Lex Trent versus the Gods

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

At long last, eight days later, Lex was standing shivering in the kitchen, stripped down to his underwear, waiting to get into his tank, glaring ferociously at the slimy mugget already there when… absolutely nothing happened.

‘You should have turned into a fish by now,’ Schmidt said eventually.

Lex sat down on the chair, pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders and said nothing. He didn’t care any more. Fish, human, what did it matter? Another side effect of whiskerfish poisoning was that, for some reason, it made your hair grow. Lex’s hair was now as long as Lucius’s, and lank and greasy because he hadn’t washed it since becoming ill. His skin had turned this greyish colour and he felt thin and everything ached…

Schmidt insisted they wait an hour to be sure Lex definitely wasn’t going to turn into a fish again before letting him crawl into the small room near the bridge that he had taken over. Lex had moved in there a few days after the poisoning because there comes a point in any illness when you feel so awful that you just can’t stand to be around anyone. Besides which, the panoramic windows on the bridge let in far too much light. Lex wanted a small, dark, silent room where he could curl up and just concentrate on not moving. This will pass, he kept telling himself. Jezra had weakened him but he was still in the running and — damn it — he was still going to win. Schmidt had been in charge of the ivory swan that drove the ship whilst Lex had been ill so that it continued to head towards their destination — the Ladder Forest where they would play the third and final round. They were now only a week away and Lex would be recovered enough to play by then.

‘Try and eat some human food as soon as you can,’ Schmidt said when they reached his room. ‘With me, of course… ’ He hesitated a moment before going on. ‘Lex… why didn’t you swap us on purpose?’

‘What do you mean?’ Lex asked, rubbing at his red eyes.

‘Why didn’t you swap bodies with me and make me share some of the illness instead of doing it all yourself?’

‘I was feeling so ill it didn’t occur to me,’ Lex said. ‘It’s a good thing you didn’t ask me that question a few days earlier, Monty.’

‘Huh,’ Schmidt grunted. But he didn’t believe him.

‘Look, do me a favour,’ Lex said. ‘Keep Lucius away from me for the next few days.’

The lawyer nodded. ‘I hope you feel better.’

And he left Lex to crawl gratefully under his blankets at last.

Lex walked onto the bridge three days later, aware that he still looked pale and sickly but feeling much better now that all traces of muggets had left his system. At long last he could look at human food without feeling sick and he’d brought a couple of fruit sticks up to the bridge with him. He was ready to rejoin the others and find out what he’d missed. He was most displeased, however, on stepping onto the bridge, to have Schmidt look round at him from the window and say, ‘Haven’t you found Zachary yet, Lucius?’

Lex’s mouth dropped open in pure horror at being mistaken for his pale, weedy brother. ‘I’m not Lucius!’ he spluttered indignantly.

‘Oh, is that you, Lex?’

‘Yes!’

‘Feeling better?’

‘Well, I was,’ Lex grumbled, ‘until you just insulted me like that.’

‘Have you looked at yourself in the mirror recently?’ Schmidt asked. ‘At the moment I’m afraid Lucius is the healthier-looking one of the two of you.’

Lex scowled. ‘I’m going to have a wash and cut my hair after this and then I’m sure I’ll look much better. So where’s Lucius?’

‘Looking for Zachary. He keeps wandering off.’

‘Good, I hope he falls overboard,’ Lex said, throwing one of the refreshing fruit sticks to Schmidt before taking a bite out of his own.

‘I would have thought your recent illness would have made you a little more sympathetic to Zachary’s plight,’ Schmidt said, after biting into his fruit stick.

‘Well, then you were entirely wrong,’ Lex said with a shrug. ‘Don’t feel bad about it.’

The door opened then and Lucius walked in with a struggling ferret tucked under his arm. ‘Lex!’ Lucius exclaimed, dropping Zachary in delight when he saw his brother on the deck. To Lex’s irritation he came over and tried to hug him. ‘I’m so glad you’re feeling better. You’ll never have to eat another mugget again!’

‘I hope not,’ Lex said, trying to twist out of his twin’s grip.

‘Well, it was your own fault, anyway,’ Schmidt pointed out helpfully. ‘Lucius did try to warn you.’

‘It was worth it,’ Lex declared. ‘I was a king for five seconds. My name will be on the Royal Monument in the Wither City now, Mr Schmidt. You’ll have to check it out when you get back.’

‘I’m sure you plan on seeing it for yourself, as well,’ the lawyer said, watching him closely.

‘Of course. But I’m not going back to the Wither City with you. You’d turn me straight over to the police and I’d get stuck in jail.’

‘Well, you did break the law,’ Schmidt said with a shrug.

‘How long will Lex have to serve, Mr Schmidt?’ Lucius asked, looking distinctly unhappy.

