The Enterprise of Death (41 page)

“It’s not that we don’t want to help, or we don’t think you deserve—” Ysabel began, but then she picked up on Awa’s thoughts and went respectfully silent as her mistress approached her and Johan. She hugged them until their ribs groaned and Johan’s clavicles popped out of their sockets, and then released them.

“Let’s get you both tucked in, then.” Awa smiled, and the three friends dug two graves by the river.

“Wait!” said Johan just before Awa released their spirits, and, clawing at the side of his grave, he soon dug his way through to Ysabel’s. He stuck his arm through and they joined hands. “Right. If you need some relics you know where to dig.”

“Goodbye, Awa,” Ysabel said. “Live.”

Then they were gone, so much bone in a shallow grave. Awa let herself sob then as she filled in the holes, terrible, painful sobs,
for the two of them and Alvarez the bandit chief and Halim the eunuch and Omorose and her little bonebird and the heartless sailor and especially herself, who was again alone, alive but alone. The very notion of her finding living people who could understand her, or even want to, was ludicrous, but she nevertheless made ready to free the last creatures she carried with her.

She built a huge pile of brush, and after dumping the salamander eggs in the center tossed down the box and cracked her knuckles. Her tutor had told her there were almost none left, that if they hatched finding more would be impossible, and that made her smile. He would find her, and he would destroy her, but he would not have these six innocents to warm his kettle with. First, though, she stripped off all of her clothes, so that as soon as the inferno was ignited and her skin warmed she could leap into the shallow river and wash away the fear and frustration of the last few years.

Awa opened her mouth to address them all, to be their mother and ignite them and set them loose into the world, but then a branch snapped behind her. Before she could spin around someone tackled her into the brushpile, the sharp branches slashing and stabbing her as she flailed. A hairy arm was around her waist and she grabbed it, his spirit fat and stupid and right there to sever, but while it recoiled from her touch like a large rat struck by a small viper it did not fade immediately, and she heard metal sliding on metal as the man latched the iron chain in place around her waist.

She struggled and his meaty fist was punching her in the back of the head. Then his hand was over her mouth, his fingers pinching her nose, and as she began to swoon Awa wondered if the necromancer would not have a living body to take after all. As she went limp the mercenary Wim clumsily slid the sack over her head and down her body, wrenching it underneath the chain around her waist and fitting a second chain around her neck.
The man had not believed in witches until she had touched him but now he felt feverish and queasy, a black lump rising on his arm. He dared not disturb the witch’s belongings, lest they be cursed.

Wim spit on the half-conscious Moor. “Von Swine didn’t pay extra for you kickin I’d gutcher wicked belly, bitch. I don’t doubt killin you’d make the angels sing.”

“She needs our ’elp, ya fuckin lump!” said Monique, and Manuel reddened to hear her preferred term for true degenerates fired at him.

“We’ve given her more help than Moses gave the Hebrews,” said Manuel. “She’s more than capable of looking after herself.”

“Maybe fore she fell in with us,” said Monique. “You ain’t seen her since ya painted’er naked in the park with us, an’ that’s years past—lose interest once you’ve seen some ass, Manuel? Friends stop meanin more’n coin once you gander their bush, lump?”

“I’ve been busy, as have you and she, else you might have called on me instead, yes?” said Manuel, only mildly more angry at her than at himself. “As you point out, I was the last to visit, meaning custom would dictate that you and she come here.”

“Fuck your custom, Manuel, I’ve a business ta run!”

