The Subtle Knife

The Subtle Knife

  by Matthew Lee

  Copyright 2016 Matthew Lee

  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

  In an age long since forgotten, around the shores of a vast inland sea, there lay two great kingdoms known as Aumen and Nyzar. Since time immemorial each of these two had nurtured a passionate hatred of the other. Each harboured golden beaches, rolling red hills and empty deserts so achingly beautiful they could drive even the doughtiest man to paroxysms of melancholy. Their people were quick to anger, yet just as easily swayed to more sanguine humours in praise of hearth and home.

  Yet their differences divided them. The Aumejid and the Nyzaen bitterly contested each other's borders, the divine right of their various potentates, and the provenance of the divinities who had vouchsafed each king his privileges. When the Nyzaen empire waxed, the Aumejid seethed with hatred at their neighbours' good fortune. When it waned, they prepared to wreak a terrible vengeance for every slight they felt they'd suffered over the past three centuries or more.

  So it was the Aumejid embarked on a bitter war of attrition against the Nyzaen. Slowly they beat their enemies back, until an empire that had once been feared across the globe was now reduced to a handful of far-flung territories of little consequence. Also there was the Nyzaen capital, the city known as Lys, which men still named the crossroads of the world. The war dragged on, yet all about Lys a peculiar stalemate had been reached, as a man clearing the ground of thorns might pause on discovering a single glorious rose.

  Down a long road, then, at the height of that stalemate came a rider. He was tall and graceful, dark-haired, and he drove his steed towards Lys like a man with a purpose. The sun beat down upon him, and he had many miles still to go, yet suddenly – with nary a hint of the city on the horizon – the rider slowed to a halt and contemplated the sky.

  Buzzards hung in a circling gyre above a point not far from where he sat. Without a word, the rider cantered across the desert towards whatever grisly tableaux lay in wait. There he found the sad remains of what had not long been a Nyzaen caravan, run to ground by marauding bandits.

  The rider dismounted, and wandered through the aftermath of what appeared to have been a truly desperate struggle. The wagons stood in disarray, their cargo plundered and the bodies of the dead slumped in the sand. The rider searched the wreckage, but everything of value had been carried off. He was about to return to his horse, when he stopped and cocked his head into the wind.

  It was a breath of air that had caught his attention, so soft it was little more than a whisper. The rider bent down beside the nearest ruined wagon, where a length of tarpaulin had collapsed across the wheels. He flung this aside, and slowly sat upon his heels to better see the space beneath.

  A child cowered in the shadows there, a girl no more than four years old. She seemed to have taken no injury, yet her pale skin had been liberally spattered with blood, and her huge green eyes were glazed with terror. The rider glanced at the buzzards overhead, and would have stood and left the child to the mercy of the desert.

  Then he stopped and looked at her again.

  Around her neck the girl wore a locket, and through the belt about her tiny waist she wore a knife, looking almost like a sword intended for an infant's grasp. Both of these things the rider gently took and studied for a long moment, and then he bent again and offered the child his hand. Cautiously she took it, and crawled from beneath the wagon.

  A column of people waited to petition to be allowed through the great white gates of Lys, and they all made a very great hue and cry when the rider charged down the line. The girl sat before him, the motion of the horse seeming not to bother her in the least.

  The guards at the gate formed up before the rider, and their commanding officer demanded he retreat, but the rider produced the knife he had taken from the girl, and the soldiers immediately ushered him through the city wall while making signs of obeisance.

  Inside the rider stopped a passer-by, and curtly asked if he might provide directions to a certain house, for he had someone with him who carried their family token.

  He might, the passer-by said, but he cautioned the rider he should find no welcome there, nor indeed any family at all. An outbreak of plague two years past had taken every living soul at that address, along with several hundred others, before the authorities contained the disease.

