The Subtle Knife, Page 4

idea of abandoning the city, even though her son had yet to marry his bride-to-be. She had relatives to the west, there were land routes still open through Aumejid territory and better, she felt, to risk death at the hands of roving marauders than hope the Aumejid legions would refrain from butchering everyone in sight when the city finally fell. But while her future mother-in-law diligently prepared to flee, Zoe wandered the house feeling oddly disconnected from the whole business.

  “What's the matter?” Timon asked her. “You've been staring off into the distance for days.”

  “I need to tell you something,” said Zoe, “and I don't think you want to hear it.”

  “Go on,” said Timon, though he felt a horrible sense of foreboding, as if something dreadful stood right behind him but all he could do was watch the tip of its shadow slide between his ankles.

  “I'm not coming with you,” said Zoe.

  “It's been more than three months,” said Timon. “You don't even have any real idea where he could have gone.”

  “Don't you think I know that?” said Zoe. “But I have to try. Something keeps telling me I have to try, like a voice in my head, or a splinter where I can't get at it. I have to do this. I have to! He's my father, and I just let him walk away! Left him convinced I believed he was a murderer!”

  “Do you?” said Timon bluntly.

  “I don't know,” Zoe whispered. “Your father was old, and sick, and the physicians didn't find any signs he'd been poisoned...”

  “Remember what was in that vial,” said Timon.

  “I know! said Zoe. “I know. He must have had something in mind when he first came here, whether he meant to kill your father, or anyone else... but there's nothing to suggest he ever went through with any of it. When did you ever see him hurt a soul?”

  “He seems to have wounded me quite badly,” said Timon bitterly.

  Zoe's eyes filled with tears.

  “I'm sorry,” she wept.

  “Don't,” said Timon. “Please. I won't stop you, I don't think I should stop you, but I can't... I can't pretend to understand this.”

  “I'll come back,” said Zoe. “If I don't find anything, I can –”

  “You can,” said Timon, “but you know my mother won't welcome you. I'm not sure how I'll feel. Right now I...”

  And he trailed off.

  “How clever of the man,” he said finally, “to do this much damage to anyone without leaving a mark, or even any sign of what he did, and when. And to think perhaps he didn't even mean to do it.”

  Two months later the Aumejid grand vizier ordered the assault on Lys to begin, and from all sides his armies laid siege to the beleaguered city. Weakened and demoralised, the Nyzaen defenders barely managed to hold out for half the year before the Aumejid finally breached the walls. They swept through everything in their path, razing half the city to the ground with a terrible loss of life. The western powers mourned, but seeing the Aumejid pronounce themselves content, they made no move to oust the invaders.

  History does not record Zoe among the dead, nor Thais and Timon Argyris. Perhaps they perished – but a great many Nyzaen fled Lys before battle was joined, and settled with the Genevine, the Bryndegaine, the Arlestene and further west into parts unknown. Perhaps those three unhappy souls successfully escaped along with their countrymen, and perhaps Zoe finally found her adoptive father and made her peace with him... but these things are for another story, to be told another time.

  The Aumejid have a saying that if you want to kill a man without him even noticing, time is the subtlest knife of all. But this has a deeper meaning: if you had a blade so well-concealed you couldn't point it out to anyone who asked, then how could you ever be sure you still knew where it was, or how to use it when the opportunity arose? You might find you'd dealt yourself a mortal wound and never even noticed.

  If you should meet any man on the road who travels with some similarly dire purpose, understand you may not be able to dissuade him from it. But tell him this story, and perhaps he might come to understand that the knife he has yet to realise he carries is a terrible weapon. No matter how cunning he thinks himself, he has not the slightest idea how much harm he might do with it, or to whom.

  #####

  Thanks for reading. You can find me on Twitter as @eightrooks, or on Tumblr at https://therookshavereturned.tumblr.com/. If you enjoyed this story, please consider telling someone else you liked it on whatever social networks you use. I’d really appreciate it.

  #####

  Cover art, legal stuff:

  To the best of my knowledge, all elements of the cover art for this publication were freely available without any legal restrictions preventing me from using them in transformative works or distributing said work under the licensing conditions I’ve chosen. If you believe I’ve used anything of yours in error, please let me know and I’ll address your enquiry as quickly as possible.

  Sand dunes taken from:

  https://www.pexels.com/photo/landscape-sand-clouds-desert-6823/

  Arabic text taken from:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canon_of_Medicine#/media/File:Avicenna_canon_1597.jpg

  Map taken from:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neorion_Harbour#/media/File:Constantinople_Braun_Hogenberg_Golden_Horn_01.JPG

  Weathering taken from:

  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grunge_background.jpg

  Rook taken from:

  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rook-Corvus_frugilegus.jpg

  (Andreas Trepte, www.photo-natur.de)

  Fonts taken from:

  https://www.dafont.com/kara-ben-nemsi.font

  https://www.1001fonts.com/alegreya-sc-font.html

  https://www.1001fonts.com/honey-script-font.html