Fighting with fire

CHAPTER TEN

The Scurleyshoo Death burst above the surface into the glittering sunlight. The force field above them vanished, the water all around them disappeared and suddenly the ship was floating on the surface of the ocean for the first time in hundreds of years. The toffs over at the teashop were cheering their fool heads off, clearly quite delighted by the sight of the ship shooting to the surface in an explosion of foam, especially as it currently had a giant octopus entwined all around it. But the only thing Lex was aware of was Jesse, crumpled motionless on the deck. No known antidote, wasn’t that what the book had said?

Of course people died in the Games. That was partly what made them exciting? there was genuine danger and genuine peril. But it was not supposed to be Lex’s companion who died.

A bare moment after the ship broke the surface, the captain succeeded in driving a spear right through one of Gloria’s tentacles and was standing there, roaring his triumph in the middle of the deck, when another tentacle suddenly curled around him and plucked him up and over the side of the ship. Suddenly all the tentacles were gone, Gloria was gone and Captain Jed Saltworthy was gone. A matter of seconds later, the crew all vanished: faded away like wandering ghosts. People said later that it must have been because Gloria had bitten the captain’s foolish head off and that his death, too, was sufficient to break the curse over the crew, who were finally free to rest in peace.

But Lex was aware of none of this, for he was too overcome with horror at the sight of Jesse, sprawled on the deck. One of the companions in the last Game had been killed by the medusa during the first round but Lex simply hadn’t cared. After all, the man had been a mean-looking gangster. He’d probably had it coming. But Jesse had only been trying to save a little girl. It wasn’t fair that he was dead. It wasn’t right.

Matters were not improved when the three Gods appeared beside them on the now-deserted deck. Kala practically snatched the captain’s medallion from Tess, smirking with glee over her prize whilst the other Gods stood by sulkily looking distinctly unhappy? as losing Gods usually did.

‘The first round goes to me!’ Kala crowed gleefully.

Jeremiah? to his credit? did not look particularly pleased about winning. His hand was gripped tightly around his sister’s and he didn’t appear to be able to tear his eyes away from the cowboy at his feet.

‘You humiliated me at the Wither City!’ Lex hissed in a voice that was full of bitterness. ‘You cheated me out of the first round! And now my companion is dead because of you! I’ll make you pay for this, if it’s the last thing I ever do!’

‘Give it your best shot, thief!’ Kala said with a horrible smile. ‘We’ll be ready for you!’ She placed her hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder and they, and Tess, disappeared. The round now over, they had presumably returned to Jeremiah’s ship.

‘Bad luck, my Lady,’ Thaddeus said with mock sympathy. ‘But you know what they say: there’s always someone who kicks the bucket in the first round. Just be grateful it wasn’t your player himself.’

‘At least my player came close to winning the round!’ Lady Luck snapped. ‘He did not fall at the first hurdle with those enchanted dolphins as your enchantress did!’

Thaddeus instantly looked less pleased with himself and disappeared from the deck with a scowl, presumably to go and retrieve his player. At the same time, the Goddess of Luck waved her arm and she, Lex and Jesse disappeared from the deck of the Scurleyshoo Death and instantly reappeared on the bridge of Lex’s enchanted ship.

‘How could you let this happen?’ Lex rounded on her at once.

‘Oh, my dear, I know it’s a horrible thing but… well…’ Lady Luck fluttered her hands miserably. ‘Little accidents do happen during Games, you know.’

‘Little accidents? Jesse is dead!’ He shuddered even to say it. The words were horrible in his ears, and horrible in his mouth. This was not the way it was supposed to be at all.

‘Lex, you know the reality of the Games. This is what you sign up for.’

That might be what other, less talented players signed up for, but it was not what Lex signed up for. After all, Mr Schmidt had lived through the whole of the last Game with no serious injuries whatsoever, and he’d been a doddering old lawyer. Jesse had been a swarthy cowboy. It just wasn’t fair. And, to make it even worse, Lex couldn’t help feeling that he was at least partially to blame for it. After all, if he hadn’t gone after Jesse and convinced him to play in the Game then he wouldn’t have been there in the first place. Or if he had just told Jeremiah and Tess about the poisonous octopuses then Tess would never have picked one up.

‘He shouldn’t have intervened!’ Lex raged angrily. ‘It was his own stupid fault! He shouldn’t have concerned himself about what Tess East was or wasn’t doing! She was the enemy! It was no concern of ours if she killed herself!’

‘I agree, dear,’ Lady Luck said tearfully. ‘It was a silly thing for him to do. And it’s a dreadful shame. Really, it is.’

She glanced out the window at the sudden sound of cheers and noticed that Jeremiah’s boat was pulling out of the harbour.

‘We’d better set off for Olaree, dear,’ she said. ‘That’s where the second round is to take place. We’ll go up on deck and bury poor Jesse at sea along the way.’