  The rider sat there for a time, as the girl wriggled in the saddle and then began to suck placidly upon one stubby thumb. Then he spoke to another man upon the street, and received directions to a convent not far from the gatehouse. Outside that convent the rider sat again and watched while the crowds milled about him.

  He looked to the building, then to the girl, then back to the building. There was a steady stream of supplicants headed through its doors, and the sisters looked harried and distressed. With an oath the rider turned his horse and rode away. Before him the girl tried to stroke the animal's neck as she swayed back and forth in the saddle.

  A certain businessman in the north quarter was surprised and delighted when a stranger approached him by the fountain where he took wine in the afternoons, and declared he should like to buy a house. He paid generously, in gold, and there was an air about him suggesting he was not a man to be trifled with – never mind that he carried a child on one arm, who clung to his neck and silently gazed about her with wide green eyes. The businessman escorted his new customer to see what he assured him was a bargain.

  Once the businessman had departed the rider stabled his horse, while the child watched him from the rushes on the floor. Then he picked her up and carried her to an inner courtyard, where birds sang in two towering palm trees that bent over a shallow pool lined with intricate mosaics. The rider took a tiny vial from his jacket, a crystal ampoule bound in silver, and held it up. The philtre within was a watery duck egg blue, and it glittered in the sun. He looked over at the girl, who had wandered over to the pool and waded into it.

  Then he put the vial away again, and went to make sure the girl didn't drown.

  In the following weeks the nobility of Lys came to understand an Aumejid painter of some considerable talent had taken up residence in the north quarter. Portraits he produced, landscapes, crowds, religious iconography and more, all of surpassing quality and at eminently reasonable prices. He lived modestly, it was said, and spent most of his time at home, the better to care for his adopted daughter, a Nyzaen girl who had never been heard to speak.

  In the months after that the painter and his daughter became a more regular presence in the day-to-day life of the city. The two of them could be seen in the markets where the painter went to source the materials for the brilliant colours in his palette; or at the public baths; or perhaps taking the air along the sea walls, with the painter gazing out across the ocean in silence. Many men enquired if they might become his patron, but courteously the painter turned down all their offers.

  Two years after the rider first drew up before the great white gates of Lys, he sat in a public garden in the heart of the city on a perfectly ordinary day, and watched the girl chasing butterflies. She was a healthy child, active and inquisitive, who professed no memory of whatever horrors she had seen in the desert. Though she still spoke very little, and the rider could see other children often thought her strange. Readily she agreed with the rider that he was not actually her father, yet she seemed devoted to him nonetheless.

  Her name, she told him, was Zoe.

  “Greetings, sir,” said a voice. “Would I be right in thinking you are that art
isan of whom much of the north quarter is so enamoured?”

  A large, red-headed Nyzaen man in fine clothes stood nearby. He was greying at the temples, yet still tall and trim, with the build of a soldier not long out of service. He looked from the rider to the girl and then back again.

  “I am,” said the rider.

  “My name is Cleon Argyris,” said the red-headed man. “You may know me. Or perhaps not the real me. God knows my poor exploits in the service of my empire were long ago, and they grow a little further out of proportion to the truth every time some perspiring diplomat attempts to use them to whip up yet more blind fervour among the masses. But I digress.”

  He sat down upon the bench.

  “I know you,” said the rider, and he marvelled silently at how little distance there was between the two of them. They were close enough he could reach out and touch the other man with no effort at all.

  “You turn down every offer of a patron, or so I hear,” said Cleon. “I would be the one to finally buck that trend.”

  “I hadn't heard this was the way you approached prospective clients,” said the rider.

  “Because it isn't,” said Cleon, and he laughed. “I hadn't given any thought to doing business here today. I shook off my bodyguards a short time ago, and thought I might take in the flowers here while no-one stands behind me breathing down my neck. But then I spotted you. So.”

  “I have had patrons before,” said the rider. “Generally I supplied them with a sample of work to satisfy them I could live up to their expectations, but if you follow my humble efforts already...”

