Beautiful Blood

8

The tower that Meric Cattanay had erected so he might observe the progress of his great work was a rickety affair some eighty feet high, so hastily carpentered of boards and poles that a strong wind would sway it, threatening to send it crashing down onto the rooftops and smoking chimneys of Morningshade below. From a platform at the summit, it afforded one an unimpeded view of the painting on the dragon’s side (albeit one complicated by scaffolding and the dozen or so artisans currently occupying it) and of the painting—it appeared to Rosacher’s eyes as a blotch of gold a few shades lighter than the dragon’s natural color, spreading from the middle joint of the foreleg around the curve of the side. Other colors were beginning to emerge from the blotch, but gave no hint of the image that would one day be presented. Also visible against the gray morning sky were the enormous vats that had been constructed atop Griaule’s flat forehead. In these, the raw materials that produced the poisoned paint were distilled. Smoke rose from beneath them at every hour of the day and night, making it seem that the dragon was venting frustration through his skull.

Rosacher had climbed the tower in order to be alone (an ambition thwarted when he discovered Cattanay, bearded and bedraggled, sketching on the platform) and to gain perspective, though not on the painting. He had taken to sleeping as little as possible, doing everything in his power to stay awake, yet some sleep was essential and he had woken that morning to discover he had lost another four years—at this rate he calculated that he had at best another week or so to live, and he hoped this elevated position would lend itself to a fresh comprehension of the problem. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Cattanay, who seemed as perturbed by Rosacher’s presence as was Rosacher with his, returned to his sketching, and Rosacher sat on the lip of the platform, dangling his legs off the side, staring at the golden blotch. His thoughts were in disarray and resisted all attempts to marshal them. He kept coming back to the panicked recognition that he was now, as best he could determine, forty-three years old, and that the better part of sixteen years had been stripped from him. The obvious thing to do would be to stop moping and get to work on his study of the blood and hope that it led to an insight into his current difficulties. He had built a laboratory in his factory and nothing stood in his way…unless it was Griaule. Not for the first time, it occurred to him that he must have been close to achieving a breakthrough, one detrimental to the dragon’s health or contrary to his schemes, for Griaule to have intervened and set his life upon such a different course. This inspired him to go forward with his researches, but the idea that Griaule might thwart him at any second neutered the impulse. And, too, he wondered if he still retained the discipline to stare for hours into a microscope. Ludie was probably right—he made a more successful criminal than he did a scientist.

Boards creaked behind him and, turning, he saw Cattanay sitting cross-legged, unwrapping a sandwich from a packet of brown paper. Glancing up, he offered half to Rosacher, who declined. Cattanay took a bite, chewed with gusto and swallowed. He made a contented sound and brushed crumbs from his beard.

“This cheese is excellent,” he said. “You should try it. Allie, my companion, soaks it in an infusion of berries. Quite tasty.”

Again Rosacher declined. He watched the artist eat for several seconds and then, feeling awkward with the silence, he asked how the work was going.

Cattanay shrugged. “It goes and it goes. I’ve been unable to manufacture a proper magenta. The color changes so much on the scales…” He gestured with the sandwich. “We’ll get it right sooner or later.”

“I meant to ask if you had any idea of how long Griaule can survive?”

“Haven’t a clue. Sorry. I suppose he could pop off any old time. You need to ask an expert in dragon physiology…if there are such. You were a doctor once, no? You’re more qualified than I to give an opinion.”

Pigeons perched on a beam beneath the platform began to squabble. The wind shifted, bringing a burning smell from the vats. Rosacher realized he’d become so accustomed to the dragon that most of the time he paid it no more attention than a rock—whenever he spoke about Griaule, he did so in the abstract, as if he were referring to an idea, a principle, something other than the dragon’s monstrous reality

“How’s business?” Cattanay asked.

“Manageable. We make plenty of missteps, but one learns to adapt.”

“It’s the same with me. Always something. Loggers haven’t returned with wood to keep the vats going or someone’s taken a fall. I’ve delegated responsibility, yet it’s a rare day when I’m not called away to deal with some trouble.”

“At least when you’re done you’ll have a monument to commemorate your labors.”

“The mural? I doubt it. How long do you think it’ll take before they decide to rid themselves of Griaule’s corpse? A week? A month? No more, surely.”

Rosacher murmured in agreement.

“There’s a man in Punta Esperanza who’s had some success with reproducing images from life,” said Cattanay. “Perhaps by the time it’s finished, he’ll have refined the process and the mural will survive in that way. It’s hardly the same thing, though.”

