“Fuck you,” says Mulaghesh. “Tell me about the swords, the sentinels’ swords. Someone’s found them and learned how to make them—who?”
“This I do not know,” he says quietly. “I do not know these things.”
“Someone’s been on this island robbing your damned sacred graves! They must have come to you!”
“I do not remember them,” says the man. “I do not have these memories.”
“Someone fucking resurrected Saint Zhurgut! Don’t tell me you don’t know who was behind that!”
“I remember those who have shed blood,” says the man. “I remember the dead. I remember the battle, the victors, the defeated. I remember what matters. All else is trivia.”
“Someone is trying to bring about the Night of the Sea of Swords! How is it going to happen? How does it work?”
“Work? As if it were some device, some machine? What you describe is inevitable. Ask why the stars dance in the sky, ask why water flows downhill. Ask the mechanics behind that.” He lowers his eyelids. “She promised it will happen. And thus, it will happen. This is the way of the world.”
“I’ll kill you, damn it!” cries Mulaghesh, raising the rifle. “I’ll do it if you don’t answer me!”
“If I could die,” says the man, “I would let you. I do not fear death. But you are in my world, and this place will not allow me to die.”
“I bet I can hurt you th—”
He shakes his head. “You think you have forced the truth from me. But you are wrong—I wish for you to see the City of Blades again, for you will see truth there. Truth about the world, and your secret heart. Now go—and see.” He opens his mouth wide, and a hot cloud of acrid smoke comes pouring out. It’s so much that Mulaghesh has to stumble out, covering her eyes with the crook of her arm. She spies a hint of flickering moonlight, goes reeling toward it, and takes a deep grateful breath when she finds herself in clear air.
***
She collapses onto the mud, reveling in the feel of the cool, damp earth between her fingers, relieved to be free of that awful place.
“Was he there?” says Signe. “What happened? Did you get what you needed?”
Mulaghesh looks up. Signe is watching her with wide eyes, holding a grenade with one finger hooked around the pin. She smiles nervously and stows it away in her pocket. “Well. You did say thirty minutes.”
Mulaghesh coughs and spits to the side. “Motherfucker,” she says hoarsely.
“What’s the matter with you?” says Signe. “Are you all right?”
“No. No, I’m not fucking all right.” Mulaghesh stands on wobbly legs, then looks back at the dome of blades. “Get back. Get back behind the trees. Now!”
Signe starts backing away. “Why?”
Mulaghesh pulls a grenade from her belt, rips the pin out with her teeth—Signe shouts, “What!” behind her—and lobs it into the entrance in the dome of blades. Then she and Signe start running.
Mulaghesh sprints through the circle gate and slides down into a crouch on the hillside, covering her head. Then she waits. And waits.
Nothing. No blast, no bang.
She waits a little longer. Then she releases her head and looks up, finding Signe flat on her belly in the brush.
“A…A dud?” Signe asks.
“No,” says Mulaghesh furiously. She stands. “No, it wasn’t a dud. It won’t let him die, he said. That motherfucker. It won’t let him die!”
She walks to the circle gate and stares at the dome, trembling with rage. “Fuck you!” she screams at it. “Do you hear me in there? Fuck you!”
There is no answer. Just the trees swaying in the wind.
Signe stands up. “General Mulaghesh, I…I think we should leave.”
Mulaghesh wants to try again, to throw another grenade into that damned dome and hear the echoing crash, to just hurt that bastard a little…
“General Mulaghesh?”
“What?” she says dimly. “Huh?”
“We should go,” says Signe. “Come on. Let’s go. It was a mistake to come here.”
As if in a dream, Mulaghesh turns and begins walking down the Tooth with her. She’s nearly halfway down when she realizes she’s been crying.
***
Far out on the open seas, Mulaghesh sits on the deck and stares down at the face of the moon reflected in ocean. Signe’s at the tiller, deftly steering the yacht among the dark waves, but neither of them has spoken for over three hours.
Then, finally, Signe says, “You saw him, didn’t you?”
Mulaghesh doesn’t respond. She imagines how nice it’d be to slip off this deck and into those dark waters and feel herself being tugged downstream to the sea.
“You’ve looked terrible since you walked out of that place,” says Signe. “Like you’re ill. You haven’t talked about it at all. Did he…Did he do anything to you? Did he, I don’t know, poison you?”
“No. Hells, I don’t know. Maybe.” Signe slips down to sit beside her on the deck. Mulaghesh doesn’t look at her. “Maybe I poisoned myself a long time ago. Only I’m just now realizing it.”
She stares into the waters, then down at her false hand. Her elbow aches. Her head feels heavy, her eyes feel heavy. It suddenly feels so difficult to look at anything, to even move.
She starts talking.
She tells Signe about the March, and about Shoveyn, the little town in the middle of nowhere outside of Bulikov, forty years ago. She tells her about the camp the night after, butchering stolen hogs, the night filled with their squeals and the scent of blood. About the smoldering ruins of the town beyond.
She tells her about how she sat there, sharpening her knife outside of Biswal’s tent. And then Sankhar and Bansa walked by, entering the captain’s tent, and they spoke to him in quiet voices.
Biswal called to her. She came in, and he said, “Lieutenant Mulaghesh, these two young men here have decided they don’t wish to continue any farther.”
And she said, “Is that so, sir.”
“Yes, that’s so. They feel that what we’re doing here is…how did you put it, Bansa? Deeply immoral?”
And Bansa said, “Yes. Yes, sir, I…We just don’t think it’s right to keep doing this. We can’t do it anymore. We won’t. And I’m sorry, sir, but we simply cannot continue to cooperate with this, sir. You can try to lock us up, but if you do we’ll just try to escape.”
Biswal said, “That’s eloquently put. We don’t have the resources to imprison you, and I can’t waste the time to have you flogged. So I suppose we don’t have any other option than just to let you two go.”
How surprised they were. Just shocked. But as they left Biswal looked back at her and said only, “Try not to waste a bolt.”
And she understood. She’d known what this would lead to the second she heard Bansa speak.
They walked out, and Biswal stopped them outside the tent. He turned, smiling, and said to them, “Boys, just one more thing…”
His voice so chummy, so cheerful. But then he looked at Mulaghesh, his eyes glittering, and her knife was already out.