The Enterprise of Death Read online

  Omorose had not allowed herself to relax since fleeing the mountaintop days before, convinced her former slave was right behind her the whole time. The fleeing corpse had avoided the few houses and towns she had glimpsed, terrified she might be caught and banished back to the grave by Awa if she were discovered eating in a farmhouse or dozing in a barn. Yet when the pasty man had discovered Omorose in the woods and offered her succor the idea of further flight lost all appeal. Let the beast find her, so long as it meant a hot bath and a meal of something other than chestnuts and longpig. Being dead, Omorose needed neither food nor drink, but wanted them desperately, and the longer she went without them the less real and the more deranged she felt.

  Her mind turned to Ashton Kahlert. He would have to be informed of Awa, at least in some fashion, so that if the black beast arrived, he could …

  What was left of Omorose’s lips curled back in delight. Ashton Kahlert was not dead. Ashton Kahlert was a man of some means, clearly. Ashton Kahlert was not prevented by Awa’s curse from harming the little beast, from killing her. Why scour the ends of the earth for a book when all she needed was to find one of the living to exact her vengeance for her? She could watch, of course, she would have to watch, it would be too wonderful to miss, and if he took it slow …

  Then again, Kahlert seemed a little old and soft, hardly the sort of man to indulge Omorose’s need to watch Awa being taken apart by degrees. She would have to be very careful and very convincing, for he was alive and she was dead, and therefore she could not tell him a single lie. Worse still, if the beast had not been following her, if she had fled in the other direction, then she might already be a week or more away, and who was to say this Kahlert would employ his resources to capture her?

  The man had hungry eyes, to be sure, but that might not be enough. Clearly no women lived in the house, which was curious for a man of means, and might denote a difficulty rather than an advantage in securing his favor if he were unaccustomed to indulging a lady. Omorose sighed and sank lower in the tub, not having had many opportunities to relax as an independent, undead being.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Yes?” she called, louder and more confident than she intended.

  “Just checking in,” Kahlert’s voice came through the door. “Are you hungry?”

  “Famished,” she said in a much more satisfyingly quavering voice. “I shall be out soon.”

  “No hurry, please,” said Kahlert, padding away from the door. He returned to his library and his pacing, hands clammy. Being alone had restored some of the wits she had taken, and Kahlert was not at all convinced she was not a dangerous witch. This was how his mother had ensorcelled his father, after all, through her looks and manner, a seemingly simple girl in need of the attention of her betters. He would flush her out, though, or be convinced of her purity, and to this end he hurried to the kitchen to make preparations—holy water in the carafe and blessed salt in the table bowl to burn her lips, a mug of sheep’s milk that she might spoil with her presence.

  Lifting herself out of the now-black water, Omorose inspected the small room and immediately noticed a book on a stool beside the chamber pot. Constipation and bathroom reading have long been confederates, so its mere presence did not interest her —it was the title. Her tutor had prepared stews for his pupils using dried tongues, and one of the tongues had belonged to a very lost Franciscan who had blundered within reach of the necromancer’s bonemen. The monk had known Latin, and as a result so did Omorose and Awa.

  Malleus Maleficarum. Malleus was “hammer,” so the title was The Hammer of Malefactresses. Thumbing through the dog-eared volume, Omorose very quickly deduced that in this instance “malefactress” meant “witch.” Flipping back through it, she saw an inscription on the very first page, and as she read the cramped Latin a dry, rattling chuckle rolled out of her throat.

  My dear Ashton, Inquisitor Before Man and God,

  What father but He Above may know my grief at being unable to intervene beyond bestowing my own humble wisdom upon so loyal a son? Hearken to the Clarion Call, heed this text, add to it with thy observations, and with brands aloft we shall rid this world of every witch that pollutes it with her licentious evil. Fear not, for I shall be thy hammer, just as thou shall be mine.

