by Alex Bell
‘That hardly seems fair!’ Lex protested. ‘It was Lucius’s fault for leaving the drayfus there! Why should I be punished for his mistake?’
‘Now, now. Play nicely, children,’ Lady Luck said lightly. ‘I have agreed to this arrangement with Jezra, Lex. Lucius will travel with you to the next round.’
‘But that just isn’t fair!’ Lex fumed. ‘I’m the one who stole the ship, I should reap the benefits!’
‘If it makes you feel any better, Lex, the enchanter is after you now that you’ve used his hat. If he catches up with you he will likely punish all persons on board the ship, so I’m afraid that, as well as reaping the benefits, Lucius may also pay the price for what you’ve done.’
Jezra picked up the end of string that was Zachary’s makeshift lead and handed it to Lucius.
‘Have fun,’ the God said to the two distinctly unhappy brothers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MAGIC HATS AND NASAL LICE
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 respec
ted. 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 d
on’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.’
