The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [36]
“Feminine problems are not my province,” the necromancer sniffed after she had finally stammered out her symptoms. “I’ve told you, gnaw a little huteri, the root, not the flowers, and some yarrow can’t hurt while you’re at it. Did you know the Spaniards call yarrow ‘bad man’s plaything’? How’s that for—”
“It’s not that,” said Awa, her pain overriding her embarrassment. “I know myself well enough. Something’s wrong.”
“Hop onto the table and let’s have a look,” said the necromancer with a sigh, closing his book. The tome floated off to the high shelf on the wall behind the bear, and had Awa not been so distracted she would have noticed the bound air spirit sit down heavily beside the book upon delivering it. Instead she stared at the necromancer, not moving. Every time she thought he could not be worse he revealed a new method of shaming her. “Hop to, Awa. Or would you rather Gisela here examine you?”
Awa looked to the concubine and back to the necromancer. Knowing the thing had a name did little to warm Awa to her. Anyone was better than the necromancer, though, so she nodded quickly and eased herself onto the table. She remembered the dying bandit chief laid out on the same table the first night, remembered countless unpleasant meals eaten here. She tried not to cry as the rancid concubine left her master’s side and came around the table to stand at Awa’s feet.
“Spread your legs,” Gisela said, her voice gruff and masculine from the anonymous bandit’s tongue the necromancer had given her. The concubine’s clammy hand felt like an old leather glove on Awa’s knee, her thin leggings soaking up the corpse’s chill. Awa whimpered as the concubine lifted up her tunic, spreading her legs farther in a bid to bring on more pain to distract her from the scene. She told herself that as bad as it was, once it was over she would have survived the worst experience imaginable, as people often do in the midst of deep and abidingly awful situations, but that gave her little succor. Bony fingers prodded Awa; it felt like they were digging in a wound.
“A scream from little Awa used to be a rare thing, indeed,” the necromancer said when she yelped. “But I suppose after you’ve let one out what’s the harm in howling down the moon most nights, eh?”
“You callt it,” said the concubine, the sharp removal of her digits somehow worse than their intrusion. “Bad, too. Surprised she can walk.”
“Like papa, like daughter, I suppose,” said the necromancer, reminding Awa that she could no longer remember her real father. “You want to make it go away?”
Awa nodded, her eyes still bolted shut rather than showing him what they both knew surged behind them.
“Right then, if you’re old enough to play with them you’re old enough to learn the remedy,” and his words cracked her dams, the tears hot on her face, the sob catching in her chest as he snatched her wrist and yanked her up from her reclined position. She tried to twist her hand away but he held her tight. “If you do it yourself you won’t have to come here next time, and believe you me, there will be a next time. But where’s the sport in love if it’s always safe, eh?”
Awa went limp and allowed his hand to guide hers down between her legs.
“Cover it with your hand,” he said, and she flattened her palm and fingers against her mound, only her dirty tunic between sore skin and rough hand. “Now find the intruder. It’s pulsing in there, cooking you up, propagating itself in the little hearth you’ve built it with grave filth for mortar. A foreign spirit, as you’d have it.”
Awa gasped, the sensation suddenly clear and unmistakable as a kite’s cry over the silent peaks. Some spirit had invaded her and was roiling in her most sensitive instrument, feeding off her heat and moisture and swelling ever larger. He was still talking but she no longer paid him heed, her face set as she focused on the spirit.
The necromancer had taught her early on how to use her spirit to close like a mouth around another