Beautiful Blood

by Lucius Shepard

  4

  Rosacher’s second thought on waking the next morning was that someone must have happened upon him lying unconscious in the brush and carried him to their home and there tended to his injuries; yet he could not think of one of his acquaintance with access to such a splendid bedchamber. The ceiling was high and cream-colored, worked with designs of leaves and roses and other flowers from which cunning, childlike faces emerged (his initial presumption had been that he was the prisoner of malefic spirits). Paintings in gilt frames hung on the walls and all the furnishings—chairs, bureau, cabinets—were exquisitely carved and finished. He swung his legs off the side of the bed (wide enough for four; green silk sheets and a golden coverlet; pineapple posts of teak with ivory inlays) and was astounded to discover that he had no aches and pains whatsoever. Either he had been lucky in the extreme or else he had been unconscious for several days, sufficiently long for his scrapes and bruises to mend. He crossed to a window, flung open the drapes, and realized that he must be in one of the mansions that occupied the slopes of Haver’s Roost. Looking eastward across the sun-drenched town, he could make out the low, patchwork roofs of Morningshade a half-mile away and the dragon’s ribcage rising above them, its back mapped by dense thickets and a wood, the rude shanties of Hangtown shadowed by the sagittal crest. The view seemed familiar, yet he could have sworn he had never been at that window before. He wandered about the room, touching picture frames, a rosewood end table, the gold and green rug that simulated a pattern of dragon scales, a leather-covered jewelry box holding cufflinks and coins and a dozen things more, and each object he touched brought to mind a memory, a fleeting association baffling in its familiarity. He stopped in front of a mirror. His hair was no longer a mass of dark curls; it was trimmed to stubble. He wore a gold earring bearing a green gemstone. Touching it, he knew it had been a gift from Ludie. Above his right eye, a scar whitened a portion of his eyebrow, an injury received in his fall from the dragon’s lip four years ago…

  This revelation, if revelation it were, if he were not lying unconscious beneath Griaule’s lip and having a dream, rooted him to the spot. He examined the memory, attempting to decide whether it had the heft of the actual, but other memories lurched into his mind, shoving one another aside in their haste to make themselves known, filling his brain to bursting with a flood of trivia (appointments to be kept, problems to be dealt with and so on), from which he distilled the undeniable fact that his plan had worked. He was wealthy. This was his house. Each and every day his factories produced a sufficient quantity of the drug in smoke-able form to supply the addicts of Teocinte and Port Chantay, and he planned to branch out, to export the drug to other towns and develop a pastille that would allow the drug to dissolve in the mouth, suitable for those who did not smoke. Dizzy with this influx of memory, Rosacher dropped into an easy chair and sought a star by which to steer through the sea of information. How was it possible that he could have these memories and yet never have experienced their reality? Was he to believe that he had been operating in a somnambulistic state for four years? There were cases in which a blow to the head caused a temporary condition similar to the one he seemed to have suffered, but in none of them had the patient prospered while enduring that condition. Four years! His memories relating to that time had little flavor or substance. It was as if he lived those years and yet had not lived them, as if he had riffled through the pages of that portion of his life, skipping ahead in his book of days to this particular day and hour. The memories were scraps, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—fitted together, they assembled a visual image and embodied a related comprehension in each of which a digest history resided…and yet they transmitted almost nothing of the emotional context.

  The bedchamber door opened and Ludie walked in, a sheaf of papers in hand. She wore riding breeches, boots, and a loose linen shirt, belted at the waist, and looked scarcely a day older than he recalled, still lovely—but a mask of hard neutrality tempered her beauty. That look, the attitude it embodied, cued another trickle of memories. They had once been monogamous, but as he involved himself more deeply in business, they had drifted apart and now he had his women and she her horses, her daylong trips into the valley where she would rendezvous with lovers, men and women both, and Rosacher’s relationship with her had become a convenience, held together by a shred of reflex intimacy that disguised their fundamental indifference to one another—they were partners (Ludie had helped finance the early stages of the business) and they trusted each other in that way, but trust no longer extended into the emotional realm. Rosacher felt himself slipping into a suit of reactions that accommodated this state of affairs, yet he also regretted that things had reached this pass and struggled to sustain a nostalgic view of her.