  He glanced at the girl, to satisfy himself she was still some distance away.

  “Far be it from me to flout your routine,” said Cleon. “Paint something for me, by all means.”

  “Might you have a subject in mind?” said the rider.

  Four sturdy-looking men entered the garden, red-faced and angry, and cast about in all directions. When they saw Cleon Argyris, and the rider beside him, they broke into a run.

  “I might,” said Cleon. “Your daughter, I think. At play in these gardens.”

  “Father!” cried Zoe. “Father!”

  The girl came charging helter-skelter across the path, one hand thrust out before her.

  “Look!” she demanded. “I caught one! I caught one! Isn't it pretty?”

  For a moment a golden butterfly sat in her outstretched palm, its wings fluttering weakly, and then the wind picked up and the insect took flight.

  “It was pretty,” said the rider. “Well done, dear heart. You're very patient.”

  “Ser Argyris!” roared the bodyguards as they drew closer. “Ser Argyris!”

  The leader drew his sword, and thrust it menacingly towards the rider. Zoe caught her breath, and threw her arms about his legs.

  “Put that thing away, damn you,” sighed Cleon. “I apologise, my friend. And to your lovely daughter as well. My wife Thais demands these oafs, and she means well, I suppose, so I suffer their presence that she might sleep better at night.”

  “No apology necessary,” said the rider.

  “The painting, though,” said Cleon. “You'll do it?”

  “I will,” said the rider.

  Zoe had previously given little thought to how her adoptive father earned his living, but on being told she was to be the subject of his next painting she suddenly developed an interest in how it would turn out. She was still young, and prone to running off to play elsewhere in the house at the slightest provocation, or sinking into a fit of pique when she decided she didn't care for how things were progressing, but often she would sit quietly for a surprising length of time to watch the piece take shape.

  Late one night perhaps three weeks later the rider downed his palette and his brushes. He sat before a window to marvel at the sight of Lys laid out beneath the rising moon.

  “Father?” said a sleepy voice behind him. “Are you crying?”

  “I am,” said the rider quietly.

  “But why?” said Zoe.

  “Because I'm sad,” said the rider.

  “Why are you sad?” said Zoe.

  “Because I've been thinking about someone who was very precious to me,” said the rider, “who isn't here right now.”

  Zoe got up from the stool where she'd fallen asleep. She yawned, and stumbled wearily across the floor to hug the rider clumsily about the waist.

  “I'm here,” she murmured.

  “You are, dear heart,” said the rider, and he tousled her hair. “You are.”

  “Is the painting finished?” said Zoe.

  “Indeed,” said the rider. “Do you want to see it?”

  He led her then to the easel, and the girl rubbed her eyes and studied it intently.

  “You don't like it?” said the rider.

  “I like it,” said Zoe. “But... it doesn't really look like me. And that bit isn't the same garden I was playing in, is it?”

  “You're right,” said the rider. “That's a place I remember from a long time ago, and very far away. But what do you mean, the girl doesn't look like you?”

  “I don't know,” said Zoe. “It just doesn't look like me. That's what I think.”

  She looked crestfallen, as if she sensed she might have disappointed him.

  “I'm sorry!” she cried.

  “You don't have to be sorry, dear heart,” said the rider, and he kissed the top of her head. “You like it. That's good enough for me. Come on. Time for bed.”

  Cleon Argyris professed himself well pleased with the painting. If he saw the same discrepancies Zoe had noticed from his original brief, the old soldier made no mention of them. He gave it a place of honour in his house.

  As a consequence Zoe's star rose along with her adoptive father's, as Cleon's guests wanted to know who both the painter and his subject were. Increasingly the rider found he was no longer merely fêted by the nobility, but treated as though he were one of them.

  Two more years passed. The rider continued to paint for Cleon Argyris, producing portraits of the old soldier, his wife, their son and a succession of sprawling vistas across the city of Lys.

