Fighting with fire

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When Lex woke up, the room was different. There was no dust for a start. No cobwebs, either. The panelled walls were splendid in pink and cream; the glass chandelier was resplendent and unbroken, garlanded with dozens of perfect, translucent flowers that speckled the entire room with pink and blue light. The Sword of Life hung above the white marble fireplace looking all the more impressive for the fact that it was no longer covered in the dust and grime of a hundred years.

The table in the centre was also restored. The white cloth and lace doilies were spotless and the silver tea service gleamed. Set daintily on a round plate in the middle were some of the prettiest cakes that Lex had ever seen.

But the thing that really caught Lex’s attention was that there was a giant fox, dressed in a smart waistcoat, sitting in one of the chairs at the table? cup and saucer in hand, drinking tea and watching Lex with intelligent brown eyes.

‘Good day to you,’ the fox said cheerfully when he saw Lex looking at him. He had a warm, mellow voice, and spoke with a refined accent. ‘So kind of you to join me for tea. My name is Plantagenet. Do draw up a chair.’

Staring like his eyes were about to pop out of his head, Lex slowly got to his feet. Only then did he realise that he was no longer the same himself. He’d been wearing cowboy clothes that were covered in dust and blood before. Now he seemed to be wearing the clothes of a gentleman? dark trousers and a waistcoat, not unlike the one the fox was wearing. He could also feel how neatly brushed his hair was.

‘What is this?’ he demanded.

Plantagenet looked at him. ‘What is what, dear boy?’

‘All this.’ Lex waved his arm to encompass the room. ‘The parlour going back to the way it was; these clothes; you! You’re a giant, talking fox. You’re not real!’

‘Well, not in the strict sense of the word, perhaps,’ the fox said, pouring tea out into the second cup. ‘Do you take cream and sugar?’

‘I don’t want any tea!’ Lex replied. ‘I want to know what’s going on!’

‘Sit down and drink your tea and I’ll tell you,’ Plantagenet said mildly.

Still feeling unsure, Lex pulled up a chair and warily sat down across from the fox.

‘That’s better,’ Plantagenet said, pushing the cup and saucer towards him. ‘Help yourself to dessert, by all means. The lumpy bumpy cake is excellent.’

‘I don’t want any lumpy bumpy cake!’ Lex snapped. ‘This room was in ruins! Everything was broken! A chandelier fell on my head! Oh dear; I’m not dead, am I?’

The fox laughed. ‘Gracious me, no! You’ll be fine. You know who I am, of course?’

‘You’re the imaginary talking fox Nathaniel East thought he could see.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Plantagenet sighed and said, ‘Poor dear Nathaniel. A most amiable companion, he was. He could see the future, you know. He told me the cowboy king would come for the sword one day.’

‘And that’s me, is it?’ Lex said, feeling faintly surprised. It did, after all, seem unlikely that Slow Sid could really be anyone’s idea of a cowboy king.

‘You’re masquerading as a cowboy, aren’t you?’ Plantagenet said.

‘Yeah.’

‘And are you not also a king?’

‘What?’

‘King Lex Trent I?’

Lex thought back to his crowning during the course of the first Game. The royalty had been temporary, and Lex had only been a king for a few seconds, but his name was inscribed on the Royal Monument back in the Wither City.

‘Er… sort of,’ he said.

‘There you are, then,’ Plantagenet said happily. ‘You’re the cowboy king, come for the sword as Nathaniel foretold that you would. You’ll have to catch up with it, though, I’m afraid? the sticking spell doesn’t apply to the sword, you see. Listen.’ The fox put down his teacup and leaned forwards across the table slightly, his voice taking a more serious tone as he went on. ‘Here’s a word of advice for you. Take a smoked trout along on the next round of the Game. It saved Nathaniel’s life once, and it’ll save yours, too. Best make it a pair of trout, just to be on the safe side. Don’t forget, now. Good luck. And maybe I’ll see you again one day.’

And, with that, Plantagenet vanished. And so did everything else.

Lex opened his eyes to a lot of dust and pain. Now he was in the right place. Coughing and spluttering, he propped himself up on his elbows and opened his left eye. Then he rubbed the dried blood from his right eye so that it was no longer glued shut. The first thing he noticed was that the Sword of Life was gone. So was the black Swann. And so was Jesse.

‘That bastard,’ Lex said thickly. ‘That bastard! I’ll get him for this!’

He staggered to his feet, his head throbbing savagely. He had no idea how long he’d been there, or how long Jesse had been gone. He was going to have to find out, and quickly, too.