Cattanay had another bite of sandwich and Rosacher, kicking his heels against the side of the platform, said, “May I ask a personal question?”

His mouth full, Cattanay signaled him to go ahead.

“Are you happy?”

Cattanay swallowed, wiped his mouth. “That’s a hell of a question…though I hear it often. Allie asks it of me almost every night.”

“I’m certain the context is very different.”

“Oh, without a doubt.” Cattanay picked at a bit of food trapped between his teeth. “Happy’s not a word I generally apply to myself. You might say I’m content. I’m doing work I love. Things aren’t perfect, but I suppose I’m happy enough. Happier than you by the look of it.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that account.”

Tipping his head to the side, Cattanay seemed to study him as though he were a troublesome area on a canvas. “Perhaps you lack passion,” he said. “That’s what people need in order to know even a minute’s happiness. Without passion and the focus passion brings, there’s only confusion. That’s how I view it, anyway.”

“I used to be passionate about science, but no more. I was never passionate about the business. The business…it was something to do, something easier than science. I think I’ve used it as an excuse not to do what I really wanted.”

“You’d best find something else you really want, then. That is, if happiness is your goal.”

“I think my goals may be changing.”

“Pah! Mine change a dozen times each morning before lunch. I’ll wish for a better source of a magenta and then the sight of an art student with a nice derriere…well, you know how it goes.”

With a grunt, Cattanay got to his feet. He balled up the paper in which his sandwich had been wrapped and tossed it off the tower. Thin streams of people were passing in the streets below. “I have things to take care of at the vats. Have you been up on the dragon recently?”

“Not for years…and then only to the edge of the mouth.”

Cattanay stepped into the basket of the elevator attached to the side of the tower and prepared to lower himself. “You ought to take a walk up there when you have a chance. It can be inspiring. You never know what you might encounter.”

+

After puttering in his laboratory the rest of the morning and into late afternoon, unable to come to grips with the scientific elements of the issue that confronted him, Rosacher heeded Cattanay’s advice and climbed the scaffolding to the vats and then walked out onto the dragon’s back, following a meandering track through dry-leaved thickets until he came to Hangtown. The settlement had grown from a handful of shacks surrounding a polluted puddle of rainwater half an acre in circumference to a village of perhaps two hundred souls housed in fifty or sixty shanties, the largest of these serving as a tavern and marked by a neatly hand-lettered sign that read:

MARTITA’S HOME IN THE SKY

It was a relatively new structure with windows that were not merely square holes in the walls, but had panes of warped, opaque glass, and its wood was still a roach-brown, not faded to gray like the majority of the shanties; yet it was equally as ramshackle, with a slumping roofed porch and a partial second floor that appeared to be in the process of sliding off. A man—a scalehunter judging by his profusion of green and gold tattoos—sprawled unconscious in a chair on the front porch, an advertisement for the effectiveness of the establishment’s spirits. Having experienced neither exhilaration nor inspiration during his walk, Rosacher entered the spacious common room and its atmosphere of gloom and fried onions, thinking a pint would help fuel his descent to Morningshade. Behind the bar (boards laid across a half-dozen barrels), a robust, round-faced woman of thirty or thereabouts, unprepossessing in aspect, her brown hair in long braids, dressed in cloth breeches (a style favored by Hangtown’s female population—skirts tended to catch on twigs and thorns) and a low-cut blouse, busied herself with polishing mugs. An elderly white-haired man with a scarred face and a man young enough to be his grandson played cards at a bench by the window. They eyed him indifferently and the woman came bustling over to Rosacher, who had taken a seat at the rear.

“We’ve a good blond ale from Port Chantay,” she said. “Otherwise it’s homebrew. Quite nice, it is, and very strong, if that’s your pleasure.”

Rosacher opted for the ale and cast an eye about the room. Basically unadorned, it had here and there a feminine touch: gillyflowers in a vase; a print showing Griaule against a mass of clouds; a framed needlepoint homily with letters so crooked that he was unable to read them. The woman returned with the ale, she hovered beside the table, and after he had paid her she continued to hover. He had a sip and said, “This will do,” thinking she wanted him to approve the ale, yet she remained standing by the table, beaming at him. Finally she said, “You don’t remember me, do you? Truly, there’s no reason you should. You didn’t take much notice of my face.” She winked broadly. “You were mainly interested in my backside.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Martita.” She tapped her ample bosom, dislodging a silver locket that had been half-concealed in her cleavage, the image of a dragon scratched on the casing as if by her own hand. “Martita Doans. I was a maid in your house. The night the assassin came, it were me what was sent to bandage you.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “We made love.”

