‘I say, perhaps we oughtn’t to be talking about such things out in the open like this,’ Mr East said, suddenly catching on to the impropriety.
Lex nodded his agreement. It was almost time for him to go, anyway, but there was just time to do one last bit of damage first. He leaned forwards across the table a little and said, ‘Ai daresay ai shouldn’t tell you this, but ai have it on good authority that this Lex Trent fellow Jeremiah’s up against is absolutely petrified of bats.’
‘Bats?’ Mrs East said sharply. ‘Bats, you say?’
‘Yaas, bats. Little winged rats, you know.’
In fact, Lex had no phobias. None whatsoever. He wasn’t scared of heights or spiders or rats or bats or snakes or anything. These were irrational fears and simply baffled him. There’d have been about as much truth in the statement, Lex Trent is scared of the colour blue, as there was in the statement that he was afraid of bats. In fact, he rather liked bats. They were sweet little things when they didn’t have their fangs out. But he may as well toss a bone Jeremiah’s way and see if anything happened, although he suspected the nobleman wouldn’t have the wit to make good use of the information. It would take a special kind of cunning to produce a bat in the middle of the Game, after all. Lex would have managed it somehow, but he doubted Jeremiah would. Still, hopefully he might waste a bit of time and energy in the attempt.
‘Ai have a friend who knew Trent when they were law students back in the Wither City,’ Lex said. ‘And apparently, one night, a swarm of bats descended on them and this fellow Trent went absolutely nuts. Freaked out altogether, so old Jonesy said. Practically wet himself.’
‘You don’t say?’ Mr East said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. The man was so transparent he might just as well have been made of glass.
‘Best not tell Easty though, eh? Ai mean, it wouldn’t be sporting, would it? And ai’m sure Jeremiah doesn’t need tips like that to win. He can win without them.’
‘Of course he can!’ his parents said in perfect unison.
‘Of course he can,’ Lex echoed.
CHAPTER SIX
Lex left soon after that, stuffing a couple of crumpets into his pocket to enjoy with Jesse later and then going back to the ship the way he had come, through one of the tourist boats, taking the opportunity to pinch a few more wallets along the way. He was pleased to find that he hadn’t lost his touch. He barely had to brush past someone and their wallet would be in his pocket. It was ridiculously easy and the reason, as he remembered now, that it had ceased being fun. There was no exciting challenge in it.
That was why he had moved on to daring cat-burglar exploits as the Shadowman, pinching spectacularly valuable things from museums, until he’d got caught up in the last Game and someone had shamelessly stolen his alter ego. He’d therefore been forced to re-invent himself as the Wizard. The tiny enchanter’s hats he now left as his calling card were magical. A little bit magical, anyway. If you said Abracadabra then a small flame shot from the tip. Lex had found a magically refilling cupboard of them on board the enchanted ship and had no idea what they had originally been for, but they worked very well as his calling card now because the fact that they were magical meant that they could not easily be reproduced by copycats. Which meant that Lex got to keep all the glory and notoriety for himself.
He slipped back on to the boat, quickly got changed and then went up to the top deck where Jesse was watching the other ship come in. Lex had noticed its approach from the teashop and had realised then that it was most definitely time to go. It was Jeremiah’s ship. He recognised it by the mermaid rising up along the prow and the painted blue and gold exterior. It was a grand ship in a boring sort of way, he supposed, but it couldn’t possibly compare with the gleaming, silver enchanter’s ship, where even the sails were made out of metal, and ancient, magical black runes were painted all along its sides.
It was fast approaching midday? the allotted time for the start of the round? and even the toffs were no longer showing much interest in their crumpets. They were all lined up eagerly, waiting for the other players to arrive and for things to get interesting.
Finally Jeremiah’s ship pulled in next to Lex’s. Lex couldn’t prevent his lip curling as he saw that it clearly ran on wind and oar power? not on magic. It was really quite pathetic and he felt a glow of smug satisfaction at the fact that Jeremiah had been forced to dock his ship right next to Lex’s and thereby emphasise the fact that the two really were in completely different classes. There was much cheering from the toffs below, though, and Jeremiah appeared up on deck to give them a bow, whereupon the crowd went crazy in quite an over-the-top way, in Lex’s opinion. After all, Jeremiah was only bowing, not throwing fistfuls of money down at them. But he was wearing fancy clothes with shiny buttons again, and had that handsome, noble look, and that sort of thing mattered to some people. Or, at least, it mattered to the stupid people, concerned only with appearances rather than actual talent. Lex wasn’t overly bothered by it, for he had no time for stupid people and never had. And never would, either.
He hadn’t seen Lorella? the enchantress? arrive in the Wither City and so did not know what sort of transportation she was using. He sort of expected it to be another enchanted ship, similar to his own. After all, it was the method of transportation favoured by the enchanters and so it made sense that the enchantresses would use them, too.
But the minutes ticked closer and closer to midday and still there was no sign of an enchanted ship on the horizon, and Lex started to worry that she might not turn up at all. He was aware of Jeremiah looking more and more pleased as the moments crept by but that was because he was an idiot who thought it was only about winning, when actually it was about winning spectacularly, and that was that bit harder to do if the competition was severely reduced before the Game even began. A no-show from Lorella was therefore the very last thing Lex wanted.
At the same time, however, he didn’t want to be shown up by her. And so he was quite annoyed when, five minutes before midday, she finally arrived in a most unexpected way. When the rainbow suddenly appeared in the sky, Lex thought it was something to do with Saydi and her love of all things beautiful, but then he realised that no rainbow? even if it was Saydi’s sun that day? would ever race across the sky quite like that! It was like some sort of glorious shooting star in pink and blue and green, and there were a lot of oohs and aahs from the crowd below as the rainbow spread across the silver sky to finally end right over the pier. And then Lorella materialised from the end of the rainbow? a human shape suddenly forming out of the multitude of colours. There was a figure-hugging, blue velvet dress and masses of long hair that? for a brief moment? sported all the colours of the rainbow before Lorella herself stepped out of it and the multi-colours sparkling about her slowly faded, leaving behind an exceptionally beautiful enchantress who smiled and inclined her head just a little as the crowd of toffs went berserk.
Lex scowled blackly, thinking that both his own and Jeremiah’s arrivals had been most effectively upstaged. The thought made him glance automatically across to Jeremiah’s ship. The same sort of thing was clearly running through Jeremiah’s mind, for he turned his head to look at Lex’s ship at the same time and their eyes met briefly.
But what might have been a shared sympathetic moment was ruined by what had passed between them in the Wither City and they both hastily averted their gazes from one another, glaring back down at Lorella instead and the stunningly beautiful spectacle she was making of herself down on the pier. Well, she certainly knew how to work the crowds, Lex would give her that.
‘Arriving by rainbow!’ Lex scoffed to Jesse. ‘I’ve never heard of anything so grossly over-the-top in my life! It’s pathetic! Isn’t it? Jesse?’