Beautiful Blood

Amelita and Rosacher became lovers shortly after she entered his employ. He had thought this would happen, and that it would be entirely cynical on her part, but he allowed the relationship to prosper because it suited his strategy and further because he was smitten with her. Yet he noticed over the months that the information she passed on to Breque excluded details designed to inflame the councilman and eventually became an uninformative digest of what Rosacher permitted her to see. One drizzly morning almost two years after he had requested her services, she came to him out on the ledge, where he had gone to write and to draw inspiration from the shifting pastorale visible from Griaule’s side. She wore the khaki trousers of a Hangtown woman and a blouse of black broadcloth, a garment that signaled self-abnegation among her people, puritanical cultists who dwelled along the banks of the Putomaya in the jungly lowlands of the country. Sitting with her knees drawn up beneath her chin, she confessed her betrayal, telling him that she had reported to Breque on Rosacher’s activities—as her feelings for Rosacher grew, however, she had come to censor her reports, omitting whatever she considered to be crucial, but she could no longer maintain even this level of subterfuge. He was unable to rid himself of suspicion and, though moved by her apparent sincerity, with a fraction of his mind he reserved judgment, knowing her to be an accomplished deceiver—he thought the confession might be a ploy designed to engage his trust. He drew her into an embrace and, his face buried in her hair, said that he loved her, words he fervently believed as he spoke them, but that seemed devalued once he released her.

“I should never have accepted the assignment,” she said in a small voice. “My instincts told me to avoid you at all costs.”

“Then we would have never met,” Rosacher said. “Would you have preferred that?”

“It might have been for the best.”

“We can move past this,” he said.

“I’m not so sure.”

“Well, I am!”

“I have higher standards for my behavior than do you…or so it would seem.”

He tried to read her face, but it remained impassive. “What would you have me do?” he asked. “Devise some punishment? You were following orders and deserve none. Forgive you? I forgive you. That should go without saying.”

She gave him a penetrating look, then hung her head, picking at a fray on her trouser cuff. At last she said, “You’re taking this rather well…and I find it odd that you don’t seem at all surprised by my duplicity.”

“Did you expect me to put on a show for you? Wail and tear my hair? I’m not a fool. I knew from the outset that you might be carrying tales about me back to Breque.”

“I see. You were being duplicitous as well.”

“Naturally I protected myself. I don’t know whether I would call that duplicity. If I had mentioned my suspicions concerning you, it would have ended our relationship. I wasn’t prepared for it to end.”

Rain plip-plopped on the scales, dripping from the edge of the wing, and an assortment of trivial creatures were poking their heads, feelers and other protuberances up between Griaule’s scales. Amelita absorbed what he had said and then made a slight gesture with her head that might have been a nod signaling acceptance.

“I have one question regarding Breque,” he said. “Did you ever withhold information from me that would have implicated him in Ludie’s murder?”

“I found nothing to implicate him,” she said. “That scarcely constitutes proof of innocence, but if he was involved, he left no trace.”

Rosacher could not hide his disappointment and she put a hand on his arm, saying, “I’ll keep trying to find a connection, if you wish.”

“No, just keep doing what you’re doing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Keep turning in your reports to Breque.”

A bewildered expression crossed her face. “You want me to continue deceiving him?”

“Your deceit protects us. If you were to go to Breque and tell him you could no longer work for him, he would simply replace you with someone whom I might not be able to detect.”

Seeing that she was displeased, he said, “You became entangled in this web when you embarked upon a course of deception. It’s going to take some time for you to free yourself.”

“And so, in order to ‘free myself,’ I must cease being Breque’s creature and become yours? Or have I always been your creature? You knew I was a spy from the outset, didn’t you? You used me!”

“What would you have done in my place? Breque put me in the position of having to defend myself. I blame him, not you.”

A squabbling arose from the nests hanging beneath the edge of the wing, and one of them, large and mud-colored, its bottom shaped roughly like a four-pointed star, swayed back and forth. A spasm of frustration struck through Rosacher and he aimed a punch at the scale whereon he sat, but pulled it before impact, recalling the damage done his hand by similar punches thrown in the past.

“Damn it!” he said. “You’re the most contrary human being I’ve ever come across!”