  With Respect,

  Heinrich Institoris Kramer, Inquisitor Before God

  The woman stepped out into the warm evening, bringing the odor of honey and lavender to Kahlert’s flaring nostrils. Her saya dress appeared even more lovely than it had before, and not so exotic in style, and by the light of the many candles he had lit she did not look nearly so dark as she had first seemed. The dust of the road, no doubt, now washed free. At that moment the servant cleaning the bath chamber was nearly overcome by the fumes of the water and the foul gray, green, and black residue on the towels. As the help uniformly hated Kahlert, no mention was made to him regarding this unpleasant discovery—if she was a bruja then it would serve him right.

  “You appear radiant,” said Kahlert, striking a clumsy bow. Most of what he knew about etiquette came from his romances, and were thus out of date and from the wrong regions besides.

  “Thank you, Inquisitor Kahlert,” said Omorose, bowing herself. “Why did you not mention that you were a witch hunter?”

  She smiled to herself at his stupefied expression, his reddening cheeks, his nervous babbling of excuses, and with a wave of her delicate hand she quieted him. Then she poured wine from a silver decanter on the table into his glass, refusing to let herself lick her lips at the sight and smells of the dinner. Then she poured herself a glass and leaned back in her chair, the lights of Granada shining beneath them as though they were dining above the stars.

  “Inquisitor,” said Omorose, cutting off whatever nonsense he was saying, “I was chased here by a witch who is trying to destroy me. I was a pious girl in my youth, but not so very long ago found myself at the mercy of a sorceress, and only narrowly did I escape her clutches. As long as she exists I am in mortal danger.”

  Kahlert dropped his glass and it broke at his feet. Whatever he had expected, this was not it, although it certainly explained a few things. He had known witchcraft was involved, and he was overjoyed that his guest was innocent. Then he realized she had taken his shaking hands, and looking at her pale cheeks, her eyes blue as his own, he could not imagine how he had thought her a Moor.

  “Ashton,” said Omorose, choosing her words as carefully as he chose his tools when interrogating supposed malefactresses. “I wish that I could tell you tales of this witch and her actions, but due to my condition, the condition she has afflicted me with, I cannot without risking myself. I must furthermore beg—beg with all my heart—that no matter what, you never ask me any questions about myself, about my past and what has befallen me. If you do, the witch will surely triumph. I will tell you what little I can without risking myself, but if ever you ask even a single question of me I may fail, and the witch, the necromancer, will be victorious.”

  Kahlert clung to her words like a romantic hero clinging to a precipice, knowing at long last his true test was at hand.

  “Ashton,” Omorose breathed, the fear in her voice genuine—if he asked but one question … “Ashton, will you help me find and destroy this malefactress, though I will not tell you all the details of her witchery? I cannot stop her by myself.”

  Well she might have asked the rain to dampen her hair, or the sun to dry it. She was a simple creature, he realized quickly, of limited understanding but a true heart, and if the trial of his faith was not questioning her further then he would obey. Preventing a victim from testifying under penalty of some curse was exactly the sort of trick a witch would employ. Once Kahlert recovered from the shock of it all they ate together, and then talked long into the night of how to find the witch. He would be her hammer.

  XXIV

  The Whores, the Boors, and the Moor

  The road to Paris had not proved smooth, direct, or happy, but at last t
hey were unpacked and settled in a miserable dump in the worst ghetto in the entire stinking city. Laws were changing, and every city and hamlet they passed through had already reached their quota of sanctioned brothels, which was rarely more than one or two in even the larger towns. With each failure Monique would curse and grin and the small caravan would move on, only occasionally losing whores to desertion. The gunner was adamant her business be legitimate and licensed, and that was how they found themselves in Paris with more mouths than they had loaves, and there at last Dario, a scrawny, ginger-tufted little man, returned to the wagons with all the paperwork signed, the license acquired, and the last of Monique’s funds exhausted.

  Awa was a little surprised to find that Monique had a husband, but soon enough realized what her friend meant by beard—the man had no more interest in women than Monique had in men, and so their marriage was far less tumultuous than most. He did have a rather virulent case of the pox when they had finally tracked him down in Marseilles, but Awa got him cleaned up and before long he was boasting and swaggering and drinking just as much as his wife. They had served together in Lombardy long before Manuel had enlisted, though Monique confided to Awa that Dario was no better with an arquebus or pistol than she was with a penis.

