out.’
But Jesse looked at his hand for only a moment before clasping it firmly with his own. Instantly, the Binding Bracelets split in half. The black one remained firmly fastened around Lex’s wrist whilst the white one shot off on to Jesse’s. Lex felt a profound sense of smug satisfaction for he was sure he had chosen the perfect companion. Jesse was tough and big and seemed relatively smart for someone with such a lot of scars and stubble. And to think that he had almost chosen one of those wimpy, peanut-fearing writers. He shuddered at the thought of it…
Jesse smiled and said, ‘So are you going to get me out of here or what?’
Lex explained very carefully to Jesse how the Binding Bracelets worked? if they didn’t eat every meal together they would switch bodies and they would stay in each other’s bodies until they managed to find their way back to each other and eat together again.
‘You don’t say?’ Jesse said, examining the white bracelet fastened to his wrist. ‘But I can still drink, right?’
‘Yes. You just can’t eat on your own.’
‘What about chewing tobacco? Will that make us switch?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Lex said, frowning. ‘You don’t swallow it, do you?’
‘Jeepers, kid, ’course I don’t swallow it!’ Jesse said, grimacing at the suggestion. ‘You gotta spit it out.’
‘A disgusting habit,’ Lex replied scathingly. ‘But not one that should make us switch. Chew and spit all you like.’
After collecting Rusty from the stables, Lex and Jesse made their way back to the harbour. Several people shot the cowboy sharp looks, for many had seen him galloping through the town just that morning with the police giving chase behind him. A couple of particularly slow-on-the-uptake people even felt the need to shriek, ‘It’s him! It’s the outlaw, Jesse Layton! He’s getting away!’
‘Oh, give it a rest,’ Lex replied. ‘He’s not getting away, he’s playing in a Game. Look.’ And he grabbed Jesse’s wrist to hold it up and display the bracelet. That promptly made people back off and leave them alone. No one tangles with the Gods on purpose, after all.
‘This is my ship,’ Lex said with a flourish once they’d reached the harbour.
The gigantic, gleaming silver thing was tied up like the rest of the boats but, unlike the ships belonging to the gypsies, traders and tourists, Lex’s ship didn’t bob on the water but floated in the air instead. For it was, of course, a magic ship that Lex had stolen from an enchanter during the course of the last Game. The enchanters were powerful, magical men and so stealing from one of them was extremely dangerous and practically unheard of. Most people were therefore terribly impressed and even a little in awe of Lex when he showed them his ship.
He was therefore less then happy when, after regarding it for a moment, Jesse said, ‘Ugly-looking thing, ain’t it?’
‘ Ugly?’ Lex spluttered indignantly. ‘ Ugly? You’ve got to be kidding! Can’t you see how large and powerful and silver she is?’
Jesse shrugged. ‘Prefer the gypsy boats myself.’
Truth be told, Lex had preferred the gypsy boats too at one time, for they were decorated in many fluttering flags and painted with colourful sea monsters. But whilst they may have looked pretty, they couldn’t fly over land or travel across a frozen sea or soar up into the sky or survive being attacked by sharks or water witches. Plus, anything Lex owned instantly looked all the more beautiful to him for the simple fact that he owned it.
‘I stole it from an enchanter,’ Lex said, just in case Jesse had somehow missed that point.
But the cowboy just nodded. ‘Yep. That’s what I figured.’
It seemed he really was determined to be distinctly unimpressed. It occurred to Lex that a writer would probably have been falling over themselves to congratulate him and tell him how wonderful he was and how heroic and daring and brave and the like. In reality Lex would have been thoroughly sick of this within about five minutes but still he couldn’t help wishing that Jesse would be just a little bit impressed with the ship. He sighed and said, ‘Well, come on then.’
The ship’s gangplank had been destroyed during the course of the last Game so, for much of it, the ship had only had a ladder running up its side. This did not make for happy disembarking, especially when it was raining and slippery. So Lex had had a new gangplank put in. It was only one of many improvements he had made to the ship once he’d known for sure that the enchanter wasn’t coming back for it (on account of being turned into a little doll and imprisoned in a glass bottle).
