Numismatic Archetypes in the Year of Five Regents
ShortStory 3,560 words Recommended by 3 award/anthology sources
"They cut off Auréle’s head and they put it on a pike above the city’s third best bridge. To me, that seemed a shame. I had only just got his nose right. It had a crook in it, Auréle’s nose. A sporting accident, from his days at the Academy. He’d been playing in some intramural league, the sort of game that teenagers play with balls and sticks..."
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Quasar links out; the story lives on Clarkesworld, where the author gets the click.