The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [44]
Awa could tell one of them was different at a glance and so she put it aside, first picking through the other bag with less attention than she had the others, her eyes flitting back to the lumpier satchel as she hurried through her search. Then she wiped her greasy hands on a dead man’s back and carefully uncinched the last bag.
Awa allowed herself a long, sighing “Oooooh” as she carefully removed one plank after another of smooth pine, some covered in hide to protect the image, others blank, virginal, and she separated the laths into two piles. Continuing her investigation, she found three large, rough cylinders of charcoal wrapped in more of the hide, several small wooden dowels and twine, a handsome little case containing a stylus and a pouch of black powder, and several more personal effects—a tiny doll made of sticks and bright green cloth, and a gold crucifix on a leather thong. There was also a wineskin containing much finer drink than she had thus far found, and after building up the fire she settled in with the wine and the sketches.
They were unlike anything she had ever seen, or at least remembered—Omorose’s harem must have contained art of some variety, but that was a lifetime ago, and there in the cave Awa doubted the images were equaled anywhere in the world. They were of dead men, mostly, though eyes less versed in the markers of the grave might not have noticed these subtle details in many of the portraits. There was also a larger nude of a woman with curly hair, which Awa did not let herself focus on until last. A few were clearly done using charcoal, and these were much more smudged than the ones he had evidently gone over with some kind of ink.
Finally she held the image up to the light, the shadows making the woman come alive, and Awa felt her chest tighten at the beauty of the creature, and she bit her lip, keen to allow herself a tiny bit of sport with such a fine inspiration to help her along. Then the image of Omorose shoved herself in the way of Awa’s arousal, and she had a compulsion to cast the plank into the fire. Instantly horrified by the impulse, she quickly covered the sketches back up and stowed them in the pack, save for the small nude she had taken from the other bag—this she wrapped carefully in dry cloth and put with the large satchel she had claimed for herself.
The sketches decided things for Awa, who now realized why Manuel’s thumbs and forefingers were stained black. She ordered the corpses of Werner, Bernardo, and the Kristobel cousins to their feet, and then had them go out into the rain and dig their own graves, their swords biting into the gray mud. Once the graves were sufficiently deep she had them crawl inside and, after shedding her clothes and leaving them in the dry cave, she buried them. The rain felt good on her skin, and the fire felt even better when she was finished, and then she brought Manuel back from his little death.
“Get up,” she ordered, releasing his spirit back into his body. Rather than promptly rising like the undead he rolled on the ground, gasping and clutching his face. Before he could fully recover, Awa launched into her spiel. “You’ve been sick ever since you rescued me, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern. You’ve had a fever and told me you saw dead men and that I was really a witch, but I’m not. You seemed to see a lot of things that did not really happen. This happens to men with fevers. Do you still have a fever, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern?”
“Blart,” said Manuel, vomiting all over himself.
“You’re still sick,” Awa observed.
“You killed me,” Manuel groaned, his headache distracting him from any potential, and indeed advisable, duplicity in the matter. “My heart stopped, I heard it. Felt it. You looked through the gear, and took them outside. The dead—”
Manuel dry-heaved and Awa licked her lips,