  She held out the papers to him. “Arthur’s downstairs.”

  Rosacher continued to stare.

  “It’s the figures you asked for,” she said. “The estimate of next year’s earnings. And the notes for the rest of your presentation.” When he did not take them, she shook the papers at him. “You should look these over before you leave.”

  “What are you up to today?” he asked.

  A flicker of displeasure—she tossed the papers onto an easy chair. “I’m going for a ride.”

  “I’d like to see you this evening.”

  “See me?”

  “Spend some time with you.”

  “I don’t…”

  “I hoped we might dine together.”

  She folded her arms. “Why? What do you want?”

  “Not much. A few hours of your company.”

  She started to speak, hesitated, and said stiffly, “If you’ve a problem with the way I’ve been handling the books, I want to hear it now.”

  “I want to see you. Can that be so difficult to comprehend? My God! How long has it been since we spent an evening together?”

  “I haven’t kept track.”

  “Nor I…but it must be months.”

  She shrugged. “If you say so.” Then, after a pause: “Very well. I’ll cancel my plans.”

  That comment touched off yet another rush of confusing memories, these relating to his presentation, and Rosacher experienced a flash of unease—there were so many details to sort through. “Perhaps I should postpone the presentation. We have a lot to talk about.”

  “Are you mad? We’ve been working toward this for nearly five years. Don’t worry. They may have summoned you to receive their reprimand, but you’ll have them scrambling to see which one of them can be your best friend before the hour’s out.”

  She said this last harshly, as if it were an indictment, and then went to a closet, selected a white suit and laid it out on the bed. She adopted a thoughtful pose. “Perhaps your green shirt. It’ll strike a flamboyant note. That’s the image you want to present. Those stodgy old men will see you dressed like a parrot, dismissive of their conservative conventions, and they’ll admire you for it. They’ll disapprove of you at first, of course. But they’ll come to recognize that you’re establishing your independence from them. They’ll view your disrespect as the byproduct of a bold personal style, and they’ll respect that in you…so long as you make it worth their while.”

  She had grown angry as she spoke or, better said, she had let slip her stoic mask and shown him her normal level of resentment.

  “Ludie,” he said helplessly.

  “I’ll be in my quarters at eight o’clock,” she said, going to the door. “Try to be punctual.”

  After she had gone he wondered if it was possible to restore the relationship. The council summons pressed in on him—he recalled its importance and his mind swarmed with details. He selected a green silk shirt from the closet and laid it beside the suit in order to gauge the effect, concluding that Ludie had been accurate in her judgment. It struck precisely the right note.

  +

  Arthur Honeyman, the gaunt giant who had broken into Rosacher’s apartment and assaulted him, had changed his outward aspect to a far gre
ater degree than had Rosacher, though Arthur’s transformation was by way of a refinement. Honeyman dressed well these days, given to collarless shirts and embroidered satin jackets that lent him a dandified air ill-suited to his rough-hewn features and bony frame. He smiled incessantly in order to show off his false teeth. They were not white but, thanks to jade inlays, were decorated so as to resemble moss-covered rocks—when he opened his mouth, they gave the impression that you were looking into a forbidding cavern. On the day he had hired Arthur, sitting at the desk in his office, a room adjoining his old apartments, Rosacher made new teeth a condition of his employment.

  “The health of your body and that of your teeth are not separate issues,” Rosacher told him. “If you don’t take care of them, sooner or later they’re bound to cause a serious infection and you’ll be of no use to me. Then there’s the consideration of your appearance. I want you to frighten people, but I don’t think it’s necessary to make them giddy with fear.”

  “Will it hurt?” Arthur asked.

  “Yes. I can do the extractions painlessly, but there’ll be some bruising of the tissues. However, you’ll suffer more living with a mouth like that than you will in losing the teeth.”

