Lex Trent versus the Gods

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lucius was clearly afraid of the enchanter’s ship. Of course, Lex had not helped matters when he had described, in great detail, some of the horrible things he had discovered on the lower decks.

‘-and I distinctly heard the rustling of a giant spider coming from one of the rooms,’ Lex went on maliciously. ‘And there are trapped ghosts down below and lost, twisted children and-’

‘Oh shut up, Lex! Just shut up! I don’t care! I haven’t slept or eaten properly in three days! I just want to have some food and then go to sleep for something more than four hours at a stretch! Do you think you could manage that, Lex? I know winning this stupid Game is the only thing you care about right now, but I’m not exactly a threat to you am I? Do you think you could just steer your way clear to sharing some of your food with me and then leave me alone for a few hours?’

‘I seem to recall your saying that you would never ask any favours of me ever again,’ Lex said coldly. ‘I thought that was our new agreement.’

Lucius sighed. ‘I wasn’t hungry then.’

Lex remained silent for a moment, making a show of hesitating, of thinking it over before standing up and instructing Lucius to follow him to the kitchen.

Lex had never had any interest whatsoever in the law. He had applied for the student scholarship programme back at the farm because of its notoriously heavy workload. They plied you with textbooks and assignments and, later on, they set you up with internships at law firms. Being bogged down in precedents and case law gave Lex a viable excuse for not helping his brother to care for his grandfather. That was the crux of it. It took a special kind of person to care for a sufferer of the soulless wake. It took a selfless, patient, gentle kind of person and Lex simply did not have it in him.

‘I have to go and help Zachary with the new drayfus,’ Lucius said, sticking his head into Lex’s bedroom one day. ‘Can you feed Gramps for me?’

Lex winced. Can you feed him for me? As if he was a child who couldn’t do anything for himself. Considering the circumstances, the analogy was an apt one but still Lex felt angry when he heard people talk that way. Not angry at Lucius as such… just angry.

‘Can’t you see I’m studying?’ he snapped, gesturing to the open textbook.

Lucius gave him a black look. ‘He’s waiting. I’ve got him settled down in his chair. It’s vegetable soup and bread today. Be generous with the butter when you do the bread and if there are any crusts then give them to him, they’re his favourite. And make sure the soup isn’t too hot because he might burn his mouth and-’

‘I think I can manage it, thanks!’ Lex snapped.

‘All right,’ Lucius said with a shrug.

Lex turned his attention back to his textbook once his brother had gone, intending just to finish the paragraph he had been on. Then he decided to finish the page. He might as well finish the chapter. There was nothing terribly depressing about automatic resulting trusts, and they delayed the inevitable moment when he would have to go out and deal with his grandfather. Lex subscribed to the ostrich philosophy — if you buried your head in the sand deeply enough and pretended that a horrible situation was not really happening, you could almost convince yourself that it really wasn’t, and that took the edge off a little.

Unfortunately, Alistair Trent was hungry and had become bored with waiting. When he went into the kitchen to find Lucius, he somehow managed to knock the soup off the stove and burnt himself quite badly. Lex heard the noise from his room and rushed straight out to the kitchen, but it was already too late. He tried to calm his grandfather, implored him to hold his arms under the cold running water but it was no good and it was not until Lucius came and took over that the situation ceased to escalate. And then a little later there had been the most blazing row between Lex and his brother.

‘I ask you to do one tiny thing for me!’ Lucius raved. ‘And look what happens!’

‘You treat him like a child!’ Lex accused. ‘You can’t deny it!’

‘Of course I don’t deny it! To all intents and purposes he is a child!’

‘How dare you say that!’

‘You know it’s true,’ Lucius said, trying to be conciliatory. ‘Do you think I’m enjoying this?’

‘Yes!’ Lex snapped. ‘I think you’re enjoying it very much! You always were jealous of my relationship with him! You always wished that you could be as close to him as I was, only you never could because you just weren’t interesting enough for him! And now whenever he wants something he goes straight to you like a child; how gratifying that must be for you!’

Lucius never had been very good at confrontation. He would always cave in rather than prolong the argument, which only irritated Lex all the more. Why couldn’t he have some backbone for once?

