And she can hear them. She can hear them talking, whispering. Inside these weapons, she realizes, are the memories and desires of an entire civilization.
A small figure toils before the forge, adorned in a thick leather apron and a wide, blank metal mask with a tinted glass plate. The sight would almost be comical if the person did not carry themselves with an air of such grimness, pumping the bellows with determination and familiarity, indifferent to the sting of the sparks. This creature knows the forge and knows their work, and intends to do it.
“Little Rada Smolisk,” whispers Mulaghesh. “What are you doing?”
She watches as Rada holds a blazing chunk of metal in the teeth of a pair of tongs. She sets it on the face of the anvil and gives it a mighty blow, turning it over and over, her movements assured. Mulaghesh can see that the forge is cunningly crafted: Rada has built her own hearth and firepot and tuyere and bellows, with a vent above that must feed into the chimney. It must have taken her months to construct. There are also air vents built into the corners of the basement in order to allow out the heat. There’s even a draft in the room as the hot, active air circulates out, bringing the cool, wintry air in.
Mulaghesh glances around at the dozens of swords, and reflects that, not for the first time, Rada Smolisk is trapped down here in the dark with the dead.
Mulaghesh paces forward, mindful of the hammer in Rada’s hand. “Stop, Rada.”
Rada pauses for a second, then continues hammering away on the lump of metal.
“I said stop it!”
Rada turns the lump over, examines it, then sets it back in the coals. Her voice is small and soft: “No.”
“Put the hammer down!”
“No.” She takes the piece of metal back out, lays it on the face of the anvil, and pounds away at it again.
“I will shoot you, Rada!”
“Then do so,” says Rada quietly. “Shoot me. Kill me.” Another ringing blow. “I am indifferent to it.”
“I know what you’re doing! I’ve been to the City of Blades, Rada! I’ve seen it!”
The hammering slows. Then she remarks, “So? What difference does that make? How does that stop anything? So you know. So what?” She looks at the hammer, considering it. “This is the most alive I’ve ever felt in my life. Did you know that? All the burdens on my soul and on my tongue…With each blow of the hammer, they fade away.”
Mulaghesh watches as Rada lifts the hammer and begins pounding away again. “The hells with this,” mutters Mulaghesh. She holsters her weapon and strides forward. Rada turns, brandishing the hammer, but Mulaghesh can tell that she’s not sure what she really wants to do with it: she didn’t expect or even really want a confrontation. So Mulaghesh grabs Rada’s wrist with her right hand, forcefully spins her around, and delivers a devastating stomp to the back of her right knee.
Something pops wetly in Rada’s knee. She screams in agony and falls to the ground, her hammer clanging on the anvil. Mulaghesh ignores her. She walks to the swords and starts grabbing them and hurling them onto the coals.
Rada’s shrieks turn into peals of laughter. She lifts her metal mask. Her face is wild and ash-streaked, not at all the timid little thing Mulaghesh has known over the past weeks. “You think that’s going to do anything? You think you’re going to destroy them like that? Maybe if you had a few weeks! It’s too late, General.”
“You went to the Teeth of the World, didn’t you, Rada?” says Mulaghesh, pumping the bellows. The swords glow hot, but not hot enough. “Took a boat, maybe hired one of the tribesmen. You found Petrenko’s sword. He took you to the City of Blades to learn from him directly, projected you there. But the Watcher there gave you the boot because you didn’t deserve to be there.”
“I’m not a killer, no,” says Rada softly. “But I know death. I know it quite well. It is my constant companion, as you know well, General.”
“So what in hells are you doing bringing more of it down on the world?” snarls Mulaghesh. “You tested out your swords on those innocent people in the countryside! You sat and watched as people butchered their own loved ones!”
“I had to know if it worked,” she says, her voice still soft. “I had to know if the swords were true, if they were really connected to the City of Blades. They took so much work to make….”
“Work? I’ll fucking say! You made the tunnel to the thinadeskite mines, you’re the one who’s been stealing it to reforge these weapons! You’re a damned clever creature, Rada, but are you so damned foolish you don’t realize those things will kill Continentals and Saypuris alike?”
“Of course I know that,” says Rada. “Of course I do.”
“Then why are you doing it, for the seas’ sakes?”
“Why?” says Rada, her voice rising, torn between amusement and hysteria and outrage. “Why? You want to know why?”
“Yes, damn you!”
“Because it is one thing to be conquered and lose one’s land,” screams Rada suddenly, “but it is another to lose eternity!”
Mulaghesh pauses, struck by Rada’s frenzied outburst.
“Can you imagine it, General?” Rada cries. “Can you imagine being trapped with all the corpses of your family for days and days, the stink of their bodies, the leak of their blood? Feeling them grow cold and clammy in the dark beside you? And imagine growing up fearing that whenever the lights go out, they might come back! Imagine going to bed every night not knowing if you might reach out in the night and feel a cool, wet face beside you, and feeling its mustache and eyebrows and knowing it was once your father! Just flesh and bone, and nothing more.”
Rada looks up at Mulaghesh, her face contorted with fury. “Then imagine realizing that once there was more. Discovering that there was an afterlife, a heaven! Once my family could have been safe! Once the dead could have been preserved, loved, respected! When I gripped Petrenko’s sword, I saw it. I saw what once waited for these people, and I realized all at once what had truly been taken away from us—that in one stroke all the afterlives that had been lovingly built for us had come crashing down, collapsing, trapping all those souls in the dark….Do you understand what your country did to us, General? Do you understand that the Blink didn’t merely injure the living, but countless, countless souls in the afterlife? And all the people who died in the Battle of Bulikov died twice—once in this world, and again when they never passed on to the afterlife intended for them!”