The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [41]
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he whispered when she had pulled back, past embarrassment but tired of feeling the dead press against her.
“Oh?” she said, almost able to stop thinking about Omorose for a moment.
“Do you like wine?”
“What?” Awa blinked. “Wine?”
“Wine.” His skull bobbed in the darkness. “We had some, my friends and I, and it was left in the cave when we all were taken. I retrieved the cask on the way back from fetching wood on one of my first trips below, and have kept it hidden. I was waiting for a special occasion to give it to you.”
This brought on the longest jag yet, and being a dry run it hurt more than ever as Awa sobbed. He helped her along to the little pit in the stone where the keg was stowed, and, fishing it out, they sat side by side on the edge of the cliff and she drank. The bandit chief had her pour a little from her cupped hand onto his extended tongue so he could taste it, which caused him to make spitting noises.
“Don’t drink it,” he said. “It’s gone sour, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t care,” said Awa, slurping out of her hand. “At least it doesn’t taste like chestnuts or wormwood.”
“It will make you sick.”
“Don’t care,” said Awa. “And if it does I can take the sickness away. I’m a necromancer, I can do that.”
“Oh,” said the chief, and after a pause, “Do you want to talk about her?”
“No,” Awa lied, wondering just how everyone on the mountain knew—were the goats laughing at her as well as the skeletons and the necromancer and the concubine and Omorose herself and … She stopped herself, knowing such paths were unhealthy, and anyway, who were goats to judge? The bandit chief let her drink in silence, and the unique illness it brought upon her was no more bitter and cramping than her grief. Finally a thought landed on her like a biting fly, and she turned on the bandit.
“You’ve got your spirit. So you don’t have to do what he says.”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you let me get away that time? Why did you bring me back instead of helping me run?” Awa was not angry, simply very tired.
“It wasn’t the right time,” he whispered, looking around the desolate, dark plateau. “He can still banish me from my bones with a glance, and his mindless ones are dangerous in numbers. We’ll find a way to get you out of here, Awa.”
“And what then?” Awa smiled wryly. “You Spaniards aren’t very accommodating to young Moors, in my experience.”
“Men are not accommodating to strangers anywhere,” said the chief. “Most of them, anyway. I have learned from my wayward life, and I repent. I—”
“I was only fooling,” said Awa, slurping up more wine. It was growing on her, the sting it brought to her starved palate a better balm than any she had yet found. “We’ve all made mistakes, and I forgave you a long … a long …”
Where did the grief hide, Awa wondered as it came on her again, ambushing her every time she felt safe, where did it lurk and why could she not vanquish it with the knowledge that she was, if not righteous, innocent in her intentions? She never would have done it, done any of it, if she had not been taken from her village outside Dahomey, if her family had not been murdered before her eyes, if the voice of her mother was not lost to her. She had struggled to forget that voice, had struggled to forget the faces of both her parents, because to remember their faces was to remember the axes cleaving them, to remember their voices was to remember them screaming. Now that she had succeeded in banishing them from her memories she realized her folly but could not call them back, she who could call back the flesh of her beloved somehow incapable of raising a simple thing like the memory of an old face she had kissed countless times, a loving voice she had heard