The term “made love” befuddled him for a moment and, once he had sorted it out, feeling embarrassed, shamed, yet not wishing to admit to anything, he said weakly, “Of course. Uh, I…How’ve you been?”

“Lately I’ve been doing very well, thank you. But directly after I left your service, now that were a bit of rough road, what with me being in a family way and having no family to turn to.”

She took a seat opposite him and leaned forward, her milky breasts squashed against the tabletop, threatening to overflow their flimsy restraint. “I wanted to tell you, seeing how the babe was yours, but that Ludie hustled me out so fast I scarce had time to pack,” she said in a stage whisper. “And Mr. Honeyman said if I gave him any trouble, he’d let his men at me and sell tickets to whoever cared to watch. So there I were, out on the streets and big as a house. I couldn’t even sell meself.” She dropped back into a normal tone. “Griaule knows what would have happened had not Mister Doans—that’s my late husband, Nathan Doans—took me in.”

“I had no idea!” Rosacher said. “I mean I wouldn’t…”

“I didn’t figure you did. Mister Honeyman made it clear I wasn’t to pester you. He said that should I try to inform you of my situation, there’d be hell to pay. Still and all, I didn’t think kindly toward you those first months.”

The elderly card player called to her and Martita went to see what he wanted. Stunned by what he had learned, Rosacher drained his pint in two swallows. If what she told him was true, and he had no reason to doubt her, Ludie and Arthur had much to answer for. Not that he would have done much better than they for Martita. He likely would not have accepted paternity of the child, yet he would have at least seen to its care and feeding. It seemed he could feel a space inside himself that affection for a child would have occupied, and this sparked a deeper resentment. He would have to rein in Arthur and Ludie, rein them in sharply, perhaps even to the point of reconfiguring the business—they had been acting more-or-less independently in recent years, and probably not to his benefit. It might be time for a housecleaning. Neither of them were indispensable and it was evident he could no longer trust them.

Martita returned, bringing a second pint, and he asked, “The child? Is it a boy or a girl?”

Her face fell. “It were a boy. I couldn’t carry it to term.”

Speechless for a moment, he said, “I obviously can’t make things right, but you must let me help.”

“I don’t want for much. Mister Doans was a scalehunter, like most here. He did very well for himself. Found several loose scales of museum quality during his day.” She shook her head ruefully. “Two years back it were he died…and him still a young man. But that’s the way of it with scalehunters, ain’t it?” She nodded toward the card players. “Jarvis is the only one I know what’s lived past middle years. For all the good it does him. He’s a miserable sod. But like I was saying, Mister Doans left me the tavern and a tidy sum besides. I’ve a decent life now.”

“There must be something I can do.”

“You might stop in and have a pint now and again. Having you here tones up the place.” She blushed. “And it would please me.”

“Why would you want me around? First I force myself upon you and then…”

“Oh, don’t be thinking that! Maybe that was your view of things, but it weren’t mine. All the girls what worked in the house had an eye for you…and me most of all.”

“I see.”

“I could have done with a little romance, but you heard no complaints from me at the time and you’ll hear none now.”

Perplexed as much by his concern for her as by her forgiving attitude, he said, “If you want me to come around, I will…though I question whether either the moral or spiritual tenor of your establishment will be improved by my presence.”

She apparently didn’t understand his words and simpered to cover her confusion.

“Well.” She rubbed her hands together and beamed. “I need to start me cooking. Folks will be wanting their tucker.”

He would have liked to catch her hand and make some promise, swear an oath to right all wrongs done her, but shame and the fear of a weakness that shame might reveal locked him into a stoic posture, for he had come to think of himself as a hard man and now, recognizing he was not, understanding how drastically he had changed during the past six years, he thought he should try to preserve the impression, at least, of rigor. He lingered a while, keeping an eye on Martita as she moved between the stove, visible through a door at the back end of the bar, and the front room, hoping business would pick up and allow him to make an inconspicuous exit. A few more customers came in, but not enough to provide him with cover. He finished his second pint, gave her a casual wave and went out.