  “Kin work a soup spoon or a saber like I kin work a nub, mind,” said Monique. “Could turn a turd inta a currant tart, that one could, an’ when we got in it he’d keep straight ahead an’ I’d be ta the rear reloadin, which would’ve got von Wine’s goat if we didn’t get the results we did. Fucker was always tryin ta get us ta act like archers when these bronzies of mine are shit from more’n a few paces.”

  Dario had not served in the last campaign under von Stein, meaning he had a better idea than Monique of where her favorite prostitutes had gotten to. Most were still working for Paula, the madam who had previously followed von Stein’s camp, and while Monique had no interest in an alliance she did hope to screw the woman out of some of her better whores. The harlots they picked up were in no better condition than the wagons they found themselves needing before very long, women worn down and scarred by life but nevertheless capable of rolling on a few more leagues.

  Despite the drafty, flea-ridden room in the dilapidated brothel Awa had briefly shared with Monique before leaving Bern, the necromancer had imagined that, once they were all settled in, Monique’s operation would closely resemble the harem where Omorose had lived and Awa had served. The reality was remarkably less comfortable, the half-timbered three-story building listing as though it might topple onto the village of tents and ramshackle huts beside it if a mark were to go at one of the girls with more vigor than a rheumatic geriatric climbing a steep staircase.

  As promised, Awa did have a private room, even if it was the low-ceilinged attic in the gable. The garret would have been dustier than an indulgence-seller’s piety if the leak in the thatch roof had not turned the dust into mud the color of gunpowder. Dipping into her small fortune of antique coins—the graveyard loot that she had decidedly not volunteered to help Monique get her business off the ground—Awa bought a pallet, blankets, a spindle, some wool to spin, an iron pot, and a large pan to burn wood in, though over the years she had become quite adept at using only the salamander eggs to cook her dinner. After she had scraped the layers of mud away, enlisted the spirits of the next storm to show her where to patch the ceiling, killed every flea that landed on her with a flick of her will, and hung the small nude portrait from a beam, Awa had a home for the first time since leaving the mountain.

  They turned the ground floor into a tavern, with Dario cooking delicious food with the poorest of ingredients, and pouring wine that was a week from being vinegar and spirits that were years from being smooth. The second story was where Monique and Dario had their private rooms, as well as the common sleeping chamber the whores shared. Monique would have preferred to have her offices at the top with the servicing area on the second story, but the second floor already had separate chambers, whereas the third was a single open room, and so the third story was where the fucking took place. With the thin, colorful linens separating one bed from the next and the near-constant screams and grunts the place reminded Awa of Paracelsus’s clinic. She took to drawing the ladder to the attic up after her, and fitted a lock to the trapdoor when she went out.

  Awa went out often, preferring to pull a cloak down over her face and roam the streets rather than stay in the dark attic with the constant riot of Venus taking place just below her. Each expedition revealed a new marvel to her, from the recently completed urban canyon of the Pont Notre-Dame to the flamboyant, castle-like façades of the aristocrats’ hôtels rising up behind their curtain walls; moldering, unique Gothic flourishes and newly built, symmetrical arcades were of equal interest to the curious young woman. Especially alluring to Awa were the gorgeous cathedrals and abbeys, and the small, charming cemeteries that abutted them, but she had not set foot in a churchyard since parting ways with Manuel and took only an aesthetic pleasure from admiring the tombstones and crypts. No matter what hour she left the majesty of the ever-growing city behind her and returned through the tightly constricting avenues that choked out the sky, she would find the brothel lit up like a beacon, and the third story every bit as noisy as she had left it.

