Page 60 of As Many Souls as Stars
‘My love,’ she said. ‘Your dissolution is the loveliest thing I have ever seen.’
Dissolution. That was a good word for it, what Esther felt. She was unmade, undone. Miriam had broken her into pieces and left them scattered over the bed.
They stared at each other, Miriam’s face hovering over hers.
Miriam said, ‘I think Imustlove you, Esther Harding. There must be no other word for what this is.’
‘Love is supposed to be a kind thing, a beautiful thing. That is what the world has always told me.’
‘The world lied,’ Miriam said.
‘Yes,’ Esther replied. ‘It did.’
16
Miriam watched Esther sleep, her face drenched in moonlight. Their only company was the shadows seething pleasure-drunk at the foot of the bed, the only sound in the room the soft rhythm of Esther’s breathing. Miriam didn’t sleep herself, but sometimes she approximated it with eyes closed and mind emptied, for hours or even years at a time—still, she would never do so when she was with Esther. It was too important to watch her as she dreamed, so that she could wake her if necessary, and ensure the past didn’t pry open the present.
On occasion, Miriam had read mortal poetry, had seen mortal art, had witnessed plays and festivals and learnt of the ruin a beautiful woman could inflict. She had thought herself, naturally, above such concerns. To Miriam, beauty was as fleeting as the landfall of a grain of sand, swept onto the beach and then pulled back by the tide.
But Miriam looked at Esther now, her hair splayed upon the pillow like tongues of flame, her lips parted and eyes fluttering with the whispers of her sleeping mind—and Miriam understood the fear of those men, who had looked at Helen and seen war approaching, who encountered loveliness and fell upon it like a sword. And perhaps, in that moment, a modicum of her contempt for humanity burnt away.
Esther sighed in her sleep. A single drop of soul, golden and glistening, fell from her closed eyelid and slipped down her cheek. Whatever she was dreaming of, it was vivid enough to inflame her magic. Miriam reached out to touch her, then withdrew. Esther was not distressed enough to be remembering something important.
The grimoire was on the bedside table. Miriam stood from the bed, fluid and silent, and took it up to read. It was illuminating, as much as the writing of a madman could be so; the line between Christopher Harding’s genius and his delusion was very thin. But the rituals outlined there, the images of the angels with their dozen eyes, undeniably brought Miriam some concern. In the correct hands, the hands of someone with true power—such ravings could become reality. The thought of Esther accessing such magic was startling. If she remembered her previous life, she could draw upon those twin souls to… well. Miriam wasn’t certain what, exactly, but the grimoire’s rambling descriptions of soul transference and siphoning were certainly worrisome.
The most sensible thing for Miriam to do would be to kill Thomas Harding; kill him, and then return to the shadows, at least until the deal was up. That would minimise the likelihood of her reminding Esther of something and undoing the careful equilibrium they had created for themselves.
But Miriam didn’t want to return to the shadows. Glancing at Esther now, she felt a new sort of hunger, one that couldn’t be sated with blood or power or sex. Miriam finally understood why people might trade their soul for someone else—and shehatedthat understanding, adored it, wanted to carve it out of herself and cradle it in her arms.
There was one problem, at least, that Miriam was certain she could solve. So—once she was certain that Esther was no longer dreaming—she left the room, and she went to find Thomas Harding.
As much as she would have loved to see Esther kill him herself, the fact was, she clearly didn’t have the stomach for it. And so, the task now fell to Miriam, to finally end this nonsense before Thomas became another Martingale and dug his spade into his cousin’s neck.Really, she mused, as she wandered the townhouse’s halls, luxuriating in the dark,really, how ludicrous it is that such a meagre morsel of a man should cause so much trouble; that he should make a witch as powerful as Esther feel fear.
This place, this house, was nothing more than a jewellery box for the delusional. It was all padded velvet wallpaper andgrotesque baroque paintings, vases of stale flowers drooping their heads over dust-coated rugs. Harding Hall, with its grand windows and vast forests, had been a far more suitable stage for Miriam’s work.Thiswas a setting for a farce, not a grand tragedy. There was, perhaps, something ominous in the townhouse’s low ceilings, in the cramped huddle of its corridors, like a fist closing around you—but what was a fist to the reaper, when the scythe was in her hands?
Miriam went room by room, stepping through each door as a shadow. The study, the main bedroom, the dining room, all empty; in a cramped room on the second floor, Esther’s brother snored while sprawled supine on a bedspread stitched with faded copper roses. A room dedicated to a pianoforte still held the vague scent of blood. Curious, Miriam opened the lid of the instrument to find a dead rat with a sigil carved into its stomach, staring in frozen terror at the brass strings. Thomas’s work, she supposed. Or perhaps Esther’s, in search of ending the curse? Either way, it was a pantomime—style without substance. The rat had died for nothing.
She found him, finally, in a room lit dimly by a single candelabra, the candles balancing uncertainly on a bed. Beside it was a coffin, and beside the coffin was Thomas. His elbows were resting on the coffin’s lid, his head in his hands. There was a gun on the coffin, too, an ivory duelling pistol. When Miriam entered, still made of shadows, she was as silent as a whisper. But when she became material, and took an audible step forward, Thomas didn’t react. He was too overcome with whatever internal argument he was having, fingers twisting in his hair as if he meant to tear it out.
‘You should do it,’ Miriam said, gesturing to the gun.
Thomas started, nearly falling off the bed. The movement of the mattress made the candelabra shudder. It nearly tipped over before righting itself.
‘Who are you?’ he asked, his face wan in the guttering light of the flame.
‘Your reckoning,’ Miriam replied, and she allowed her pretence of humanity to slip away, as a snake might shed its skin; shadows bled and dripped from her eyes, her mouth, the tips of her fingers.
Thomas, to his credit, neither screamed nor fainted. Instead, he reached for the gun. He stood with the trembling muzzle aimed directly at Miriam’s chest. ‘Stay back.’
Miriam smiled. She laid a hand on the coffin, considering. ‘Who is it within, I wonder?’
His expression morphed into fury. ‘Leave her alone.’
‘I have no interest in a box of bones, Master Harding, never fear.’
‘Did—’ The pistol trembled in his hand. ‘Did Esther send you, somehow? To stop me?’
‘Tostopyou? Oh, sweetheart.’ Miriam stroked the wood of the coffin. ‘You still thinkyouare the villain of this piece? The shadow hiding in the dark? You aren’t, I’m afraid. Esther Harding has her share of nightmares chasing her. Compared to me, you are nothing but a pleasant dream.’
