Beautiful Blood (4 page)

“As I said, an intriguing proposal, though one that veers dangerously close to bribery. I have little doubt that you would be capable of achieving your goals under ordinary circumstances, but these circumstances are far from ordinary. When we were elected to the council, we swore an oath whose primary dictate was that we would do everything in our power to destroy Griaule. Now you ask us to protect him. The gap between the two positions is, I’m afraid, unbridgeable. Were we were to accept your proposal, we’d be thrown out of office.”

The faces of the other council members displayed morose agreement.

Rosacher was caught short for a response; he had not predicted this. “Griaule…” he said, and pretended to clear his throat, searching for a logical avenue to pursue. “Griaule has permitted me to draw his blood. This is a certain sign that my purposes are in accord with his.”

“That changes nothing,” Breque said. “It is not the council’s purpose to do Griaule’s bidding.”

“Yet you insist that he controls you, that his will is dominant. If that is true, you do his bidding whether or not you admit to it.”

“For the sake of our dignity, if nothing else, we believe we are allowed a modicum of free will.”

“You can’t base your decisions on a bastardized ontology,” said Rosacher. “Either Griaule controls you, or this notion of the dragon as god is ridiculous.”

Struck by an idea, he once again pretended to clear his throat, stalling while he constructed his argument. Breque inquired whether he wanted a glass of water.

“How long have you been trying to kill Griaule?” Rosacher asked after taking a drink.

“There were countless attempts made before our body was organized, most of them ill-considered, a good many of them harebrained,” said Savedra. “The first official attempt under aegis of the council was undertaken approximately six hundred years ago. Of course in the early days, the council was appointed by a feudal duke and had no real power. But as it’s presently configured, more than two hundred years.”

“I’m forced to assume, then, that Griaule is not ready to die,” Rosacher said. “Or that you’ve failed miserably in satisfying your oath. If I wanted to kill the dragon, I’d cut down the forest in the hills close by him, pile the wood around his sides and set him on fire. Has that been tried?”

“Two centuries ago,” said Febres-Cordero. “A strong wind blew the fire back on the town. They had to rebuild completely. It was an event that coincided with the removal of the feudal duke.”

“We’ve explored every method we can think of,” said Breque. “This explains why we’ve offered a reward and are entertaining more eccentric schemes.”

“Yes, I met one of your eccentrics in the vestibule,” Rosacher said. “A fellow by the name of Cattanay. He intends to paint a mural on the dragon’s side using poisoned paint. Paint with a high lead or arsenic content. His expectation is that it will kill Griaule within several decades.”

Rooney chuckled and Paltz shook his head, as if astounded by this foolishness, and said, “Well, it won’t take several decades for us to deal with him!”

“Cattanay believes the process of painting will be too subtle for Griaule to recognize as an attempt to kill him. And by the time he does, if he does, he’ll be too ill to remedy it. His control will have slipped. I think the plan may have some actual merit, but that’s for you to decide.” Rosacher fixed his gaze on Breque. “More pertinent to the question before you, a plan like Cattanay’s, one that will take decades to achieve a result, would serve our mutual purposes. In thirty years we’ll have made enough money to provide for our heirs to the tenth generation, and—theoretically, at any rate—you’ll have a dead dragon, a booming economy, and a well-trained army. You’ve been at this for six centuries, gentlemen. I suspect your constituents won’t quarrel overmuch with a plan that delays their gratification a few more years.”

“Your argument presupposes that the plan will work,” said Savedra. “What if it doesn’t? Griaule may be capable of sniffing out Cattanay’s intentions.”

“You won’t know that until you’ve tried,” Rosacher said. “However, the signal virtue of Cattanay’s plan is that he’ll need three or four years to map out the project, build scaffolding, and so on. That should give you time to come up with an alternative. In the meantime we will profit and the town will thrive.”

The faces of the men at the table were a comical study in perplexity and concentration. Rosacher made a gesture of finality. “Gentlemen, I’ve stated my case and now I have business to attend. With your kind permission, I’ll leave you to your deliberations.”

“If there are no further questions…” Breque looked inquiringly to the other councilmen. “Mister Rosacher, you have our thanks for making most exhilarating what otherwise might have been a tiresome adversarial experience. You can be sure that we will discuss every facet of what you have said. Give us a few days. You will hear from us by Friday at the latest.” He beamed at Rosacher and gestured toward the door. “Would you mind telling Mister Cattanay to come in? I, for one, am eager to hear the details of his proposal.”