  He was now comfortably well off. There were times he wondered whether he ought to vacate his flat in the bohemian confines of the artisans' district for something better suited to his elevated status.

  That carried risks for an Aumejid, but if it meant he could ensure Zoe a comfortable future...

  And there were times where, after he thought about these things, he sat by the window at night and wept again. Though only once he could be sure Zoe was fast asleep.

  A year later Cleon Argyris summoned the rider, and informed him he had received a request. The ruling council of Lys had seen his paintings of the city, and approved of them. They wanted him to work on an even bigger canvas, one that would capture the essence of the popular belief that Lys was still the crossroads of the world. He would be free, within reason, to interpret that brief however he saw fit. This was such an honour Cleon wanted a celebration just to announce the rider had accepted it.

  What else could he say?

  The flower of the Nyzaen aristocracy swept into Cleon's house, and the grounds came to life with music and laughter and joy. Naturally the rider was there, and so was Zoe. She was two-thirds his height now, a slim and serious girl who still kept to herself a good deal, and preferred reading or learning to paint to playing with anyone her own age. Yet the rider could not help but notice she was joining in with the other children's games for once, rather than wandering off to find a quiet room in which to hide.

  In fact it was the rider who sought refuge beyond the torchlight, on the edge of the grounds, and it was there that Cleon found him, sitting in the dark.

  “So here you are,” said the old soldier. “I thought this whole affair wouldn't be much to your taste. I'm sorry, my friend. A necessary evil, I'm afraid.”

  “For what?” said the rider.

  “I think of it as doing what little I can to foster unity,�
�� said Cleon. “A somewhat gentler spirit of community than the rabble-rousing those idiots on the council cling to.”

  He sighed, and gestured towards the lights of the city beneath them.

  “If Lys survives,” he said, “after our empire finally crumbles, it won't be chest-beating exceptionalism that saves us.”

  “I find that somewhat strange, coming from you,” said the rider bluntly.

  The old soldier looked at him.

  “So you do know me,” he said. “The butcher of Kerion. The tyrant of Hamassus.”

  “I had wondered, over the years, if you were the same man,” said the rider.

  “There was a time I would have insisted I was not,” said Cleon. “When I first took refuge in Lys I played the penitent to the hilt. But I came to realise all I was doing was placing my wife and son in unnecessary danger, and making a nuisance of myself into the bargain. I could still try and make some small amends for the things I had done without going about in sackcloth and ashes for the rest of my life.”

  “There was a time people demanded a lot more than that from you,” said the rider.

  “Oh, I know,” said Cleon. “Hence the bodyguards. Do the Aumejid still call for my head?”

  “The edict is still technically in effect,” said the rider. “But that grand vizier was deposed eleven years ago, and few people have paid much attention to his policies since.”

  “A few,” said Cleon. “Reason enough for caution, I suppose. Some might say only my death could provide any real recompense for my crimes, but for now I prefer to go on living. While Lys remains the crossroads of the world.”

  “It is a remarkable city,” said the rider.

  “Then paint it that way,” said Cleon. “Show them just how remarkable. Now come on. Duty calls. People want to toast you and Zoe, and I have to think of something for them to shout that avoids chest-beating exceptionalism, or anything else so crass.”

  They climbed slowly back up the hill towards the house, and then as they reached the first of the lights the old soldier slapped his thighs and cursed.

  “I forgot,” he said. “Last year's castura. The bottle is still in my study. Could you fetch it? While I keep this lot entertained?”

  “I know the way,” said the rider. “But you keep that room locked.”

  “Here, take the key,” said Cleon.

  “You're not worried I'll do something improper?” said the rider.

  “Why should I care if you take a look around in there?” said the old soldier. “You already know my secrets.”

  And he gave the rider a wry smile.

  The rider passed through the house of Cleon Argyris, observing room after room of guests laughing and making drunken conversation. Dignitaries, financiers and clergymen hailed him, to which he smiled and nodded before moving on.

  He