‘All right, Lex,’ Lucius had said quietly. ‘Fine. I won’t ask any more favours of you, all right? Just go ahead and concentrate on your studies.’

‘I’ll hold you to that!’ Lex replied, quite determined that no makeshift reverse psychology was ever going to work on him.

Then, one evening, something happened and Lex snapped. He just couldn’t take it any more. So, after everyone had finally gone back to bed, he packed a bag and left, without saying goodbye and without looking back.

‘What about Zachary?’ Lucius asked, breaking in on Lex’s thoughts. He stood clutching the ferret to his chest as he gazed fearfully round the huge kitchen.

‘What about him?’ Lex asked.

‘He’s hungry, too.’

Lex sighed and waved his arm to encompass the room. ‘Help yourselves.’

There was a large metal table in the centre and a pantry that curved round two of the walls, stuffed from top to bottom with food, not all of which looked like it was supposed to be for humans.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Lex said, turning towards the door. ‘I need to figure out how to get this hat off.’

‘You’re not leaving us, are you?’ Lucius asked in alarm.

‘Why not?’

‘I’ll never find my way back without you!’

Lex sighed and sat down at the table.

‘Thank you,’ Lucius said.

Lex bit back the cruel retort. Why was he thanking him? Why did he always have to be so polite? It wasn’t as if Lex was going out of his way to accommodate him. Lex hated genuine politeness. Calculated politeness could serve a purpose sometimes but real, genuine politeness… that was something for hypocrites. Lex sat back and watched as Lucius fetched some food from the pantry for himself and then found a saucer and poured milk into it for Zachary.

‘No ferrets on the table,’ Lex said lazily.

‘You know he’s not a ferret,’ Lucius said with a touch of impatience.

‘No ferrets on the table,’ Lex repeated. ‘It’s my ship, I make the rules.’

‘It’s not your ship,’ Lucius sighed, picking Zachary up and putting him on the floor. ‘What happened to you, Lex? What happened to all your fine ideals about being a lawyer one day? You could have been wealthy and comfortable and respected. What could possibly have persuaded you to throw all that away?’

Lex shrugged. ‘It wasn’t exciting enough,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t understand. I never really wanted to be a lawyer.’

He had never truly had any fine ideals either. Very few people really did. There were almost always dark, gritty, secret motivators lurking behind the glossy golden surface. Lucius did not understand this.

‘I think it’s terrible,’ he said stiffly, picking at a cold slice of ham.

‘I know you do. That’s why my life will be extraordinary and exciting and bigger than I am. Whilst your life will be tedious and meaningless and flat. I’m making the best of what I’ve got. You’re just drifting meaninglessly through. It’s such a waste.’

‘Well, we can’t all be adventurers,’ Lucius said coldly. ‘Someone has to do the drudge work. Anyway, it’s kind of hard to have this discussion with you whilst you’re sitting there with that ridiculous hat stuck to your head. You look like an idiot. And you’ve put all of us at risk by wearing it.’

‘What can I say? I do like my hats,’ Lex drawled. ‘But I had better do something about this one. Take your ferret, we’re leaving. You can finish eating that on the bridge where Schmidt can babysit you.’

‘I wish you’d stop referring to Zachary as a ferret,’ Lucius sighed, carefully picking up the little weasel with both hands. ‘You might hurt his feelings.’

‘We wouldn’t want that,’ Lex murmured, eyeing the ferret with what some might have described as a murderous glint in his eye.

The sneeze was sudden and violent and seemed to catch even Lucius by surprise. Since his hands were both occupied holding the ferret, he was unable to cover his mouth. This was exceedingly unfortunate for Lex since it resulted in a spray of spit landing on his upper arm. This in itself would not have been overly problematic — nothing a bar of soap and a bit of scrubbing couldn’t have solved. But the real killer of it was that, amidst the spit, was one small insect with rather a lot of legs and long feelers on its head. Lex yelled in pure horror when he saw the thing and started waving his arm about desperately in an attempt to shake it off. But the bug knew exactly what to do and within moments it had crawled up Lex’s neck, across his face and, despite his efforts to knock it off, had disappeared straight up one of his nostrils.

‘Nasal lice!’ Lex spluttered in outrage. ‘You idiot, why the hell didn’t you warn me?’

