Ruddy light pried under his eyelids and he heard somebody humming a snatch of a familiar song. A confusion of memories crowded his brain—he could make no sense of them—and a hazy figure moved across his field of vision, clarifying into a lovely Raphaelesque woman clad in breeches and a low-cut blouse. She passed into an adjoining room. He made to call out and that set off a paroxysm of coughing. Once the coughing subsided he felt dazed and out of his depth. Something partially covered his face, interfering with his breathing—he pawed at it and found that the lower half of his face and both hands were bandaged. He sank back into the mattress and wondered where he was. The room was Spartan, a few sticks of furniture, an oil lamp, unadorned walls of newly cut boards, a window covered by an orange shade—yet it had a pleasing aesthetic and the blond color of the unfinished wood glowed with a raw vitality. The bed was not much larger than a cot, though comfortable. As he grew increasingly alert he felt pain in the areas that were bandaged and called out again, cautiously this time, producing a feeble grating noise that initiated another bout of coughing. There was no response, but several minutes later the woman re-entered and he attracted her notice with a hand signal. She sat on the edge of the bed and laid a hand on his forehead, peering at him with a worried look. She asked if he needed anything and he shaped the word “water” with his lips.
After he had drunk and swallowed the medication she pressed upon him, two pastilles, he took her measure. She might be Martita’s twin, he thought. They were identical in nearly every respect, yet the physical characteristics that made Martita ordinary somehow combined in this woman to effect a regal and voluptuous beauty. She leaned toward him, adjusting the pillows beneath his head, and a silver locket incised with the crude image of a dragon dangled in his face.
“Martita?” Speaking her name set off yet another spell of coughing.
“There, now!” She shushed him, putting a finger to his lips. “You’ll be talking soon enough. I know you have questions, though, so I’ll tell you what I can.”
He nodded.
“You run afoul of a swarm of flakes, you and Mister Honeyman,” she said. “You won’t find as many of them this side of Griaule, the Teocinte side, as once there was. Cattanay’s crew crawling all over keeps them away. Flakes likes their solitude. But now and then a swarm drifts over this way and does some damage. You only had a few stings. Most of ’em spent their poison on Mister Honeyman, I reckon. People say they had trouble identifying his remains, he were so disfigured. ’Course the fall didn’t help matters none. Come right through the roof of a bathhouse, he did. Some of the ladies from Ali’s Eternal Reward were lying about, taking their ease with one another, if you catch my meaning, and what with Mister Honeyman bursting in on ’em like that…well, it dimmed their mood, let’s say.”
Rosacher was greatly relieved by this, understanding from this that he had not lost more years, merely days.
Martita looked up into a corner of the room as if receiving intelligence from that quarter. “That woman,” she went on. “Ludie. She were up here looking for you. Her and some of the militia. She said she’s worried about you, but I never trusted that one, so when Jarvis found you hanging off Griaule’s side, I figured to let you decide about things. If you want me to let her know you’re here, I can…”
Rosacher clutched her arm and shook his head, signaling “no” in as emphatic a way as he could manage.
“I thought as much. She pretended she were desperate afraid for you, but what I took from her manner was she wanted to make sure you were dead.” She patted his hand. “Don’t you worry. You’re safe here.”
He was not so confident about this as she appeared to be, but neither was he inclined to debate the point. Weariness overtook him and, if the conversation continued for longer than that snippet, he could not later recall it.
For the better part of a week Rosacher was in and out of consciousness. One state came to resemble the other. His sleep was littered with vivid dreams that were extraordinary in nature—in them, dressed in a black hat and coat, he traveled throughout the Carbonales Valley, often to different portions of the dragon’s body, even visiting Griaule’s internal regions, and there he would speak with various and sundry (he could not recall much detail from these conversations, but had the impression they were significant). By contrast, his waking periods were drowsy and muddle-headed, enlivened by the stirrings of arousal he felt whenever Martita visited him. He recognized she must be giving him mab to treat his pain and this accounted for her newfound allure; but knowing that did nothing to diminish that allure. Though thicker and less dainty than the women he was accustomed to having in his bed, he did not find this off-putting. She seemed epic in dimension and he pictured her image carved bare-breasted and forward-looking on a ship’s bow, or sculpted in battle dress at the head of an army, and imagined himself lifting away her bronze breastplates and pressing his lips to the bounty beneath. Toward the end of the week, when she came to clear away the remains of his supper, he pulled her close, fondled her and nuzzled her neck. She allowed him a free hand for several seconds and then went to the door and called downstairs to her assistant, Anthony, telling him to tend to the counter. When she removed her clothing, her skin gleamed as if a sun were embedded in all that whiteness. He understood that what he saw now differed from how he had once perceived her, yet he did not question his response to her and soon was lost in the soft turns of her body. She straddled him, her hands braced on his shoulders, her braids lashing his chest. Through lidded eyes he observed the quaking round of her belly, immense, pendulous breasts shaped like summer squash jouncing together, slack features pinked from exertion, these sights orchestrated by the rhythmic slapping of flesh—she seemed a divine animal in human form and he gave himself over to the act, drowning in her, devoted to her pleasure as he had been with no woman before. Afterward, lying torpid amid the rumpled bedding, he watched her buttoning her trousers and realized that, while he did not feel love toward her (he doubted he would ever know that emotion), he had no sense of disdain such as customarily attended his liaisons with unimportant women. Instead, he had an urge to make a joke or be playful in some way, but he was uncertain of his instincts in this regard and kept quiet.
“If you’re strong enough to give me a bounce…” Martita cinched her belt. “You’ll soon be wanting to get up and about.”
She went to a closet, took out a black suit and a slouch hat, and laid them on the foot of the bed.
“Try these on when you’ve a mind,” she said. “Mister Doans wore that suit whenever he went to town. It can take a bit of letting out if needs be.”
Rosacher tried to pull her down onto the bed again, but she fended him off, saying she had to get back to the bar or else Anthony would rob her blind.
“I’ll look in on you again this evening,” she said. “Get some rest and we’ll see how you’re feeling then.”
After she had left he examined Mr. Doans’ suit and hat—they were identical to those he had worn in his dreams, and identical also to those worn by the man with the horrible cough and the bandaged face who had come to him in a dream on the night the Church’s assassin had invaded his bedroom. He knew what Martita would say were he to bring the subject up. She’d tell him that Griaule’s ways were too subtle for men to comprehend and would advise him not to waste time on matters that were beyond him. The usual drivel. And yet, he told himself, although he had backslid from this viewpoint on several prior occasions, the usual drivel was becoming ever more difficult to discount.
10