Nostromo watched her reflection in the mirror, listening to the wall-mounted clock as it went tick-tock. She could go the longest time without blinking. Or breathing, for that matter.
The white ibis mask she wore, soft crimson circling the eyes to match the bird it evoked, obscured much of her face save for the dark red, glossy lips beneath. She wore white, as she was wont to do, with expertly tailored pantaloons and a fitted blazer, both gleaming against her dark chocolate skin. She fastened a single button, then reached a hand inside, adjusting her bare breasts for comfort. The cleavage was ample. Decadent. Perfect for the soirée to come.
Tick-tock.
There was time yet before the Feast began in earnest.
She adjusted the ornate plume-studded headpiece nesting in her black hair, tilting her head to admire the asymmetry. Vanity was certainly among the better-curated sins in her repertoire.
Nostromo lived in imagery. The memories she’d burn in other people’s retinas. The odes. The poems. The carved inscriptions and fevered scripture her acolytes would leave behind. Nothing was random. Everything held meaning. The precious stones adorning her ears and fingers, each telling its own story — of skies under different suns, of old blood pulsing, of secrets not for the faint of heart, of lies hidden in plain sight. The faint, magnetic markings across her black skin, glyphs no one alive could read. The high heels that would click on the marble tiles in perfect time with the clock’s tock.
Tick… tock.
She was what the guests would remember of the evening, long after the night’s delectations would dissipate. She was the host. And she threw some of the wildest parties.
A bell chimed a deep, resonating tone, signaling time. Expected. Eagerly awaited.
She smiled wolfishly at her reflection, the mirror declining to return the pleasure. It never did, only offered back her soulless depths. She grasped her ivory walking cane, its tip crowned with a golden ibis head, and pushed open the heavy, gilded double doors leading past her private boudoir.
She stepped onto the balcony overlooking the inner atrium. Everything was finely poised. She was the first one in motion, as these things should be. The space slid into carefully orchestrated movement in her wake.
There was music seeping into the space, the invisible string ensemble playing an age-rehearsed, timeless introduction to the ball. The valets stood at attention, immobile statues, their masks and accoutrements mirroring hers, except inverted, their masks silver and clothing black and without ornamentation. She inspected a pair of them, a man and a woman — adjusting their lapels, pulling the man’s pantaloons higher, reaching a domineering hand into the woman’s blazer, ungently squeezing the breast, testing the fit. Just as she had done to herself moments earlier. The servants were holding trays of fine foods and champagne flutes, ready to greet the arriving guests.
That was her next move. She glided across the floor and down the winding flight of stairs, her heels and walking cane weaving in and around the beats of the sinuous melody.
The crowd had been waiting for the bell’s toll to enter. The most eager guests were filtering through the entrance, being seen to by valets instructed to please. Everyone wore their best, still leagues beneath her most careless, a procession of animal masks hiding the identities of those coming for the feast and the thrills. The souls that yearn for release, for discharge, for oblivion. Some of whom wouldn’t be returning whence they came. Of course, she knew them all, masks or not.
Ever the arbiter, she greeted them in silent, ritual observance:
Welcome to the Feast of the senses. Where sins run free and trade their weight in your fluttering, inconsequential little souls.
She let them pass inside without ceremony, standing as an island of pure white washed by a stream of humanity. Whether they knew her or not mattered little. They always returned. The minister came first, wearing the hawk’s mask, his arm hooked with his mistress — the hare — ears and all. He’d soon forget all about her. Then came a posse of newly rich tech bros out for a bender, unaware they’d arrived for more than they bargained for, forgetting masks weren’t optional. Her servants corrected the faux-pas, handing out spares with mute precision. Some of the older patrons — a gathering of mammals and birds in varied plumage and fur — recognized her and nodded reverently. She tipped her head back, a chiseled smile beneath her mask.
Beyond the stream of humans making their way in, outside, the sun was passing through the gates of Hell, the horizon awash with fire and sepia. Black limousines continued to slip into the courtyard one by one, unloading more guests in twos and threes, or small groups. They would keep coming for a while still.
“Nostromo. Always a vision. Always the hunger in your depthless eyes. Prowling alone, tonight? Has Luguentz finally tired of your rituals?”
There were few beings through the ages that had been such a persistent, nagging annoyance to Nostromo as Paris. Not everyone ages like old wine. Certainly not Paris. He’d already been something of a dick back in the Troy days. Always brimming with a “good idea” that was anything but, poking his cute nose into things better left for grown-ups. By the time of the French Revolution, he’d graduated to full eye-roll material. Under her ibis mask, Nostromo obliged.
