Beautiful Blood

 His scars were permanent and they were not the kind of scars that lent an exotic accent to a man’s features. The skin covering the left side of his jaw and neck had been rendered reddish brown and displayed a coarse, rippled look, as with overdone bacon, and the backs of his hands were much the same, although the effect was not so pronounced. On discovering that the majority of Martita’s patrons bore such scars, he became less self-conscious, yet nonetheless he wore high collars and often gloves, and was prone to incline his head to the left in an attempt to hide the worst of the scarring. A lingering ague caused by the flakes’ poison left him weakened, and he decided to wait until he regained his strength to avenge himself upon Ludie. In truth, vengeance was no longer his first priority. During his recuperation he came to recognize that sooner or later he would have to deal with Ludie and Breque, though not to square accounts—he could live without retribution. His survival was the important thing and if sparing them was less risky than killing them, then that was the course he would choose. He doubted, however, that this would prove to be the case.

He woke each morning with the intention of cutting short his usage of mab, but when Martita brought him the pastilles he swallowed them without hesitation—he was insufficiently motivated to quit taking the drug. Five weeks had elapsed since Arthur’s attempt to kill him and he couldn’t recall ever having been more content. He enjoyed the rough, comfortable atmosphere of the tavern, and liked the way he felt about Martita, and he wanted to do nothing that might affect those relationships, at least until he had time to assess this situation more fully. What did it matter if his contentment were the product of chemicals? Under normal circumstances was not happiness induced by a temporary imbalance of one kind or another? But by far the most compelling reason for using mab was that he no longer dreaded falling asleep—in addition to its palliative benefits, he had stopped losing years and, while he could not be certain that this state of affairs would continue, or that mab was the critical variable involved (it might be, he reasoned, that his sense of lost years was due to some mental affliction, now passed), he was reluctant to change any of his behaviors for fear of a relapse.

He took to helping out in the tavern, working behind the counter during the days—this allowed Martita to leave him in charge and keep the place open whenever she had business in Teocinte. In the afternoons, with the sun slanting through the windows, gilding the rough planking, the patrons encased in distinct beams of light, dust motes whirling above their heads, the kinetic representation of their illuminated thoughts, the smell of cooked apples (dragon apples, grown in a stunted orchard sprouting from Griaule’s back, valued for their medicinal properties), all the peace and sweetness of the place…it was so quiet, so quaint and homey, so unlike any environment Rosacher had known, it charmed him and he basked in that charm, in that ruddy, glowing space, recognizing it for an illusion, knowing that people could ruin any such space with their bloody-minded urges, yet embracing the illusion for as long as it would last. Not long, as it turned out. Before two months had passed, the confines of his new life, giving Martita a daily bounce and having superficial, simpleminded (for the most part) chats with the patrons and handling the ordinary business of the tavern…they began to chafe at him. Mab prevented the chafing from growing too pronounced—it manifested as a nagging sense of dissatisfaction that he could have easily ignored; but Rosacher was not a man who overlooked imperfections and he picked away at this mental sore each day until the only thing that would reduce the aggravation was another pastille.

While talking one afternoon with Jarvis Riggins, the elderly scalehunter who had rescued him from beneath the dragon’s shoulder, Rosacher expressed this very dissatisfaction. Jarvis wore his usual costume of leather trousers and a sleeveless canvas shirt; his arms, cheek, and neck were festooned with tattoos, the majority being tiny representations of green-and-gold scales that signified important finds. The largest of his tattoos was all but hidden by his shirt, a dragon rampant, a portion of the head showing above his collar. He sat facing away from the window, his cloudy nimbus of white hair backlit by the late sun into a flaming halo, his scarred, crumpled face in shadow, a visage so ruinous it might have been an element of terrain that, when seen from a great elevation, resembled a human caricature. He inquired if Rosacher knew where he was and, without waiting for an answer to his question, asked another: “Do they have herds of mile-long dragons where you come from, boy? They must…else how can you live here and not realize you’re walking around on top of a miracle?”