The Enterprise of Death (51 page)

“Interesting.” Her host’s pale brow creased as he dropped the torch and swept her up in his arms, dancing over the polished glass floor just as the wave of vipers came crashing down around his ankles. His hands were so chill they froze the sweat infusing Awa’s leggings and she gasped at both the sensation and the sight beneath her. The squirming snakes were only able to scale up to his knees before the intense cold emanating from Carandini put
the serpents to sleep and they fell away without getting within striking range of Awa’s dangling feet. “It not only prevents me from personally hurting you but actually compels me to protect you from the traps I had set to circumvent that very ward. It is just as Breanne said, but interesting to see in action. I don’t regret the time I invested one bit.”

“Sorry?” Awa was growing dizzy as he swung her onto his back, putting his chest between her and the darts suddenly fired at them by some unseen device in the shadowy chamber. She saw oily black blood bubble out around the small shafts prickling his chest, and then they were through the snakes and past the darts and at yet another red door. Setting her down, he opened the door and ushered her through as she asked, “Who’s Breanne?”

“An associate,” said Carandini. “It was she who dealt with young master Walther.”

“Walther?” The room Awa entered was dark, and as Carandini closed the door behind her the light of the abandoned torch was blotted out, leaving them in perfect blackness.

“Your predecessor. Light.” And light there was, light of every imaginable color reflecting out of dozens of glass globes that spotted the enormous workroom. The globes were full of liquid that swirled and flashed, some set atop stands on the long tables, many more suspended from the scalloped ceiling by braided wires, and these as much as the bizarre apparatuses that adorned the room made Awa gape in wonder. “This is one of the laboratories. The others are in use so you cannot see them, lest you take more than your due.”

“More than—oh.” Awa saw him tapping his shaved scalp. “My predecessor came here? This Walther was the last apprentice of the necromancer, the one whose skin he wears? Er, wore?”

“Yes,” said Carandini.

“And your associate, Breanne, dealt with him?”

“Yes.”

“I must speak with her!”

“No.” Carandini smiled, showing his fangs again. “You speak with me.”

“Oh. Well, you tell me, then—what was he doing here?”

“What?” Carandini blinked at her. “The same thing I presume you’ve come for.”

“And what’s that?” asked Awa.

“To find a way to break the curse your tutor has afflicted you with, to postpone or prevent the loss of your body and soul.” Carandini looked warily at her. “Isn’t that why you sought us out?”

“Oh! That would be wonderful!” Much as she wanted to indulge her curiosity, Awa had resolved to be as forthright with the dead as they were with her, and that meant honest answers given at the time of asking. “I just came here to ask for your help with my, my lover. She was the one in the sack, upstairs? She’s dying and so I killed her, but only a little, and I hoped you would turn her into one of you before she dies all the way. I don’t want her to start rotting, and the book said—”

Carandini shook his head. “You sought us out to help with your
girlfriend
?”

“Well, yes. But since I’m here and you know about everything having to do with my tutor, why don’t we talk about that instead and deal with Chloé later?”

“Chloé’s your lover?”

“Yes. In the sack.”

“Very well,” said Carandini, throwing his hands in the air. “Ask away.”

“Well, first of all, why are you so helpful?” Awa sat on one of the benches.

“Because I must,” said Carandini. “I am compelled. And besides that, your tutor is an old enemy. He is a cheat. He came
here long, long ago, volunteering an alliance. We accepted, despite our caution in aligning ourselves with a breather, and soon enough he had taken what he could and snuck off instead of putting in the years of labor he had promised. Indicative of your type, was he, more concerned with personal advancement than the common good. The hunt for knowledge oughtn’t to be competitive.” Carandini glared at Awa. “
Ought not be
competitive.”

“I agree! Really! And I’ll do what I can to help, and—what was that about being compelled to help? The ward you mentioned, the curse that keeps the dead from harming me?” Awa narrowed her eyes at Carandini. “How would you treat me if the ward did not compel you to this or that?”

