Page 3 of To Clutch a Razor
The wind blows the Knight back, so he’s cowering on the floor at her feet, an arm curled over his head. Bones sail through the air and tapestries flap against the walls and jars tumble from their shelves and crash, spilling eyeballs and dried tongues and rare powders across the hardwood.
“So kill the guilty instead of the innocent, for once,” she says. “Or suffer the consequences of missing half your soul, whatever they are. Those are your choices, and don’t you dare think them unfair.”
She nudges time back with the toe of her shoe. The weight disappears from her shoulders, from her bones. Her skin tightens over muscle. She’s young again, and a warrior again, and the air is calm.
The Knight is still cowering on the floor, windblown and terrified.
“Get out of my sight,” she says.
She turns away from him, and tugs the curtain back to look at the river. The sun is still too bright on the water, but she lets it burn dark spots into her vision for a few seconds.
When she turns again, the Knight is gone.
2A FAMILY MEAL
When Dymitr was a child, he often waited in the weapons room for his uncle to come back from a hunt.
Always his uncle, not his parents—because his mother, Marzena, liked to greet with admonishments, and his father,Lukasz, was unpredictable, at turns either kind or vicious. Uncle Filip, though, was ruddy-cheeked and sly; he took coins out of Elza’s ears and taught Dymitr how to whistle with a piece of grass between his thumbs, and when Dymitr’s older brother teased him for being too sensitive, toosoft,Filip called him off.
So Dymitr would sit on the stone bench at the edge of the weapons room, his legs swinging, and wait for Filip to return. When he did, Filip’s hands were always bloody, and his face was always smeared with dirt. He would offer Dymitr things piece by piece to be returned to their places: spare knives that hadn’t been used in the hunt, and the armored vest, and his heavy boots, which always needed to be cleaned. He didn’t talk much, after, but Dymitr didn’t mind the quiet. And he didn’t mind scrubbing Filip’s boots, either.
Most of the time, the bone sword was sheathed by the time a Knight came home, so Dymitr’s first glimpse of one came when he was ten years old, and Filip turned away from him to change his shirt. Filip went out on missions often, which meant he drew his sword often, so it was close to the surface of his skin. So close that Dymitr could see every ridge of the golden hilt, and every centimeter of the bone blade, standing out from Filip’s back.
It was an honor to become a Knight. Not everyone in the family did. Not everyone had the constitution for it, as his grandmother liked to say. And the people of the village—the ones who were in the know—treated Knights like royalty. Knights always got to go to the front of the line at the butcher shop, always got extra cakes at the bakery. Even the unruly teenagers who played soccer in the field behind the old factory went silent and still at the sight of them. Knights were like old heroes of legend come to life.
So the sword, such an integral part of becoming a Knight, should have left Dymitr awestruck. Instead, he shuddered at the sight of it bulging from Filip’s shoulders like a tumor. He wanted to look away from it, but he couldn’t stop staring until Filip put a clean shirt on to cover it. Then Filip turned around and looked at Dymitr standing there with bloody boots in hand.
“You haven’t seen one before?” he asked.
Dymitr swallowed. He felt nauseated. “Not up close.”
Filip clicked his tongue, disapproving. “Your parentshave been neglecting your education.” He sat on the stone bench next to the door. “Come. Ask your questions.”
Curiosity wasn’t always rewarded in Dymitr’s family, so the invitation to ask whatever questions he liked was a rare one. He stood in front of his uncle, his fingers twisted together in front of him.
“Does it hurt to draw it?”
“Yes,” Filip said steadily.
He had a thick beard, gray in places, and neatly trimmed. There was a scar through his left eyebrow—a big, crooked one that made his skin pucker and ripple.
“Does it hurt to sheathe it?”
“Yes.”
“Then why…” Dymitr furrowed his brow. “Why not just leave it here in the weapons room, then collect it next time you go out on a mission?”
“Well, for one thing, it tugs at you when you’re separated from it, so you can always find it. Annoying. And for another…” He shrugs. “It’s good to always have a weapon with you. Monsters don’t only attack when we hunt them. They can creep into our houses, slip into our bedrooms while we sleep. Infest our bodies and minds, feed on our blood. The sword is with me always, so I’m never defenseless against them.”
No one ever softened things for Dymitr, or any of the children in the family. Monsters were everywhere, pain was inevitable, and only the strong could survive both.
“The sword is a tool,” Filip said. “But it’s also a treasure—because it’s hard won, understand?”
Dymitr never had much. Not because his family couldn’t afford it, but because they didn’t believe in certain indulgences. Nothing without purpose: a child’s bow-and-arrow set, for learning archery; a chessboard, for learning strategy; a survival kit, for learning to be resourceful. He and his brother and Elza had a fort in the woods, built from fallen logs, where they went to start small fires and set traps and identify mushrooms. They had tournaments with the rest of the cousins that were half playful, half serious. They quizzed each other with questions that sounded like the first parts of jokes, but weren’t.What is most commonly misidentified as a strzyga? What do you call a banshee in Germany? In what country can you find an oni?
He was used to his most valuable possessions having purpose. And that purpose was always related to monsters.
“How…” Dymitr was almost afraid of the question, but he asked it anyway. “How are they made?”