‘I’m sorry, I thought they’d all gone!’ Lucius cried, wringing his hands hopelessly.

‘Thanks a lot! Thanks a sodding lot, you moron!’

Nasal lice were one of the many reasons that Lex disliked farms. Excluding nostrils, the lice habitat of choice was a special kind of hay of the type used to feed the drayfii. That was why protective clothing was always supposed to be worn when handling the hay. The lice were not dangerous — just exceedingly unpleasant, especially if, like Lex, you had a fetish about being clean. They could lay up to twenty eggs a day but an infestation rarely lasted more than a week. The body had a very efficient, if embarrassing way of getting rid of them. Sudden, violent sneezes. Lex thought of Schmidt and was suddenly even angrier — I daresay I would become accustomed to the lice given time, the lawyer had drawled. So Lex had started life as a farm boy and Schmidt was an expensive lawyer in an expensive suit, but that didn’t mean that Lex wasn’t clean. But now, because of Lucius, he would have to go through several miserable days of feeling dirty again.

‘Why weren’t you wearing the protective suits?’ Lex raged at his twin.

‘I was, but there was a rip down by the leg and I didn’t notice it till afterwards. Look, I’m sorry; I know how much you hate lice, but it will only be for a few days.’

‘Don’t say anything to Schmidt,’ Lex ordered. ‘Not a word!’

After escorting Lucius and Zachary back to the bridge, Lex trailed about the ship looking for the enchanter’s wardrobe. He was sure the rooms moved about. It had been near the bridge before but this time he searched right across to the other side of the ship before he found it.

This room, like the bridge, seemed to be made of ivory. There was a large full-length mirror that took up almost a whole wall and Lex stood and examined his reflection for a while. The hat certainly added to his height. And although it clearly clashed horribly with the rest of his clothes, it did give him something of an impressive appearance. Despite the unease he felt over the enchanter, Lex couldn’t find it in himself to regret putting on the hat. Lex liked power. He craved it in the aftermath of having felt so powerless for so long.

Lucius had tried to keep the special days special — birthdays and so on — but Lex had sneered at him for that. What was the point of dressing Alistair Trent in his best suit and putting out special food and pretending things were normal when it was nothing but a grotesque farce? Lex and Lucius had fallen out about it over the harvest weekend. Lucius had been in the kitchen pouring out three tankards of Grandy, for he couldn’t let his grandfather drink anything with alcohol or caffeine in it now. Alistair had been sitting at the dining-room table waiting patiently for his food, unspeaking. Lex was also sitting at the table waiting but, whilst Lucius was still able to talk to their grandfather by speaking as if to a child, Lex couldn’t do that. At last, unable to take the oppressive silence any longer, Lex had gone into the kitchen to find Lucius.

‘Why are we doing this?’ he’d asked.

‘We always celebrate the harvest,’ Lucius replied, looking up in surprise.

‘But he doesn’t even know what harvest is now, so what the hell is the point? I can’t do this; I’m going out.’

‘Lex!’ Lucius said, and Lex stopped for he had never heard anything even approaching steel in his twin’s voice before. ‘Sit down,’ Lucius said through gritted teeth. ‘I know he doesn’t understand any more. I look after him every day so, believe me, I know! But this isn’t for him, it’s for me. You pretend nothing’s wrong every day so you don’t have to help me. Fine. Okay. But I need this celebration, all right? I’ll pretend everything’s fine today and you can pretend all the other days of the year. Now go back to the table and sit down.’

And Lex had returned to the table, albeit with a certain lack of good grace. But that was in the past. Lex didn’t take orders from his brother now. In fact, he didn’t take orders from anyone. He tilted his head before the mirror, examining his reflection from different angles. The hat suited him. But it was a dangerous thing, he reminded himself. He had no choice but to try and remove it. It was the only responsible thing to do. Responsibility was so boring.

Lex turned in surprise as the door opened behind him. Of everyone onboard he had been the only one brave enough to explore beyond the bridge, so he was not expecting Schmidt to walk in on him.

‘Why aren’t you babysitting Lucius?’ Lex asked.

‘Did you know he was allergic to nuts?’ Schmidt asked.

‘Well, of course,’ Lex said, turning back to the mirror. ‘It’s an allergy we share.’

