He rested, though it was a watchful, nervous rest, constantly turning this way and that to see if anymore lizardkin were somehow sneaking up on him through a flat, featureless plain of sand. When he felt too nervous to stay sitting and his legs were only aching faintly he got back up, the hairs on his arms standing up as he anticipated another attack at any moment, and took the time to search the corpses. There was little of any interest on them — pockets containing scraps of paper with lizardkin script on them, though to Melrose they were just squiggles — and clean clothes (save where blood had stained them) that seemed well looked after but old. They were startlingly soft to the touch and Melrose, whose own undergarment chafed even in good weather, felt a little jealous. He had just about given up hope of finding anything when he remembered that the lizardkin woman had appeared to have something in her hands, so he checked them. Her palms were a greenish colour and looked like they’d been painted, and after a moment of staring at them he realised that the paint was obscuring a ring as well. He pulled it off and wiped it as clean as he could on her clothes.
The ring looked to be made of silver or platinum and had been blackened at some point in places by something that wasn’t rubbing off. When he ran a thumbnail over the inside of the ring it seemed to catch on things, and he thought there might be writing in there. All in all, it was perhaps a clue, but more of a mystery. He rolled around the palm of his hand, wondering if it was valuable enough to sell, and decided that maybe Rufus could appraise it when he got back.
If he was getting back. He looked around again at the never-ending plain and held back a sigh of frustration.
“Safest place for you,” he said to the ring, just to hear a voice that wasn’t from a lizardkin, “is on a finger.” He had to squeeze his littlest finger into it though, as it was too small for his others.
He looked up, resolving to continue West unless the sword guided him otherwise, and nearly jumped out of his own skin. The featureless white sand had vanished, replaced by grey flagstones, and the bodies of the lizardkin were lying in pools of purplish blood that he was sure the sand had drunk. He rubbed his forehead, wondering if he was hallucinating, and as his littlest finger passed across his eyes everything seemed to shimmer and evert, and suddenly he was standing back in the workshop again. The dead lizardkin were still on the floor, and the machines around him were humming and buzzing likes bees on a summer afternoon. The strange metallic contraption was close by overhead and it was sparkling with light and making the shadows in the room cavort frenetically. There were bloody footprints on the floor, walking a wide circle around the edges of the workshop, and as he studied them he realised that they were his. All of his trekking across the sandy plain had actually been walking in circles in this workshop!
“I guess you have a use after all,” he said to the ring, staring at again. It looked innocuous.
He walked around, making sure to stay away from the loudest machines and the spider-thing, and reached the table without any further strangeness. He ignored the neatly stacked papers and just thumped it until the jolting caused a drawer to slide slightly open. Inside was a rectangular metal box with an eye incised in the top, and this was a close enough match to the Device that Rufus had described that he was happy to seize it and leave.
In the doorway he was stopped by a middle-aged man with a walrus moustache and a gnarled wooden walking-stick.
“Move,” said Melrose, drawing his sword. He was no mood for any further magical tricks.
“Of course, Sir,” said the man stepping aside. “I just wanted to ask you if you know what you’re doing.”
Melrose walked outside and then paused. He looked at the stranger who looked back at him with quizzical eyes.
“Getting a Device,” he said. “For a mage. A trainee mage, he calls himself.”
“And why doesn’t this mage get it for himself?”
“You’ve got me there,” said Melrose. He shrugged. “Why do mages do so little for themselves? I mean, they have all this magic and they always seem to have other people to fetch and carry for them. Make their meals, make their beds, sweep their floors. It’s never magic doing it, is it?”
“That’s not quite what I mea—“
“What good is all that magic anyway?” said Melrose, warming to his theme. “What do they ever do with it that is useful? I mean, if you want a portal opening to a strange world where monstrous creatures try and eat you, sure, they can do that. They can summon elemental spirits and rain fiery death down on armies from a distance, which is kind of useful if they’re on your side, but can they divert a river so that there was no need for the war in the first place? If they can, have they ever? I mean, you’d have to think they’re either hiding how useless this magic is, or they’re the most self-centred, arrogant, narcissistic, pompous unlikeable bastards you could ever meet.”
“Not quite wha—“
“Royalty excepted, of course.”
“… of course,” said the man. He waited a moment to see if Melrose would continue, and then opened his mouth, only to find Melrose cutting him off again.
“Or sharpen a sword even! You’d think that’d be a piece of cake, really. Just sharpen one bloody sword.” He looked at his sword in his hand, and then at the middle-aged man. “I mean, you wouldn’t want me to stab you with a blunt sword, would you?”
“Don’t stab me at all, please,” said the man quickly. “I can see you have a lot on your mind. Good day.”
Melrose watched him shuffle away, wondering briefly why the man had a walking stick he clearly wasn’t using, and then dismissed it from his mind.
“You’d think they could sharpen a bloody sword,” he muttered to himself, sheathing his sword again. He set off across the non-streets of Dalshire to Rufus’s house.
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