The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [179]
“I’m done talking to you,” said Awa, the air muggy and cloying. “And I’m damn sure done listening to you.”
Awa left her circle, crawling over to the edge of his with the book in her hand. Then she set it down just outside the ring of hissing, evaporating blood and opened it at random. Winking at her tutor, she hoisted the pistol Monique had given her, the short-barreled Last Resort that the gunner normally kept in a hidden holster at the base of her spine. He was saying something but she refused to hear him. Dumping the shot and powder out of the gun, Awa let the salamander egg roll into her palm, placed it on the ground, then put the open book facedown over the egg.
“I might not be able to beat you,” said Awa. “But I wanted you to watch me fuck you over as best I can.”
“Awa?” The necromancer’s voice had grown plaintive. “Awa, I can’t lie, you know this, and when you summoned me before I mentioned that we might find another way together, remember? Before you lost control and banished me? If—”
“Fire,” said Awa, and the necromancer screamed inside his prison. The egg ignited, the book shrieking like an owl-nabbed field mouse as the flames engulfed it, and Awa rocked with laughter. The powder she had dumped out of the gun caught as well, the ground sizzling and popping around the burning book, and then a deposit of the powder popped at the edge of the circle containing the necromancer. A smoking piece of blood-soaked earth spit up into the air from the tiny blast, and before it had landed or Awa’s laugh could turn to a scream the necromancer came billowing out of the sliver cut from the circle, bringing his vaporous body down atop the book. It went out instantly, and he reared up before Awa, his old face forming on the head of the cloud.
“Spiteful, nasty little thing! Think I have to obliterate your spirit when I claim you!? Think I can’t keep it around for a few centuries, in constant agony!? Think I have limits!?”
“Yes,” Awa said from where she lay sprawled on the ground beside the broken circle, and then she pointed at him and said his name.
The dead came howling from the sky, hundreds of spirits falling through the cart onto the necromancer before he could flee back into his circle. The dozens of black claws he sprouted to fend them off were not enough, nor were the few arcane tricks his ethereal body was capable of, and they drove him to earth. They knew his name, she had told them his name, and with it they found him and held him. A dozen or two would have been little trouble, a few score a touch difficult, but the hundreds of spirits adhering themselves to his spectral form were too much, and his voice cut through the roaring gale of the dead, a single desperate word.
“Please!” he howled, and Awa smiled, and then they were gone.
Awa was alone, the morning light spilling under the edge of the cart blinding, her ears ringing from the necromancer’s final scream. It would take her a very long time to fulfill all the requests the dead had made, every single fallen mercenary demanding a unique boon in exchange for his service, and each request was recorded in blood on the first page of the necromancer’s book that Awa had judiciously removed before summoning her tutor. Some of the spirits had ignored her plea, going to wherever the dead go without a backwards glance, but the legion who had postponed their journey to the realm of the dead, from which none can return without the aid of the living, had proved strong enough to drag the necromancer with them. The old cheat.
The charred book settled, a puff of ash rising, and then it wiggled a little. Awa pulled the ruined tome off the hatched salamander, the creature waddling away out from under the cart. She gathered her bag and Monique’s gun and followed it into the light.
The dead were everywhere, but packs of the living still clumped at the base of the wall, planning their next doomed attempt to take the earthworks. Awa