‘Then why did you let him eat that casserole? Didn’t you know it had nuts in it?’

‘I knew,’ Lex said, smiling. ‘Has his face swelled up yet?’

‘Why do you hate your brother so much?’

‘I don’t hate him. I’m just not favourably inclined towards the constant sound of his voice. Lucius is a chatterbox. The swelling will shut him up,’ Lex said, glancing at Schmidt’s reflection in the mirror. ‘Trust me, I was doing us both a favour. Why did you leave him, anyway?’

‘I’m looking for the kitchen,’ Schmidt said, sounding none-too-happy about it. ‘He said if he didn’t get a glass of water mixed with lemon then he could suffocate.’

‘Oh. Well you don’t seem to be in any great rush. I take it you don’t overly care for my brother’s company, either, if you’re willing to risk liability for his death.’

Schmidt rolled his eyes. ‘Despite what your brother told me, he did not seem to be in any immediate danger. And despite whatever contempt I might feel for you, I don’t seriously believe you to be a cold-blooded killer.’

‘Perhaps I didn’t realise he’d eaten nuts,’ Lex suggested.

‘It seems to me that not much gets past you without your noticing it,’ Schmidt grumbled.

‘Thank you,’ Lex said. ‘Now tell me how to remove the hat.’

‘What makes you think that I have any idea?’ Schmidt said defensively.

‘You knew about the prophet’s bat and the dangers of using the hat. I don’t know where you learnt about those things, but I do know it wasn’t from any law book.’

‘It was a law book,’ Schmidt insisted. ‘I learnt about the bat and the unsuitability of enchanted hats for humans from reading. I have had some strange cases to try over the years and my legal research has sometimes taken me into the realms of the strange and the bizarre.’

Lex gave a slight shrug and tried to pull the hat from his head again, for the look of the thing, before turning back to Schmidt. ‘The enchanter is looking for us. I felt him when I used the hat and he felt me. He is, as we would expect, very angry indeed. You heard the Goddess of Luck earlier. When he catches up with us, which he will do very quickly if I don’t get this hat off, he will not stop to apportion blame, he will simply punish everyone on board his ship and that includes you. He won’t cut you any slack because you’re elderly or because you’re a lawyer or because you’re a Withian citizen. Enchanters are above the law, Monty. We tricked his crone and we stole his ship. You played your part in that even if you played it unwillingly. I know that you know how to remove this hat. I can sense it just as you could sense that I’m a fraud. We’re all at risk whilst I’m wearing it. Tell me how to take it off.’

Schmidt looked at him for a moment, an expression of pure hatred on his face until, making up his mind at last he said, ‘Try holding your breath for twenty seconds.’

Half suspecting that he was being made a fool of, Lex did as Schmidt had suggested. After exactly twenty seconds, the hat fell off.

‘You certainly didn’t get that from any book, Monty,’ Lex said quietly, letting out his breath in relief.

‘Go to hell,’ Schmidt hissed before stalking from the room and slamming the door behind him.

‘Not today,’ Lex murmured softly to himself as he replaced the silver hat back on the rack alongside the others.

The journey on board the enchanted ship continued on the basis of a kind of disgruntled, resentful truce between Lex, Schmidt, Lucius and the ferret. Lucius was exceedingly hurt over the whole nut-allergy affair and somehow managed to bring it up every time he saw Lex — which had not been often over the last few days for Lex spent little of his time on the bridge. He always took care to return at night, though. He knew well enough that the ship was not safe. He really had been joking when he told Lucius that he’d seen ghosts and lost, twisted children down below, but that joke backfired on him when he remembered it late at night and became extremely uncomfortable at the recollection of his own ghost stories.

He had gone out on deck one night with the intention of enjoying the air and the soothing sound of the ship cutting through the sea and the smell of the foam. But it had been unnaturally quiet for, of course, this was no ordinary ship — it flew, it did not sail and, as such, there was no sound of water, no white foam trailing in the ship’s wake. Nothing but a slightly unnatural silence. It was a warm night so Lex sat down with his back against the wall, looking out towards the prow. He could enjoy smelling the ocean on the sea breeze, even if he could not hear all that much of it. Lex had always loved ships, especially at night. They were their own little worlds, separate from everyone else, hidden away in the middle of the ocean.