But first things first. Lex needed to get a smoked trout. That was what Plantagenet had said. He was the talking fox after all, so he ought to know. To Lex’s slightly muddled mind, getting the trout seemed like the task with top priority. So he left the wrecked tea parlour and zigzagged his way round to the kitchen. It wasn’t much of a kitchen to speak of, really. After all, they mostly just served tins of beans. But there had been fish for breakfast a couple of times. Lex must have been quite an odd sight, bursting into the kitchen, covered in dust, with a bleeding head and screaming for trout.

‘Want a glass of milk, Sid?’ the barman said with a smirk. ‘Calm you down a treat.’

‘Listen, Mack,’ Lex snapped, grabbing fistfuls of the barman’s collar in both hands. ‘I ain’t Slow Sid anymore, see? One more blow to the head and I’m back to my old self. This is Sid the Kid you’re dealing with now. And if I hear just one more crack about milk then you’ll be using your hat to pick up your teeth. Got it?’

It was all hot air, of course? after all, Lex was half the size of the barman. But the man shrank back, anyway. Doubtless it was the shock of it. Like a small, soppy dog turning suddenly vicious. Plus, the genuine anger in Lex’s eyes, as well as the blood smeared down one side of his face and crusted in his hair, did make him look a little deranged.

‘Smoked trout!’ Lex barked. ‘Give me two, right now!’

‘All right, Sid,’ the barman said, holding up both hands in a placating gesture. ‘Whatever you want.’

He rummaged in the larder and, a moment later, produced two large smoked trout. Lex snatched them from him.

‘Where,’ he growled, ‘is Jesse?’

‘I dunno,’ the barman replied.

Lex pushed past him impatiently and went to the bar to question the cowboys there. As soon as he entered the room, he grabbed his pistol from its holster, raised it above his head and shot a bullet right into the ceiling, causing plaster to shower down upon the floor. Everyone fell silent and turned to stare at him.

‘Listen up,’ Lex said in a hard voice. ‘Slow Sid is gone for good. As soon as I find Jesse Layton I’m gonna string him up by his neck till he’s dead. Five gold pieces to the first man to tell me where he is.’

‘He rode out about an hour ago,’ one cowboy piped up. ‘In a right hurry, he was, too. He went due west.’

‘Due west isn’t a location!’ Lex snarled. ‘Can’t anyone do better than that?’

The words were barely out of his mouth before Lex realised that he didn’t actually need to know where Jesse was. He could find out at any time just by eating something. The Binding Bracelets would cause them to switch then, and Jesse wouldn’t get his body back until the two ate together again.

Lex was just looking at the uncooked trout in his hand, and about to force himself to take a bite out of one of the raw fish, when a new cowboy entered the bar. The first words out of his mouth were, ‘Hey, Sam, did you hear about poor old Jesse?’

‘What about poor old Jesse?’ Lex snapped, whirling round to face the newcomer.

‘Captured,’ the cowboy replied. ‘Seems his old gang heard he was here. I guess someone recognised him from the reward posters. They’re gonna hang him at noon, so they say.’

All thoughts of swapping places with Jesse disappeared instantly from Lex’s mind.

‘Say, and there’s another thing,’ the cowboy said. ‘There’s some posh fella walkin’ round the town telling everyone that there’s an impostor here at Dry Gulch House. He’s even giving out posters, look. Says it’s really some city kid called Lex Trent.’

As he spoke, the cowboy took a crumpled poster out of his pocket and straightened it out so that the whole room could see it. It was a promotional poster from the stadiums showing a large image of Lex’s head. The cowboys stared at the poster for a moment. Then, slowly, all eyes turned towards Lex.

‘Is this true?’ one of the cowboys said in a dangerous voice, stepping forwards to loom over Lex in a distinctly threatening way.

Under normal circumstances, Lex would have been able to get himself out of that mess. He would have thought of something to prove to everyone there that he really was a cowboy and that Jeremiah was just out to make trouble. But, because his head was still a little muddled, all he seemed to be able to think about was the smoked trout still hanging from his hand. So when the question, what would Sid the Kid do in this situation? rose up in his mind, all Lex could think was, The fish! Slap him with one of the fish!

So he did.

There may have been a number of ways of proving himself to be a cowboy. Slapping another cowboy in the face with a smoked trout was not one of them. There was a bellow of anger from the struck cowboy and suddenly everyone in the bar was lunging for Lex. But his natural instincts kicked in then and he ducked past them all and fled out to the stables, leapt on to Sally’s back and dug his heels in.

As he galloped past the entrance to Dry Gulch House in a cloud of dust, several cowboys aimed shots after him. Fortunately, they all missed? possibly because he was moving too fast? and Lex was very glad, in that moment, that he had learnt how to gallop, after all.

