Lex could have groaned aloud. He believed it! The idiot actually believed he wouldn’t be harmed here, when the fact was that he was seconds away from either being shot, or dragged outside to be strung up from the nearest tree. Lex had to wonder how the nobleman had even managed to survive into adulthood. He shook his head in despair (but only on the inside). The parents were to blame, really. This was what a posh school and too many private fencing classes could do to a person. But Jeremiah getting himself killed was the last thing Lex wanted. After all, he didn’t want to win the Game by default. Where would be the fun in that? He wanted to win gloriously. And that would be difficult to do with both Lorella and Jeremiah dead, and no one but Tess and a little sprite left to compete against. It would be like being the only adult on a toddlers’ wrestling team: you’d win all right, but there would be no glory in it. No, this wouldn’t do at all. Lex was just going to have to save the nobleman from himself. Again.
Before anyone else could do anything, Lex quickly scooped up a spoonful of beans from his tin, drew the spoon back, took careful aim and flicked them right at Jeremiah’s face. Lex was sitting only a few tables away and his aim was good. The beans splattered right across Jeremiah’s right cheek.
‘Boring man,’ Lex announced blithely to the room in general. ‘Boring speech. But nice coat.’
The other cowboys erupted into cheers and laughter at the same moment that Jeremiah roared in outrage. The nobleman’s head whipped around, looking for his assailant. Lex could have lowered his head and hidden his face under his hat, but he didn’t. Their eyes met and it was worth the risk to see the expression of utter amazement and fury on Jeremiah’s face at the sight of Lex sitting there in Dry Gulch House, calmly eating a tin of beans? or calmly dribbling a tin of beans, as the case may be. Disciplined as he was, it was too much for Lex and he broke one of his own rules then by breaking character just long enough to wink at Jeremiah. Then he instantly slipped back into Slow Sid and continued to eat his beans, staring vacantly out the window as if he’d already forgotten Jeremiah was even there.
‘Oh my Gods, that’s Lex-’ Jeremiah started to shout above the din, but was instantly cut off by a crust of bread hitting him on the nose. A moment later, he was being positively pelted with food. Everything and anything edible within easy reach was hurled at Jeremiah. It was mostly beans. Soon they covered his coat and his skin and his hair. It would have been glorious fun to watch but Lex forced himself to calmly finish his lunch whilst gazing blankly out of the window because that was, after all, what Slow Sid would have done.
Jeremiah tried to throw a punch at one point but the danger had passed by then. The cowboys were in too good a mood to think about killing him now. A lot of blood all over the place would completely ruin the atmosphere. So he was unceremoniously hurled out of the front door instead where he landed on his back in the dust by the front steps.
Lex hoped he would just get back in his carriage and drive away but instead Jeremiah stood up and, still bellowing in anger, actually started coming back towards the house? like someone just begging to be hanged by his neck until he was dead. The cowboys had clearly had enough of the game by then, for one of them fired a shot. It was not intended to kill but, still, the sound seemed to tear through the air as the bullet bit the ground between Jeremiah’s feet. The nobleman stumbled back, white as a sheet. The sudden quiet from the rest of the cowboys indicated very clearly that the fun was most definitely over.
‘If you don’t want to be strung up from that tree right there,’ the scar-faced cowboy said, pointing at the nearest one. ‘Then get in your fancy carriage, drive away, and don’t ever let us see your sorry face here ever again!’
Jeremiah? bean-stained and dusty? stared at the cowboy for a moment. Then his eyes swivelled round to the window where Lex was watching. All eyes were on Jeremiah and? as this was make-or-break point? Lex broke character a second time, just long enough to emphatically mouth the word, ‘ Go!’
To his relief, Jeremiah finally turned on his heel and stalked back towards his carriage with his head held high like there weren’t really beans dribbling all the way down his back. Lex only breathed a sigh of relief once Jeremiah had climbed up into the driver’s seat, grabbed up the reins and ridden away, back in the direction he’d come.
‘He’s really going to hate you now,’ Jesse remarked in their lime-green bedroom the next morning.