He dug in his pocket for the crystal ball and re-watched the first round. It had been broadcast to the stadiums about an hour after it had actually been completed and now the footage was stored on their individual crystal balls so that they could watch it whenever they liked. Lucius had not watched it even once but Lex had seen it over and over again. It annoyed him that the footage of Lucius climbing the wall of the castle had been edited to look more impressive, with lots of nail-biting shots of how extraordinarily high they were, and all the parts where Lucius had complained, whined or wept had been cut altogether.

The Gods called the little crystal balls Divine Eyes and Lex therefore assumed that they somehow recorded what the Gods saw. After all, there were no cameras in evidence, following them about during the course of the Game, but the Gods had some way of watching everything that went on even though they weren’t physically there. It therefore seemed that, somehow, they also had a way of recording the images they saw so that they could be played back later.

The muted, tinny sound of glorious music came softly out of the little ball when it got to the part where Lex leapt out from behind the statues to freeze the medusa. He could imagine the music booming across the giant stadiums and the cries of awe from the spectators. The grand music, combined with lots of fearsome shots of both the medusa and the minotaur, as well as the fact that this part had been broadcast in slow motion, made the whole thing look even more dashing and courageous than it really had been.

‘It wasn’t as impressive as all that,’ Schmidt had snorted when he’d seen it.

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Lex replied smoothly. ‘Seeing as you were the one cowering behind the statues whilst I was the one who heroically saved both our lives!’

To his immense satisfaction, Schmidt did not have anything to say to that. But Lex had taken to smugly watching and re-watching the footage in his crystal ball when he was alone late at night up on deck. He wanted to appear careless and nonchalant about it and felt that image would be somewhat ruined if the others saw him vainly ogling himself in the ball over and over again.

Lady Luck had smugly told him that he was the favourite to win already, with both Lucius and the prophet trailing far behind him. The defeat of the medusa and minotaur had created quite a stir and, already, enterprising merchants had produced a limited edition action figure of Lex fighting the monsters. The Goddess had brought him one in delight when she visited the ship yesterday. Lex took the three figures out of his pocket and examined them in the moonlight. Action-figure Lex did not look all that much like him as he was practically the same size as the minotaur — tall and broad and with a brave, fearsome expression on his little plastic face. Lex didn’t mind, however. You knew you’d made it when they turned you into an action figure.

He put them all back in his pocket and gazed out over the dark sea, feeling well pleased with himself. Look at me now, Gramps, he thought. This would be an adventure worthy of your stories. Lucius’s news that Alistair Trent was dead hadn’t particularly saddened Lex for he had known that it must have happened by now and he also knew that his grandfather would have wanted it. He was not a man made for half-lives. He had been a respected Chronicler and had only given it up when he had come home to raise Lex and Lucius after their parents died.

‘Sorry we cut your adventures off short, Gramps,’ Lex had said one day when he’d been about six. ‘You’d have had loads more without us.’

‘Well… some things are more important,’ Alistair replied lightly, running a hand through his thick silver hair as he sat down on the bench. He’d been chopping wood for the last hour but Lex had just brought him a tankard of beer, so he was having a well-earned break.

‘I want to be a Chronicler one day,’ Lex said.

‘Oh no,’ Alistair replied with a smile, picking Lex up with his strong hands and putting him on his knee. ‘You’ll be an Adventurer yourself. Don’t settle for writing the story, Lex. Accept nothing less than actually being the story and maybe one day The Chronicles of Lex Trent will be on the bookshelves next to Adventurers I wrote about myself.’

Lex had almost squirmed with pleasure at the suggestion. ‘You said it takes a certain type of person to be an Adventurer,’ he prompted, hoping for further praise.

