Beautiful Blood

“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.