He had spent some very happy days during his three months back at the family farm working on and improving the ship. There were still a lot of rooms inside it that he’d never been into and these were all marked with a giant X. He’d originally intended to go through them all but, after one slightly unfortunate incident when he tried to remove the rabid, fire-breathing rabbit that had attacked him once before, and the thing got out and… well… set fire to the barn, Lex’s brother, Lucius, had forbidden him from going into any of the other unsafe rooms. Of course, Lex didn’t usually listen to a word Lucius said but, on this occasion, he had to agree. An extremely flammable farm really wasn’t the place to have fire-breathing things running amok in a livid rage. So he had left the doors with strange noises behind them well enough alone. For all he knew, this might mean that he’d have a ship full of dead monsters at some point for, if they were sealed into little rooms with nothing to eat, they would surely starve. But the fire-breathing rabbit had been sealed in the room for at least four months without food and, nevertheless, seemed to be extremely active when it finally did get out.
‘Some parts of the ship are off limits,’ Lex said as he, Jesse and Rusty walked across the gangplank. ‘You can’t go into any room with an X on the door.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I haven’t had the chance to check what’s in there and it’s usually something dangerous that wants to eat you. But the corridors are safe and any room that doesn’t have an X on the door is fine.’
Lex opened the door, they stepped into one of the ship’s corridors and were immediately enveloped in the scent of carpets. When he’d first got the ship it had been covered in mirrors and marble? even the floors? which hadn’t made for a very cosy feel. So Lex had had carpets put into all the rooms he was able to use. It had cost him a pretty penny, of course, for the corridors alone required several huge rolls of carpet. But Lex had sold some of the treasures he’d found on the ship to raise the money. Lucius pointed out that Lex could have spent the money on improving and modernising the farm, not to mention replacing the barn that had been burnt down. Lex resisted this particular line of thought most strenuously at first for the very idea of spending his ill-gotten gains on a barn of all things was quite sickening. And it was hardly his fault that the rabbit had headed straight for it, damn the thing… But, in the end, he gave Lucius some money for a new barn just to stop him from going on and on and on about it. You let one fire-breathing bunny loose and no one ever lets you forget it…
But the corridors, kitchen and bridge were now all carpeted. And Lex was very pleased with the result. He had even rolled around on the new carpets a bit when they’d first been put in? after vacuuming them first, obviously, so that he wouldn’t get all those little bits of fluff sticking to his clothes and hair.
They found a room down below to put Rusty in. Then Lex gave Jesse the tour? showing him the kitchen and the bridge and the room where he would sleep. Lex was planning on sleeping on the bridge as he’d done in the last Game. It was the only room in the ship that had windows, the other rooms all being rather dark, claustrophobic little boxes. As one of the biggest rooms, not to mention the fact that it was the highest, Lex felt the observation deck had rather a nice status-symbol feel to it and saw it as his due to sleep there. It, too, was now carpeted, with a grand four-poster bed and a wardrobe and a little coolbox with some food in it in case he fancied a midnight snack, and a couple of big, squishy armchairs. It was the perfect set-up.
Jesse’s room, on the other hand, was a small, sparse place with white marble walls and just a mattress and a blanket on the floor.
‘They’re new,’ Lex said, a little defensively. ‘The room isn’t big enough for a proper bed. And at least it has a carpet.’
‘Don’t matter anyhow,’ Jesse said. ‘I’ll sleep down below with Rusty.’
Lex shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
When they went up to the bridge there was a white griffin the size of a small horse lying on Lex’s four-poster bed. Half eagle, half lion, it was sprawled there looking rather pleased with itself.
‘That’s Silvi. One of the griffins I told you about. She’s the friendliest. You can probably stroke her without her taking your hand off. But be careful around the other two.’