‘Yes. You need certain qualities.’ Alistair glanced at his grandson. ‘But you’ve got most of them in spades already, which is damned remarkable considering you’re still only a little sprat. I’m completely confident that you’ll do the Trent name proud one day, my boy… ’

After a while, Lex fell asleep. He started awake some time later feeling cold and stiff and, for a moment, unsure of where he was. Then he remembered and was suddenly filled with the desire to get down below with Schmidt and Lucius where there were warm furs and the comforting sounds of other people breathing. He was about to stand up when he noticed the creature moving about on the deck. It was a moon-goblin — a strange, thin, melancholy creature made from moonlight. Lex froze, hoping the thing hadn’t seen him. Although mostly harmless, moon-goblins could be dangerously unpredictable when they were upset. This one was crying, wandering morosely about the deck, gazing out at the black sea, staring up at the stars and then wandering about again. Lex could hear its muffled sobs as it shuffled around. No one knew why the moon-goblins were such a sad species or what it was they cried about. This one had probably had its curiosity roused at the sight of the enchanted ship flying over the ocean. After a few minutes, it climbed over the outer railings, let go, and was blown away by the wind. Lex lost no time in scrambling to his feet and getting off the deck and back to the bridge as fast as he could, doing his best not to think about lost, twisted children.

It was with relief that he slipped into the bridge, firmly closing the door behind him. The light from the stars and moon shone in through the panoramic windows and illuminated Schmidt, Lucius and the ferret curled up in the warm blankets that had been piled around on the floor. As soon as Lex stepped into the room, Lucius sat bolt upright. ‘Is that you, Lex?’ he whispered fearfully.

Lex cursed inwardly. He knew he’d been quiet. Still, at least Lucius had had the sense to whisper — the last thing he wanted was for Schmidt to wake up and start telling everyone off.

‘Of course it’s me,’ Lex said quietly, tiptoeing over to his own designated sleeping space beside Lucius.

‘Where were you?’ Lucius asked. ‘I was worried about you when you didn’t come back. I thought something might have happened. I thought you might have had an accident or fallen overboard or-’

‘Gods, will you listen to yourself? You’re like an old woman! Shut up and go back to sleep.’

‘I suggested to Mr Schmidt that we make up a search party just in case something had happened to you,’ Lucius went on, unperturbed. ‘But he said that he would never be that lucky.’

Lex chuckled softly.

‘It’s not funny,’ Lucius said huffily.

‘Schmidt knows that I’m controlling the ship with the ivory Swann in the basin over there,’ Lex said nodding towards it. ‘So if the ship is still moving then that means that I am still alive and still on board, all right?’

‘Oh. All right, but I wish someone had told me before. Where is the ship going, anyway?’

Lex groaned softly. ‘Don’t you ever stop talking? You know where the ship is going; the Goddess of Luck said that her round would take place in the Golden Valley.’

‘Well, I don’t see what we can possibly do there,’ Lucius grumbled. ‘There’s nothing there but-’

‘ Wealth,’ Lex said gleefully.

When the Lands Above had at last washed its hands of royalty and the assassinations and bloody feuds that went with it, the last kings had gone to the Golden Valley, taking much of their acquired wealth with them. The western kings took horse-drawn carriages that stretched on for miles, journeying with them across the continent to the promised land where there would be no subjects baying for their blood and no relatives plotting to kill them. The eastern kings did much the same but for the fact that their carriages were pulled by elephants rather than horses. The kings had been allowed to take people with them but strangely they had all chosen to take servants rather than family. Kings had grown to be instinctively distrustful of relatives, especially since many of them had got their own titles by sneaking a drop of poison into Uncle’s brandy one night. So they took gold and servants instead of loved ones. It was said that the Golden Valley did now truly glitter, due to the amassed wealth of the land’s exiled kings.

‘I want to see that gold,’ Lex whispered. ‘It must be the most amazing sight.’

‘But it isn’t worth anything,’ Lucius grumbled. He pulled out a note of m-gold and held it up to the moonlight. ‘We use paper money, now.’

Lex snatched the note from him and examined it as best he could in the dark. Paper money! He sneered at the sight of it. What intrinsic worth did it have? What intrinsic beauty did it possess? There was nothing rare or unique about paper notes. Lex tossed it back to his brother dismissively.

‘And I thought people weren’t allowed to go there now, anyway,’ Lucius said.

‘The Gods want us to go,’ Lex said. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose. I’m glad to see you’ve maintained some respect for the Gods.’

Lex suppressed a smile. If Lucius could only hear how he spoke to Lady Luck when it suited him. Although, to be fair, he probably would not have tried it with any of the other Gods.

‘Go to sleep,’ Lex said. ‘We’ll get there tomorrow or the day after and I want to be ready.’