“And I don’t?” said Manuel, keenly aware that the sketch he was in the middle of copying was no longer receiving as much of his attention as it really ought to command—one of the corners he had secured with a nail had torn slightly and now the whole damn thing might be off-center. Worse still, his apprentice was gone for the day so he could not simply pass it over to the boy. “And I very much doubt a few years of brothel life has wholly
removed her, her witchcraft, which proved more than a match for me or four stout mercenaries back in—”

“Don’t be callin her a witch, Niklaus,” said Monique. “Don’t want your precious studio havin an accident, do ya? Lots a powder in my purse, an’—”

“Don’t you fucking threaten me!” Manuel finally set his stylus down. “Our friend, Awa, is a witch. I’ve seen what she can do, I’ve
felt
what she can do, so don’t you act like you didn’t know! Did I say she was wicked, Mo? Did I? The fuck I did. But she’s a witch, a real fucking witch, and—”

“What the fuck is that?” Monique shoved past him, and he gave a little yelp as she knocked his arm into an easel. Steadying it and turning, he saw what she had pulled the rest of the way out from under a stack of planks and his stomach rolled. For a moment he considered calling for a servant but then he saw that her face was hurt, not angry. She looked up from the paper, and said in a voice far quieter than he had ever heard her use, “You knew.”

“That was ages ago,” said Manuel, glancing at the closed door over her shoulder. “Katharina told them she’d gone to Muscovy.”

“You fuckin knew an’ let me go on bout this.” The stupid confusion on her face was maddening, as if it were difficult to understand. How the illiterate had even recognized the bill for what it was he could not fathom, though he supposed the men who had come to her brothel must have delivered a similar poster. The sketch of Awa on it was pure amateur work, a black head with distinctly European features, and—

The clicking of his teeth as she punched him in the chin was somehow louder than the easels toppling, the planks clattering, the pots and glasses shattering, and then he landed on his back. She did not strike him again but went back to staring at the poster, perhaps puzzling over the different squiggles underneath the image. Hers would have been in the French vernacular if the
author had any sense, and he must have a little if his men had found both artist and gunner, whereas the bill Monique now held was in German. Manuel winced as he flexed his jaw, then he saw the paint spreading across his floor, the scattered planks and tipped canvases, and he winced again. Monique crumpled the bill in her hand and looked down at Manuel with the expression of one who has just realized that the meal they were in the midst of enjoying was seasoned with rat droppings.

“I thought you was different, Manuel, an’ so did she. You’re just like’em, though, aye? Von Wine, them Lombardy mayors, all of’em. How much ya sell me one of your kids for, Manuel? How much ya sell me your wife for? How much’ll it cost me ta watch ya fuck a pig, you little shit?”

“Look,” said Manuel, his voice cracking as he looked up at her, “they came here when I was out with Margaretha and Lydie, two men came here. To my fucking house. Tomas, the servant, Tomas wasn’t going to let them in but they forced the door, and one held him and the other found Katharina with, with Hieronymus, with my little boy. He was on her tit and they just barged in. They didn’t talk long, just enough. Katharina was terrified—”

“An’ ya didn’t fuckin tell me.” Monique was shaking her head. “Ya didn’t tell me first thing when I come in the door. Ages ago, aye? An’ ya didn’t even send fuckin word?!” She slapped another canvas over, and that brought Manuel to his feet.

“Kat knew who they were fucking after, Mo, and she stalled and cried until she thought she sounded convincing, and then she told them Awa had stayed a night and then gone to Muscovy. Muscovy, Mo, how much farther from Paris can you fucking get?! And you ask why I didn’t send someone from my fucking house directly to where she was, you ignorant pimp?! Did it ever cross your mind that my house might’ve been watched?!”

“It ever cross yours it might not’ve?” Monique kicked the base
of an easel, bringing a painting he had been tweaking for half a year facedown into a spreading pool of paint.

“Stop!” Manuel went for her, the smirk breaking her face like a rock through a window telling him this was just what she had in mind. His fingers went numb as his punch struck her cheek, and then he was down again, unable to breathe or even see straight as first a jab to the stomach and then a boot to the armpit sent him rolling across his floor, the forest of stands toppling around him.