As Rosacher and Arthur strode down the hill, Rosacher’s mind went to the day ahead. There were appointments, contracts to examine, and he had to inspect repairs made to the refrigeration unit at the new factory. He would be fortunate to finish by seven o’clock. The time had come, he thought, to hire someone, perhaps several someones, to manage the business. Now that the council had been dealt with and, from his reading of Breque, he was confident of the result, he needed to get on with his study of the blood. He had been so consumed with the business that he had done pitifully little toward that end, and he looked forward to spending days locked away in a laboratory. But it was difficult to find people who were both competent and trustworthy. He would have to recruit his management staff on the coast and that meant a trip to Port Chantay, rounds of interviews…more time wasted. He despaired of creating a gap in his schedule.

“Pardon me, sir.” Arthur’s face was etched with worry. “What you said back there…that I was an expert on warfare. I don’t know the first thing about it.”

“There are dozens of books on the subject,” Rosacher said impatiently. “You have wonderful instincts as to aggression. I’m sure you’ll be a quick study.”

“I can make out letters and sound some words, but…”

“Don’t tell me you can’t read?”

“Take me forever to read a book, it would. Even then, I reckon I might not make much sense of it.”

“Learn, then,” said Rosacher, a nasty edge on his voice, fuming inwardly over the incompetence with which he was surrounded. “If you don’t learn, Arthur, how will you ever advance yourself?”

Shortly after eight o’clock that evening, Rosacher arrived at Ludie’s apartments. He hesitated, debating whether or not to knock, ultimately deciding that since he was attempting to restore intimacy, he should behave as would an intimate—he opened the door. The room was dimly lit by a single ornamental floor lamp in a corner, its flame turned low, and the windows held rectangles of purplish dusk. Walls and ceiling were draped in swaths of billowy, diaphanous cloth—pastel shades of green, yellow and blue that shrank the enclosed space and was intended to make the room appear to be the interior of a tent. Beneath this canopy, pillows and rugs were arranged about a teak table on which a cold supper was laid. The decor represented an ideal of luxury in Ludie’s homeland, or rather what she presumed to be an ideal—she had been born into poverty and sold at the age of six to a brothel-keeper from Peppertree; he in turn had sold her to the Hotel San Salida.

Rosacher collapsed amidst the pillows, closed his eyes and was assailed by nagging concerns relating to business. Attempting to quiet his mind, he sank deeper into a morass of petty entanglements, expenditures, collections and whatnot. When he succeeded in pushing these matters into the background, the question of his three-year lapse arose, and that so disturbed him, he abandoned the idea of resting, opened his eyes and saw Ludie standing above him. She was dressed to match the décor, wearing a gauzy peignoir that revealed the voluptuous contours of her body; yet in opposition to the seductive image she presented, her expression was one of poorly concealed distaste.

“I apologize for being late,” he said. “I…”

“How did you fare with the council?” She reclined beside him on the opposite side of the table and popped a slice of orange into her mouth. “It must have gone well or else you would have been too preoccupied to come at all.”

He told her in brief what had been said within the council chamber and she said flatly, “Congratulations.”

“You don’t sound like you mean it.”

“Oh, but I do!” Iciness slipped into her voice. “I’ve never doubted you, Richard. You’re far more accomplished a criminal than ever you were a scientist.”

“This is good news for both of us,” he said, electing not to respond in kind, not wanting to alienate her further. “You’re certainly due your share of congratulations. The plan was
our
plan, not mine alone, and I would never have had the gumption to carry it through without your support.”

 “You sound as if you’re speaking at a testimonial dinner. Do I get a gold watch, too?” Her laugh was brittle, a single disparaging note.

“This Cattanay,” she went on. “Do you think it wise to allow him to proceed with his plans? What if the poison works more swiftly than he anticipates?”

“I’ll stop him before he can do any real harm. With Arthur in position at the head of the militia, no one will be able to thwart us. Until then, Cattanay’s project is of such scope, it’ll deflect attention.”

He heard people talking in the street below and the crazed yapping of a dog, abruptly cut off and replaced by a whimper. Her flowery scent seemed to intensify; her eyes, large and dark and liquid, appeared lit from within.

“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked.

“I thought I was, but…no.”

Following another patch of silence, she said, “Well…” She sat up and undid the fastening of the peignoir, letting it slip from her shoulders to reveal a breast. When he displayed no reaction, she lifted a breast and made a lascivious show of licking her nipple, keeping her eyes on him all the while.

“Stop it!” he said angrily.

Dropping into the patois she had once used with her clientele at the brothel, she said teasingly, “You mus be a jumbie mon, you don wan to slip-slide wit this fine gyal.”

“Stop!”

She stared at him heatedly. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“What I wanted…” He gave his head a violent shake, frustrated by her misreading of him. “Yes, that’s part of it, but I wanted more, I wanted…”

“Would you like me to fetch another woman? Perhaps the two of us could please you.”

