The Dragon Griaule

‘After I’d been with Jefe a few weeks, caring for him twenty-four seven, I realized how willful he could be and I began to worry he wouldn’t turn out as I hoped.’

‘There’s a shocker,’ said Snow.

‘I wanted a means of stopping him, so I bribed the engineer to provide me with a code that would enable me to bring down the central section of the chains all at once. At first I asked for a code that would bring them all down, but he warned there would be a splashing effect – if all the chains fell they’d likely kill everyone in the room. I’ve been tempted to use the code several times, but until now I always trusted my original decision.’

He could guess what had changed for her, why she was now willing to act, and he wanted to be sure, to ask, Why now? because he doubted it had much if anything to do with Chuy – but he bit back the question, worried that if he pressed that particular button it would enlist a negative emotion and she might rethink her decision.

‘What’s the code?’ he asked.

‘In the lair there’s a panel at eye-level just to the left of the door. Inside there’s a keypad. Punch in seven-one-three-nine-one. It’s my birthday. Seven, thirteen, ninety-one. When it’s the right moment, you press Enter and down he’ll come. But I’ll be the one who enters the code.’

She sat up in bed, a process that required his assistance, and once she had resettled with pillows behind her, she said, ‘It’s best I do it, anyway. If he stays true to form, he’ll take you up to one of the perches and leave you there while he flies. I know the precise section of chains that will drop and I’m used to watching him fly – I know his timing and you don’t. But he may not allow me to go upstairs with you. In that case . . . he might leave you on the ground and have you watch him fly. Maybe you can use the code then. We have to make certain he brings me up with you. The way to ensure it is to act like we’re angry with one another and keep on arguing about how he should govern.’

‘How’s that?’

‘He was interested in what we said. If we can hold his interest, when it comes time to kill you, he’ll want me there to watch him end the argument.’

‘I’m not good with heights,’ Snow said after an interval.

‘You’re going to have to be.’ She rolled her neck to loosen the muscles. ‘There’s one more thing. You might have to finish him off.’

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I thought the idea was to make him fall from a height.’

‘The fall may not kill him. When he first started to fly he took a number of falls – they laid him up for a day, but that’s all.’

‘How long a fall are we talking about?’

‘The longest was fifty or sixty feet.’

‘He fell sixty feet onto a concrete floor and lived?’

‘This time the chains will come down on top of him – that should do the job. But we have to prepare for the possibility that he’ll survive. I’ll bring a machete, but you’ll have to use it. I’m not strong enough.’

‘Can you get a gun?’

She shook her head. ‘No guns. Since the sniper incident, he hasn’t let anyone near him with a gun. He sniffs them out.’

‘He doesn’t worry about machetes?’

‘He sees me with one every day. I have to kill chickens and chop weeds in the garden. He’s not concerned about anyone killing him at close range.’

‘Jesus fuck!’

‘You can do it! If he’s not dead he’ll be stunned, chewed up in the chains.’

‘How about making him fall from higher up?’

‘He wants his audience to see everything. Generally he’ll strand whomever he’s going to kill on a perch close to the floor. Then he makes this tumbling run across the center of the lair that brings him in at around thirty or forty feet. He plucks whomever it is off the wall and carries them higher before he drops them. I’m familiar with that run, I can time it. Otherwise he flies erratic patterns, and the odds against my being able to time him go way up. We can discuss it, but that’s not the path I’d choose if my life were in the balance.’

Something about the plan, her sudden conversion to his cause, seemed flimsy and too facile by half. Of course it hadn’t been that sudden, the conversion – it had taken him more than a week to work this change, to make her reflect on her feelings for him, yet nonetheless it was a quick turnaround.

‘You look funny,’ she said. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘I was thinking . . . visualizing.’