It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer, or a child. Between twins, the spirit of the womb. Between lovers. Death. Great numbers might drift through the drama, of course - thousands in fact - but they could only ever be phantoms, agents or, on rare occasions, reflections of the three real and self-willed beings who stood at the centre. And even this essential trio would not remain intact, or so he taught. It would steadily diminish as the story unfolded, three becoming two, two becoming one, until the stage was left deserted.
Needless to say, this dogma did not go unchallenged. The writers of fables and comedies were particularly vociferous in their scorn, reminding the worthy Quexos that they invariably ended their own tales with a marriage and a feast. He was unrepentant. He dubbed them cheats, and told them they were swindling their audiences out of what he called the last great procession, when, after the wedding songs had been sung and the dances danced, the characters took their melancholy way off into darkness, following each other into oblivion.
It was a hard philosophy, but he claimed it was both immutable and universal, as true in the Fifth Dominion, called Earth, as it was in the Second.
And more significantly, as certain in life as it was in art.
Being a man of contained emotion, Charlie Estabrook had little patience with the theatre. It was, in his bluntly stated opinion, a waste of breath; indulgence, flummery, lies. But had some student recited Quexos’s First Law of Drama to him this cold November night he would have nodded grimly, and said: all true, all true. It was his experience precisely. Just as Quexos’s Law required, his story had begun with a trio: himself, John Furie Zacharias, and between them, Judith. That arrangement hadn’t lasted very long. Within a few weeks of setting eyes on Judith he had managed to supersede Zacharias in her affections, and the three had dwindled to a blissful two. He and Judith had married, and lived happily for five years, until, for reasons he still didn’t understand, their joy had foundered, and the two had become one.
He was that one, of course, and the night found him sitting in the back of a purring car being driven around the frosty streets of London in search of somebody to help him finish the story. Not, perhaps, in a fashion Quexos would have approved of—the stage would not be left entirely empty - but one which would salve Estabrook’s hurt.
He wasn’t alone in his search. He had the company of one half-trusted soul tonight: his driver, guide and procurer, the ambiguous Mr Chant. But despite Chant’s shows of empathy, he was still just another servant, content to attend upon his master as long as he was promptly paid. He didn’t understand the profundity of Estabrook’s pain; he was too chilly, too remote. Nor, for all the length of his family history, could Estabrook turn to his lineage for comfort. Although he could trace his ancestors back to the reign of James the First, he had not been able to find a single man on that tree of immoralities - even to the bloodiest root - who had caused, either by his hand or hiring, what he, Estabrook, was out this midnight to contrive: the murder of his wife.
When he thought of her (when didn’t he?) his mouth was dry and his palms were wet; he sighed; he shook. She was in his mind’s eye now, like a fugitive from some more perfect place. Her skin was flawless, and always cool, always pale; her body was long, like her hair, like her fingers, like her laughter; and her eyes, oh, her eyes, had every season of leaf in them: the twin greens of spring and high summer, the golds of autumn, and, in her rages, black midwinter rot.
He was, by contrast, a plain man; well scrubbed, but plain. He’d made his fortune selling baths, bidets and toilets, which lent him little by way of mystique. So, when he’d first laid eyes on Judith - she’d