The cool air seemed to illumine him, bringing new and untried emotions to light. He hurried past Hangtown’s shallow, semi-permanent lake, filmed over by algae and scum, glazed with moonlight, realizing how isolated he had become. With Ludie leading a separate existence and Arthur spending every waking hour with the militia, his life had emptied out and, while he consorted with a variety of women and had no end of business acquaintances, he had not sought to replace these losses with relationships of an equivalent depth. In his solitude he’d had time to dwell on regrets and recriminations, and had developed a streak of self-pity; this in turn had created a sentimental side that he despised on principle, yet had come to depend on as a companion to his calculating and brutal nature, taking the place of lovers and friends. Whereas previously the sight of a mother nursing an infant or a small boy playing with a puppy would have barely registered on his consciousness, now these incidences seemed brightly human, striking him as emblematic of the world’s fragility and beauty, often causing his eyes to tear. Yet he knew better than to accept this change at face value and suspected that his reactions were linked to self-interest, perhaps to a renewed apprehension of mortality and a sense that his personal failures were unredeemable.

The thickets buzzed with insignificant life, the tops of the bushes swaying in the strong wind that flowed over Griaule’s back. He pushed into them, proceeding along a partly overgrown trail that led to the dragon’s crest, rising like a shadowy cliff above. He had never envisioned himself with children, yet the revelation that he’d fathered a son, even one stillborn…it was as if a pebble had been dropped into the waters of his soul, one from which ripples continued to spread long after the event, and he could not cease from thinking about the lost potentials of fatherhood. Overcome by frustration, an emotion never rising to the level of grief or rage, affording him no release, he cast his eyes upward. A scatter of stars lay directly above, like a throw of cowrie shells on a fortuneteller’s dark cloth, and he imagined he saw in them a blueprint for action, his life’s path revealed.

“Richard!” A woman’s voice at his rear.

Clad in trousers and a waist-length jacket, Ludie stood half in the spiky shadow of a century plant, considering him with a glum expression. Her presence put him on the alert—under ordinary circumstances, she would never set foot on the dragon—and he asked what she was doing there.

“Protecting my investment,” she said.

Arthur moved out of the bushes to stand behind her, a long-barreled pistol dangling from his right hand. He slipped his free arm about her waist, nudging a breast with his thumb, and grinned.

“I don’t know what you two have in mind,” said Rosacher. “But I advise you to think things over carefully before you act.”

“Oh, we done that,” Arthur said. “We’ve thoroughly analyzed the problem, as you might say.”

“Ask yourself if you’re capable of running the business,” Rosacher said. “You’ve no idea how complicated it is.”

Ludie extricated herself from Arthur’s grasp. “This has nothing to do with whether or not we can run the business. It has everything to do with your incompetence.”

“Incompetence? Are you mad?”

“In the past year demand has outstripped supply for the first time since we began. Between theft and poor management, our profits are down nearly thirty percent from our peak…which was five years ago. You’ve lost your entrepreneurial instincts, Richard. Your enthusiasm for the game.” She folded her arms. “We’ve struck a new agreement with the council. Breque has assured us he can handle day-to-day operations until we find someone to replace you.”

“You’re not qualified to deal with Breque,” Rosacher said. “He’ll have you for breakfast.”

Ludie’s mouth tightened.

“Why do you think he struck such a deal with you?” said Rosacher. “He knows he’ll be able to outmaneuver you if I’m not around.”

“I’m not an idiot. I understand that Breque will move against us.”

“Understanding and doing something about it are different things. You don’t have the focus, Ludie. The discipline. You won’t put in eighteen hours a day when necessary. You’ll be fine at first, but sooner or later you’ll…”

“Arthur.” She urged the giant forward with a gesture—he covered the distance between them in two steps and seized Rosacher by the collar.

“I’ll meet you below,” said Ludie, shooting the cuffs of her blouse. She stared at Rosacher without emotion, then turned abruptly and struck out along the path. Rosacher started to call after her, but Arthur clipped him behind the ear with the butt of his pistol and, once he had recovered from the blow, still dazed, his vision blurry, the moon jolting in and out of view, he found that Arthur was dragging him by his collar through sparse vegetation and over sloping ground, over mattes of vines, the same that partially curtained Griaule’s sides. He twisted about, wanting to see where they were headed, and caught a glimpse of the lights of Teocinte spread thick as stars across the valley and recognized they were above the dragon’s shoulder, very near the point where a man would have to hang onto something in order to keep from falling off the side. He flung himself about, hoping to break Arthur’s grip, but to no avail, and as he cast about for some other means of escape the giant stopped and hauled him erect, holding him by the shirtfront at arm’s length. Rosacher felt the chill tug of gravity and clawed at Arthur’s arm, attempting to determine which tactic would be the most propitious, whether to cajole or threaten. Arthur smiled, the merest tic of a smile and said, “Mind the drop, now,” and released him, simply opening his hand. Rosacher gave a terrified squawk and clutched at Arthur’s sleeve. His feet skidded on the slick surface of a scale and, flailing with his arms, he managed to maintain his balance sufficiently so that he did not go somersaulting backwards off Griaule, but rather pitched forward onto his stomach and slid down the dragon’s side, clutching at the edges of scales, his fingers too weak to find purchase, grabbing at vines, entangling his arm in one, more by accident than anything else, snagging another, continuing to fall, but slowly, slower yet, until he was less falling than lowering himself. To his amazement, he realized that he might not die.