“I would peel you like an onion,” said Carandini, clearly overjoyed she had asked. Those eyes, pink and shiny as salmon flesh, came alive in a way the rest of him never would, and his bright red tongue flicked over his ivory teeth. “I would commandeer an entire theatre to take you apart, to find out how his wards work. Of course, if you did not have the ward I wouldn’t have anything to study, which is a paradox. What was I saying? No, I would just kill you, I think, for your audacity, for one, in coming here to ask for assistance with your … relationship, but also because it’s the only way to thwart him, I think, but then he, then you … another paradox.” Carandini looked confused.

“Only way to thwart him?” The hope he had fostered in her quickly felt the pinch of frost. “Of course you don’t know another way, otherwise my predecessor, this Walther, would not have been possessed. But obviously he was.”

“Obvious now,” said Carandini. “The boy stood a decent chance, to hear Breanne tell it.”

“But you won’t let me hear Breanne tell it.”

“No.”

“What did she do for him? How did she deal with him, as you said?”

“The issue,” Carandini sniffed, “is that if you die it would probably thwart him, indeed, it is likely the only way
to
thwart him, but that pesky ward prevents us from counseling such a course, or allowing you to consider it. Breanne was forced to perform surgery on Walther when it became evident he intended to kill himself upon leaving our company.”

“Surgery?” Awa glanced nervously at the array of too-bright metal tools covering the tables. “What kind of surgery would prevent him from, ah, doing that?”

Carandini tapped his head again. “Cut him off from thinking about most things, other than eating and keeping warm. Unfortunately that route didn’t work, otherwise I’d already be up to my wrists in your skull. Again, these abominable compulsions—it must have gotten the boy killed, or whatever you want to call what your tutor does when he steals your body, and so that avenue is denied me.”

“How would, would hurting his brain keep him safe?!” Awa demanded. “What kind of solution is that?”

“A pretty good one.” Carandini crossed his arms. “It kept him from doing himself harm, which was the point in the first place, and no doubt caused some difficulties for your tutor upon taking over the body—we had hoped that if he did manage to possess Walther he would be in the same bestial position as the boy, but apparently the old breather managed to overcome the deficit of reasoning long enough to trap some traveler or another and eat their brain. That’s how you lot repair your physical injuries, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Awa sighed. Why had she even allowed Chloé to come along in the first place—so she could watch Awa become possessed, or maybe help her kill herself ? So she would be close to Awa when her body was stolen by an utter bastard with a predilection for dead flesh? What the hell was wrong with her?

“The surgery wasn’t the only precaution.” Carandini had
taken up a pair of pliers and was wresting the darts out of his breast. He dropped the bloody quarrels on a metal plate to punctuate his sentences. “Breanne found a mountain peak riddled with thick, unbroken veins of iron. Those natural deposits, when combined with a great deal of time and energy and our own arcane wards, would allow an ethereal spirit to pass through but prevent the necromancer from leaving once he bonded with the flesh of his pupil. He would have been imprisoned there upon possessing Walther, yet somehow you fell within his grasp and he manipulated you into doing exactly what all your predecessors had done—studying his arts to prepare your body, then freeing his spirit from the aged mortal shell after he cursed you. And all without ever escaping the mountaintop! A little impressive, I must admit.”

“So you took the apprentice to the mountaintop and left him there? How was that different from killing him, and how could you if the ward—”

“It was the only way, and obviously Walther had a chance or we wouldn’t have been able to leave him there. Initially Breanne wanted to dump him on some empty island or in the middle of a desert, where the boy could live just long enough to become possessed and then perish, but she couldn’t, the ward wouldn’t let her. Compulsions compulsions compulsions. I didn’t want to let you in, I didn’t, I wanted to lock the door and leave you to fend for yourself, but next thing I know I’m ushering you downstairs, giving you the grand tour, so why don’t you tell me what it is I can do for you and be off.” Carandini stood and walked along the benches toward a metal door set at the end of the hall.