Lex stared at her dumbly. Would she be this fickle when Lex himself finally died? Shed a tear or two, look suitably pained for five minutes and then flit off in search of the next thing to occupy her flighty mind?

‘Look, I can’t just tip him over the edge of the boat-’ he began, but then he broke off suddenly, eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Did he.. Did he just move?’

‘Move?’ the Goddess replied blankly. ‘He’s dead, Lex. There are blue rings all over his hand.’

‘I thought I saw him move just then.’

‘Oh, my dear, I know that’s what you want to believe, but I’m afraid that-’ But then she, too, broke off with a startled exclamation.

They had both seen it this time. Jesse’s hand had definitely moved.

‘Perhaps that’s a death twitch,’ Lady Luck said, peering a little closer.

‘Gahhhh!’ croaked Jesse.

‘Perhaps that’s a death rattle,’ the Goddess suggested.

Lex pushed her aside impatiently. ‘No, he’s alive! How is this possible?’

The cowboy was, indeed, alive. As Lex and Lady Luck goggled at him in astonishment, he suddenly propped himself up on his elbows with a great shuddering breath that sounded extremely painful.

‘He’s alive!’ Lady Luck screeched in alarm. ‘What wizardry is this? Don’t get too close, Lex! He might be a zombie!’

But Lex wasn’t listening to her. He was too busy rushing forwards to help Jesse to his feet, shaking his hand vigorously and saying, ‘I’m so glad you’re not dead! Do you feel all right?’

‘Er… yeah,’ the cowboy replied. ‘I think so.’

‘Perhaps you have a special immunity. Did you get bitten by a lot of snakes, or something, back in the West?’

Jesse shrugged. ‘No more than usual.’

‘Perhaps it’s because it was a baby that bit you,’ Lex said, reaching for the book.

Consultation of the book revealed that this was indeed a difference between the adult octopuses and their young. It seemed that the babies did not have enough venom to kill a man, only enough to temporarily paralyse him. In the meantime, they were supposed to squeal for the mother who would quickly come over and bite the prey up into little pieces, small enough for the babies to swallow-

‘That’s quite enough of that, thank you, Lex!’ Lady Luck interrupted, fluttering her hands in distress. ‘I’m sure poor Jesse doesn’t want to hear such horrible things.’

‘Oh, no, ma’am; I think they’re fascinating little blighters.’

‘But doesn’t the thought of being chewed up into bite-size pieces and eaten by all those octopuses distress you?’

‘Nope.’

Lady Luck looked rather impressed by this, so Lex snorted and said, ‘He probably just doesn’t have the imagination to picture it.’

‘I guess I’ve never been the imagining type,’ Jesse replied amiably.

After reading the book, it seemed that no lasting damage would be done by a baby octopus bite except for the fact that the blue rings would eventually turn into white scars. Lex himself would have been upset about this. The rings were unsightly and rather gross, and it was important to Lex to minimise scars? especially right there on his hand where anyone could see them? but Jesse just shrugged when Lady Luck started fussing about it. It seemed that out in the Wild West they were all rather proud of their scars.

‘I’ll even be able to beat Popcorn-Face Billy with this,’ Jesse said, holding up his ringed hand and looking at it with approval.

‘Yes, well, your petty victories aside,’ Lex snapped, ‘we’re now losing the Game because of you! The medallion was right there in your hand! Why didn’t you give it to me before rushing off to play the hero? Why did you have to drop it right next to Tess East, for goodness’ sake? There’s no place for heroics in these Games and you’d better get that into your thick head right n-’ He broke off, then said, ‘Hang on! Can we claim hero points for it? He did save her life, after all!’

But Lady Luck was shaking her head. ‘It won’t work, I’m afraid. Hero points can only be awarded for the heroic acts of players, not their companions.’

‘But that’s totally unfair!’ Lex protested.

‘I can try and get the rules changed for the next Game but it’s too late for this one. Once a Game has started you can’t change any of the rules.’

Lex was furious about the entire business. He and Jesse were the ones who had done all the work. All Jeremiah had done was to blunder in stupidly at the end with his sword. It wasn’t fair that he should have won the round. He hadn’t even been the one to pick up the medallion; it had been Tess. But it seemed that, whilst companions couldn’t earn hero points for the player, they could win for them, and so there was nothing to be done about it. For the first time, Lex had actually lost a round, and it was a bitter pill to swallow.

The ship set sail for Olaree where they were to spend the next week before the second round. Rooms had been booked for all three players and their companions in an extremely grand hotel. Lex had fully intended to stay on the boat but, when Lady Luck brought him the newspaper headlines the next morning, he soon changed his mind.

He had expected to tear the papers up in a rage at the sight of story after story touting Jeremiah’s victory. But, to his pleasant surprise, he found that the focus wasn’t on Jeremiah’s victory at all, but rather on Jesse’s heroic, tragic death. Once they realised the cowboy was perfectly all right, Lady Luck had been all for rushing straight off to inform everyone, but Lex had stopped her.

