King of Swords · Swords · Air

Smith set him facing straight out of the card, gold crown over a red hood covering his ears and throat. The robe is pale turquoise, the mantle a dull violet, and a red under-sleeve shows at each wrist, the same red running down his left side to the ground. The sword is up in his right hand, a bare hand closed on the grip beneath a plain crossguard, the blade leaning slightly off vertical. His left hand hangs curled and empty. Behind him a dark carved throne back: a butterfly at the crest, a pale crescent moon to either side, more butterflies below. Turquoise sky, a bank of grey cloud at his left, two birds high above it, wind-cut trees at both edges, green turf and orange earth at his feet. No court. No crowd.

Everything in the picture is settled except what the edge is for.

His suit is air and he is where it ends: intellect given a throne and told to govern from it. The Page watched, the Knight rode the idea headlong, the Queen came to clarity by way of loss. The King is what a mind becomes once it has to decide for other people and then live inside the decision. Waite reads him through the offices of judgment: law, command, authority.

Upright, that is the gift. Principle applied without favor, the hard true sentence said plainly and then stood behind.

Reversed, the same edge turns. Judgment goes cold, candor becomes a permit for cruelty, the crown sits above nothing that thinks. Air carries no mercy of its own. It comes from the hand on the hilt, and the hand is bare.