  Arthur shuffled his feet, glanced out the window. “Why’re you doing this? After what I done to you, it don’t make sense.”

  “Everyone in Morningside is afraid of you,” said Rosacher. “I’ve been observing you for several months and you’re not unintelligent, though your methods of intimidation are unnecessarily crude. Most importantly, you’re not an addict.”

  “Too right! I’d sooner take poison than smoke a pipe of mab (this the name the citizens of Morningshade applied to the drug, being an acronym for ‘more and better’). I don’t need my view of the world tarted up. I prefer to see things as they are.”

  “An admirable trait,” said Rosacher. “One I’ve grown to appreciate.” He got to his feet and came around the desk to stand in front of Arthur. “The past is the past. There’s no need to dwell on it. I can help you and you can help me by dealing with problems that may arise. What I’m proposing is a business relationship pure and simple.” He held out his hand. “Do we have an accord?”

  “I’m your man!” Arthur shook his hand gingerly, as if taking pains not to injure him anew. “I’ll deal with your problems. You can trust to that.”

  Rosacher was not inclined to extend his trust. For all his coarse exterior, Arthur was no fool and, sooner or later, the instincts bred by his rough-and-tumble existence would turn his intellect in a treacherous direction. Rosacher believed, however, he could find ways to keep him occupied.

  Three and a half years later, armed with teeth that were no longer new, grinning fiercely at every passer-by, his huge frame draped in a jacket of cherry-colored satin embroidered in white silk, hair held back from his shoulders by a gay matching ribbon, Arthur accompanied Rosacher to the top of Haver’s Roost. People cleared out of the giant’s path, falling back to either side of the winding street; others came to the windows and doorways of the mansions of brick and undressed stone that lined it, made curious by the passage of this two-man parade. At the summit of the hill lay a cobbled square ringed by buildings of pinkish stucco with ironwork balconies and red tile roofs, open on one end (the opening was due to be closed off by a cathedral, its foundations already laid and a single wall erected). It was toward the largest building, a three-story affair with ornamental iron bars over the windows, that they proceeded.

  “I’ve never been up here before.” Arthur sniffed the air. “Don’t smell near as ripe as Morningshade.”

  Rosacher mounted the steps. “I think you’ll find the stench more familiar once we’re inside.”

  A slender, dark-haired man, appearing to be four or five years younger than Rosacher, sat on a bench in the mahogany-paneled vestibule on the second floor, outside the council chamber, clutching a leather artist’s portfolio, listening as a functionary explained that he would have to wait until Mr. Rosacher finished his business before the council. On hearing this, the young man jumped up and demanded an immediate audience. Rosacher stepped in and said, “Excuse me. Mister…?”

  “Cattanay,” said the man, giving the name an angry emphasis, pronouncing each syllable with biting precision. “Meric Cattanay.”

  “Richard Rosacher. You have a proposal to put before the council?”

  “I’ve been here since yesterday. I’ve come all the way from…”

  “Believe me, Mister Cattanay. I understand your frustration. But I think I can assure you that the council will be in a more receptive mood after I have done than they are at the moment.”

  Somewhat mollified, yet still agitated, Cattanay expressed doubt as to Rosacher’s claim, but when Rosacher told him that his business involved a considerable financial settlement, he sat down again. And when Rosacher inquired what his proposal entailed, he opened his portfolio and displayed a number of sketches that detailed a scheme for killing Griaule by means of poisoned paint applied to his skin. The idea seemed ludicrous on the face of it, yet Rosacher was forced to acknowledge that the basic notion was ingenious. He asked how long it might take to complete the job.

  “I’m not sure,” said Cattanay. “It will take two years at least to organize the project, to build the scaffolding and vats in which to mix the paint. We’ll have to employ dozens of men, perhaps a hundred and more, to supply us with timber for fuel. That’ll require another year or two. Then we’ll have to create the painting and give the poison time to act. The whole process could take twenty or thirty years. Maybe more. I imagine something will go wrong every single day…problems I haven’t envisioned.”