‘Use your head for once,’ he’d said. ‘There might be some way we can use this to our advantage.’

If nothing else, it might give Lex a slight edge in the second round if all the other players believed he had no companion. What Lex had said seemed to set the Goddess off thinking, for she promptly disappeared, saying that she must edit the Game footage. The Games were not broadcast to the stadiums live anymore, simply because the Gods preferred to pick and choose what people saw. They wanted their own players to come across as daring and heroic and brave. So any unfortunate moment where a player might? for example? break down in tears, was carefully edited out later.

When Lex watched the footage from the round on his Divine Eye he had to give Lady Luck some credit, for she had done a very fine job of it, despite the fact that they had lost. The battle with the little octopuses looked quite horrific, as did the big fight up on deck. There was much emphasis? complete with music and slow-motion playback? on the moment when Lex and Jesse both ran towards Tess East to save her from the octopus. Lex could practically hear the rapturous applause from the stadiums when Jesse grabbed the little monster off her and flung it out to sea. And then, most deliciously of all, Lady Luck had included the moment when Jeremiah punched Jesse, only she had omitted the part where Jeremiah had spoken and so? to the spectators in the stadiums? the reason for his punching the cowboy would have been completely unclear. Add to that the fact that Jesse apparently crumpled up and died right there on the deck shortly afterwards… Well, it was enough to bring tears to the most hardened eye. Indeed, the Lex in the footage even seemed to have manly tears glimmering in his eyes at the end of the round.

‘Well, ain’t that just touching?’ Jesse said when he saw it, smacking Lex hard on the back. ‘And there I was thinking you were just a selfish brat who didn’t care about no one but yourself.’

‘I am a selfish brat!’ Lex snapped. ‘I’ve never cried for anyone but myself and I don’t intend to change my habit now. Those tears were added in later, during the edit.’

‘Is that allowed?’

‘Of course. The Gods only touch up what is already there.’

On Jeremiah’s footage, Kala had done a good job of making him seem handsome and fearless and bold. But, if anything, this only added to the overall impression the public had of him as a cold, ruthless, selfish git? whilst poor, noble, heroic Jesse Layton had given his life to save Jeremiah’s little sister. The papers were full of what an honourable, decent, practically saintly man Jesse had been, which seemed rather ironic when he was actually an outlaw on the run, with a reward on his head and a noose waiting for him back west for whatever horrible crimes he’d committed there.

Lex might have been slightly annoyed by all the attention Jesse was getting, but the papers were also focusing on poor, grieving Lex Trent. They seemed to have decided that Lex and Jesse had been the bestest, closest of friends for many years and that Jesse’s death had crippled Lex utterly.

‘It says here that I’ve spent every day since my dear friend’s demise walking the deck of my ship and staring out to sea.’

‘ Every day?’ Jesse said. ‘Heck, I only died yesterday.’

Lex shrugged. ‘Time moves slower when you’re grieving. Apparently I’m refusing food, too,’ he said, squinting back at the newspaper.

The papers were full of photos from the feast and the first round of Jesse and Lex together looking companionable, whereas any photo of Jeremiah that appeared tended to veer towards the unflattering side, showing him with his eyes half closed or his mouth half open. Overnight, he had become the villain of the piece despite the fact that he had won the first round. Everyone hated his guts. Lex was smugly satisfied. It was worth losing the first round for a result like this.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Lex said when they reached Olaree the next day. ‘I think I might stay at the hotel after all.’

‘What for?’ Lady Luck said. ‘I thought you were going to stay on the ship.’

‘It’s too good an opportunity to pass up,’ Lex replied. ‘I’ve got the part of a grieving friend to play.’

Olaree was a snob town. It was full of posh buildings and fancy sidewalks and rich people. There was to be a welcome dinner for the players that night. Lex’s ship arrived several hours before Jeremiah’s and, within half an hour, people had left a veritable forest of flowers on the dock beside his boat. Some of the bouquets were quite frighteningly huge and elaborate. Clearly the rich people of Olaree subscribed to the belief that nothing says ‘sorry your friend is dead’ quite like a spray-painted silver fir-cone. There was even one particularly inventive flower arrangement in the shape of a cowboy hat.

‘Why are they making such a fuss about it?’ Lex asked, peering out at the harbour from a corner of the window in his room. ‘People die in Games all the time.’

‘It’s several things, dear,’ Lady Luck replied. ‘It’s partly the fact that Jesse is so good looking, in a rough-and-ready kind of way; it’s partly that he died heroically saving a child’s life rather than merely trying to win the Game; it’s partly that Tess East is such a sweet-looking thing and so everyone wanted Jesse to save her; and it’s partly that you’re a young boy, now playing the dangerous Game all alone. People love all that.’

‘They’re a fickle bunch,’ Lex replied, remembering how they had all cheered and cheered for Jeremiah before they decided they hated him.

‘Yes, dear.’

‘Well, at least it makes it easier for me to cheat and rob them.’