  Even had she been inclined Awa could not join in the sport on the third floor—the punishment for a woman lying with a Moor was death, in Paris and elsewhere, and the punishment for two women lying together supposedly the same, so Monique insisted Awa and any girls who shared her or her predilections did so far removed from any witnesses, lest the letter of the law by some rare chance find itself enforced. Monique, good as her word, had found whores willing to take a tumble with a blackamoor; in fact, several seemed eager to try her out, but Awa only rarely got so bored and lonely that she took one up to her attic.

  Awa had once awoken to find the woman she had brought up rifling through her bags, and she gave the whore a different kind of little death than she had earlier in the evening, only reviving the terrified, confused woman after she had dragged her down and delivered her to Monique. The gunner waited until Awa returned the whore to life before administering a beating that rang in Awa’s ears even after she had run back to her attic. From then on when she did fuck the whores she did not go to sleep until they had gone back downstairs and she had stowed her ladder.

  All that changed a year and a half after they had settled in Paris, when Awa met Chloé. Awa had seen the girl before—indeed, she saw her every morning when she woke up. She was the whore Manuel had painted on commission for Bernardo, the girl whose portrait had saved the artist’s life back in that wet cave two years before, the portrait hanging on Awa’s wall. Chloé was curvaceous yet fit, black-haired, green-eyed, and foulmouthed, and Awa fell in love as she had only once before in her life. Or rather, fell deeper in love, for she had loved the girl in the portrait with that feverish intensity hearts reserve for imaginary paramours. Unlike Omorose, Chloé was far from proud; despite being one of the youngest women in the brothel she was willing to take on the crustiest, rankest beggar who had robbed or murdered his way into enough coin for a fuck or a suck.

  Chloé was in the early stage of the pox when she arrived, but upon inspection Awa saw that half a dozen other wayward spirits also infected the young woman’s nether regions. Breaking them all, as well as running her hands over the girl to kill the inevitable ticks, fleas, and lice, took quite a bit of energy, and by the end Awa was barely remembering to apply the mundane paste she mixed to cover her necromancy. Chloé did not even wait until Awa had finished before making a move, rubbing against the necromancer’s fingers as she shakily smeared the ointment.

  “Your boss asked if I’d fuck a blackamoor, and I told her nay,” said Chloé as Awa looked up from her work in surprise. “But I thought she meant blokes. You’re not a bloke, though, so if you got the francs to match that interest I’ll make myself obliging.”

  “What makes you think I’d have an interest?” s
aid Awa, unable to meet the woman’s eyes.

  “Everyone’s got an interest in something,” said Chloé, “and you’re interested in putting your tongue up there or I’m a blackamoor myself. What say you wash me off and get first taste of the new pottage, eh? Didn’t even let the monger have a go, said I wanted to get clean first.”

  A year or two before Awa might have turned away or at least blushed, but instead she met the young woman’s olive eyes and nodded. Upstairs they went, Awa leading her out of the whores’ sleeping chamber and quickly past Monique’s closed door. When they reached the attic Awa lit a candle and pulled up the ladder.

  Then they sat facing each other on the pallet, the younger woman suddenly demure, and Awa found herself pinning Chloé down, kissing her hard, more excited than she had been in ages, the dark-haired whore letting out little gasps. It was strange, taking the initiative, and even when Chloé traded places with Awa the younger woman maintained her beguiling modesty, repeatedly leaving Awa shuddering on the edge to adorably ask for guidance that they both knew she did not require. It was unlike any fuck Awa had enjoyed since arriving in Paris, and when they were both exhausted she tightly held the warm little creature. Feeling Chloé’s willowy arms intertwined with hers, Awa drifted off remembering two junipers she had once seen that had somehow merged their trunks and become a single beautiful, twisted tree.

  “Who’s Omorose?” Awa started awake, the warmth and darkness suddenly cloying instead of comforting. She rolled away from Chloé, scolding herself for falling asleep.

  “Nobody,” said Awa, her eyes not so quick to adjust as they once had been, the girl beside her in the bed still just a pale lump. “How long have I slept?”

  “I don’t know. I was asleep, too,” said Chloé. “Do you have anything to smoke?”