‘Well that depends on the judge to some extent,’ Schmidt said. ‘But you’ve got theft, fraud, criminal damage, evasion of justice-’

‘It would be about five years,’ Lex interrupted.

‘If you were lucky,’ Schmidt said.

‘I’m always lucky.’

‘Five years?’ Lucius said, looking horrified. ‘Oh, Lex-’

‘Shut up, Lucius. I’m not going to prison. They’ll never catch me.’

‘But do you really want to be running your whole life?’ Lucius asked.

‘Ha! Only if somebody’s chasing me,’ Lex grinned. ‘It wouldn’t be fun otherwise. Who’s done what with my crystal ball, anyway? I want to watch the footage from the second round.’

Lucius dug it out of the pile of blankets and handed it over to Lex.

‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘Now I’m going to clean up and cut my hair. We’re looking a little too similar for my liking. I’ll be back later.’

He left the bridge and went down the corridor to the bathroom. It was a large ivory room with a huge circular bath in the centre. When he’d first found it, Lex had been put off from using the bathroom by the thick black toenail clippings that blocked the plughole. When he’d turned the taps on, he’d washed them all away but the image had stuck in his mind. The enchanter had clearly had something of an obsession about his feet, for Lex found a myriad of foot creams and lotions and — urgh — a whole bag of pumice stones neatly laid out in one of the mirrored cabinets. But now the thought of clean hot water outweighed Lex’s distaste and he filled the tub to the brim, sloshing water everywhere when he stepped in. He couldn’t help a groan of pleasure when he sat down and a whirlpool motion started up, pummelling his back and easing away all the aches and pains. The hot water was wonderfully soothing and slightly honey-scented and — whilst Lex would have preferred a more manly scent — being clean again felt indescribably good. He ducked his head under the water to wash his hair, getting rid of the horrible build up of grease at last. He’d always hated long hair, anyway, for it got in the way and gave him a wimpy look, but having lank, greasy strands stuck to his head was unbearable. Whatever else he might be, Lex was a stickler for cleanliness.

After he’d sat there for a while, he reached over for the crystal ball he had left at the side of the tub and leant back to enjoy the footage from the second round. Like the first one, it had been edited to make him look suitably impressive and he could just imagine it beaming out over the stadiums accompanied by oohs and aahs as Lex raced through the magic forest — an entire herd of draglings and a mad king in pursuit. The wicked witch footage in particular had been very heavily edited — Lex was sure her remaining teeth hadn’t been as sharp as that in real life and she hadn’t been so big either and she certainly hadn’t chased after them when they escaped from her cave, as the recycled dragling-chase footage seemed to imply. The fairy godmothers’ village and Matilda had been cut altogether and so had the whiskerfish transformation as none of that really seemed very dignified at all. The last image of Lex showed him standing with the gleaming crown on his head and a self-satisfied smirk on his face. He was still the bookies’ favourite to win by a long shot, for he had already won both the first two rounds by a mile. But the slate would be wiped clean for the third round, so that it was anybody’s Game.

When, at last, Lex managed to drag himself out of the bath, he wrapped a white towel around his waist and took a comb out of the mirrored cabinet. He carefully ran this through his chin-length hair to detangle it. When he was done he put the comb down on the edge of the sink and opened the cabinet door again to get the scissors. But when he shut the mirrored door, he jumped and almost dropped the scissors as Jezra’s reflection swung into view. The God of Wit and Daring was standing just behind Lex by the now-empty bath, wearing his usual high-necked pale blue jacket, a lazy smile on his face.

‘Hello, Lex. Feeling better?’

‘I’m afraid so, my Lord,’ Lex said, bowing stiffly.

He did not overly resent Jezra for what he’d done. Lex understood the need to win. But it was hard not to feel just a little bit bitter when looking directly at the person responsible for making the last two weeks of his life an utter misery. Especially when Jezra had always been something of a hero to Lex.

‘It was nothing personal, you know,’ Jezra went on, running a hand through his long hair.

Nothing personal? Of course it had been personal! But Lex just nodded. There was no sense in arguing with Gods. He turned back to the mirror and raised the scissors to his hair but froze at the sound of Jezra’s sharp command, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you!’

‘Why not?’ Lex asked, looking at the God in the mirror, scissors still poised at the side of his head.

Jezra smiled. ‘Because if you cut your hair then all those awful muggets you ate will have been for nothing.’

‘I don’t follow,’ Lex said, putting the scissors down carefully on the side of the sink and then turning to look at Jezra. Something in the God’s voice alerted Lex to the fact that Jezra was excited about something.

‘You didn’t really think my plan was to kill you, did you?’ Jezra asked, and then, when Lex didn’t answer, he continued, ‘Lex, you’re far too valuable for that. I’m not the kind of God who would destroy something he wanted just because someone else had it at the time. I would wait patiently, fully expecting to procure the object of my desire in good time.’

