rectory attached to the rear of the church, and kept the remainder to guard the double doors at the front. Once the men were in position, he appropriated two lanterns and hurled them against the doors, an act that magnified his rage. Burning oil spattered the wood and soon the doors were ablaze. Arthur sent four men to guard the entrance to the square. Showing uncommon foresight, the city fathers had chosen to leave the entrance a narrow path between buildings that could barely funnel two men walking abreast into the square, thus permitting it to be easily defended against a mob. Rosacher doubted there would be more than token resistance to his actions, if that. In recent years the influence of the church, both in Teocinte and elsewhere, had been undercut by the popularity of mab.