“Paris,” she bowed her head as he approached. Acknowledging his intrusion but not offering him the space for another lame retort.
He was a full head and half of curly black hair shorter than her yet walking with a strut as if he owned the château and the party couldn’t start without him. He tutted, eyeing the milling crowd.
“Blimey. I’ve been to a couple of these back in Troy — before the war and after the Greeks sacked it. I’ll hand it to you, old bird, you throw a memorable party,” Paris quipped, massaging his pointy beard, but Nostromo had her back already turned on him and was making her way inside, the crowd easily parting before her. Walking past one of the servants, she fished a mask in the shape of a weasel’s snout from a bowl and tossed it to Paris. He didn’t seem to appreciate the gesture.
“Keep up if you want or go lose yourself in some carefree, unbridled diversion, Paris,” she called, not looking back. It was exactly how he’d drifted through the centuries — careless as breath. The hurried footsteps behind her told her enough about his choice.
Her mood soured a bit, but she would not be deterred. There was still ample room for diversion of her own. The ever-present music trailed her mood and shifted to something she’d surely appreciate, a touch more modern but still carrying the faint echo of home crumbled to dust. The percussions and rhythmic chanting of Dead Can Dance reverberated across the space.
Nostromo glided through the atrium, click of heels and clack of her cane, the space rimmed by a black marble colonnade. The main thoroughfare of the château with three branching corridors inviting guests further into its depths, depending on their compulsions, this is where the crowds swirled and then thinned out in procession. No one was overly hurried, people flitting to and fro like the butterflies only she permitted them to be. Everyone was buzzing, whether from free-flowing drink, the ambience or the promise of something more yet to come.
‘Tis how she preferred things. Alive. Perched at the edge of the abyss, flirting with the fall. With heartbeat stuck in the throat. These soirées reminded her of that time long long gone, when she had one to speak of. Perhaps drawn by the need to taste the quickening of pulses once more, she cut down the corridor toward the left wing.
“So, what is that old rascal Luguentz up to?” Paris, infallibly, was at her ear.
“He’s off spelunking somewhere in Tibet,” she muttered. The mention of her partner irritated her. Tonight was meant to be a distraction-free night. “I don’t know where he is, Paris. He sure comes and goes as he damn pleases.”
She deliberately wasn’t pausing as they walked the length of the hallway. Doors to other rooms and liminal spaces dotted it, guarded by statues of men, women, and other fantastical and mythical beasts in various states and poses, alone, in twos or multiples. Mood-setting. Failing to come up with a stratagem to shake Paris, she took a turn at random, and through a heavy set of curtains entered a space where the festivities were well and truly underway.
It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim-lit space, veiled by the twirling tendrils of incense. The music’s pulse was matched by the languid, tidal sway of bodies, limbs intertwining, parting, finding each other again in movements older than any of them. It didn’t do much for her, alas, although Paris’ eyes darted feverishly across the room. She plucked a flute of champagne from a servant’s tray and pressed another into Paris’ hand. She carefully waded through the tangle as if it were an overgrown garden, stepping over oblivious, enraptured limbs and sighing bodies.
“Delightful,” Paris observed dryly, spilling some of his drink en route.
In the center of the room there was a leather chaise longue, somehow still empty, and Nostromo regally assumed position, crossing her legs, sipping her drink, the bodies around them folding and unfolding in pleasure and abandon. Paris, lacking any better option, sat squarely on the naked bum of a man so inebriated he’d long since slipped into oblivion.
“So, what else is new?” he fished, balancing himself and his champagne.
Nostromo felt the first stirrings of a headache of timeless proportions. She quickly narrowed the cause to Paris’ repeated mentions of Luguentz. They unsteadied her. Luguentz being far away had loosened her leash — and she always intended to tug hard.
This Feast wasn’t going to manage itself on its own, and so she ignored both the fly on the wall that Paris had become and her very much unpresent partner.
She snapped her fingers, the sound carrying above the cacophony of sounds. In the space of three sighs, a feline, lithe servant emerged from the smoke, dressed like the rest of her retinue, except in purple, a bronze cat’s mask hiding a fluid, colorless voice. The Tallyman, one of Nostromo’s oldest ministers, bowed low.
“Mistress.”
