The Enterprise of Death (16 page)

“What are you talking about, Manuel?” Awa interrupted. “Dogs or priests?”

“Priests,” said Manuel, “but the metaphor—”

“Your priests are hungry? You seem clever enough to speak in clearer terms than dogs and shepherds. There are many followers of your god, and so your god has many priests, yes? After that I could no longer follow you.”

“Yes,” said Manuel. “The priests, well, the priests have become distracted by the world, I think, by material rewards instead of spiritual ones. Follow?”

“No,” said Awa.

“Look,” said Manuel, “I’m no Erasmus but I’ll see if I can’t explain. Priests are supposed to be concerned with God, and with helping we mortals follow God. Yet in the time between the foundation of the Church and today, right now, much of the clergy has stopped doing so selflessly, instead demanding payment for their service to God. Men no longer need to live just lives, but instead can be as corrupt as they wish so long as they pay the Church to forgive them. Sins, wicked acts that displease God, are forgiven by the Church in exchange for wealth, instead of the acts of contrition and penance that God had stated was the only way to be restored to His graces.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Awa.

“From what I’ve seen, and what I’ve heard and read.” Manuel shrugged. “And not all priests are like that, of course, but enough to give one pause.”

“You still haven’t told me how you were living like your god before you became a soldier.”

“No. And I said I was
trying
to live like God, not that I was succeeding. You asked me if God was a soldier, and I said no. He kills, yes, and we servants of He are soldiers when we have to be, yes, but He is not a soldier Himself, for soldiers follow orders and He—”

“So you had to be a soldier?”

“No,” said Manuel with more guilt than he was accustomed to feeling about the matter. “I became a soldier to feed myself and my wife and niece and maybe one day my children, and to better serve Him in my own humble fashion—through my art, through the pictures you liked. I do not think God is a soldier, but I do think He is an artist.”

“You have not struck me as humble,” said Awa. “But I don’t know if you should be. Your god is an artist?”

“Yes,” said Manuel. “He made this world, did He not? It is a beautiful place, and no living man may match His skill in creating. Look around you at this realm, and the creatures that populate it. Yet I struggle to emulate Him, to create beauty, to venerate Him through my art.”

“And you seek to do this outside of your god’s church, which you consider corrupt?”

“Well,” Manuel sighed, looking at his charcoal-stained digits. “Most of my paying jobs are done for churches and abbeys.”

“You’re a hypocrite, then,” said Awa, quite pleased. She was a hypocrite, too.

“No,” said Manuel. “Well, maybe a little. I take their money, it’s true, but it’s all to serve Him, and I turn a little coin glassblowing on the side. You see—”

And on they went, until the sun set, and they ate cold meat
and drank warm wine, and talked on until Awa began to yawn and blink and Manuel had almost forgotten that he was keeping company with a sorceress. He remembered sure enough when she went outside to relieve herself and killed him on her way out, those fingers stopping his heart as abruptly as a bandit’s breaking-pole stopping the spokes of a wagon. He lay on the floor of the cave, unable to move or speak or breathe, terror and panic driving his mind to the threshold of sanity, and then she returned and addressed him.

“Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern, I know you can hear me despite being a dead man. I like you more alive than dead, but I also prefer being alive myself and know that I cannot trust you, for your fear of me is as obvious as it is justified. However, I also know you will never trust me so long as I keep killing you every time I take a piss or a nap, so we must agree that a better solution is needed. Get up.”

Manuel did not vomit this time but his head still pounded and he glared up at her. “What the fuck do you want from me?”

A fair question, and one Awa had not considered. The answer came of its own volition. “You saved me, this is true. Yet it is also true that you took me away from where I was. Therefore I want you to escort me back to where I was before we met, and then we may part ways.”

“Back to the camp?” said Manuel. “But—”

“What? No, to where I was before that, a day and a half northwest of there, I believe, beside a stream. My belongings are still there, I hope.”

“What, ah, happened there?” Manuel asked, sitting up. “The man who captured you, Wim, died the morning of the battle, before von Swine gave you to me.”

“I was stupid,” said Awa harshly. “Careless. Feeling sorry for myself. I—” She looked up sharply but seeing that Manuel was not smiling at her expense she cleared her throat. “He threw the
chain around me. This Inquisition must have told your master how to bind me, and he told the man. Before he tightened the iron I touched him, but the chain must have already dampened me enough that instead of dying at once he persisted long—”

The witch broke off, her eyes widening, and Manuel nervously glanced over his shoulder to make sure some worse horror was not approaching. Awa could not believe how stupid she was, detailing to Manuel her principal weakness. Most men were not versed in witchcraft, especially not the minutiae of debilitating a necromancer, yet here she had gone telling him the last thing he needed to know. Her fingers twitched and she almost killed him again before appreciating just how confused he looked.

“So we journey back toward the camp, which isn’t even there anymore, and then you go your way and I go mine?” said Manuel carefully, his eyes on her quivering left hand.

“Yes,” said Awa, adding quickly, “Unless you’d like my help with your master.”

“Who, von Stein?”

“He’s threatened your family,” said Awa, her brown eyes stabbing into his. “I know about serving masters we despise, and I think you will need to kill him for your family to be safe.”

“Yes,” Manuel said numbly, although already he was imagining how he could get her back into her sack and safely to the Inquisition. She
was
a real goddamn witch, after all, so it wasn’t like she was some innocent he would be turning over. What had she said about iron binding her?

