The Enterprise of Death (46 page)

“Start with the slut she brought,” said Omorose eagerly. “Take her on the floor so the witch can see. While you fuck her I’ll use the comb to peel back her scalp.”

That was without a doubt the single evilest thing Awa had ever heard. She moaned again, hoping against hope that the mild-looking man would balk at this, perhaps even remove her gag, hear her side of the story, listen to—

“I want to shoe her first,” Kahlert said firmly. “If she’s as powerful as we suspect, the iron on her arms and legs might not be enough. I still think we should take care of her—”

“Fine, fine.” Omorose twitched, clearly displeased. “But you’ll do it, won’t you, Ash? You’ll do it so the witch has to see?”

“Of course,” said Kahlert, knowing that what a witch hates most is what most needs doing, no matter how distasteful the act might be were an actual human involved. “What choice do we have?”

Omorose shrieked with laughter, dropping down to look Awa in the eye as she did. Awa was hyperventilating, her pupils dilating, and Omorose yanked out her gag.

“I gave you another chance,” Awa finally managed as Omorose shimmered before her. What Awa at first took to be a spell revealed its mundane cause when the tears tickled her chin. “Life, I gave you another life! I gave you everything I could!”

“You gave me everything, alright,” Omorose whispered. “You think I wanted you to dig me up and play with my bones, you nasty bitch? You think I wanted to become some rotten monster instead of lying at rest? You’re just as selfish as you were on the mountain!”

Omorose laughed again, and Awa knew they were both lost. Kahlert came over beside the still tittering Omorose and held up a small V-shaped piece of iron, several holes punched through the flat surface of the metal.

“This is your test, witch,” the man said softly, almost kindly. “The lady Rose has told me you conceal a cloven hoof under the skin of your left foot, like the devil himself, and that she knows the method of removing the glamour you disguise it with. If you are innocent obviously your foot will remain your foot, and I will release you, and your friends. Conversely, you may admit to your crimes now, in which case you will be burned at once, your soul cleansed.”

“The
fuck
she will,” Omorose growled at Kahlert. “What’s the meaning of this fucking pardon?!”

“It is not Christian to use the stronger methods when—”

“I confess!” Awa wailed. “I confess I confess I confess!”

Omorose was livid, her pretty face taut and wild, but Kahlert held up a gloved hand and said, “You confess to what?”

“I confess!” Awa hiccupped. “I confess to whatever you want, to whatever she said!”

Kahlert shook his head slowly. “You know what you have done. Confess.”

“I confess to being a witch,” said Awa, eyes darting between the patient Inquisitor and the fuming Omorose. “I confess to bringing Omorose back from the dead, and raping her, and trying to kill her again, and—”

“What?” Kahlert furrowed his brows.
“Back from the dead?”

“She’s dead!” said Awa. “She’s dead dead dead!”

“Don’t listen to her, she’s trying to turn you against me,” Omorose murmured, desperately hoping he would not ask her if this was true. It had been a very careful dance she had led him on down the years, and the thought of being tripped up by her
irresistible compulsion to honesty now would be worse than never having crawled out of the ground. To her relief Kahlert nodded, clearly disappointed with Awa’s confession.

“No!” Awa blubbered. “She’s dead, and I brought her back but she’ll kill me, and I never meant, I never meant—”

“All of the farriers I spoke with said it wouldn’t work,” Kahlert cut her off, wiggling the iron V in front of her. “They said it would ruin the goat’s foot, that such things were only for horses. Even still I found one who would make an appropriately shaped shoe, and having applied it to several beasts myself I assure you that it does indeed impede movement instead of aiding it. But by the fourth or fifth goat I had gotten the knack for deeply affixing the nails without splitting the hoof wide.”

Awa had not paid a great deal of attention to the hooves of the few horses she had ridden, but his meaning was clear enough and she moaned again, “I confess!”

“Well, Rose.” Kahlert turned to Omorose, who was once more exuding a sunny smile now that it appeared Awa would not be proceeding directly to the stake after all. Omorose stood without a word, and Awa felt the woman’s finger bones running up and down her calf. They dug under the manacle, and as Awa gave another low cry she felt the string tug and then come loose. Omorose came back into sight, dangling the fraying length of twine that had disguised Awa’s foot. Kahlert took it gingerly, his breathing shallow, and looked wide-eyed down the length of Awa to where her hoof stuck out from the manacle.

“Bring the hammer and nails,” Kahlert breathed, standing up and walking out of Awa’s field of vision, down to her legs.

“Please!” Awa squealed, looking to Omorose. Her former mistress was twitching all over, her nose and lips and even her eyes jarring from tiny spasms. The woman smiled, and blew Awa a kiss as she walked out of sight. Awa suddenly had to urinate
very badly, and then Omorose came back before her, holding up a small hammer in one hand and a tiny bouquet of iron nails in the other. Then she smiled even wider, and went to Kahlert.

It was a cloven hoof. Kahlert giggled. He suddenly, desperately wanted to stop everything, to unshackle her and put the chains back into place, to bag her and gag her and take her without delay out of his house, out of the Empire. She must go to Rome, they must go to Rome, and then unmask her before that swamp-Pope Adrian. It would slap the Church in the face with a real, live witch, it would convince them, it would make them stop punishing the loyal and rewarding the wicked. His father would posthumously be brought back into the Church,
he
would be brought back into the Church, everyone would know, and then the good work could begin in earnest. This was God’s gift to him, Ashton Kahlert, Inquisitor before God, and soon, Inquisitor before Man once again.