Paris eyed her servant, brows furrowed, clearly irked. Perhaps it was the absence of any color in the Tallyman’s voice. Beneath the mask, the Tallyman could be anyone. A man, a woman — or something else entirely.
“Tallyman. What’s the count for this room?” Nostromo asked imperiously. She ignored the searching hand creeping up her leg, another person’s face buried in her thigh, while she sat amid the heaving, murmuring waves of flesh.
“Thirty-nine souls in all, Mistress,” they dutifully recited, the Tallyman’s eyes passing over Paris and the one he was sat upon. Judgmentlessly.
“Seven Kindled, with genuine passion for their pair. Four Flickering, on the fence, here to explore and enjoy. Twenty Unmoored, cutting all anchor to self, displaying high likelihood of soul fracturing. That leaves eight Soulless.”
“What does that mean?” Paris butted in. The Tallyman tilted their head but didn’t mark Paris’ impertinence.
They breathed, “The Soulless? Those for whom the spark is gone. They will not leave here as they came, of course. They are for the Devourer’s delectation. Hers alone.” The Tallyman bowed their head reverently to Nostromo.
Nostromo registered the spasm of hunger at her core. Beyond imagery, beyond her meticulously orchestrated role of the host with the most lavish parties, she was the final arbiter. The unworthy, the empty, were claimed — or let pass — as she willed.
Details which mattered little to Paris, Nostromo knew. Until he, too, would come for his judgment. Eventually. To the Tallyman, she waved them on: “That’ll do for now. Note the tally and carry on. We’ll do the balance at night’s end. Mark the Soulless and leave them aside for me.”
The Tallyman bowed deep, and departed, deftly wading through the mass of humanity, swallowed by the smoke. Turning to Paris, Nostromo asked: “What do you think this is?”
She delighted at seeing Paris uncomfortably squirming on his fleshy seat. The naked man underneath shuddered, in a feverish dream. “Do I… really want to know?”
Nostromo nodded, the corners of her lips curving. “You never stuck around for the Balancing. You always remained… here,” she waved a vague hand over the present tableau.
“The Balancing is the best part of my soirées.” She licked her lips laconically, savoring the look on Paris’ face.
She felt like she had drunk her fill of this scene. “Let’s continue. There’s still time before the curtains fall on my Feast.”
They moved on, but before they exited, Paris grabbed a new, full glass of champagne into each hand. Nostromo shook her head, but swept through the hallway and, through a connecting passageway, into a different wing of the château.
“Why are you here, Paris?” She spared him a side glance. He looked up at her, dark eyes twinkling.
“Eternity is a long time to go without company,” he said wistfully.
He wasn’t wrong. She left unspoken the very reason she and Luguentz had agreed to share eternity: he ferried the unclaimed, she consumed the rest. His present absence was an opportunity to gorge herself, unmeasured and unchecked. She strode on, click of heels to the clack of the cane.
“I guess I just wanted to…I don’t know. How do you do eternity, Nostromo?”
Her smile held no warmth. Eternity knew only the twin companions of vanity and worship. The rest was enduring, unending hunger no amount of souls would ever sate.
“Ah, here we are,” she said, fluidly stopping in front of a double door flanked by two tall, ebony, muscular servants. Muted sound pulsed through the doors. Paris’ what-now look lingered, but he stayed, ever curious. The pair of servants peeled the door open.
A wave of suffocating, humid heat crashed over them. Inside, the wrong kind of disco beckoned: strobing lights, a forest of glistening, dancing bodies, the Chemical Brothers’ beat, but everything slowed to near snapping. Time stretched here, playing out in slow motion, but Nostromo moved at her own pace, the large square tiles pulsing under her feet as she pushed expertly through the throng. Paris followed, mesmerized, yet the tempo of his heartbeat remained his own.
Nostromo ascended the stage on the far side, framed by ceiling-high LED panels, and stood beside the DJ — no mere human, but another piece of her menagerie. The Dancer.
She wore a pink flamingo mask, long pink ponytail tumbling down her back, otherwise naked. Her limbs moved with the grace of a dancer, yet obeyed some otherworldly will: arms twisting, neck impossibly craned, hips contorting beyond human limits.
Nostromo nodded and the Dancer mimicked the nod, acknowledging her mistress but remaining committed to the sinuous, joint-popping dance. She smiled wolfishly and the Dancer, under her mask, smiled dreamily back. Nostromo yanked her ponytail, the Dancer arching her back, and the entire floor of humans leaned toward the stage.