“I am going to sleep now, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern, and we both know the only way I can ensure you do not try to kill or capture me is for you to die.”

“Wait, no—” Manuel put his hands up.

“Shut up,” she said, her face suddenly looking very young and sad. “You listen to me, and then you speak. You did not think I was a witch, and that is why you freed me. You thought I was a
madwoman, you told your master, and you pitied me as such. Your god and his servants do not pity witches—I know this, and your master threatening your family certainly does not compel you to help one whom you consider wicked by nature. But I’m not wicked, even if your church thinks that I am. I have done things I regret, it is true, but who has not?”

“I wouldn’t …” Manuel began but she looked at him and he knew she had more to say, and so he let her.

“I had a master, and he would have me kill to save myself. I will not do this, because it is what he wants and because I do not believe innocents should suffer so that I may live. Instead I sought to free myself, but in the years I’ve searched for a way to thwart him I’ve found no escape, no alternative but to do as he bids, to slaughter children to lift the curse he put upon me.”

The flat tone of voice and the despondent expression on her young face magnified the horror of her words, and Manuel felt lightheaded. She was speaking of the devil, of course, and could he doubt her after all he had seen and experienced that day? He leaned closer as she continued.

“Yet I will not. When I was captured I had just put the last of the dead I had raised into the ground, and I intended to desert my quest. I decided to try and live as a simple woman instead of a necromancer, to find some place in this world where I could exist for a few quiet years. I was content to wait for my death, my oblivion, and so I will be hard-pressed to begrudge you if I wake up and find myself wrapped in chains, a sack over my head, a gag in my mouth. Think of your family, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern.”

And with that Awa went to the fire, lay down, and went to sleep, the wrapped-up portrait she had taken clutched to her chest. Manuel waited until her breathing evened out and then fled the cave, stumbling through the darkness back to the scene of the morning’s altercation. By the light of the moon he eventually
found the discarded chain and the stinking sack they had bound her with, and he took them back to the cave, approaching the dark mouth much more slowly and cautiously than he had left it. She still slept beside the dying fire, and Manuel stood over her, the iron chain gripped in both hands.

“One more task,” said the necromancer one autumn afternoon, “one more ritual, little Awa, and then you will be free to go, a necromancer in your own right. It’s enough to make me get out a handkerchief.”

“What?” Awa felt her breath dash away and hoped it came home soon; she had much more to ask on the matter.

“You don’t think I meant to keep you here forever, did you?” said the necromancer, and Awa realized she had thought exactly that. Considering any alternative might have given her hope, something she tried to weed out of her emotional garden lest it choke her seasonal apathy and perennial pragmatism.

“You’re going to let me go?” Awa marveled at the words even as she knew they had to be another of his games. “You would not let me go without a reason. I am too useful to you.”

“True enough!” He laughed, in better spirits than she had ever seen him. “The fact is, you can’t go where I’m bound, so there’s nothing for it. Getting there will require your aid, but once I’m gone you can do what you wish—stay up here for all I care, or see the world and all its wonders. I only ask that you stay alive so that we may converse again some sunny day, and I will
be most displeased if I have to call you back from where the dead go. And don’t think a split skull will stop me, either —even if your body’s dashed I can summon your shade, put it in a bottle or something. So live, Awa, live!”

“Ah,” said Awa. “That’s it. You’re not really letting me go, you’re just going away for some reason, and someday you’ll come back and put me back under your thumb.”

“Must you always think the worst of me?” The necromancer scowled, clearly put out. “Here, I’ve got some presents for you.”

“Presents?” Awa took a step back. “I really don’t want—”

“Are you sure?” asked the necromancer, and Awa was no longer.

“What I meant,” she said carefully, “is that I don’t need—”

“Need’s a funny, fleeting thing,” he clucked, opening his bear and rooting around until he found a small chest. Setting it on the table, he gave her a strange smile and opened it up. Awa looked around to see where his concubine had slithered off to, suspecting a trick, but then he beckoned her around the table. “Put that hoof of yours on my chair.”

Awa obliged, and he took a thin, shimmering black rope from the box. He wrapped it twice around her ankle where goat fur met skin and tied it in a bow. Nothing happened. She looked up at him, and he grinned and nodded, pointing back down. Returning her gaze to her hoof, she stumbled backwards, nearly tipping his chair. Her hoof was gone and her old foot was in its place, the black twine bowed around her ankle.

“I don’t want this,” Awa said. “I liked it!”

“It’s still there,” the necromancer said huffily, hurt, or something like. “I just hid it so you won’t be burned at the stake by the first peasant you run across. The rest of the world isn’t so understanding of our talents.”

“Oh,” said Awa, and tapping her heel on the floor she felt her hoof clatter instead of a too-soft sole.

“You still see the string?”

“Yes,” said Awa. “Shouldn’t I?”

“It’s only visible to you, so you can take it off if you like, and even with it on you’re liable as not to leave cloven hoofprints, so be mindful of mud when you’re walking about muddy villages.” He rooted through the chest for something else as Awa held her foot up and tried to wiggle her illusory toes.

“What is it made of ?” she asked.

“A braid from my tutor’s beard,” said the necromancer, making Awa lose some of her excitement over the gift. “And here’s his skull.”