The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [149]
“That’s right, I’m a witch,” Awa said evenly, though behind her calm features swelled an impossibly large smile. She had found it she had found it she had found—
“Blackmoor cunt!” Merritt was clearly terrified but she needed him to help move Chloé before the entire house caught fire, and her patience with the man was limited in the best of times. “Fuck! Witch!”
“Merritt,” Awa said, switching from French to his native English to ensure he understood. “You listen to me, and you listen good—pick up Chloé and carry her out. Once we’re outside you can go your way and we can—”
“Fuck!” Merritt noticed the second door and broke for it.
“Merritt,” said Awa, advancing on him as he fumbled with the door’s lock. “If you don’t do as you’re told I’ll kill you. Right now. Pick her up.”
She was right behind him and then he got the door open, but as he swung it wide she brushed his shoulder and down he fell, his lifeless head cracking against the doorframe. Awa stood over him, and a moment later he shambled back to his feet and obediently retrieved Chloé’s body. Then another thought came to Awa, and as Merritt passed by her, exiting the burning house through the stable that adjoined the torture chamber, she went and raised Kahlert’s corpse. Giving Omorose’s bones a kick for good measure, she spied a glint of burnished bone on the floor and retrieved the ring she had given her mistress so long ago.
The ring reminded her of the string that Omorose had removed from her hoof, and she ordered Kahlert’s corpse to find it. He did, his head flopping from side to side atop its broken neck, and as the room filled with smoke she hastened outside after the walking dead. Pausing in the stable, she opened the stalls and released the panicking horses. She did not particularly care for the animals but bore them no grudge, either, and knew she had much to atone for. Balance was everything, good with evil, light with dark, life with death, greed with sacrifice.
Maybe.
At any rate, she had the fucking book.
Awa marched Merritt and Kahlert far away from the burning house before she let herself examine the tome. She held it in her hand, in her fucking hand, and did not want some bumpkin or bounty hunter coming upon her as she did some light reading beside the inferno of Ashton Kahlert’s country house. There were no neighboring buildings in sight but she still took them away from the path that wound out the front gate, instead having them slosh up the creek to cover their tracks. Soon they dipped under the canopy of evergreens but Awa made herself wait until just before sundown before stopping and opening the book.
The first page was blank and crisp, but every page thereafter was covered from top to bottom in script, the text occasionally broken by diagrams and illustrations. Flipping through it, she saw that every few pages the handwriting changed, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but always the same brown ink. Not ink, of course, and as she thumbed through it she saw that each page contained much more than words and pictures and skin and blood—scraps of spirit clung to the book, many, many little pieces, and closing the book softly she let out a very long sigh. She would not be obliterated completely when he claimed her, then, but some small part of her at least would live on through his book. Small comfort.
“Inquisitor.” She addressed Kahlert’s mindless corpse, recalling from her teenage experience with the concubine on the mountain that interrogations went much quicker if one simply addressed the bones instead of the willful spirit. Not once in her dealings with the animate remains of Kahlert did she think about her oath to ask the spirit’s permission before using its body, nor did she consider the feelings of Merritt’s spirit as she had his corpse fetch firewood—ever since her initial encounter with Manuel in the cave, she had wondered if it would be possible to administer a little death to a person, raise them