Page 34 of As Many Souls as Stars
‘I—I—do not understand.’
Miriam’s fury was so powerful, it writhed around her, sent the shadows shuddering and twisting like snakes. She flayed the humanity from her face, leaving only a swarming darkness where her features should have been; she was too angry to remember the arrangement of eyes and skin that comprised a person. ‘Tell me, Master Martingale,’ she said, as he struggled against her hold, ‘how many women have you brought to their deaths?’
Her voice was many voices, each a scream, each a whisper. Martingale whimpered. ‘Please, I—I know not.’
‘You do know.Tell me.’
He tried to shake his head. She tightened her grip, warningly; hissing in pain, he spat, ‘Fifteen.’
‘Including Cybil?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘I see.’ Miriam hummed in thought. ‘It is a shame I cannot give you a death for each of them. I suppose the one shall have to do.’
Martingale began to reply, but he did not finish. Miriam had pulled his skull from his spine as if she were uncorking a bottle of wine.
She tossed his head over her shoulder. It fell into a patch of ice and skidded along the path. Meanwhile, a great gush of blood fountained from the torso’s torn neck, falling in a rainbow across the hedgerows. Miriam kicked away the body and went to Cybil, crouching beside her.
Her eyes were fluttering sightlessly, mouth twisted in a grimace; she was not breathing, and if her heart was beating, it would soon stop.Death would suit her less than life, although she would make the prettiest corpse Miriam had ever seen. Miriam brushed some hair out of her face and glanced at her chest. The light there was barely visible now, but the soul was present still, faint yet persistent. Relieved, Miriam made herself into shadows and slipped within Cybil, reached for that remaining glimmer of existence. She found it soon enough, ephemeral and fading, falling through her fingers like sand. Cupping her hands, Miriam said Cybil’s name once more, and allowed the light to engulf her.
There was nothing here, no sky or ground or air to breathe. But there was Miriam Richter, and there was Cybil herself.
Richter was standing in front of her, present and yet absent. When Cybil tried to look down—to perceive herself, to see her own body—her flesh was flickering, light and dark, like a dying candle flame.
Her voice an echo in the void, Cybil said, ‘Where am I?’
Richter replied, ‘Half departed, my dear, much is the pity.’
‘I am dead.’
‘Near enough.’
Cybil’s hands flew to her neck. ‘Oh, God,’ she croaked, voice trembling. ‘I amdead.’
Richter sighed. Her hair floated behind her in an amorphous storm cloud of shadow, making only the faintest impression of materiality. ‘That is hardly a surprise,’ she said. ‘Death is inevitable. Thousands of fools have suffered it, and thousands more will do so.’
Inevitable. Cybil saw, in the awful and infinite clarity of hindsight, every moment of the life that had now ended: the ceaseless days of isolation, the echoing corridors of Harding Hall, the empty eyes of her parents, the slow drag of a finger against a windowpane. The shallow existence Cybil Harding had lived had hardly been worth the effort of her breathing. She had never cured her mother. She had never gone to Court. She had failed to make anything of herself, todoanything with herself, except suffer her curse and resent herself for it.
‘It is a tragedy,’ Richter continued, heedless of Cybil’s distress, a frown stitching new lines into her forehead. ‘You were my favourite, I think, of all those I ever tried to consume. And now I am denied my meal.’
Is this it?Cybil asked herself.Is this really it? Is this all that I am worth?
‘Could I return?’ she demanded. Richter raised an ink-stroke brow. ‘Could I live again?’
‘Anything is possible if you are willing to pay the darkness a price. That is the sole law by which magic is governed.’
‘I want it,’ Cybil said. ‘This cannot be it; this cannot be all I shall ever have, all I shall ever be. I must do it again. Another chance.’
Richter thought on this, and then she smirked. Cybil had a sudden, powerful sense that she had made a mistake.
‘A resurrection,’ Richter mused. ‘Powerful magic indeed. For a new life, nothing less than your entire soul would suffice. Most shadows would not have the patience to wait for such a meal.’
Cybil said, with grim acceptance, ‘But you would?’
‘I would,’ Richter said. ‘If you promise your soul to me—I can assure you, my dear, you will live once more.’
Cybil did not reply. The silence of the void they stood within was all-consuming. The darkness was a living thing, sinking its teeth into the empty space between their words.
