hear the woman berating the server for the fact that there hadn’t been enough butter on her crumpets. He grinned inwardly at the heavy weight of her purse, now stowed away inside his pocket.
He’d wanted to come to the teashop partly because it seemed rather a shame to come all the way to the Sea Volcanoes and not sample crumpets at its famous teashop (even if he did have to wait until he was back on the ship with Jesse before he could enjoy them), but mostly he’d wanted to come for a little sport. Lex had moved on from petty pickpocketing. His crimes were more sophisticated than that now. But he still liked to keep his hand in every once in a while, just to reassure himself that he hadn’t forgotten how. Of course, this was hardly a sensible time for thieving right when the Game was about to begin and he’d been in prison and threatened with disqualification once already. But a teashop just stuffed full of toffs like this… Well, expecting Lex not to try to rob them would be like expecting a wolf not to go after a paddock full of fat, stupid sheep who were all bleating at it in a distinctly taunting sort of way.
The veranda commanded a spectacular view of the Sea Volcanoes rising up out of the water and there were twisting black rails all the way around the perimeter to stop rich fools from walking straight into the sea. The tables were placed at a spacious distance from one another and covered in crisp, spotless white tablecloths on which stood silver teapots and plates of scones and crumpets.
Lex surreptitiously eyed the tables, chose a likely looking one with only two men already seated, walked up to it and sat down before saying, ‘Do you mind if ai sit here? Ai’m waiting for my elevenses but ai’m afraid ai’ve just had the most devilishly trying time of it with that fool server in there.’
‘It’s like I was just saying, isn’t it, Forsythe?’ boomed the man to Lex’s right. ‘You can’t get the staff these days.’
‘You’re quite right, Easty, quite right.’
‘Easty?’ Lex blurted, looking up sharply. ‘Are you, by any chance-?’
‘That’s right. Humphrey East. My boy, Jeremiah is playing in the Game,’ the man said, practically swelling with pride where he sat.
Lex had to force himself not to goggle at him in sheer disbelief. Now that he looked at him more closely, he could see that there was a slight resemblance. They both had the same dark hair and haughty look, although Jeremiah’s father was getting on for being a bit on the rotund side? too many hours spent lounging in fine armchairs, enjoying expensive brandy, had ruined what had probably once been an impressive figure. Lex supposed it made sense that Jeremiah’s father would be here at the commencement of the first round. After all, the Easts obviously had more money than sense and so could easily afford to shell out for this little tea party in order to gloat over the first-born son. And if Lex couldn’t find some way to turn this to his advantage, then he wasn’t half the talented cheat he thought he was.
‘Mey name is Trent Lexington III? of the Galswick Lexingtons, you know? ai was at the Academy with your son.’
‘Really?’ Humphrey East said, grasping Lex’s hand and shaking it emphatically. ‘Glad to know you, my boy. Glad to know you. Although I can’t say I remember Jeremiah writing home about you.’
‘Ah… well,’ Lex looked uncomfortable as he drew back his hand. ‘I don’t expect he used mey real name. They used to call me Old Squiffy.’
It had been an educated guess on Lex’s part but, from what little he understood of private schools, it seemed that there was always one unfortunate boy who got landed with the nickname ‘Old Squiffy’. Whether or not Jeremiah had ever had such a friend, Lex couldn’t tell, but it seemed to go down well enough with his father, who threw back his head and laughed. ‘I say, Forsythe, do you remember the Old Squiffy from our school days?’
The two men had a good chuckle and Lex let them have it. He’d experienced a momentary flicker of concern that they might work out the Trent Lexington thing. After all, they must have known that one of the other players in this Game was called Lex Trent. But that was toffs for you. Money had made them stupid. Lex could have announced himself as Tex Lent and they still wouldn’t have put the pieces together. In fact, that wasn’t a bad idea, Lex thought. He rather fancied calling himself Tex. He would have to think up an alter ego for Tex Lent at some point when the circumstances were right… But not now, when Trent Lexington suited the situation so perfectly.
A waiter appeared at that moment with Lex’s tea and crumpets, closely followed by the woman in the daft hat that Lex had knocked into on the way out in order to pick her pocket. He almost choked on his first mouthful of tea when, instead of walking past their table as he’d expected, she pulled up a chair and sat down instead.
‘Wilhelmina, my dear, this is Trent Lexington. One of Jeremiah’s school friends, come to watch him play. Isn’t that nice?’
‘Pleased to meet you, ma’am,’ Lex managed. So this silly old bat was Jeremiah’s mother. And Lex had her purse in his pocket! It was only with a great deal of self-control that he managed not to smirk where he sat.
‘Likewise, I’m sure,’ the woman said, still looking rather tearful. Perhaps she was fretting about the possibility of poor dear Jeremiah getting killed in the Game. Lex was glad in that moment that he had no such fussing relatives? except for Lucius? inconveniencing him and cramping his style. Who needed parents, anyway?
Lex took another gulp of tea and thought hard. Time to get to work. But how to go about it? He could hardly come straight out and ask Jeremiah’s parents if their son had any useful little weaknesses or character flaws that a scoundrel might try to exploit. They may not be the brightest pair he’d ever met but even they were surely likely to get suspicious about those sorts of questions.
‘Ai can’t tell you how much ai’m rooting for Jeremiah!’ he gushed. ‘I do so hope that he wins!’
‘Of course he’ll win!’ Mr East boomed, as if the very suggestion that he might not was absurd. ‘The boy was born and bred to win!’
‘Yaas, of course he was!’ Lex agreed before making a show of looking around for non-existent eavesdroppers, lowering his voice and saying, ‘And ai’m quaite sure that that phobia of his won’t interfere with his ability to play the Game one jot. Not one single jot.’
Mr and Mrs East instantly both looked rather annoyed and Mrs East said huffily, ‘It’s perfectly natural for a young man his age to be afraid of rattlesnakes.’
Lex wasn’t sure what the young man his age bit had to do with it but he just nodded along, anyway.
‘Absolutely!’ Mr East agreed. ‘Mark of intelligence, if you ask me! Besides, there’s hardly going to be any rattlesnakes in there, are there?’ He pointed at the silver surface of the sea.
‘No, sir,’ Lex replied. But we’ll see what we can do about that.. ‘But what about that other thing?’
Guesswork, once again. There was no guaranteeing there was another thing, after all. And, indeed, for a moment both of Jeremiah’s parents looked blank.
‘Oh, perhaps he didn’t tell you,’ Lex said, looking embarrassed. ‘Perhaps ai shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘Don’t be absurd!’ Mrs East snapped. ‘Do you really think our son would have told you things that he didn’t tell us? I expect you’re referring to that upset with the brandy at the Academy. But Jeremiah doesn’t drink anymore,’ she said, fixing Lex with a frosty look.
‘Doesn’t drink, you say?’
‘Not one drop. He knows his own limitations. We brought him up in such a way as to make sure of that.’
‘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
