Beautiful Blood

News reached Rosacher from Teocinte. Makdessi’s campaign against Mospiel had been successful, though Makdessi himself had not survived, and the rule of the prelates was no more. Many of them had been hanged in the square facing the palace. On hearing this, Rosacher thought of Arthur and how he would have loved to preside over the festivities. As for Teocinte’s economy, Carlos’ prediction did not pan out. The infusion of Mospiel’s wealth into Teocinte’s coffers staved off financial collapse and might have stabilized the economy, but Breque’s continued expenditures kept the nation in a state of perpetual crisis, never able to catch up on their debts. Rosacher reacted to these reports with diminishing interest and it was not until eight years had passed, when the news that Griaule had wakened from his millennia-long slumbers and destroyed most of the city before giving up the ghost, thereby ending the production of mab…not until this came to his attention was he moved to visit the country he had once called home.

The establishment of a ferry between Temalagua and Port Chantay had cut the duration of the trip in half and, availing himself of this improvement in transportation, Rosacher arrived in Teocinte less than two weeks after the dragon’s death. What he saw appalled him. The House of Griaule and, indeed, all of Morningshade, had been obliterated, either crushed beneath the dragon’s body, which lay athwart the ruined city, or burnt to cinders by the fire he had vomited in his final assault on the world of men. Fire had destroyed the bulk of the city beyond Morningshade—the buildings atop Haver’s Roost had survived, though not unscathed. The rear of the cathedral, now utilized as an orphanage, had been left in ruins and the government buildings had sustained minor damage. A vast tent city had sprung up among the charred ruins and there lived a population composed of survivors and émigrés, the latter mainly people who had come to scavenge the treasure hoard of Griaule’s corpse. Cutthroats and pistoleros and scoundrels of every stamp ruled the place and you took your life in your hands by walking through its crooked byways. At every hour of the day and night, gunshots could be heard, bespeaking the minor wars fought between the embattled remnants of Teocinte’s army, who strove to protect the rights of those who had made pre-mortem arrangements regarding the ownership of Griaule’s scales, bones, organs, and so forth, and those who sought to possess these things extra-legally. Thousands of people swarmed over the carcass, hacking and slicing and prying. They had laid bare one of the dragon’s ribs, the curve of bloodstained bone arching above the host of two-legged flies that milled beneath like the rib of an enormous unfinished ark, and gunfire also issued from dark crimson recesses of the body. Winches had been maneuvered into place and were engaged in removing the teeth and fangs. Men in butcher’s aprons carted away huge slabs of meat. So many people were engaged in picking over the corpse, sawing at bones and scales, sampling fluids, even preying on the dragon’s parasites, the gigantic worms that infested the dragon’s bowels, Rosacher entertained the notion that he was observing the annihilation of a normal-sized lizard by a Lilliputian race of hominids who performed the functions of ants and beetles, and dwelled in a settlement of dirty gray canvas that hid the bulk of their repulsive habits from view. It was both an epic and dismaying sight, one that called to mind the majesty of nature and at the same time posed an inescapable comment on the vile nature of mankind. Rosacher was grateful that Griaule’s flesh seemed to be rotting at a rate commensurate with the pace of his metabolic processes when alive—there was as yet only a hint of the stench that would saturate the atmosphere before too long.