Chapter 6 #3
Miriam had spent the morning in Ipswich, in fact—it was a stroke of luck that Cybil had come here also.
A mere moment before Cybil had arrived at the gates, Miriam had taken her last meal: a man who had traded his soul for vengeance against a merchant guild that had wronged him.
He had forgotten, of course, that he was still a member of the guild also, and so she had slaughtered him alongside his enemies.
The guildhall had displayed a large portrait of some ginger-haired woman with a white face and too many pearls; Miriam had amused herself by washing the painting red with their blood.
Then she had left, licking the gore from her fingers.
There was still a crimson streak on the inside of her wrist. The guildhall was only a few streets away from here, where Cybil and Peter Oswyn were now avoiding puddles as they navigated the cobbles.
The scene would be found, sometime soon, and the mortals would make their excuses—one of the merchants went mad, perchance, or a wild animal had attacked, or a local witch had laid a hex.
They always found a method of dismissal, a method to tell themselves it could be prevented from happening again.
As Cybil and Peter neared the market, the air became heavy with the stink of horse dung and humanity.
The space was thronging with people. Miriam landed upon the roof of a stall to watch Cybil as she wove through the crowd while staring nervously at Peter Oswyn’s back.
She was unaccustomed to this, clearly, the bustle and the noise; a blacksmith struck a horseshoe nearby, and Cybil cowered as if the sound had run her through.
In the distance, a fruit seller was singing to entice customers, warbling about apples red and pears so green—Cybil clearly found this grating, as she kept glancing in the seller’s direction, forehead creasing.
The echoing silence of Harding Hall must have felt as distant now to Cybil as Miriam’s birthplace did to her—across the sea, across centuries.
Cybil stopped, curious, at a stall selling fresh fish.
An eel had been hooked and hung from the stall’s front, glass-eyed in death.
Below it, the fishmonger was busy gutting a pike.
He gave Cybil a wary look, but he did not shoo her away.
She watched as he pulled a ribbon of entrails from the animal, pale and thin, like the strings of a fiddle.
The eel on the hook suddenly spasmed and twitched. Cybil startled, jumping halfway in the air; the fishmonger laughed. ‘They do that, sometimes,’ he said. ‘Last spark of life in ’em. They think they can get off the hook and splash right back into the sea.’
‘Does it feel pain?’ Cybil asked.
‘I would not know, mistress. What is an eel’s pain to a man?’
She smiled wryly, glancing back in the direction of the gate. The movement made a lock of red hair fall from her cap, catching the light like a strand of fire. ‘Men are strung up sometimes, also.’
‘We are all God’s creatures,’ he said. ‘But there is a manner of things—a Chain of Being. The queen above men, and men above eels.’
‘And God above us all,’ Cybil said. ‘Observing us squirming on our hooks.’
Peter Oswyn then appeared at Cybil’s elbow. His expression was hopeful, and in his hand he held a fruit of some sort: round and orange, its skin glazed with honey, top cored and oozing with jam.
‘’Tis a stuffed medlar,’ he said proudly, presenting it to her. ‘With rose hip jam.’
Cybil plucked it from his hand uncertainly, and pinched it between two fingers as if it were a dirty rag. ‘… My thanks.’
They stared at each other for a long moment.
‘Will you not try it?’ Oswyn asked her, face crumpling.
‘It is only that—I am not fond of sweetmeats,’ she said, and she handed it back to him.
He was aghast. ‘But you must like them.’
‘Why?’
‘Well—everyone does. ’Sides, my da says sweet things are good for women. Keeps them biddable.’
Cybil appeared vaguely disgusted. ‘You ought to be cautious, Master Oswyn. Too much sugar and your teeth shall rot.’ She turned her head away from him, towards the buildings at the other side of the market. ‘Which way was the apothecary?’
Oswyn sighed. ‘This way, my lady.’
‘Then lead on,’ Cybil said—still clearly irritated, to Miriam’s delight—and she followed Oswyn into the crowd.
Their progress was not quick. Every second stall, Cybil would stop to inspect the sunlight glinting off knives, to peer at glass baubles and weigh pewter plates in her hands.
The sellers could sense her wealth; they tried to lull her into conversation, making claims about the quality of their wares that were patently absurd.
‘’Tis an Indian bowl, from Roanoke,’ one man claimed of a misshapen lump of half-fired clay.
Cybil snorted, said, ‘Oh, indeed,’ and turned away.
Then she looked up, her eyes meeting Miriam’s where she sat on the canvas roof of a fur trader’s stall.
Cybil looked at her for far longer than any human would stare at an ordinary crow.
Miriam knew Cybil could sense the darkness in her, even if she did not know exactly its origin—and it brought Miriam pleasure to be seen in a manner she so rarely was.
She spread her wings, letting the sunlight slip into the folds of her coal-black feathers and disappear.
In the back of her throat, she mimicked a crack of thunder.
Cybil’s eyes widened at the mimicry, and then she laughed, delighted. ‘What an extraordinary creature,’ she said, stepping forward towards her—and then Peter Oswyn returned again, looking beleaguered.
‘Mistress, the apothecary shall soon close.’
‘That crow made the sound of a storm!’
Oswyn glanced at Miriam, crossing himself. ‘Ill omens, crows. My ma says they carry curses.’
Cybil’s expression twitched, then went stoic. ‘The apothecary, then.’
The apothecary was not a stall but a building at the edge of the square, bearing a sign with a crude drawing of a mortar and pestle.
Cybil instructed Oswyn to wait outside—her patience with him had clearly grown thin—and as she entered, he leaned against the wall to stare up at the sky, chewing his lip.
Miriam opened her beak again and mimicked the sound of a man’s scream. Oswyn hopped three feet in the air, face going wan, and then he noticed the crow. He crossed himself once more, glowering.
Miriam sensed an opportunity, and she would not allow it to slip away. If Cybil found this man interesting, so be it.
The heavy clouds meant the shadows were thin, but Miriam still found refuge in the darkness cast by the apothecary’s sign, melding into its shadows.
She was fortunate to have been so gluttonous the past few days; she had more than enough power to trade.
As the sign swung back and forth in the breeze—the shadow swinging with it—Miriam waited for Oswyn’s shadow and hers to make contact.
He sighed and shuffled. Just another inch to the left, and she would have it.
His soul was a dying star, hardly visible: that was good, because her plan would have been difficult otherwise.
This trick required someone suggestible.
Peter Oswyn, still flushed from his interactions with Cybil, took a deep, joyful breath of Ipswich air, and leaned sideways—and the shadows slipped down his throat, wrapping themselves around the light in his chest. He panicked, but the panic was a distant thrum: he was in darkness—he was the darkness.
When Miriam released him, he would feel as if he were waking from an uncertain and unpleasant dream. For now, he was trapped in a nightmare.
Mine now, Miriam thought, lifting Peter’s hand to inspect it in the light. Come along, puppet. You might prove useful, after all.