Lex shrugged. ‘He hated me anyway. Besides, this is all his fault. He started it by spiking my drink in the Wither City.’
‘You really are one to hold a grudge, ain’t you?’ Jesse said.
‘I never forget an insult,’ Lex replied in a hard voice. ‘A person might wrong me once but, by the Gods, they won’t do it again!’
‘Well, if you feel that strongly about having a bit of somethin’ extra put in your drink in what was just a childish sorta prank, then think how Jeremiah must feel about having his uncle killed and a family mansion stolen away by a gang of ruffians like us.’
Lex was slightly startled by that, for he hadn’t thought of it in that way before. But he had to admit Jesse had a point. If Dry Gulch House had once belonged to the Trents, Lex would have been every bit as outraged as Jeremiah? more so, probably? and utterly determined to get it back. Only he would have been cleverer about it. He would not have simply marched in, expecting self-righteousness and legal technicalities to carry him through. He would have made sure he succeeded. And he would never have waived his right to rent? never! He would not simply have got the house back from the cowboys, he would have had his revenge on them, too.
But he shrugged Jesse’s comment off carelessly. ‘The Easts have plenty of other family mansions. I’ll bet they don’t even miss this one. It’s not like any of them would want to live here, especially after what happened to Nathaniel. Anyway, enough of all this talk about Jeremiah. I need to carry on looking for the sword.’
Although it was now morning, Lex had decided to continue his search straightaway, after snatching a few hours sleep, rather than waiting for nightfall again. It didn’t matter much, anyway, since the other cowboys tended to spend all their time in the bar. There was, therefore, no reason why Lex shouldn’t search during the day as well. Especially as he was fast running out of time.
‘Ain’t you tired of that, yet?’ Jesse asked. ‘I told you, that sword ain’t real. You’re lookin’ for somethin’ that don’t even exist!’
Lex scowled. The truth was that, even if the sword were real, he was starting to think that he might be forced to concede defeat for the simple reason that he was going to run out of time. In a house this huge, it could be hidden in any number of places. After hours of exploring, there were still rooms he hadn’t been into at all. Let alone the countless secret passageways he knew the house to contain but which he was yet to discover. It could take him a year or more to locate the sword.
And yet the thought of having to admit failure was a bitter pill to swallow for Lex. He had bragged to Jesse about finding the sword. The idea of having to admit that that had all been a lot of talk was intolerable. Jesse would gloat insufferably. He would rub it in and pour salt into the open wound. Lex knew he would do that because it was exactly what he would have done himself.
‘The sword is here!’ he snapped. ‘Just because you were unable to find it doesn’t mean that I won’t. It’s right here, somewhere in this house. I just wish I knew where that sword was. Then I could-aarghh!’
He broke off with a cry of pain as something very hot suddenly started to burn through his trouser pocket. He reached his hand in, grabbed the velvet pouch and flung it on to the bed. It was practically smoking. Gingerly, he picked the pouch up between thumb and forefinger to tip the contents out on to the bed. The Wishing Creatures of Desareth tumbled out together. The white and red Swanns and the blue Dragon lay there as usual. But the black Swann was steaming hot. In fact, as Jesse and Lex watched, it even started to char the sheet.
The black Swann? the one whose wish was recorded as ‘unknown’ in Erasmus Grey’s book. And Lex had just said aloud that he wished he knew where the sword was hidden. Now the Swann was burning hot to the touch. When Lex had been very little, he had played a game with his brother, which involved one of them hiding an object for the other to find. The seeker would move around the room whilst the hider said they were getting hotter the nearer they got to the hidden object, and colder the further away they went from it.
Could it be… Could it really be that the black Swann’s wish was not to turn pumpkin pies into poo, as Lex had feared, but to locate missing objects instead? Could it be that just one of his Wishing Creatures could actually do something useful?
‘What are those things?’ Jesse said, peering down at the stone animals on the bed.
Lex ignored him and used a corner of the sheet to pick the black Swann up gingerly. ‘I wish I knew where my brother, Lucius, was,’ he said, loudly and clearly.
The Swann did not go instantly cold as he had expected, but remained hot instead. Lex frowned at it for a
