Beautiful Blood

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, suspended 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.