The man with the Knives

[rogin]

It's a bit writing into the desert here, because maybe two people on my flist at best have read Ellen Kushner's Riverside series, but since this is the place where I get my fannish joy on, I have to post anyway, even if everyone is busy with comic wank day.

The Man with the Knives is a Riverside short story, which is available online since yesterday.

I wonder if anyone who hasn't read the series can take much from the story, but as the books left me with a massive want for more I sucked up every new details about the characters.

In the end of "Privilege of the sword" Alec is forced to leave the city because he murdered a rival nobleman, so he leaves the duchy to Katherine, takes Richard and sails on to greener shores. From a few lines in "The fall of the kings" we know that he and Richard settled down on an island, where they lived happily for a while. Then Richard died. Some time afterward Alec married Sofia but died himself before Theron was born.

This story takes place directly after Richards death, when Alec meets Sofia. What's so cool about this series is that there are so many underlying motives and returning patterns. Richard and Alec lived directly at the cliffs, considering that Richard is almost completely blind it's a weird choice of place to grow old for a couple.
But it's symbolic for how they lived in Riverside, which is the time Alec is longing for, where they figuratively danced on the edge of the abyss every day. Alec likes to flirt with disaster, to stare into the abyss, but in the end he can't really let go of the control.
Richard on the other hand loves the challenge. He always expected that at some point he'd meet a foe, who'd overpower him, but mean as the universe is, he loses his eyesight and can't go down fighting. So he plays with the wind on the cliffs, like he did with his opponents, taking night time walks on the edge.

And one day he fell off. Which is so exceptionally cruel for Alec, because no one with a brain like Alec's could not think of suicide. Sure, he thought they were happy on there little house on the cliffs, that they were enough for each other. But did Richard? Did he still think this live without a real challenge worth living? Did he just fall off by accident? Or did he chose to end it? Or did what they had there just not mean enough to him to take proper care?

It's such a mean ending for the two of them and one that is so fitting because it leaves no room for peace.

And of course the other part of the story is about Alec and Sofia. It's a pretty great story in itself because it is a very atypical love story. It's not the one true love, at least not for Alec. His one true love just tumbled over a cliff and left him broken.
What he has with Sofia is a completely different thing that is much saner in a way. She helps him heal, he changes her live, or rather gives her the impulse to do it. Richard and Alec were in many ways a destructive couple, especially when they were younger. Alec and Sofia are constructive but not nearly as passionate or caught up in each other. He heals, he saves a few lives with what he knows about anatomy and Sofia later on becomes a surgeon.

Also this new relationship allows Alec to get away from himself, the same way he did when he left the hill behind. No one knows who he is, not even his name. Not what he did, he gets the chance to start anew, even if he is of course caught in his past, to Sofia he's a new man.

What can I say. I liked it.

I'm very curious about the next short story that is set after swordspoint and said to come out in summer. I really hope I'll be able to get it over here somehow.