He only slowed down once he was a considerable distance away from the house. Then he took a moment to collect himself and think about what he was going to do. Jesse had gone, taking Lex’s sword and Swann with him. The cowboy must have known that he couldn’t hold on to them for long because Lex was bound to use the Binding Bracelets to swap them. His intention, therefore, must have been either to ride into town and sell the items, or else hide them somewhere until the Game was over and the Binding Bracelets were off…

Lex glanced down at the Binding Bracelet on his wrist and suddenly felt quite cold with horror. Jesse could switch them! If he was able to talk his captors into giving him some food? a last meal, so to speak? then he could swap the two of them and Lex would find himself in Jesse’s place! Lex might not have thought the cowboy capable of that at one point, but Jesse had shown his true colours today? leaving Lex behind with his head practically bashed in and taking the sword with him. Lex wasn’t at all sure that Jesse wouldn’t swap them, if he got the chance. He therefore had to make sure he found him first. The outlaw at Dry Gulch House had said he thought Jesse was to be hanged at noon. Lex would have to hope that information was correct. Hopefully, that would give him enough time to find the dratted cowboy first.

But, even once he’d found Jesse, Lex would need a plan. He could not simply go riding in? a lone kid on a horse. He’d just get strung up by his neck, too. Lex pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think. He was alone in the middle of a deserted dusty path with no idea where Jesse was or how to go about finding him. His head hurt, his throat was dry and Heetha’s sun was beating down savagely already, making him thirsty, sweaty and rather drowsy. He felt that, if he could just lie down in a cool patch of shade and sleep for a few minutes, his head would be much clearer when he woke up. But that wouldn’t do. Not at all. He had some vague notion that people who had recently hit their heads should not go to sleep in case of concussion but, quite aside from that, he might at any moment find himself in Jesse’s body with a noose around his neck.

Struggling with muddled thoughts was an unpleasant, unfamiliar experience for Lex. But, suddenly, a plan came to him. He could only hope that it was a good one. Not like the fish-slapping plan, which hadn’t worked out at all. He dug in his heels and Sally set off down the path at a canter.

It took about twenty minutes to reach the town. When Lex got there, he went straight to the undertaker’s. He could tell it was the undertaker’s because of all the cheap wooden coffins on display in the window. And there, parked right outside, was what Lex was looking for? a hearse. Or, at least, a long, flat wagon with a coffin on the back.

‘Good,’ he muttered to himself.

After surreptitiously checking to make sure that the coffin was not an empty one, Lex then proceeded to corner passing farmers and ask them where the cowboys went for hangings. He was sure they would know. After all, they would need to have some idea of where the place was, if only to stay away from it. Sure enough, he soon had a set of rough directions. People seemed eager to tell him, just to get rid of him. He certainly cut an alarming sight, what with the dried blood, and the sweat making streaks in the dust down his face, and the? by now rather worse-for-wear? smoked trout still dangling from one of his hands.

According to the townspeople, it was about a half-hour journey on horseback. With that information, Lex had everything he needed to carry out his plan. All he had to do now, was steal the hearse. The problem was that it was not hitched up to a horse. If it had been, then Lex would have simply leapt on to the wagon and driven away before anyone could stop him. But he was going to have to hitch Sally to the wagon, which could be a problem seeing as the undertakers had large glass windows, and he would surely be spotted within moments.

Lex was standing there trying to work out how he was going to do it when he suddenly heard a loud, irritatingly familiar voice.

‘Impostor at Dry Gulch House! Please take these posters and pass them on to any cowboys you see! Impostor! Lex Trent is really a trickster, posing as a cowboy!’

Lex rolled his eyes. Whilst walking around the town he had spotted hundreds of posters identical to the one he had seen in Dry Gulch House. They’d been stuck to almost every available surface. If you didn’t know any better, one might think that the people of Dry Gulch were Lex’s most avid, enthusiastic fans. Goodness only knew where Jeremiah had got so many posters. Presumably, Kala had somehow provided him with them. Well, Lex might have had his cover blown? partly by Jeremiah and partly by his own pathetic response to the poster? but he was damned if he was going to stand there listening to Jeremiah’s self-righteous spiel as well.

He marched up to the nobleman? now dressed in a bean-free blue coat and dark trousers? and tapped him, rather hard, on the shoulder. ‘Give it a rest, can’t you?’ he snapped when Jeremiah turned around. ‘Your stupid plan worked. I’m out of the house. Congratulations!’

To Lex’s surprise, Jeremiah gaped at him with a horrified expression on his face. ‘What… what happened to you?’ he said, finally finding his tongue. ‘Did… did the cowboys do that?’