“—’eard the way she talked bout ya,” Monique was saying as the artist moaned, wiping the smear of blood from his face. Paint, he realized, which was somehow worse. “Only ’eard lads on the line talk bout their da’s like that, or preachers preachin bout the All-Father. You’re a saint ta her, Saint Manuel the fuckin Brave. She’d tell ’ow you saved’er from Werner an’ them more times’n you talk bout the ’orny fuckin bishop, talk bout your little pictures like they was treasures of Heaven. Have you even fuckin thought bout her since them men came lookin?!”

Manuel had thought of hardly anything else, but had almost convinced himself she would do better without his blundering about, leading her hunters to her hiding place. Things were better than they had ever been in Bern, he wasn’t some fucking peasant anymore, he was coming up fast. Von Stein, asshole though he certainly was, had found his little cowherd even more useful on these obscure political battlefields, and so vanishing from society for who knew how long to ride to Paris to maybe get his friend killed, and himself and his growing family besides, had not seemed exactly judicious. Tell that to the raging lummox in his studio, though.

“I should’ve written,” he admitted, still not moving lest she deliver another kick. “I should have fucking found a way to get word to you, alright? They said if she were lying, they’d, they’d
take measures. Measures with Kat, and our fucking kids! She sent them to Muscovy and—”

“How in fuck ya know she said that, Manuel?” Monique sat down on his stool, one of the few untipped items in the room. “How you know that wife of yours didn’t point ta Paris an’ say—”

“She’s not a liar,” said Manuel, the fear one he had harbored ever since that day, to his shame and frustration. “We’ve never lied to each other.”

“And ’ow you know that? You her confessor, too?”

“We don’t go anymore,” said Manuel. “We’re, we’ve broken. You should, too—God doesn’t need you to pay some—”

“Manuel!” She was using her battlefield voice, and he knew a servant would arrive soon, praise God. “I don’t fuckin care how ya do your prayin, I want ta know how ya fuckin know your wife ain’t a fuckin snitch!”

“She fucks other men!” Manuel shouted back now, furious at her for voicing that needling doubt, for opening that box he had locked up and weighed down with volumes of Katharina’s proven honesty. “She tells me about that! And she tells me when she’s been selfish or nasty, which she is sometimes, being fucking human and all. We’re not all fucking saints, Monique! We’re not all fucking heroes who only pause their prayers long enough to enslave other women, to foster lust, to, to, to fuck girls who’d puke at the thought if they weren’t drunk, broke, and starving! So ask me how I know my wife isn’t a fucking liar and I’ll tell you how I know—because she doesn’t even lie to herself, so why—”

“I told them where she was.” Katharina was in the doorway. She looked tired. “I didn’t lie to Niklaus, though. They came, and I told them she had gone to Moscow. They didn’t believe me. They showed me something they had in a little case, a sort of bracelet with metal spines on the inside, and pointed at my baby son, and so I told them to look in France. I told Niklaus they had
come in and asked, and I had told them Muscovy. So I didn’t lie to him, and he didn’t lie to—”

“You’re an evil fuckin cunt,” snarled Monique.

“I’m a mother and a wife,” said Katharina evenly. “And I lack much motivation to protect a witch. Did Manuel tell you what they did together, in the graveyard before you two left? Did she tell you? Has he shown you the
art
he’s crafted based on what she showed him? Call me evil if you like, but I sleep very well at night knowing I’ve done all I can to protect the people I know to be good.”

“You wanna tell me again she ain’t a fuckin liar?”

“I knew,” said Manuel, and laughed a stupid, weird little giggle. “I knew. Or I should have. The look on your face when I got home, Kat, the panic in your eyes when you said Moscow to me, and I said
do you swear
, and you just nodded, as frightened as I’ve ever seen you. I knew right then you’d told them more but I didn’t ask, did I? I just said you, you’d done a good deed. Ah!” Another part of the conversation came to him, and he giggled again. “You said I should write! You said I should write to warn Awa, and I said no, we were, we were probably being watched and she could take care of herself, and and and—”