Fighting with fire

CHAPTER TWENTY

The next two days were a tiresome, irksome business for Lex. His time was split between playing Jesse’s pet monkey for the entertainment of the other cowboys down in the bar, and searching for the sword at night. It was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. If Lex had had a proper riddle to work with, he would have cracked it already by now, but all he had to go on was a madman’s drivel that might not even hold the answer at all.

Something unexpected happened on the second morning, though: Jeremiah came to Dry Gulch House. Lex was in the bar when he arrived. Jeremiah came on his own, by carriage? the fool. He must have brought the carriage with him on board his ship, for it had the East coat of arms emblazoned in gold on the door. No doubt he had travelled across the desert in it when he reached the Western shore and was forced to leave his ship behind.

Lex was sitting by the window eating a tin of beans when Jeremiah arrived. Someone had given him a spoon but, for the look of the thing, he felt compelled to spill most of them down the front of his shirt, anyway.

No one actually noticed Jeremiah until he walked into the bar. When he came in, dressed in his fancy royal-blue coat with the golden buttons, hair brushed, jaw shaved and generally looking as clean cut as a man can be without being a woman, he couldn’t have stuck out any more than he did. Everyone went quiet, staring at him in amazement. Everyone knew that only cowboys were allowed into Dry Gulch House, now. Peasants weren’t allowed, farmers weren’t allowed and noblemen definitely were not allowed.

‘I am Jeremiah East,’ he announced to the room. His booted feet were planted firmly apart on the floor like he owned the place. It was clear that he was pleased with the fact that everyone had gone silent at his appearance. He had no idea that this was just the calm before the storm. ‘This house was the rightful property of my great-great-uncle, Nathaniel East. It was unlawfully taken from him a hundred years ago by savages. I have consulted a lawyer who has assured me that, despite the time that has elapsed, no deed of ownership was ever passed. This house is therefore still the property of the East family. You are all trespassing. I will give you one hour to vacate the premises. I expect you all to provide me with contact details so that later we can negotiate reparations for the vandalism done to the house. If you carry out my instructions to the letter then I will agree to waive my lawful right to collect rent for the period during which this house has been illegally occupied.’

Lex goggled at him. He’d known Jeremiah could be stupid, but he hadn’t realised just how stupid. As an ex-law-student, Lex knew that everything Jeremiah had said was, technically, true. But things like that just didn’t matter out here. Not here in the Wild West where disputes were decided by duels and the sheriff was just someone to throw stuff at on a slow-moving day.

The scar-faced cowboy Lex had crossed earlier was the first to react. He stood up from the table where he’d been drinking and told Jeremiah? with rather a lot of unnecessary swearing? to get out. Jeremiah actually looked shocked and outraged by this. It was clear that he had expected his little speech to work flawlessly.

‘The law is on my side,’ he said, going quite pale with anger. ‘I have the documentation with me, if you’d like to examine it. It’s quite bad enough that my poor uncle was slaughtered right here in his own home by a gang of savages like you, without having his house overrun by them as well! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! You’re a corrupt, contemptible lot of cowards and I want you out of my family’s house right now.’

Calling them cowards was going just that little bit too far. These were men who produced far too much testosterone as it was, and prided themselves on being tough and manly and other such meaningless things. Yet there Jeremiah stood, looking rather smug and clearly thinking that he had just put everyone in their place, when, actually, the most likely reaction now was for one of the cowboys to stand up and shoot him straight in the chest.

‘Y’know I’m getting the sort of feeling that history is about to repeat itself,’ the scar-faced cowboy said. ‘First the uncle, then the nephew. We’ll put your head up in the trophy room, kid.’

‘You wouldn’t dare touch me!’ Jeremiah sneered.

Lex could have groaned aloud. He believed it! The idiot actually believed he wouldn’t be harmed here, when the fact was that he was seconds away from either being shot, or dragged outside to be strung up from the nearest tree. Lex had to wonder how the nobleman had even managed to survive into adulthood. He shook his head in despair (but only on the inside). The parents were to blame, really. This was what a posh school and too many private fencing classes could do to a person. But Jeremiah getting himself killed was the last thing Lex wanted. After all, he didn’t want to win the Game by default. Where would be the fun in that? He wanted to win gloriously. And that would be difficult to do with both Lorella and Jeremiah dead, and no one but Tess and a little sprite left to compete against. It would be like being the only adult on a toddlers’ wrestling team: you’d win all right, but there would be no glory in it. No, this wouldn’t do at all. Lex was just going to have to save the nobleman from himself. Again.

Before anyone else could do anything, Lex quickly scooped up a spoonful of beans from his tin, drew the spoon back, took careful aim and flicked them right at Jeremiah’s face. Lex was sitting only a few tables away and his aim was good. The beans splattered right across Jeremiah’s right cheek.