For a moment, Lex had absolutely no idea what Jeremiah was talking about. Then he caught sight of his reflection in a nearby window and almost jumped in shock himself. The blood, dirt and sweat made him look really quite alarming, and the gash on his temple reminded him of how much his head hurt. Lex looked back at Jeremiah, all ready to snarl his defiance and tell the nobleman that he could keep his petty victory because the cowboys hadn’t so much as laid a finger on him, and he had found the Sword of Life before they’d chucked him out, anyway…

But then he met Jeremiah’s eyes and his plan changed direction abruptly. For Lex spotted it at once? that flicker of guilt. Guilt was one of Lex’s favourite things. It was just so darn useful. A person burdened with a guilty conscience could be made to do almost anything. Jeremiah was trying to hide it? and it was only a flicker? but there was no doubt whatsoever that he seemed to be feeling a twinge of guilt, the lightweight.

‘What did you think was going to happen?’ Lex asked. ‘That they would just give me a slap on the wrists and send me on my way?’

‘No, I just… I thought that they’d throw you out like they did me, and-’

‘I barely escaped with my life!’ Lex snarled. ‘Jesse wasn’t so lucky. They’ve dragged him away to be hanged.’

‘ What?’ Jeremiah fairly goggled at him.

Despite the danger and the heat and his aching head, Lex found himself thoroughly enjoying the moment. ‘I understand why you hate me,’ he said, taking the opportunity to rub salt into the wound, ‘but I’m surprised you feel that way about Jesse. Whatever I might have done to you, he did save your sister’s life. But I suppose you don’t care about that. All you care about is how much you hate me. Well, congratulations. Now Jesse really is going to die because of you.’

‘Now, look!’ Jeremiah snapped, grabbing Lex’s arm. ‘Is any of this true or are you just lying through your teeth again? Why the heck would they hang Jesse just because you were posing as a cowboy?’

‘Jesse helped me. He was an accomplice, so in their eyes he’s just as guilty as I am. Worse, in fact, because he’s one of them and so ought to know better.’ Lex threw Jeremiah’s hand off impatiently and said, ‘Use your brain, if you have one! Do you really think I would bash my own head in for the sake of a scam?’

Jeremiah glared at him. ‘I think there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for the sake of a scam! You’re a blaggard and a rogue! You don’t care about anyone but yourself and you’re quite happy to lie shamelessly in people’s faces to get what you want! I saw how you did it at the Majestic when you had everyone believing Jesse was really dead. Even I thought you were grieving! So forgive me if I don’t fall for the same trick twice, but I know what an excellent actor you are and I’d bet money on the fact that the state you’re in now is due to nothing more than careful planning, good make-up and fine acting.’

And with that, Jeremiah lunged out his hand and knocked the dried blood from Lex’s temple, clearly expecting it to flake away to reveal ordinary skin beneath. Instead, he simply re-opened the gash and it started bleeding again.

Lex did not need to act this time. Jeremiah’s clumsy fingers had made contact with the most sensitive part of his already-sore head. If his headache had been bad before, that touch almost seemed to split his head in two. He pushed Jeremiah away with one hand whilst jerking the other up to clamp over his temple, warm blood trickling through his fingers as he groaned in pain.

When he was able to see something other than stars again, he glared up at Jeremiah and said, ‘Are you completely deranged? Did your mother drop you on your head one too many times as a baby? What the heck’s the matter with you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jeremiah replied. ‘I honestly thought you were putting on an act.’

‘I’m not!’

‘Well, obviously, I can see that now!’ Jeremiah said, looking quite peeved. ‘But you only have yourself to blame! When you walk around fibbing all the time about everything, you can’t be surprised when people don’t believe you on the odd occasion when you are telling the truth!’

‘Whatever!’ Lex replied sourly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I need to go and try to save Jesse from the mess you’ve landed him in. No doubt it’ll be futile and we’ll both end up dead, but I’m sure that’ll please you no end.’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous!’ Jeremiah said. ‘Naturally, I’ll help you rescue Jesse.’

‘You’ll what?’ Lex frowned. He knew the nobleman felt guilty, but he hadn’t realised he felt that guilty.

‘This is your fault,’ Jeremiah said firmly. ‘Not mine. If you hadn’t lied and cheated your way into Dry Gulch House then Jesse wouldn’t be in the predicament he’s in now. So don’t think you’ve managed to guilt me into anything. But he did do Tess a great service back on the Scurleyshoo Death and I owe him for that. So I’ll help you.’

Well, two rescuers were better than one. And, if anyone shot at them, Lex could always use Jeremiah as a human shield.

‘What’s your plan?’ the nobleman asked.

‘First we need to steal that hearse,’ Lex said, pointing across the street to the undertaker’s. ‘Do you think you can distract them long enough for me to get Sally hitched to the wagon?’