The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [57]
The concubine’s spirit had nicked off to wherever they went, not having foreseen so early a rise, and Awa’s smile widened. He wanted to dig her up at some point, the old sneak, and he knew his pupil might interfere with that goal if she were to remain in plain sight. The potential for mischief was mind-boggling, and Awa reached out and reeled in Gisela’s spirit.
“Get up,” Awa said once she had relocated the spirit.
“You found me?” Shriveled eyelids blinked over the frozen yellow pools that her eyes had deteriorated to, rotten grapes set in a moldy gourd. “Told’em you couldn’t be trusted.”
“Get up and do as I tell you or I’ll push you out and make you watch what I do to your bones,” said Awa, confident her tutor had disciplined his favorite paramour to the point that she would know better than to disobey those with the power to banish her spirit with a nod or a word.
“Couldn’t do worse’n what he’s done,” Gisela said but crawled out of the grave all the same, frozen bones shrieking inside saggy skin as she moved.
“You can’t lie,” said Awa, “and I’ll push you out and ask your corpse if you give me trouble.”
“Course you will,” said Gisela. “You’re the same’s he.”
“No.” Awa forced herself to keep her voice level. “I’m not like him. But I know how to hurt you, so behave. He hid you here to keep you safe from me, and so you’d stay fresh for when he came back to get you, yes?”
“Yeah,” said Gisela, squatting in her grave and rubbing her knuckles.
“When will he come back for you?” said Awa.
“In his time,” said the concubine, her bandit’s voice husky as ever. “When he’s done with you.”
“Done with me?” The queasy feeling this brought on told Awa she was on the right track. “Do you know what he is planning as far as I’m concerned?”
“Yeah,” said the concubine, looking rather pleased with herself for a dirty old corpse crouched in a snowy grave.
“What,” Awa said sharply. “What is he planning as far as I’m concerned?”
“He’s plannin on takin your pretty body and makin it his. Can’t live forever, not even he, but he can get somethin new, somethin fresher. Spirit’ll last for all days, tis the blood and bone what sours.”
“What?” She cannot lie, Awa told herself, she must be telling the truth. “What do you—”
“Did you have a vision of bein out your skin?” the shriveled concubine asked, and Awa’s heart froze at the memory. She had felt the cold air on her exposed musculature as she lay dripping on the floor, the necromancer hunched over the large bloody membrane he held stretched flat on the table like new vellum, his quill racing over what she had known must be the inside of her skin. She had awoken with a scream, her whole body racked with fever, but until that moment she had been able to force herself to believe it had been nothing more than an especially vivid nightmare, that even for her tutor there were limits to what reality would allow. The concubine clapped her hands together gleefully. “You remember, don’t you, lil Awa?!”
“Yes,” said Awa, her taxed mind as numb as her ice-crusted ankles. “He wants my body. His spirit wants my body, and he did something to me, when I was asleep.”
“Marked you! Marked you for his touch!” said Gisela. “And once he’s in you wager on those hands of yours touchin me a bit! Wager on that tongue of yours—”
“I don’t think so,” said Awa, pushing the concubine’s spirit out of her body, the shade moaning as it was unmoored. The dead do not lie, however, and so that wager—“Get up.”
The corpse sat back up from where it had fallen, the loose soul of Gisela expectantly settling around her body’s neck like a stole. Awa smiled at that, knowing the bones remembered as well as the spirit, and chided herself for allowing the hideous concubine to enjoy even a drop of pleasure, an iota of sensation. You stay and you watch, she thought, and smiled at the cadaver.
“Your fun’s over, Gisela,” said Awa, pleased to see the spirit writhe over her bones. “But first you watch your body tell me what I want to know,