  Arthur snorted in derision and Cattanay glared at him. “They’ve run through all the unsubtle methods of killing him and failed,” he said. “You know, burning him, stabbing him, and so forth. Of course now I think about it there’s one method they haven’t essayed. They could hold up a gigantic portrait of this fellow to Griaule’s face”—he jabbed his thumb at Arthur—“and make a loud noise. I expect that might do the job.”

  Arthur snarled and reached for the knife tucked into his waistband, but Rosacher put a hand on his forearm by way of restraint and said to Cattanay, “Fascinating! How did you come up with the idea?”

  “Some friends and I were in a tavern and we got to talking about schemes to make money. Painting the dragon was one of the schemes. I’ve fleshed it quite a bit since that evening, but the original idea, it was a joke, really. A joke made by a group of friends who’d had too much to drink.”

  The functionary, who had vanished into the council chamber while Cattanay described his scheme, returned and told Rosacher that he could go in.

  Inside the chamber, an austere, spacious room with thick beams supporting the ceiling and windows overlooking the valley, offering a view of the hills enclosing its eastern reach, five men sat in high-backed chairs at a mahogany table, a ceramic pitcher and glasses set before them. With a single exception, they were fleshy and gray-haired, clad in sober suits, but the bearded man at their center, Wallace Febres-Cordero, possessed a gravitas the others did not and, though Rosacher had not met him until that moment, he divined from this brief observance that Febres-Cordero was the person he would have to sway. He took a seat in a wooden chair (the only one available) facing the table and Arthur stationed himself at his shoulder.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” Rosacher said. “I’m Richard Rosacher and this is my associate, Arthur Honeyman. How can we assist you?”

  “As you know,” said Febres-Cordero in a mannered baritone, “the council has no authority over you as regards the production of drugs. We have no laws that would apply, yet we may find ourselves obligated to write new law should you continue on your present course.”

  “And why is that?” Rosacher asked.

  “My God, man!” A thin, balding council member at the end of the table, Paltz by name, brought the flat of his hand down with a smack. “You’ve addicted half the population of
Morningshade to your poison!”

  “It’s closer to three-quarters, but let’s not quibble,” said Rosacher.

  “We’ve had numerous complaints about your activities,” said Febres-Cordero. “Every moral authority is up in arms against you.”

  “To whom are you referring?”

  “The Church, for one.”

  “The Church as moral authority.” Rosacher chuckled. “Now there’s a fresh idea.”

  The florid face of the heavyset man sitting on Febres-Cordero’s left, Councilman Rooney, grew purplish and he said, “You come here dressed like a popinjay and attempt to…”

  “I think we should give Mister Rosacher the opportunity to defend himself.” Febres-Cordero glanced along the table and then looked to Rosacher.

  “Indeed, I would welcome the opportunity to speak,” said Rosacher. “Though not to defend myself, but instead to offer an alternative course of action. Have any of you gentlemen smoked mab?”

  “Now you’re being impertinent,” Febres-Cordero said. “I warn you, do not try our patience.”

  “I intended no impertinence. I merely wished to know whether or not you were conversant with the drug.”

  “We have interviewed a number of addicts and understand its effects.”

  “Did any of these addicts strike you as derelicts? Were they pale and sickly as with opium addicts, or were they hale and neatly attired? Did they not earn an honorable wage?”

  Councilman Savedra, a vulturous, stoop-shouldered man, older than the rest, said, “If the thrust of your argument is to be that the drug causes no physical harm to the addict, it does not touch upon the moral issues.”

  “It is an element of my argument, but not its sole thrust. And it’s not the health of the individual that concerns me so much as the health of the community.” Rosacher stood and went a few paces along the table. “Should the council rule against me in this, I will happily move my business to Port Chantay or another of the coastal towns. It will be an inconvenience, nothing more. But before you banish me, I beg you to let me speak without interruption so I can present my thoughts in a coherent fashion.”