Beautiful Blood

After he had drunk and swallowed the medication she pressed upon him, two pastilles, he took her measure. She might be Martita’s twin, he thought. They were identical in nearly every respect, yet the physical characteristics that made Martita ordinary somehow combined in this woman to effect a regal and voluptuous beauty. She leaned toward him, adjusting the pillows beneath his head, and a silver locket incised with the crude image of a dragon dangled in his face.

“Martita?” Speaking her name set off yet another spell of coughing.

“There, now!” She shushed him, putting a finger to his lips. “You’ll be talking soon enough. I know you have questions, though, so I’ll tell you what I can.”

He nodded.

“You run afoul of a swarm of flakes, you and Mister Honeyman,” she said. “You won’t find as many of them this side of Griaule, the Teocinte side, as once there was. Cattanay’s crew crawling all over keeps them away. Flakes likes their solitude. But now and then a swarm drifts over this way and does some damage. You only had a few stings. Most of ’em spent their poison on Mister Honeyman, I reckon. People say they had trouble identifying his remains, he were so disfigured. ’Course the fall didn’t help matters none. Come right through the roof of a bathhouse, he did. Some of the ladies from Ali’s Eternal Reward were lying about, taking their ease with one another, if you catch my meaning, and what with Mister Honeyman bursting in on ’em like that…well, it dimmed their mood, let’s say.”

Rosacher was greatly relieved by this, understanding from this that he had not lost more years, merely days.

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.