The Two of Swords: Part 14 by K. J. Parker

biscuits.”
    Myrtus grinned and went away. “You don’t know anything at all?” she said.
    “No.”
    “Very well.” She laced her fingers together and rested them on the table. “In that case, let me tell you a story.”
    “Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a blacksmith. He lived in a city, or a village, or a tent in the grass country, and people from miles around used to come to him for the tools and the other things they needed.
    “Every day, just before daybreak, he would build a great fire, as hot as the sun. He crushed ore, mixed it with lime and charcoal and loaded it into a crucible; with the bellows he made the fire roar, until the iron sweated out of the rock and pooled in the pig slots he’d cut into the floor. Or he would take scrap from the scrap heap, heat it until it was soft, flatten it, draw it out, fold it and weld it and fold it again and again, then draw it down into bars over a swage block. When they were cool he put the pigs and bars up on a rack, ready to be made into whatever he needed to make.
    “Many things were asked of him, from gates to spoons to needles, hooks to hinges to arrowheads. For each purpose he chose the most suitable material: plain iron for those things that neither bend nor flex, steel for those things that flex and carry an edge. He heated the material in the fire, worked it between hammer and anvil, stretched it, jumped it up, bent it, flattened it, twisted it and drew it out; he could make thick bars and thin plates, straight lines and every possible curve; he could make steel so hard it could cut steel, or sheet so thin you could crumple it in your hand. He could make springs that bent double on themselves and sprang back into shape. He could make wire that twisted and stayed twisted. Everything he made was different, but it all came from the same ore and passed between the same hammer and anvil; and everything he made was for a purpose, and everything,
everything
he made was good.
    “The people would come and take away the things he made; and some of them were wise and used them well, and some of them were stupid, and used them badly. They broke them, bent them, twisted and distorted them; and then they would bring them back to the smith and say, this thing you made for me is no good, fix it or make me another.
    “The smith would look at the work he had made and others had spoiled, and decide what was to be done. Because he loved the things he’d made, he would use all his skill and patience to straighten the bent and the twisted, to weld the broken, to braze and solder, to retemper the steel that had lost its memory. But sometimes the damage they had done was too great; so he put the thing he had made in the fire to soften it, until all its shape and memory were lost, and he hammered and folded and welded it back into bar stock, and began again, as if with fresh iron.
    “Now, you must have seen some of the work that this smith made. You will have seen the sun and moon, which rise and set with such extraordinary precision, and the seasons that come round so reliably we can live by them, though we can’t see the ratchets and the pawls. You will have seen the earth, which gives us bread and meat; you will have seen the body, which is the most perfect tool for all our needs, which responds to our quickest thought and our deepest memory. In everything that works and functions you’ve seen his hand; the mere fact that we can live, that we have a sun to warm us and food we can eat – if you want proof of this smith and his skill, look about you, look at everything useful and helpful and good, and ask yourself; why does water refresh us and food nourish us, why is there summer to grow the grain and winter to cool the earth, why is there a sun to give us light and darkness to let us sleep? Or, if you prefer, who designed us so that we can live in the world, digesting bread and meat and water, being warmed by sunlight and cooled by shade, seeing in daylight and