‘Boring man,’ Lex announced blithely to the room in general. ‘Boring speech. But nice coat.’

The other cowboys erupted into cheers and laughter at the same moment that Jeremiah roared in outrage. The nobleman’s head whipped around, looking for his assailant. Lex could have lowered his head and hidden his face under his hat, but he didn’t. Their eyes met and it was worth the risk to see the expression of utter amazement and fury on Jeremiah’s face at the sight of Lex sitting there in Dry Gulch House, calmly eating a tin of beans? or calmly dribbling a tin of beans, as the case may be. Disciplined as he was, it was too much for Lex and he broke one of his own rules then by breaking character just long enough to wink at Jeremiah. Then he instantly slipped back into Slow Sid and continued to eat his beans, staring vacantly out the window as if he’d already forgotten Jeremiah was even there.

‘Oh my Gods, that’s Lex-’ Jeremiah started to shout above the din, but was instantly cut off by a crust of bread hitting him on the nose. A moment later, he was being positively pelted with food. Everything and anything edible within easy reach was hurled at Jeremiah. It was mostly beans. Soon they covered his coat and his skin and his hair. It would have been glorious fun to watch but Lex forced himself to calmly finish his lunch whilst gazing blankly out of the window because that was, after all, what Slow Sid would have done.

Jeremiah tried to throw a punch at one point but the danger had passed by then. The cowboys were in too good a mood to think about killing him now. A lot of blood all over the place would completely ruin the atmosphere. So he was unceremoniously hurled out of the front door instead where he landed on his back in the dust by the front steps.

Lex hoped he would just get back in his carriage and drive away but instead Jeremiah stood up and, still bellowing in anger, actually started coming back towards the house? like someone just begging to be hanged by his neck until he was dead. The cowboys had clearly had enough of the game by then, for one of them fired a shot. It was not intended to kill but, still, the sound seemed to tear through the air as the bullet bit the ground between Jeremiah’s feet. The nobleman stumbled back, white as a sheet. The sudden quiet from the rest of the cowboys indicated very clearly that the fun was most definitely over.

‘If you don’t want to be strung up from that tree right there,’ the scar-faced cowboy said, pointing at the nearest one. ‘Then get in your fancy carriage, drive away, and don’t ever let us see your sorry face here ever again!’

Jeremiah? bean-stained and dusty? stared at the cowboy for a moment. Then his eyes swivelled round to the window where Lex was watching. All eyes were on Jeremiah and? as this was make-or-break point? Lex broke character a second time, just long enough to emphatically mouth the word, ‘ Go!’

To his relief, Jeremiah finally turned on his heel and stalked back towards his carriage with his head held high like there weren’t really beans dribbling all the way down his back. Lex only breathed a sigh of relief once Jeremiah had climbed up into the driver’s seat, grabbed up the reins and ridden away, back in the direction he’d come.

‘He’s really going to hate you now,’ Jesse remarked in their lime-green bedroom the next morning.

Lex shrugged. ‘He hated me anyway. Besides, this is all his fault. He started it by spiking my drink in the Wither City.’

‘You really are one to hold a grudge, ain’t you?’ Jesse said.

‘I never forget an insult,’ Lex replied in a hard voice. ‘A person might wrong me once but, by the Gods, they won’t do it again!’

‘Well, if you feel that strongly about having a bit of somethin’ extra put in your drink in what was just a childish sorta prank, then think how Jeremiah must feel about having his uncle killed and a family mansion stolen away by a gang of ruffians like us.’

Lex was slightly startled by that, for he hadn’t thought of it in that way before. But he had to admit Jesse had a point. If Dry Gulch House had once belonged to the Trents, Lex would have been every bit as outraged as Jeremiah? more so, probably? and utterly determined to get it back. Only he would have been cleverer about it. He would not have simply marched in, expecting self-righteousness and legal technicalities to carry him through. He would have made sure he succeeded. And he would never have waived his right to rent? never! He would not simply have got the house back from the cowboys, he would have had his revenge on them, too.

But he shrugged Jesse’s comment off carelessly. ‘The Easts have plenty of other family mansions. I’ll bet they don’t even miss this one. It’s not like any of them would want to live here, especially after what happened to Nathaniel. Anyway, enough of all this talk about Jeremiah. I need to carry on looking for the sword.’

Although it was now morning, Lex had decided to continue his search straightaway, after snatching a few hours sleep, rather than waiting for nightfall again. It didn’t matter much, anyway, since the other cowboys tended to spend all their time in the bar. There was, therefore, no reason why Lex shouldn’t search during the day as well. Especially as he was fast running out of time.

‘Ain’t you tired of that, yet?’ Jesse asked. ‘I told you, that sword ain’t real. You’re lookin’ for somethin’ that don’t even exist!’