The lady Rose stood beside him, a very curious expression on her face as she held out the hammer and nails. He took one of the nails and held it up. They would never believe him. Even if he brought this Moorish witch before them they would deny it, that was the way with the wicked, they would claim he had faked it, attached the foot himself, something. Yet here was a lamb who believed him, who believed in him, who had delivered to him this abomination, and all she wanted was justice, not a commendation by an officer of the Church, not the Pope’s blessing, just real, honest justice. She had not trusted the Church, she had trusted him, and even when the Church had turned its back on him she had believed, and now, even though he had doubted both her and himself many times over the long years, he believed, too. There must be something to this Luther’s ideas, he thought, God must be just as sickened by the Church’s corruption as he was, and then Kahlert smiled and shook his head.

“I wish my father could be here,” Kahlert told Omorose as he reached for the hammer. “I’m sure he watches us from Heaven, though. Hold the shoe for me and—”

Omorose screamed in his face, terrified in a way that Kahlert had only previously seen on the rictuses of the doomed women he interviewed, and even then only when substantial portions of their bodies had been put through his crucibles. He spun around, expecting a demon or worse to have materialized behind him, the witch’s familiar, but there was nothing there.

The lady Rose was still screaming when he turned back to her, the poor girl’s entire body rattling as she shrieked in horror, and he knew at once that she was bewitched. Keeping the black sorceress alive even a moment longer would be a mistake. She had a hoof so it was not as though he could be mistaken, and clearly the iron was not binding her as well as he had hoped. Best to kill her at once, rather than risk being ensorcelled himself as he exacted a full confession.

Kahlert opened his mouth to tell the lady Rose to be strong, that he would break the spell, which was when she smashed in his teeth with the hammer. He spun away onto the ground, his jaw afire, blood and broken teeth choking him, and as he tried to get up she fell on him with the hammer, wailing like a tortured witch as she struck again and again. He crawled along the length of the table with Omorose riding his back, gurgling blood as the possessed woman broke ribs and bruised muscle, and then he collapsed directly under Awa.

The noises behind her had been almost worse than the prospect of the shooing, Awa’s imagination unable to process what was happening. When Kahlert dragged himself beneath her, covered in blood and making wretched moans very similar to those she herself had voiced only moments before, a thought occurred to her. Then Omorose appeared, squatting down in front of Awa and continuing her unbroken shriek as she caved in
the back of Kahlert’s neck, a thick black porridge welling out around his collar.

Omorose had not found the book, Awa realized, and a strange, terrible laugh burst from her mouth as she felt Omorose remove first the shackles at her wrists and then those at her ankles, and Awa rolled off the table onto the floor, meaning to put some distance between herself and her unexpected savior. Unfortunately, a week of being restrained and cramped, followed by the vicious overexertion the table-rack had inflicted, had rendered Awa’s limbs nearly useless and she lay sprawled on the floor. Omorose had finally stopped screaming and stood shaking by the table. The manacle pins she had removed were still in her bloody hand, and giving a little sob, she cast them away into the corner.

“Not fair,” she cried. “I had you I had you I had you.”

“You didn’t find the book,” said Awa, the idea making more and more sense. “You didn’t find it and thought you could have a living person do what you couldn’t, but the curse compelled you to protect me.”

“I hate you!” Omorose shrieked. “I hate you I hate you I hate you!”

Awa looked down at the bloody furrows in her wrists and ankles where the iron had cut her, knowing the dead cannot lie. It was not fair, then, but then what about life was? She sighed heavily, still nauseated from the harrowing experience. She looked up to say something, to say anything, but Omorose was gone. Then Awa heard the dull thump of a hammer striking meat, and a high-pitched whine. No.

Awa’s neck snapped around and there was Omorose, straddling a squirming, sack-covered body. The hammer came down again, a beatific grin on Omorose’s face as the tool struck home, the handle gripped in both hands. The shrouded body underneath her was convulsing now, and the hammer went up a third
time. Awa tried to stand but still her legs thwarted her, and she screamed impotently at Omorose.

Omorose turned that smile to Awa, that mad, sadistic smile, and the hammer fell. The sound it made when it connected with the sack was wet, and the body stopped thrashing as violently. Then Awa was screaming at herself, screaming at the top of her lungs because she was a necromancer, an unbound witch, and as easy as spitting or blinking the spirit was snipped from Omorose’s body, and then Omorose’s body was gone, a skeleton collapsing into loose bones atop a bloody sack.

Awa crawled across the floor, little nonsense words bubbling out of her mouth as the necromancer’s ring slipped off of Omorose’s finger bone and rolled away. It was Merritt, it had to be, the sack was too large and the spreading pool leaking through it was too cold to belong to her hot-blooded Chloé, and, picking up Omorose’s skull, Awa smashed it on the ground, shards of bone spinning across the floor. She closed her eyes, bit her lip, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes again. Then she unlaced the hood with numb, clumsy fingers, and pulled open the slit to reveal the bruised, swollen, and utterly dead face of Chloé.

Chloé was not dead. Her eyelids fluttered, the girl’s left eye a bright red puddle, and beneath the blood-filled eye her nostril was smashed flat and black, and as she opened her mouth Awa saw that her jaw was split and crushed. Awa killed her before Chloé could feel the bones of her face sliding apart, before she could feel her battered organs fail, before she could feel cold air on exposed marrow and muscle, and though it was a little death the necromancer knew that once she revived Chloé, which she must in a day or two at the latest, her partner would not have long at all, certainly not enough time to force-feed her enough meat and bone to heal her. Then Awa wondered if she would be able to raise her at all, if, little though the death she had administered was, it had been enough, given Chloé’s condition, to kill her lover entirely, and she whimpered to herself.