Beautiful Blood by Lucius Shepard Read Free Book Online

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