Lex scowled. The truth was that, even if the sword were real, he was starting to think that he might be forced to concede defeat for the simple reason that he was going to run out of time. In a house this huge, it could be hidden in any number of places. After hours of exploring, there were still rooms he hadn’t been into at all. Let alone the countless secret passageways he knew the house to contain but which he was yet to discover. It could take him a year or more to locate the sword.

And yet the thought of having to admit failure was a bitter pill to swallow for Lex. He had bragged to Jesse about finding the sword. The idea of having to admit that that had all been a lot of talk was intolerable. Jesse would gloat insufferably. He would rub it in and pour salt into the open wound. Lex knew he would do that because it was exactly what he would have done himself.

‘The sword is here!’ he snapped. ‘Just because you were unable to find it doesn’t mean that I won’t. It’s right here, somewhere in this house. I just wish I knew where that sword was. Then I could-aarghh!’

He broke off with a cry of pain as something very hot suddenly started to burn through his trouser pocket. He reached his hand in, grabbed the velvet pouch and flung it on to the bed. It was practically smoking. Gingerly, he picked the pouch up between thumb and forefinger to tip the contents out on to the bed. The Wishing Creatures of Desareth tumbled out together. The white and red Swanns and the blue Dragon lay there as usual. But the black Swann was steaming hot. In fact, as Jesse and Lex watched, it even started to char the sheet.

The black Swann? the one whose wish was recorded as ‘unknown’ in Erasmus Grey’s book. And Lex had just said aloud that he wished he knew where the sword was hidden. Now the Swann was burning hot to the touch. When Lex had been very little, he had played a game with his brother, which involved one of them hiding an object for the other to find. The seeker would move around the room whilst the hider said they were getting hotter the nearer they got to the hidden object, and colder the further away they went from it.

Could it be… Could it really be that the black Swann’s wish was not to turn pumpkin pies into poo, as Lex had feared, but to locate missing objects instead? Could it be that just one of his Wishing Creatures could actually do something useful?

‘What are those things?’ Jesse said, peering down at the stone animals on the bed.

Lex ignored him and used a corner of the sheet to pick the black Swann up gingerly. ‘I wish I knew where my brother, Lucius, was,’ he said, loudly and clearly.

The Swann did not go instantly cold as he had expected, but remained hot instead. Lex frowned at it for a moment before the idea occurred to him that perhaps the Swann could not locate more than one missing object at once. Perhaps it would not ‘reset’ itself, so to speak, until Lex had found the sword.

He picked up the other Wishing Creatures and thrust them into his pocket before looking around for something with which to pick up the Swann. He couldn’t carry it in his bare hands for any great length of time without it burning his skin. He could try using a piece of the sheet but he feared the Swann would burn right through that, too.

‘Here,’ Jesse said, crossing over to the fireplace and picking up the cast-iron tongs. ‘Use these.’

Lex took the tongs and used them to pick up the black Swann. It left behind a big circle of black on the sheet. Hopefully no one would notice. They hadn’t exactly been white to begin with. And they were already riddled with burn marks where cowboys had clearly fallen asleep with lit cigarettes in their hands.

‘So,’ Jesse said, staring suspiciously at the Swann. ‘D’you mind tellin’ me just exactly what it is you’ve got there?’

‘Yeah, I do mind. Don’t be so nosy.’

It was no use, though. Jesse, despite appearances, wasn’t stupid. He’d heard Lex say that he wished he knew where the sword was right before the Swann started to burn through his pocket. He’d seen Lex’s reaction? known that little cogs were turning in the thief’s brain. He knew that Lex suspected the Swann might lead them to the sword, somehow. And with something magical hopefully guiding the way, there was no chance that Jesse wasn’t coming, too.

Lex was not best pleased. After all, he knew that the cowboy wanted the sword and that he’d been to Dry Gulch House on more than one occasion to search for it. But there was nothing he could do to stop Jesse from coming. Resolving to keep a very sharp eye on the cowboy, Lex stepped out into the corridor. First they went upstairs, and the Swann cooled enough that Lex was able to hold it with his bare hands. So they went downstairs, and the Swann got even hotter than it had done in the bedroom. It was a little difficult to follow, for the Swann was so hot that a shift in temperature was only noticeable if it was a larger one. Lex was a little worried that other cowboys might see them wandering around and think them a strange sight, what with the glowing-hot Swann Lex was carefully carrying in the tongs? although it was, perhaps, the sort of odd thing Slow Sid might do for no apparent reason. At any rate, no one appeared beyond the recesses of the bar.

Eventually, by a patient process of trial and error and after several false starts, they finally found themselves back in the library. And there the Swann started to smoke. The smoke stopped if they moved into any of the other rooms leading off from the library, but started again the instant they went back.

‘So it’s in here somewhere then, right?’ Jesse said. Lex did not like the eager way he’d said it.

