useful thing to have tucked away somewhere. Lex’s curiosity was even more aroused by the revelation that Schmidt knew this crone. Lawyers were not generally on speaking terms with magical peoples. It was frowned on by the Law Society, so this was another thing that Lex carefully filed away under Potential Leverage.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The water pump was in the centre of the fairy godmothers’ village. Their own guide had disappeared when they walked out of the crone’s hut, probably frightened off by all the shouting. They were being watched with curiosity from various windows, but no one came out to take a closer look or to protest at the free use that was being made of their pump. Lex shooed away some loitering duckigs and then knelt down on his knees beside the pump. He deliberately made a show of washing his mouth out, spitting bloody water onto the grass and noting with satisfaction the rather mortified expression on his employer’s face. Then he set to work cleaning the crown.
When he had finished, the three of them stared at it, enthralled, for several moments and the fairy godmothers in their cottages went to fetch their glasses so they might see it better from their windows. Lex had already known that the royal crowns were made from something even more beautiful and valuable than gold, but he hadn’t known what exactly. Now he clearly saw that the crown was made out of star-silver. The Gods made these crowns out of the stars themselves, imbuing them with an ineffable majesty and beauty that gold would never have been able to achieve. Lex couldn’t take his eyes off it. He wanted to be able to look at it always. There was no way he was ever giving this back to the crone; no way. They would have to prise it from his cold dead fingers first. It was simply shaped with no jewels or gilt adornment of any kind — it simply didn’t need any. Now that it had been washed, the silver shone softly in Lex’s hands, dappling his face with starlight. Lex could see his wavering reflection in the crown’s surface as if he was looking into a clear, still unicorn lake. This was what he lived for — this, right here. The moments when he came face to face with beauty like this.
After they’d been gazing at it for a few moments, the crone began to fidget restlessly and started whining about getting ‘her’ crown back, so Lex stood up with a sigh, shushed her and then prepared to lower the crown onto its rightful place on his head. He froze in surprise when a madman burst from the trees, waving his arms and chasing a herd of startled-looking duckigs before him.
‘Don’t put it on!’ the figure shrieked. ‘Lex, don’t put it on, it’s bewitched!’
‘What’s wrong with Lucius?’ Schmidt asked in surprise.
‘Ha! He’s too late, as usual,’ Lex said with a grin as his brother sprinted towards him.
‘You’re too late, Lucius. I already found the-oompf!’ He broke off as Lucius crashed into him and the two of them went rolling over on the grass, the crown flying out of Lex’s hand.
‘You idiot!’ Lex snapped, snatching it up again. ‘You’re too late; I’ve already won. I found it first.’
‘Lex, please listen to me,’ Lucius begged, still very much out of breath. ‘The Gods are cheating!’
‘Well of course they are; they want to win.’
‘The crown is bewitched. It’s a trap!’
‘Eh?’
‘It’s a trap! I overheard Jezra talking with the Judge. He’s bewitched the crown with some kind of poison to take you out of the running. He made the Judge keep the prophet back so that you’d find the crown first. Oh Gods, Lex, you have to believe me; I’m not making this up!’
‘All right, calm down, I believe you,’ Lex said calmly.
‘You do?’ Lucius beamed up from where he was still sprawled on the ground. He had been sure that Lex would think this was some kind of ploy — that his greed would overturn his common sense and he’d crown himself anyway. ‘Thank the Gods.’
‘Hmm,’ Lex examined the crown in his hands thoughtfully. ‘But is it really bewitched?’
‘Lex, I swear I overheard Jezra saying that-’
‘Yes, yes, I already said I believe you,’ Lex said, waving his hand dismissively.
‘Then you understand it’s a trap?’
Lex glanced at his brother disdainfully. He noticed he still had Zachary tucked under his arm. The ferret was hanging there resignedly. ‘Of course it’s a trap, Lucius; that’s not the issue. The issue is working out exactly what the trap is.’
‘But… I just told you… ’ Lucius stammered.
Lex sighed. ‘Jezra would have realised that you overheard him.’
‘No, no,’ Lucius protested at once. ‘I was careful not to be seen. He told the Judge he realised he wasn’t going to win. He said all he wanted now was to hamper you.’
‘How can you be fooled so easily?’ Lex sneered. ‘This is the God of Wit and Daring. He’s not going to accept defeat that easily. Trust me, he’s still playing to win and if you overheard him it’s because Jezra wanted to be overheard. It was a part of his plan.’
‘Well, what difference does that make, anyway?’ Lucius said.
‘Jezra tricked the Judge,’ Lex said patiently. ‘He got the prophet out of the running before the round had even begun by making up this story about the crown being bewitched. He ensured that you overheard what he’d said so that you would run and tell me not to put on the crown. That much is clear. There’d be a stalemate and you and I would get an equal number of points for this round. A bold lie to frighten me out of winning the crown. If he knew you had overheard and were going to warn me, then he’d have no need to actually bewitch the crown, see?’
‘You’ve lost me,’ Lucius said.
Lex ignored him. Of course Jezra knew that Lucius knew. He had anticipated Lucius’s loyalty; he knew the message would be passed on to Lex. And he knew that Lex knew his brother was a terrible liar and so had to be telling the truth. So Lex should be able to put the crown on safely… but there was that slight danger that Jezra himself might have been even cleverer than that and also anticipated Lex working out his scam, in which case the crown might be dangerous after all. Lex looked at the beautiful thing in his hand. He just had to put it on. The chances were that this was nothing more than a lie that Jezra had cleverly arranged for Lucius to deliver, for he must have let Lucius overhear deliberately. The whole thing had to be a bluff. Lex glanced at Schmidt. ‘Well, you only live once, don’t you, sir?’ And before anyone could stop him, he lowered the crown onto his head, ignoring the others’ yells of warning.
Nothing happened.
Everyone was staring at Lex in silent apprehension. A grin slowly spread across his face. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘What did I tell-’
And then, without any warning at all, Lex turned into a fish. A whiskerfish, to be precise — with a small, blue, spotted body and long, ridiculous whiskers that fanned out from his face. For a moment everyone stared at the thing, thrashing around in the grass on top of a pile of Lex’s clothes, the crown having rolled off a little distance. Schmidt was the first to recover. He picked Lex up and ran to the nearest fairy godmother cottage with him — dropping him several times because he was thrashing so hard and almost treading on him once. He barged straight into the cottage, past the indignant fairy godmother and dumped Lex into the sink, which he quickly filled with water.
‘Just what do you think you’re doing, young man?’ the fairy godmother said irritably from behind him.
Schmidt turned around in surprise. It had been a long time since anyone had addressed him as ‘young man’.
‘Isn’t it self-evident, madam?’ he snapped. ‘My friend poisoned himself with whiskerfish poison and was suffocating out there.’
‘Yes, but you might have knocked before barging in,’ the godmother said huffily. ‘It doesn’t do to forget our manners over these things.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Schmidt said wearily.
Lucius appeared in the doorway then and pushed past the irate godmother to rush over to the sink. ‘Oh, is he okay?’ he asked, wringing his hands. ‘Is Lex all right, Mr Schmidt?’
‘He’ll live,’ Schmidt said dryly. ‘But for the next couple of weeks his life is going to be rather difficult, I’m
