Page 1 of As Many Souls as Stars
PROLOGUE
She remembered little of her creation, save that it was painful for all those involved, and that she immediately punished those responsible for it. In hindsight, she had acted rashly, leaving herself with questions that would be forever unanswered—but still, she did not blame herself for it. As she plunged her bloody hands into the frigid waters of the Baltic, her only regret was that she had not taken the time to learn her own name.
Once her skin was clean, there she remained: naked and unflinching, despite the snow that fell listlessly onto her shoulders. The nascent night curled around her waist, curious at this new shadow that seemed somehow deeper,darkerthan the rest. She petted it idly as she stared across the sea, considering the wild chain mail of froth and foam, the glass shards of ice that spun from wave to wave. She was hardly ten minutes old, but she had all the knowledge and wisdom of an ancient evil. That was what her creators had believed her to be, after all. And thus, so it was.
What meagre memories she did have were hazy, indistinct: the ritual with its circle of bone-pale faces; the chanting in an invented language; the acrid scent of burning herbs. Her creators had offered themselves to the shadows, believing their pact would summon a demon—but the demon they had believed in did not exist. The shadows had to birth one for them instead. And so, thisnewshadow, this pact-made creature, had stepped forward and found herself pressing against an intangible barrier. Her feet burnt where they touched something fine and crystalline on the floor. A circle of salt.
One of the men had said, ‘We would like to make a deal.’
She had looked at him and smiled with sharp teeth, reaching a hand towards him. Flinching, he had stumbled back. His foot skidded on the ground. Salt scattered, and the circle was broken. Suddenly thebarrier between her and her creators was gone; the burning faded. She heard the blood running in their veins and saw the dimpled imperfections of their flesh. She hated them.
They had made her what she was, and she had killed them for it. Death for life. An exchange, just as all magic was, though not the trade they had wanted. And here, standing at the precipice of the ocean, she understood the defining principle of her existence: there was no one else like her. She was alone.
She would always be alone.
High above her, a crow flew, weaving through the air. Delighted by this new creature, and still uncertain of her corporeal form, she seized the shadows and pulled them around herself. Her arms became wings, her mouth a beak. She launched into the sky, flying beside the crow like a mirror image. Further inland unspooled the seething streets of a dying town, a labyrinth of dirt roads, squat stone houses, plague carts rolling from door to door. She soon heard the shrieking, the desperate voices of a thousand unquiet minds: hope and fear, desire and anger, sorrow and regret. She saw a starving woman at a street corner, clutching her child to her chest, desperately imagining deliverance. There was a faint ember glowing at the point the woman’s heart would be, a light barely visible. It was her potential, her being, hersoul.
That light was an absence in the shadow’s own self that, once apparent, felt impossible to ignore. She felt the darkness within her as an emptiness, a hunger. And as she saw this stranger’s soul, she knew that all she wanted—all sheneeded—was to take it for her own.
Still a crow, she alighted on the street corner and then took human form. She chose the shape of a woman, dark-haired and dark-eyed, a reflection of the person she was watching; but the shadow lacked the fragility of her victim’s expression, and the vulnerable hunch of those slender shoulders. Instead, with instinctive curiosity, she sent the shadows forth to seep into the stranger’s skull: they brought her back memories, each bright and sweet as berries. The shadow made herself as tall as the man she could see in the stranger’s past, the one who had kissed her goodbye that morning before he went to beg foralms at the church gates. She gave herself his clothes, his gait, his heavy eyebrows—becoming an amalgam of the woman and the man whom she loved. In her newborn naivety, the shadow believed this would be pleasing.
The woman watched as she approached, wide-eyed and silent with astonishment. As the gap between them narrowed, the baby squalled.
She was so hungry. They both were. The shadow wished to tear the woman apart, crack her open and feast. But this mortal soul, enclosed within its fragile shell of skin and bone, would only flee if its cage were opened. The shadow instead turned to the principles of her creation; she was a creature of exchange, after all. Blood for blood. Magic for magic.
‘Please,’ the woman said. ‘Do not hurt me.’
‘Do not hurt me,’ the shadow echoed, delighting in this first creation of sound, in the churning of muscle in her throat and the press of her tongue against her teeth.
‘Who are you?’ the woman asked.
‘Who are you?’ the shadow replied.
‘Miriam Richter.’
‘Miriam Richter.’ The shadow liked the name, how it was soft, then sharp, a kiss before a grimace. It seemed another shadow she could slip into. She thought of the words her creators had spoken to her when she was born, and she felt the rightness of them, the potential. She smiled as she said, ‘Would you like to make a deal?’
The woman said, ‘A deal? What deal?’
And so, the shadow told her.
And so, the pact was made.
That woman was the first. She sold both her soul and her name to the shadow in exchange for relief from her hunger. Eventually, the human would still starve, of course—she had not specified otherwise, in the deal she had made—but that did not matter. She would not feel the emptiness of her belly, even as it hollowed her cheeks and carved furrows in her flesh. She would feel nothing, now her soul was gone.
The woman walked away, nameless and empty-eyed, as the shadow—thenewMiriam Richter—watched the glowing mote ofthe mortal soul she had won dance along her fingertips. She placed it on her tongue, and she swallowed. It blazed a comet’s trail down her throat, filling her with light. For the first time since she was born, Miriam felt satisfaction.
That woman was the first, but not the last.
Miriam Richter was hungry still.
Part I
Suffolk
1
Cybil Harding was born on Christmas Eve, 1576, under inauspicious stars. Her father had drawn the chart himself; it told him that his daughter was destined for an early death, that she would bring calamity to those she loved and those who loved her. But that was hardly surprising, after all. She was a First Daughter, and a First Daughter was always cursed.