‘That, or there’s a secret room here somewhere,’ Lex replied.

Lex suspected the latter. A library was, after all, a classic place in which to conceal a secret room. The problem, though, was that, as far as Lex knew, secret doors were usually opened in libraries by pulling out the right book, or combination of books. It was a little hard to work out which ones to move when every single volume here was exactly the same.

Whilst Jesse wandered around tapping on walls like a fool, Lex stood and looked at the bookcases. There were thirteen of them in total. They were tall, heavy, wooden things? identical but for the fact that the thirteenth one over in the corner had some sort of wooden carving perched on top. It was so small that it was barely noticeable, and Lex couldn’t even tell what it was from the floor. He strongly suspected, but went up the ladder, anyway, to check. The little carving was, as he had thought, a fox. Sitting on its haunches and complete with little waistcoat, it calmly surveyed the library below.

Plantagenet shall guard the sword in a fond embrace…

Lex fiddled about with it a bit but it didn’t seem possible to move it in any way.

‘What have you found up there?’ Jesse called from below.

Lex ignored him. Each bookcase had twenty-six shelves. Lex went down the ladder until he was at the thirteenth. Then he counted along until he was at the thirteenth book. To all outward appearances, it was exactly the same as all the rest? but it was the thirteenth book on the thirteenth shelf of the thirteenth bookcase, being watched over by a little wooden Plantagenet…

Lex pulled the book out. At first, absolutely nothing happened. He was just about to sulk because his idea hadn’t worked when, suddenly, with a creak and a groan, the entire bookcase began to swing forwards. Lex shot down the ladder before he could get squashed and stared in delight at the now-revealed doorway that had previously been hidden behind the bookcase. He snatched up the tongs and the black Swann and rushed straight into the secret room before Jesse.

The light coming in from the library illuminated the place enough for them to see what it was, despite the fact that it was covered in a three-inch coating of dust and a thick matting of spider webs. It was a parlour. A tea parlour, from the looks of things. Decorated in what had once, possibly, been pink and cream, it was a smallish room, with one table in the centre. A huge glass chandelier hung from the ceiling, adorned with pink and blue glass flowers. Despite the coating of dust, it was clear how beautiful it had once been.

The table was covered with a tablecloth and several lace doilies, still laid out with tea for two. There was an exquisite silver teapot along with a matching milk jug and sugar bowl. Two delicate bone-china cups and saucers were set before the two chairs facing each other on opposite sides of the table. And in the middle was a plate set with miniature cakes that the years had turned rock hard. Apart from the dust, it was almost like the table had been set yesterday. As if Nathaniel East was going to stroll into the room at any moment to take tea with his imaginary fox.

And there, hung above the fireplace, was the sword. It was everything Lex had expected it to be? large, bejewelled and magnificent? one blade blue, the other red. Unlike a normal sword, this one’s handle was not at the end, but in the middle, with the two blades stretching out from it in opposite directions. Lex and Jesse spotted it at the same time and moved forwards as one.

But, as soon as Lex took his first step, the black Swann became so hot that it burst? quite literally? into flames. Lex almost jumped out of his skin, and instinctively whipped back his arm. The flaming Swann flew out of the tongs and went up towards the ceiling where it smashed into the chandelier. Dust and dead bugs rained down on Lex as the Swann fell back down to the carpet. When it landed, it was smoking but no longer on fire. Lex looked up and met Jesse’s gaze.

‘Well, now,’ the cowboy said with a grin. ‘Weren’t that a lucky thing that you weren’t holdin’ it just then? It woulda taken your hand off.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Lex said, dusting dead bugs off his clothes and trying to sound casual. ‘I’m always lucky.’

Unfortunately for Lex, he spoke just a little bit too soon on that occasion. The sentence was barely out of his mouth before there was a creaking and a groaning from overhead. The next moment, the cord holding the chandelier snapped. Doubtless, it was a combination of age and being hit with a flaming Swann but, suddenly, the chandelier was falling down right to the spot where Lex stood.

He dived for cover. And almost got out of the way in time. Almost. But not quite. One twisted glass arm struck him across the side of his head, the glass shattering with the force of the blow. The rest of the chandelier smashed directly on top of the tea table, raising a great cloud of dust and causing the table to collapse beneath it.

Lex reeled away from it all, his head whirling. He sneezed once from all the dust. Then blood started running into his right eye from the gash on his head. He was vaguely aware that this was not one of those ‘get back up and brush yourself off’ sort of injuries? which infuriated him seeing as he had finally, finally, managed to find the sword. It was right there and all he had to do was reach out and take it…

But it was no good. There was nothing Lex could do to prevent the wrecked parlour fading from his vision as everything went silent and black, and he crumpled to the floor in a dusty, bleeding heap.