The flat crack of a gunshot and a bullet ricocheted off a scale hard by Rosacher’s elbow. He allowed himself to slip down beyond the curve of Griaule’s ribcage, out of Arthur’s sight, and hung there, doing a half-spin, bumping against a scale the size of a cathedral door, feeling terribly exposed, as might a criminal escaping prison by means of a too-short rope flung over an outer wall. To this point he had merely been reacting, but now he began to think again, albeit in a fragmented way, unmanned by the sight of Morningshade below, its flickering orange lights tiny as fireflies. The vines had been cut back from Cattanay’s mural, otherwise Rosacher might have climbed across the dragon’s side and then shinnied down onto the scaffolding. He could not descend to the valley floor—the longest of the vines ended hundreds of feet above the tallest rooftop—and thus he began inching across the masonry of lichen-dappled scales, moving vine-to-vine toward the shadows beneath the shoulder joint of Griaule’s foreleg, planning to hide there until morning when he would climb up or, if unable to make the ascent, attract the attention of a scalehunter (areas beneath the joints were prime spots in which to find broken or loosened scales). On reaching the area he wove vines together into a makeshift seat, constructing a virtual cage of vines in which he felt relatively stable. This done, he hauled himself tight against the underside of the joint, securing the cage there, lashing it to other vines. Then and only then did he allow himself to catch his breath and take stock.

He could see nothing of his immediate surround, not even scales close enough to touch, yet it seemed that here, tucked beneath what was essentially the dragon’s armpit, he could make out Griaule’s scent—a pervasive cool dryness unalloyed by the lesser odors of vegetation and lichens, like that of an abandoned fortress, a mass of ancient stone tenanted by wind and the ghosts of lizards. The dragon’s moonstruck side curved away like a planet armored in scales, each of considerable size save for a section about thirty feet overhead that appeared to be composed of hundreds of irregularly shaped scales four or five inches in width…or perhaps it was a single scale struck by innumerable blows that had left it cracked, divided by hundreds of fine fissures. If this were the case, the culprit would have likely been someone other than a scalehunter—scalehunters were notorious for their superstitions and their lore was rife with cautionary anecdotes concerning men who had attempted to pry loose a scale or otherwise cause the dragon to suffer a minor bodily insult, and how Griaule had exacted his revenge upon them. Rosacher was in the habit of scoffing at such stories, but now that he was more-or-less alone on the dragon, he could not dismiss them. When seen from his vantage, the beast’s magnitude was no longer quantifiable. “Gargantuan” was too modest a term for a creature that was its own domain. He recalled the night he had ventured into Griaule’s mouth, the army of strange insects sheltering there, the way they had moved in unison, and he understood that assigning a mystical value to the experience was not entirely irrational from a phenomenological standpoint. Thinking about Griaule as a magical figure rekindled his anxieties and, suspended by vines above a five-hundred-foot drop, staring between his feet at the lights of Morningshade, he placed his palm upon a scale and prayed to be kept safe. The prayer was tinged with shame at having surrendered to fear, yet was no less fervent for all that and, though he mentioned no names, was directed toward Griaule. Afterward he chalked it up to a weak moment, yet he felt calmer. He gazed off along the swell of the dragon’s ribcage, soothed by the shimmer of moonlight on the scales, and marveled at his good fortune. Had Arthur pushed him rather than simply letting him go, he would be lying dead and broken in the street below with his every organ ruptured. He was determined to have his revenge and he needed to act swiftly, before his business was imperiled more than it already had been. Further, he would have to do something about Breque. The council had served as an effective buffer between Rosacher and the Church, a function he preferred them to continue for the foreseeable future; yet it might be the time for bold strokes. His position was not as strong as he would have liked (for one thing, he was uncertain how the militia would react if he removed Arthur as their leader; for another he had no idea what steps Breque had taken to protect himself), but he would have surprise on his side and a sufficiency of funds (salted away for just such an emergency). Within a matter of days he could hire assassins and organize their assignments; then he could sit back and orchestrate events. He’d operate out of Martita’s tavern. Should things go awry, he believed he could depend on her to hide him—her dog-loyalty to him had been evident.

