‘It seems to be floating well enough. What did I tell you?’ Lex said to the lawyer.
Schmidt gazed back at him coldly. The old crone was still screaming for her bloody cat, which seemed to have disappeared into the ship somewhere.
‘She’ll be able to row back to shore all right with that, she’s got an oar. And she has her cane. What more does she need?’
‘You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met,’ Schmidt said coldly. ‘You really don’t care about anyone at all, do you? She will be punished by her enchanter.’
‘She’ll be in more trouble if she stays with us. And, like you said, we are only borrowing the boat.’
‘Yes,’ Schmidt replied with a horrible smile. ‘So I know you won’t mind leaving her with a deposit. As you fully intend to bring the ship back.’
‘Deposit? What dep-?’
Lex broke off in pure horror as the lawyer suddenly grabbed his bag which had been lying on the deck and threw it overboard where it landed with a splash next to the crone, who promptly pulled it into her basket, crowing with glee at the valuable nature of the things inside.
‘How dare you!’ Lex hissed, rounding angrily on the lawyer. ‘How dare you! Do you know how long it took me to collect all those beautiful things? Do you know how hard I had to work to get them?’
‘It hurts, doesn’t it, Lex? Losing things that are important to you? Good, I’m glad you’re upset.’
Discipline, Lex told himself. He’s baiting you. Don’t rise to it
… Don’t rise to it… After all, he still had his money belt — not that Schmidt needed to know anything about that…
‘I’m not upset, Mr Schmidt,’ Lex said with exaggerated politeness. ‘Just a little concerned about how we’re going to finance our journey now that you’ve given away all my valuables. After all, I have no money now and there will be travelling expenses and food expenses and things… but that’s okay because you still have your wallet, don’t you? I must say it’s very sportsmanlike of you to agree to pay for all this out of your own pocket, Mr Schimdt,’ Lex gloated, noting with relish the distinctly unhappy expression that was now on his employer’s face.
‘Didn’t think it through, did you?’ Lex asked, with sudden coldness. ‘It takes practice, you know, swindling people. You really shouldn’t try it unless you’re absolutely sure it won’t backfire on you.’
He glanced over the edge of the ship. ‘You know, Monty, I have the sneaking suspicion that you might have overpaid her.’
The old crone was paddling for the shore as fast as her oar would take her, one arm still crooked around Lex’s bag.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mahara was a dead Goddess. She had died, they said, for love. For the love of a mortal man. She had given up her immortality for him. And now her abandoned sun was cold and useless, its light shedding no warmth so that it was unable to prevent the ice storms from sweeping in, blowing snow across the land and freezing the ocean solid. It was a problem for the gypsies and the fishermen, for their boats would become stuck on the frozen sea. But, to an enchanted boat, Mahara’s sun was no obstacle. The ship flew over the solidifying ocean and sliced through the gales, the shards of ice shattering harmlessly against the steel prow where they would have punched straight through a wooden gypsy boat.
Lex and Schmidt had taken to using lengths of rope to guide themselves round the mirrored boat. They feared that, without something to guide them back to the bridge, they might become permanently lost within the vast, winding, reflecting corridors. Schmidt had warned Lex not to go poking around. The bridge seemed harmless enough, as had Bessa’s little cabin, but who knew what might be lurking elsewhere within the ship?
Predictably, Lex had scoffed at the words of caution and set out to explore or — more accurately — to loot the ship. Who knew what manner of valuable, dangerous, beautiful things he might find on such a vessel? He was disappointed to discover that many of the rooms were similar to Bessa’s cabin — nothing more than tiny little marble boxes. He did find a wardrobe, though, and amused himself there for a while, trying on the enchanter’s tall, pointed hats. He also took some white fur coats to make the hard-surfaced bridge more comfortable. He found a bathroom too and the kitchen by following the grey cat, which seemed to appear from nowhere, watching Lex warily with narrowed, yellow eyes. The creature gave Lex the creeps and he was sorely tempted to drop the wretched thing overboard. But he had some vague notion that cats on ships were supposed to be good luck or something and it ran off when he tried to approach it, so he shrugged and left Piewacket to himself.
Schmidt had steadfastly refused to eat a thing that Lex had found on board in case the food was enchanted, preferring instead to eat what they had brought with them from Jani’s Tavern. But Lex had sampled some of the pantry’s supplies and found the food to be very good indeed. He had continued his systematic exploring of the ship until he had some idea of its layout. Any conman knows that it is important to have escape routes very firmly fixed in your mind in case the worst should happen.
Lex knew how to get out on deck and he knew how to escape into the bowels of the ship to hide if need be. But he had not been inside all of the rooms. His natural explorer’s instinct had been somewhat curbed after opening an innocuous little door to find a rabid rabbit on the other side that almost roasted him with a blast of flame from its foaming mouth before lunging for his feet. The thing had chewed halfway through his boot before he managed to kick it off and slam the door shut. Lex had no idea what it was there for — it might have been a pet, a magical experiment gone wrong or the enchanter’s breakfast for all he knew — but he marked the door with a big X to make sure he didn’t go in there again and when Schmidt asked him where the scorch marks had come from, Lex told him that he had discovered a small dragon down below. It sounded better than rabid bunny rabbit.
But the incident made him wary of opening any closed door too readily. Furthermore, he had a sneaking suspicion that some of the rooms sometimes changed size. Or moved. He was almost sure that he had been near the bottom of the ship the first time he encountered the ferocious, fire-breathing rabbit and yet, the next day, he saw the same door on the top floor just outside the bridge, the X he had drawn on it still there, undisturbed.
Lex had since drawn X’s on several of the doors just on the basis of the strange sounds he had heard coming out of them. There had been a decided munching, crunching kind of sound from one and from another Lex was sure he had heard the rustle and tap of some many-legged creature walking about on the mirrored floor. So, in spite of his initial bravado, Lex had decided, after all, that he would sleep on the bridge with the lawyer that night. He wasn’t scared of the ship. Not at all. He just liked being able to see the sea going by and the only windows in the whole ship were on the bridge. The wall-to-wall mirrors everywhere else did not allow any portholes and that gave the ship a stifling, claustrophobic air, especially considering the ease with which one could get lost.
Bessa had said that the ship read the mind of the key holder and so Lex had assumed that it was heading for Khestrii. His hope was confirmed when they began to catch sight of other enchanted boats the next day, heading in the same direction as them. The boats never strayed too close to each other and Lex could only assume that they could somehow sense each other and keep on separate courses.
They arrived at the great metal harbour an hour before sunset. Lex had worried about this moment. Khestrii was the home of the enchanters and it would never do for them to see Lex and Schmidt getting off the ship — they would immediately suspect foul play for no enchanter would willingly allow his ship to be used by non-magical people. As it was, the ice storms let in by Mahara’s sun had driven the enchanters away from the harbour and, as they had no midnight markets here, the port was deserted. Besides which, the white fur coats that Lex had found effectively shielded them from any suspicious glances and, with the hoods pulled up over their heads, it was not obvious that they were not enchanters anyway. The only thing that gave them away was their height. Lex in particular was not tall enough for the coat and the end of it dragged in the snow in a most irritating way. He would just have to hope that if anyone did notice this they would assume that he was a lucky crone with a kind master who had graciously allowed her to wear one of the coats, although that in itself was unlikely.
But although the ice storms worked in their favour in emptying the harbour, they did not make it very easy to disembark the boat. Their rather brutal departure from the docks at Gandylow had broken off the gangplank, so the only way to disembark the ship was to have it hover just over the docks and then climb down the ladder that ran
