The towering halls of Vivessi Thricul were home to great and terrible works of art. Vivessi herself was the artist. She was a flesh sculptor, a blood painter, a composer of anguish, and the entirety of the Dark City viciously envied her skill. It pleased Vivessi to know she was envied, just as it pleased her to crack open a lesser creature and paint her walls with its hidden colours. But pleasure was elusive on the day she stood before her latest work, a homage to the fall of Uelendi as told by the ancient song-weaver Inngelde.
‘No,’ Vivessi murmured as she gazed at the piece before her. Her ornamental talons curled around her chin, while at the same time, the heel of her shoe impaled the slave at her feet. ‘No, no, no.’ Vivessi’s mouth twisted, and she dug in her heel for good measure. ‘This is all wrong!’
‘Honoured courtesan,’ a low voice said. Vivessi ignored it. She ripped her heel from the slave and marched towards the twitching figures that made up her art. Fifty-eight captives were flayed and positioned in patterns that made use of their exposed bones to produce sound. Taken together, the display would invoke the burning of Uelendi. Or it should have.
‘Honoured courtesan,’ the low voice repeated.
‘What?’ Vivessi said, glaring at the source.
It was a hooded slave-monger of the weeping-jewel district, and with him were slaves chained together in a line. ‘The wares you have requested, most honoured one.’
‘Oh,’ Vivessi said, her ennui rising. She swept towards the slaves and gazed down at the first one. ‘No.’ An incubus warrior emerged from the shadows and anointed the rejected slave’s head with liquid from a jar. The slave began to dissolve. The slave-monger presented the next one. ‘No,’ Vivessi said again. A new incubus emerged and anointed the second slave. ‘No, no, no, yes.’ Three more slaves began to scream and dissolve, while the fourth was removed from the line. Vivessi continued appraising each slave, until she came to a small mon-keigh with stringy hair and large eyes. The girl did not look at Vivessi. Instead, the mon-keigh stared unblinking at her art. Vivessi kicked the girl with such force that the neighbouring slaves collapsed with her. ‘I did not give you permission to gaze upon my work.’
The girl didn’t respond, instead raising her head to stare at the flayed bodies. Vivessi kicked the girl again. Again, the girl rose up to stare. Vivessi narrowed her eyes. The girl murmured in an alien tongue, still staring at the art. ‘What did she say?’
The slave-monger cleared his throat. ‘She said, most honoured one, that the sky looks like it’s burning.’
Vivessi’s scowl disappeared. After a moment that seemed to stretch, she spoke. ‘This one. Give it to me.’
Soon enough, the slave girl had a new name and a new purpose. Her name was Little Eye, and her purpose was to assist Vivessi in her work. The girl carried and mixed paints, peeled back flesh, and helped position limbs. Vivessi only addressed her to issue commands or lecture on the artistic style known as kanic-feroc, or kanfe for short. Little Eye never spoke, never responded. She only carried out Vivessi’s commands and watched.
‘Kanfe’s foundation is pain,’ Vivessi began one day. She pried open a captive’s finger, pinning one side to a canvas. ‘Brush number eighteen.’ Little Eye handed her the brush, and Vivessi continued. ‘The pain of loss, specifically. If the work is not rooted in that, it is not kanfe, but something else. Blue dye number three.’ Little Eye passed her the vial containing the dye. ‘But the art cannot just convey the pain through metaphor or depiction, no, the work itself, the medium, must suffer that pain. If the medium does not suffer, the work has failed.’ Little Eye said nothing, but her eyes followed Vivessi’s every move.
Years passed, and Vivessi’s acclaim grew. As did Little Eye. The girl became a young woman, but her role remained the same. ‘Dye,’ Vivessa said. The artist didn’t notice that she no longer needed to specify which dye. ‘Brush.’ Vivessi was consumed by her work, striving for greater and greater depictions of kanfe. ‘Scalpel.’
One thing that did change, however, was that Little Eye began to accompany Vivessi on raids beyond the Dark City. For Vivessi was a favoured courtesan of a feared archon, and she was as much an artist on the battlefield as she was in her own home. Little Eye did not fight, instead presenting Vivessi with weapons as skillfully as she supplied her with brushes. The pair became inseparable, and as always, Little Eye watched her master’s craft.
On one such raid, the vessel containing Vivessi and her archon was blown from the sky by a rival’s sabotage. Impacting in the jungle below, the incubi warriors and crew were killed instantly, though Vivessi and her archon survived. Vivessi was impaled through her stomach by twisted metal. The archon was pinned underneath a thruster red with heat.
Little Eye, unharmed, extracted herself from the wreckage. ‘Muses curse me,’ the archon said through gritted teeth. ‘Vivessi, have your slave summon a flesh-mender and more warriors. We cannot remain here.’
‘You heard my lord, slave. Thought-cast for aid.’
Little Eye looked at Vivessi, then at the archon. The young woman approached the drukhari lord and stood over him. ‘What are you waiting for?’ the archon bellowed. Little Eye stared a beat longer, then picked up a piece of shrapnel and dug it into the archon’s eye. The drukhari lord screamed.
‘What are you doing?’ Vivessi yelled. ‘Little Eye, cease!’
Little Eye continued her work, and the archon continued to scream. The young woman finally turned to Vivessi, presenting the archon’s mutilated face. Vivessi’s anger slowly dissipated.
‘Oh, how dare you. I love it.’