A faint noise interrupted the flow of his thoughts and he saw a lanky figure clambering down Griaule’s side: Arthur. The giant had removed his jacket and his white silk shirt rippled with light. He had wrapped a vine about his waist, using his left hand to control his rate of descent and holding his pistol in the right. He stopped about fifty feet above and scanned the area beneath him. Holstering the pistol, he began traversing the dragon, heading in the general direction of the shoulder joint. There was nothing for Rosacher to do except pray and pray he did, initially to a nameless presence, but as Arthur drew nearer the prayers evolved into fervent pleas to Griaule, begging the dragon to distract the giant, to lead him away or cause the vine to snap. Once he had negotiated slightly more than half the distance between them, Arthur drew his pistol and fired two shots into the shadows beneath the joint, both going wide of Rosacher.

“Show yourself!” Arthur called. “I promise to end things quickly!”

Rosacher tried desperately to think of something he could do or say that might extricate him from this situation, unearthing and discarding old strategies. Suddenly he grew weary and sat plucking at the vines that constrained him. It was as if light and energy were emptying from his mind.

“If you force me to chase after you,” Arthur shouted, “I promise you’ll regret it!” A pause. “Do you hear?”

Rosacher suspected that Arthur might be afraid of the dark space in which he had hidden; but this did no more than give his spirits a momentary boost.

Cursing, Arthur descended a few feet and planted a boot on what Rosacher had presumed to be the shattered scale, knocking loose several of the broken pieces—against all expectation they did not fall but hovered beside Arthur, fluttering as though weightless and borne aloft on an updraft. The remainder of the pieces also fluttered up about the giant, laying bare an undamaged scale beneath. They swarmed about him like a leaf storm, almost obscuring him from sight. He screamed; his pistol discharged and he screamed a second time, his legs poking out from the mass of golden fragments that sheathed his upper body, kicking madly, presenting an image that might have been engendered by the brain of a drug-addled artist. Whatever their nature—be they insects or something more obscure—they settled on his hands, neck and face, affixing themselves to the bare skin, so that he came to resemble a man with huge golden mittens and a misshapen golden head thrice normal size that changed shape subtly, now shrinking, now growing distended. Spasms racked his body, yet he screamed no more. He hung there for a second, some reflex permitting him to maintain a grip on the vine that supported him, and then he tumbled away, spinning down against the lights of the town. The insects (Rosacher had determined they were such) came scattering back up from the falling corpse and formed into a cloud that drifted off around the curve of the dragon’s ribs—once again Rosacher entertained the conceit that he was looking off along the curve of a golden planet and observing the curious astronomical object that orbited it.

Silence and stillness closed in around him and he realized he was trembling. His breath came quick and shallow, and though the night was fairly warm he felt chilled to the bone. He squeezed his eyes shut, attempting to control his body, and heard a thin keening, like a teakettle beginning to boil. Curious, he opened his eyes. An insect like those that had attacked Arthur danced before his face—a long, dark, drooping body suspended between papery gold wings. In panic, he swatted at it and it fluttered off, going out of view. He no longer heard the whining, but as he twisted about in his cage of vines, hoping to catch sight of the insect, it fluttered up from behind his back and battened onto his jaw. He made to knock it away, but did not complete the gesture—a second insect, its wings folded, perched on his middle knuckle. A sting, a pinprick attended by a cold, burning sensation, and his hand cramped, knotted into a fist. Another sting seared his neck. Cold fire spread down into his throat and across his cheek. More stings followed, how many he could not be certain. They blended into a red wash of agony, fire poison acid, a distillate of each combined to produce a fourth and commensurately greater effect. The pain had a noise, a crackling scream that he realized was issuing from his throat. He seemed to be riding atop the noise as if it were a wave, one carrying him toward a black coast that came to cast a shadow across him so deep, he could no longer distinguish movement or color or anything at all. Even his pain was subsumed, although it seemed he brought its memory with him into the blessed dark.