The book had no pictures but nearly a hundred pages of hand-written scrawl. In the candlelight, which made shadows cavort across the walls like some two-dimensional circus, it looked ominous and demonic and Melrose found himself edging slightly away from it. Rufus closed the book up after several seconds.
The main room of the house was messy, though Melrose supposed that when you were blind you either didn’t care about the mess or weren’t aware of it all. Against the back wall were two bookcases, one full and the other half-full. This struck him as odd since Rufus couldn’t see to read. There was a single chair in the room, set near a fireplace that was cold and dark; snow had fallen down the chimney and settled on top of charred-looking logs. There was a footstool near the chair that looked stained and dirty, and across the room was a door that led into other rooms in the house. Judging by the size, from the outside, there must be several more rooms through that way.
There were two windows opposite the bookcases, both curtained for the night. By the door leading deeper into the house was a waist-height wooden table on which sat a dirty plate and a half-full cup of water. A fork had been dropped on the floor beneath the table.
“When did you go blind?” asked Melrose. He bent to retrieve the fork from the floor.
“About five years ago,” said Rufus. “You’re going to ask how I read the book, aren’t you?”
“It’s a pretty obvious question,” said Melrose. He put the fork on the plate with a clink and Rufus’s head turned sharply towards the source of the sound.
“Don’t move anything,” he said waspishly. “If you move things I won’t know where they are.”
“Just picking up the food-weapon that you dropped,” said Melrose. “Saves you finding it with your foot later.”
“Well… tell me first then,” said Rufus. He shuffled across the bare wooden floor to the bookcase and ran his hand over the spines, deciding where to put the book back. “Actually, make yourself useful and light the fire. It’s freezing in here.”
Melrose agreed completely with that assessment of the room and knelt down by the fireplace to see what needed doing. Though charred, the logs still had plenty of unburned wood on them so he turned them to bring the freshest wood to the bottom and then looked for kindling.
“I have a device,” said Rufus, “that can read the books to me. It’s a decidedly clever little thing that was… well, brought to me, I suppose you’d say, shortly after I went blind. It’s saved me a lot of trouble. Finding a good amanuensis is a nightmare, you know?”
“No,” said Melrose scattering small twigs and wood shavings over the stones in the fireplace, mounding them and then setting them alight with the flint. Rufus’s head turned again on hearing the snap of the metal against stone.
“Oh, there’s a device for lighting the fire as well,” he said. “Didn’t I say?”
“No,” said Melrose, getting back to his feet. “You seem to have a lot of devices.”
“Heh, yes,” said Rufus. “Well, you see —“
“Sharpening this sword,” interrupted Melrose, “is going to involve finding you a device, isn’t it?”
“That’s quite the conclusion to jump to!”
“Isn’t it?”
The logs in the fire had caught light before Melrose managed to get Rufus to admit that this was the case.
“Right,” said Melrose. He sat down in the chair, ignoring the look of annoyance of Rufus’s face. “So, I’m going to have go and find this thing. Who can sharpen the sword using it then?”
“Well, practically anyone,” said Rufus throwing his arms wide as though to encompass the whole world. “Anyone at all. So long as….”
“Go on.”
“Well, the device needs a command word,” said Rufus. “It’s in the book.”
“So anyone who knows this word can sharpen the sword?”
“Yes. Well, technically yes.”
Melrose sighed and stretched his legs out, resting his feet on the footstool. A strange aroma like dried herbs rose up from it with a puff of dust. “I’m not going anywhere tonight,” he said. “I’m staying here, in the warm, in front of this fire. So you can take as long as you like to tell me what the new problem is, but you are going to tell me.”
Rufus hummed, hawed, prevaricated and tutted his way through six excuses before giving in.
“The device I’ve got can’t pronounce the command word,” said Rufus. “Someone needs to read the book and tell me, or you, or whoever, what the command word is.”
“Doesn’t sound so hard,” said Melrose sleepily. The warmth of the fire was extremely welcome after the day he’d had, and while he was aware that the blood on his cuirass was probably smeared all over Rufus’s chair, he found it hard to care. The grotty little man seemed to have an excuse for everything he was expected to do.
“I couldn’t read the word when I could still see,” said Rufus. “The handwriting in the book is execrable. The device has coped pretty well, but it stays silent at the command word, so either it can’t read it either, or it doesn’t know how to pronounce it. So you probably need a wizard to read it.”
“What does execrable mean?” asked Melrose. “And aren’t you a wizard?”
“Trainee! Trainee! And I don’t have a mentor either,” said Rufus, sounding excited. “You’ll need an actual wizard from somewhere, and they don’t grow on trees.”
“Funny thing,” said Melrose, sounding reflective. “Only when I first met you — and several times after that, when I think about it — I don’t recall you mentioning the trainee part before.”
“Well—“
“In fact, I’m sure I remember you calling yourself the mage-smith of Dalshire.”
“Once, maybe—“
“Lots of times, in fact. I bet, if I go out and ask the people here, they’d probably not tell me about the trainee thing either.”
“Why don’t you, then?”
“Hah.” Melrose closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the fire. “You’d like that. But still, I don’t think you can get away with calling yourself a trainee, Rufus.”
“I am still blind though.”
Melrose thought about it. “No devices to help you see again?”
“Not without your sword being sharpened first.”
There was a long silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire, and then a pop as some knot of wood exploded sending a plume of sparks up the chimney.
“I see,” said Melrose finally. “So what am I getting paid for all this then?”
“I don’t—“
“Cut the bluster, Rufus. I only ended up back here because you lied to me about the sword to begin with, and now it turns out that you want this device and that device and gods know what else… and all I want is my sword sharpened.”
“That is a form of payment!”
“Not when the reason it can’t be sharpened is your lies,” said Melrose. “So, if I’m getting all this junk for you, then my sword gets sharpened and I get payment. You’ve got till the morning to figure out what you’re going to offer me. And if I don’t like it, I’m taking your stupid book and finding someone else who can read it.”
“That’s not a very sensible threat,” said Rufus, but he didn’t sound confident.
“I’ll burn the rest of them too,” said Melrose looking at the fire. “I hope you get on well with your neighbours, as they might set fire to the whole house. Who can tell what happens when a trainee mage’s book go up in flames?”
“Morning, you said?” asked Rufus after a significant pause.
“Yes.”
“Ah. Well. Goodnight then.”
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