“I need the wits that are leaking into me, your wits, to find a way to stay alive,” said Awa, brightening. “Why don’t I stay here, and you and your collective can study me without killing me, and then when he comes we’ll all have figured out something together!”

“Out of the question,” said Carandini, opening the iron door. “We would succeed, I presume, in removing your ward if we were to examine you, which would allow us to kill you, which is why I can’t allow you to stay.”

“Well don’t, then!” Awa followed him. “Why be so nasty to me? Why not make a friend, form an alliance, and defeat the necromancer together! You don’t have to kill me once the ward is removed!”

“I didn’t say we could remove it, just that we might. Dark.” All the globes in the laboratory winked out. “Light.”

The rear wall of the new room lit up, thousands of luminescent insects squirming across it, pale green light spilling out over a spacious, comfortable stone chamber. The chairs and bed looked as soft as the floor and walls were hard, and Carandini ushered her to sit as he went to a tasteful wooden cabinet and fetched a bottle. Awa settled into the chair, and though she told herself she would not display anything of the sort, a happy sigh involuntarily left her lips. Her host set a beautiful yellow glass bottle on a small table beside her chair then sat opposite her in the seat’s twin.

“If you stay here you will die,” said Carandini wearily, rubbing his temples. “That’s obvious. I don’t particularly wish to help you but it seems I must do something or you will die, which I am compelled to prevent. So what next?”

“I don’t know,” said Awa, picking up the bottle. “Is this wine?”

“Yes,” said Carandini, and, waving his hand, two glasses appeared on the table beside her, sparkling quartz goblets that blazed with the light of the wall. “Pour me one, too, if you please, might as well enjoy being foolish for a night.”

“I drank with a skeleton before,” said Awa. “But he really couldn’t keep it in, of course, and it couldn’t affect him. I suppose you are different?”

“I am.” Carandini winced.

“Tell me about your type, about your differences from the undead I am familiar with,” said Awa as she filled his glass. As soon as she finished it floated off the table and drifted over to his languid fingers.

“We require blood to stay alive,” said Carandini. “As you will eat a finger to replace a missing digit, we must drink fresh blood to preserve ourselves. We do not have a heartbeat unless we wish it, however, and as our bodies maintain a very cool climate the blood inside our veins will last a very long time and we do not need to refresh it very often. If we choose to use it, it goes bad much quicker and we must ingest fresh human blood.”

“Choose to use it?” Awa sipped her wine and found it delicious, but much as she wanted to throw back the glass and pour another she knew that getting sloppy with this monster would not further her cause. “How do you use your blood if you do not have a heartbeat?”

“We do not have a heartbeat unless we choose to. I’ve turned mine on now, for example, in order to digest and savor the giddiness this beverage affords. If we’re of a mind to enjoy a nice meal, or other physical pleasures, then we activate the dormant organs required for the task and set to. The blood goes bad much quicker when we do this, though, so we usually avoid it.”

“Where do you get human blood down here, so far from everything?” The question made her a little uncomfortable, as she doubted the answer would be pleasant. It was not.

“We have a farm further down,” said Carandini, draining his glass. “We raise them, humans, and keep them in pens downstairs. They’re never in the best of health but we’re rather good at tending to their maladies, and so we always have something on hand. They don’t taste as good as those that live above—not enough exercise, probably, or maybe the sunlight has something to do with it. At any rate—”

“That’s terrible!” Awa set down her glass. “What gives you the right to do that!?”

“The same thing that gives them the right to eat cows and sheep and everything else—there’s no one to stop us. Of course at this point we’ve developed artificial tonics that serve just as well, but it really doesn’t taste as good so we just keep it on hand for an emergency, like a plague outbreak or—”

“Doesn’t
taste
as good?! You mean you don’t really
need
the blood, you just prefer it?!”