The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [48]
“You have not struck me as humble,” said Awa. “But I don’t know if you should be. Your god is an artist?”
“Yes,” said Manuel. “He made this world, did He not? It is a beautiful place, and no living man may match His skill in creating. Look around you at this realm, and the creatures that populate it. Yet I struggle to emulate Him, to create beauty, to venerate Him through my art.”
“And you seek to do this outside of your god’s church, which you consider corrupt?”
“Well,” Manuel sighed, looking at his charcoal-stained digits. “Most of my paying jobs are done for churches and abbeys.”
“You’re a hypocrite, then,” said Awa, quite pleased. She was a hypocrite, too.
“No,” said Manuel. “Well, maybe a little. I take their money, it’s true, but it’s all to serve Him, and I turn a little coin glassblowing on the side. You see—”
And on they went, until the sun set, and they ate cold meat and drank warm wine, and talked on until Awa began to yawn and blink and Manuel had almost forgotten that he was keeping company with a sorceress. He remembered sure enough when she went outside to relieve herself and killed him on her way out, those fingers stopping his heart as abruptly as a bandit’s breaking-pole stopping the spokes of a wagon. He lay on the floor of the cave, unable to move or speak or breathe, terror and panic driving his mind to the threshold of sanity, and then she returned and addressed him.
“Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern, I know you can hear me despite being a dead man. I like you more alive than dead, but I also prefer being alive myself and know that I cannot trust you, for your fear of me is as obvious as it is justified. However, I also know you will never trust me so long as I keep killing you every time I take a piss or a nap, so we must agree that a better solution is needed. Get up.”
Manuel did not vomit this time but his head still pounded and he glared up at her. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
A fair question, and one Awa had not considered. The answer came of its own volition. “You saved me, this is true. Yet it is also true that you took me away from where I was. Therefore I want you to escort me back to where I was before we met, and then we may part ways.”
“Back to the camp?” said Manuel. “But—”
“What? No, to where I was before that, a day and a half northwest of there, I believe, beside a stream. My belongings are still there, I hope.”
“What, ah, happened there?” Manuel asked, sitting up. “The man who captured you, Wim, died the morning of the battle, before von Swine gave you to me.”
“I was stupid,” said Awa harshly. “Careless. Feeling sorry for myself. I—” She looked up sharply but seeing that Manuel was not smiling at her expense she cleared her throat. “He threw the chain around me. This Inquisition must have told your master how to bind me, and he told the man. Before he tightened the iron I touched him, but the chain must have already dampened me enough that instead of dying at once he persisted long—”
The witch broke off, her eyes widening, and Manuel nervously glanced over his shoulder to make sure some worse horror was not approaching. Awa could not believe how stupid she was, detailing to Manuel her principal weakness. Most men were not versed in witchcraft, especially not the minutiae of debilitating a necromancer, yet here she had gone telling him the last thing he needed to know. Her fingers twitched and she almost killed him again before appreciating just how confused he looked.
“So we journey back toward the camp, which isn’t even there anymore, and then you go your way and I go mine?” said Manuel carefully, his eyes on her quivering left hand.
“Yes,” said Awa, adding quickly, “Unless you’d like my help with your master.”
“Who, von Stein?”
“He’s threatened your family,” said Awa, her brown eyes stabbing into his. “I know about serving masters we despise, and I think you will need to kill him for your family to be safe.”
“Yes,” Manuel said numbly, although already he was imagining how he could get her back into her sack and