“That’s not what I meant by ‘more.’”

She watched dispassionately as he positioned himself cross-legged on the pillows.

“We were friends once, weren’t we, Ludie? More than friends. We used to talk for hours, we…” Rosacher made a fist, as if he intended to pound on something; then he relaxed his fingers and lowered his hand. “I hoped we could go back to how things were.”

“Then you’re a fool, Richard. It’s sweet in a way. It’s all that’s left of the boy I met in Morningshade. And you
were
a boy. You had a boy’s passion, a boy’s recklessness. But your passion has changed into a lust for wealth, and your recklessness has matured into ruthlessness. You don’t see that in yourself. You’ll pay it lip service, you’ll admit to it. But you don’t really see it and so you remain a fool.”

Full darkness had fallen—the windowpanes like black semaphore flags salted with a message of stars. She had spoken with such mildness that her characterization of him had the tenor of sage counsel.

“I love you,” Rosacher said.

“No, you had a feeling. Your brain sparked and you had a feeling. You said to yourself, I’ve got to get back with Ludie, back to how things used to be. Even though how you thought things were, that truly wasn’t how they were. You know that, but you want to deny it. You want to hold onto that feeling, because it’s the only one you’ve had lately that has nothing to do with business.”

Everything she said diminished him. He thought that if she kept talking, he would wind up the size of a homunculus, a tiny man sitting on a vast pillow, a plush island upon which he’d been marooned.

“I’m a fool, too,” she said. “There was a time I thought I loved you. I knew all the love in me had been dragged out and kicked into the street, but I hung onto that thought. Love was something I could dream about whenever sone foul-smelling bastard was riding me. It was a story I’d been told. A fairytale. But I couldn’t hold on for long. It passed…and your feeling will pass as well. In a week you’ll be consumed with something else.”

“We’re friends, though, aren’t we?” Rosacher said. “We’re at least friends.”

“We have a bond, but…”

“Yes?”

“I owe you everything, Richard. My life. Money. Freedom.” She tapped the side of her head. “You taught me how to use this, and how to behave like a lady. I’m grateful for that. It’s why I stay. But for that very reason, because
you
did everything, because
you
lifted me up from Morningshade, I can’t help resenting you. I still feel owned, owing you so much, and that feeling trumps friendship.”

“That’s absurd. You don’t owe me a thing, and you don’t have to stay. I can get someone else to manage the books.”

A wounded look crossed her face. It pleased him to recognize that he could yet hurt her, that she was not without emotion where he was involved.

“I’ll stay until it’s right to leave. And when I go, it won’t be farther away than the other side of the hill, where I won’t have to look at that damned lizard every time I step out the door.”

She reached between two pillows, withdrew a lacquered box and put it on the table; she removed from it a pipe with a long, straight stem and a brass bowl, the image of a miniature dragon raised on its surface. “This is what you want. To touch that night again, the night Arthur came into our lives. I think it’s what we both want. Things have gotten crinkly between us and this is what we need to straighten it all out.”

“Thank you, no.”

Ludie packed the bowl with a bed of moist tobacco. “Have you forgotten how to play?” She embedded a grayish white pellet of mab in the tobacco. “I think you have. I think you forgot the instant the idea for the business came into your head. One minute you were the Richard I knew. A sweet, intemperate boy. The next, you were acting smooth as a bishop on Sunday morning. Can’t nothing catch on you now, you’re so smooth.”

She took a match from the box, ignited it with the nail of her thumb, and lit the pipe. Her cheeks hollowed as she drew in smoke. She leaned back amid the pillows, letting smoke trickle out between her parted lips. “Ohh…” she said breathily, and gave a delicate shudder. She closed her eyes for a second and drew in more smoke. After a third lungful, she looked as if she filled out her skin more thoroughly, as if she had ripened all in a moment. Her eyes were brighter, a’dance with gleams.

“Touch me,” she said, lightly slurring.

With reluctance, for part of him, the lesser part, wanted to resist this fake, this chemical fraud, he gloved the side of her breast, rubbing the nipple in a circular motion with the ball of his thumb. Her eyelids fluttered down and she bit her lower lip and made a musical noise, barely audible, a noise with which he was most familiar, though he had not heard it for many months. To hear it now affected him strangely. It raised the flag of his desire, yet he also felt a chill, as if her arousal endangered him. She caught his hand, brought it to her mouth and licked the tip of his forefinger. In her face he saw the refinements of love—her features had softened, her gaze was doting, her manner one of fervid devotion.

“Richard…” she said, leaving the remainder of the sentence unspoken, yet not unheeded.

A horse and rider went by on the street, the percussive sound of its hooves fading to muted pops. Shamed by his weakness, Rosacher picked up the pipe.