Lex stared at the God, a suspicion suddenly coming into his mind. ‘You want to switch us?’ he said incredulously as realisation dawned.

Jezra laughed. ‘Yes, I’d like to pass you off as Lucius. What do you think?’

Lex turned and gazed at himself in the mirror. He did look virtually identical to his brother now that his hair had grown and his skin had taken on a sickly pallor. But Lucius was merely pale, he did not have the dark shadows under his eyes that Lex had or the greyish tinge to his skin and he wasn’t as thin as Lex had become after a week spent eating nothing but muggets. Lex was about to voice these objections to the God but then he realised that they could all be overcome. There was a week to go before the last round and by then Lex would just look pale rather than sickly. And any weight he hadn’t put back on could be disguised with the right clothing. A slow grin spread across his face.

‘Will you play for me, Lex?’ Jezra asked softly. ‘Will you trick Lady Luck as she tricked me and win for me instead of for her in a beautiful, spectacular double cross?’

‘My Lord, it would be an honour to win for you,’ Lex said, still grinning at his reflection and silently thanking his whiskerfish poisoning for giving him such a perfect, flawless disguise.

It was not a very difficult thing for Lex to convince Lucius to go along with the scam, for Lucius was afraid of the Ladder Forest even before he knew what the round entailed. There was, to be fair, something a little bit ominous about all those old ladders of various shapes and sizes just stuck into the ground, like trees without leaves or branches. The Ladder Forest was an accumulation of spares to replace worn-out Space Ladders. This was very important for, without the ladders, the two halves of the planet would drift apart and the Lands Above would lose their Gods. Some even said that the ladders were growing — getting taller and older and darker by the year. And that little ones had started sprouting up, too. People stayed away from them in the main, and the tourists gave them a wide berth when they came to gawk at the Space Ladders.

‘I got you into this,’ Lex said charitably to his brother. ‘And now I’m going to get you out.’

‘What about the Gods, though?’ Lucius whined. ‘They’ll be angry-’

‘They expect cheating,’ Lex said dismissively.

‘I know but-’

‘Look,’ Lex interrupted, ‘it’s simple. All you have to do is hide in the enchanter’s closet until the Game is over. You can manage that, can’t you? Otherwise you’ll have no choice but to go out into the ladders yourself.’

So Lucius had agreed to hide in the cupboard — taking Zachary with him since the ferret would have given the game away, for he wouldn’t let Lex pick him up and would always bite him at the first available opportunity.

The timing was perfect, for by the time they arrived at the Ladder Forest, Lex and Lucius had identical complexions thanks to the whiskerfish poisoning. They didn’t do the switch until the night before, so as not to give Lady Luck any more warning than necessary. Lex installed Lucius in the closet with Zachary that evening after dinner, then crept back to the bridge where Schmidt was about to lie down to sleep.

‘Where’s Lucius?’ the lawyer asked when Lex walked in.

‘I am Lucius, Mr Schmidt,’ Lex said, slipping easily back into the respectful tone he had once used every day with his employer.

‘Oh. Well, where’s Lex then?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lex replied, biting his lip and feigning worry as he glanced around the bridge. ‘He said something about going to look for scissors.’

Lex had explained his hair by saying that he’d been unable to find any scissors. He had enjoyed complaining bitterly about his resemblance to Lucius over the past few days, allowing the lawyer to believe he was in a foul temper and proclaiming that he would find something with which to cut his hair if he had to turn the ship upside down to do so.

‘Perhaps I should go and look for him?’ Lex said, fiddling with his hands in an exact mimic of Lucius when he was worried.

‘Lex will turn up,’ Schmidt said. ‘Don’t worry about him. Just go to sleep. And by the grace of the Gods, this will all be over this time tomorrow and we can go back to our lives.’

‘I hope so, sir,’ Lex snivelled. ‘I just want to go home to my farm.’

Lex hid a smile as he lay down to sleep. This was all going so perfectly. He was going to trick Lady Luck, he was going to win the Game, he was going to better everyone. Schmidt would be easy enough to fool, the doddering old twit. And afterwards Lex would be even more notorious and have the great Lord Jezra himself as his patron. Lex had agreed to Jezra’s proposal on the condition that he won the Game as Lex Trent and not as Lucius. He wanted to make his own name notorious, not his wimpy brother’s. Jezra had been more than happy to agree to this, for it would enhance his own reputation once it was known that he had bested Lady Luck by stealing her player right out from under her nose.

The players were due to meet at the edge of the Ladder Forest at sunrise the next morning. When Lex supposedly didn’t turn up, the round would simply commence without him and there wouldn’t be a damned thing Lady Luck could do about it. Ha! How perfectly delicious it all was.