Paris was just dumbfounded, blinking. “You’ve expanded the effects since Troy.”
Nostromo conjured her best about-to-eat-the-lamb smile, as if she was deciding whether to bite into the Dancer’s neck. She let go of her minion, who gracefully straightened, just as tall as Nostromo. “Technology helps. But also, what’s music without the dance?”
The Dancer wove her hands in a flourish, and the crowd shifted with her. When her stomach rippled like a belly dancer’s, they undulated too — a field of grass in invisible wind. Then, as her impossibly long arms wrapped around herself, the dancers on the floor pressed together, bodies compressing together, as if pulled inward by invisible string. Paris leaned forward, drawn, but Nostromo’s hand clamped on his shoulder and held him still.
He licked his lips, voice dry. “I think I like your Dancer.” The contortionist flowed into a ballerina’s penché, one leg raised high, as her hands rode the turntable.
“You can stay after the soirée, if you want. Only looking for now.”
Nostromo snapped her fingers, and — as if conjured out of thin air — the Tallyman mounted the stage with brisk, soundless steps. They stopped, waited.
“What’s the tally?”
“Eleven Kindled. Thirteen Flickering. Five Unmoored. Seven Soulless.” The cat’s mask drifted over crowd, cool and dispassionate as ledger ink.
“Thank you, dear,” Nostromo said warmlessly. The Tallyman bowed and vanished as quickly as they came.
Nostromo shoved Dancer against the turntable, dragging a fingernail down her spine. Even constrained, the Dancer continued her hypnotic weave, and the crowd kept mirroring it. Nostromo recounted the tally in her head, in anticipation of the Feast’s end. She licked her lips, without thinking.
Paris crossed his arms, sulking. “Only thing eternity’s good for is indulgence.”
Nostromo’s smile was all teeth. “Then stop pretending you’re above it.”
Her focus snapped back in place. She released the Dancer. “Let’s go.”
They exited the room into the hallway, just as the bell tolled another hour. Nostromo tilted her head, savoring the sound and the promise it always carried. Paris, clearly unsettled, shuffled his feet.
“Nostromo?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to Helena, would you? After all, her soul must have passed through your hands. They all do.”
Ah, so that was why he came. Naturally. Nostromo flashed him a feral grin, reveling in his unease. “Come.”
They swept across the marble floor, the click of Nostromo’s heels to the clack of her cane to Paris’ inelegant shuffle. They passed into the château’s third wing, where the music gradually relinquished terrain to something raw and raucous — as if nearing an open-air marketplace where people were hawking their wares and shouting their offers. Or a corrida with a bull fight in the middle and the onlookers cheering. Nostromo guided them to a third room, the largest one yet, and the noisiest. Paris stood rooted at the entrance, not knowing where to look first.
The room was circular in shape, ringed by tiers of benches rising like an ancient arena. Guests crowded them, laughing, waving, jeering, throwing scraps into the pit. In the center, there was a banquet table, seats taken by masked revelers gorging themselves, food and champagne smeared across silk and jewels. Throwing food at each other without decorum. Servants swept in and out, bearing new platters and refilling cups.
Nostromo’s heels clicked straight for the table’s head, Paris trailed her. Until he froze.
On the table lay a woman. Motionless. Blonde, tumbling mane of hair, with porcelain skin, blue veins visible under her skin. She was covered in food, her body the platter. Guests casually plucked food from her, as fruit from a bowl, without a care for the world.
Her blue eyes were open. Empty. Soulless.
“Helena,” Paris breathed.
Nostromo smiled — a sly, knowing thing — and snapped her fingers, the sound sharp and clear. The Tallyman willed into existence.
“The tally?”
The Tallyman’s depthless eyes swept the room. “No Kindled. No Flickering. Twenty-seven Unmoored. Thirty-one Soulless.” The Tallyman’s sweeping gaze landed on Paris, then trailed his line of sight to the table.
A pause. “Correction: Twenty-eight Unmoored. Thirty-two Soulless.”
The bell tolled. Low. Final.
“You’re right on time, Paris,” Nostromo murmured, the hunger unfurling in her chest, a tide already pulling him in. To the Tallyman standing beside her, she said, “I’m of a mind to skip the Balancing tonight. Luguentz won’t mind, not when he’s too far away to stay my hand.”
She turned to Paris, a hungry twinkle in her dark eyes. “Even eternity has to come to an end sometimes.”
….
This story is intended as a complement to Soul Merchant.