you ought to be more careful how you talk to me? Don’t forget that it’s me who’s really the sorcerer, not you!’
‘If you’re a sorcerer then I’m a blinkin’ ballerina!’ Jesse growled. ‘You ain’t no magician! You’re just a kid with a few magic Swanns!’
‘Magic Swanns?’ Jeremiah repeated. ‘What the heck are they?’
‘They grant wishes, or something,’ Jesse replied. ‘That’s how he did it.’
‘Well, whatever! I still saved your neck, you ungrateful wretch! After you stole from me, too, and left me for dead!’
‘Did I heck!’ Jesse scoffed. ‘It was only a little crack on the head. I’ve had worse and lived to tell the tale. So, yeah, I took the sword. But I only did exactly what you’d have done in my place.’
‘That may be,’ Lex replied in a voice of ice. ‘The difference is that I wouldn’t have got caught! I heroically, selflessly, save your life and then you actually have the nerve to lecture me about the way I went about it! All right, so I let you sweat a bit first but you ought to consider yourself lucky that I saved you at all!’
‘No way you’d have let me die, seeing as you had no idea where the sword was!’ Jesse retorted.
‘Well, maybe I saved you because I wanted the sword, and maybe I saved you for your charming company!’ Lex snapped. ‘I guess now we’ll never know! No doubt you would have used the Binding Bracelets to switch places with me if you’d been given the chance to get your hands on any food!’
To Lex’s surprise, Jesse looked utterly gobsmacked by this. Then he looked highly offended.
‘Hey!’ he said angrily. ‘Stealing the sword was one thing? it weren’t even yours to begin with? but letting you hang for my past is somethin’ else. The thought never even entered my head!’
‘Surely you can’t expect me to believe that?’ Lex snarled.
‘Will you two shut up!’ Jeremiah said loudly. He glared at Lex and said, ‘You dragged me here under false pretences! They weren’t about to hang Jesse because he helped you get into Dry Gulch House but because he double-crossed them; you weren’t interested in saving his life? you just wanted the sword; and I’m starting to think the cowboys weren’t the ones who roughed you up, either.’
‘No one roughed him up,’ Jesse snorted. ‘A chandelier fell on his head.’
‘Yeah, that sounds more like it!’ Jeremiah replied, looking quite vicious. ‘No doubt you were doing something you shouldn’t have been doing at the time, too! If that sword you’re talking about is the one I think it is, then it once belonged to my uncle! Which means it now rightfully belongs to me!’
‘Does it ever!’ Lex scoffed. ‘I’m the one who found it!’
‘That doesn’t make it yours!’
‘It does in my book! I’m the one who got my head bashed in to get it! I’m the one who’s probably gone half crazy for it and, no doubt, will be seeing giant talking foxes for the rest of my days because of it!’
‘What in the world,’ Jeremiah said, ‘are you talking about?’
Lex cursed silently. He hadn’t meant to say anything about Plantagenet. He’d end up strapped down in a loony bin, for sure. He told himself that it had just been a dream. To prove it to himself he took the trout out of his bag and threw them defiantly down on the sand where, given the heat, they would probably be cooked within minutes.
‘I’m hot; I’m tired; I’m thirsty; I’m probably concussed; I’ve done what I came here to do; and I’ve had it up to here with the pair of you! I’m going back to my ship!’
‘Well said, old chum.’
Lex almost jumped out of his skin, and whirled round on the spot to stare in dread at the wagon. There, perched on top of the coffin, was Plantagenet. He looked just as he had before? dressed in a waistcoat, and even holding a cup and saucer.
Lex stared at him for a moment before looking back at Jeremiah and Jesse. He’d hoped to see suitable expressions of shock on their faces but, instead, they just looked slightly puzzled.
‘Can’t you see him?’ Lex hissed.
‘Who?’ Jeremiah said blankly.
‘ Him!’ Lex pointed back at the wagon. But when he looked back, there was no one there. Plantagenet had gone, almost as if he’d never been there to begin with.
Lex pinched the bridge of his nose, but it didn’t help and he swayed where he stood.
‘Is this another one of your acts?’ Jeremiah demanded.
‘No, I’m not feeling well!’ Lex snapped. ‘It’s this heat! No doubt you two would just love it if I dropped down dead? then you could pinch all my stuff and leave me out here all alone in the desert. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to be left for dead twice in the same day! So I’m leaving right now! You can find your own way back! See if you can manage to stay out of trouble for five minutes without me!’
‘You should probably see a doctor,’ Jeremiah said. ‘Head injuries can affect people in funny ways, and that looks like a nasty one.’
‘I don’t need any doctor!’ Lex snapped. ‘And I don’t need you sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong!’
‘Aw, just let him go,’ Jesse replied. ‘With any luck, he’ll keel over before he gets back, and the vultures will peck him to death. Save us all a lot of grief.’
Lex ignored him. He picked up his bag and, after a brief hesitation, snatched the trout off the sand before making his way back to Sally. He unhitched her from the wagon, climbed up on to her back and then set off in the general direction of what he hoped was Dry Gulch.
Secretly, he was completely and utterly horrified. It seemed to him that he’d either suffered some sort of serious brain damage that caused him to see Plantagenet, or else he’d gone mad. But he couldn’t afford to go mad! Not now, when he was in the middle of a Game, and close to winning it, too! He cursed the black Swann, and the chandelier, and the sword, and Jesse for causing him to get hit on the head like that. He’d been perfectly fine up until then. He thought angrily to himself that he seemed to be completely incapable of getting through a Game without some seriously debilitating thing happening to him. Last time, he had spent the better part of one week as a whiskerfish; this time he was seeing giant, talking foxes wherever he went!
After a while, Lex became aware of the sounds of a wagon trundling along at a brisk pace behind him. He risked a glance over his shoulder? just to make absolutely sure that Plantagenet wasn’t the one driving it. To his relief, it was just Jeremiah and Jesse. Lex pulled a face and turned back. Why the heck was Jesse giving Jeremiah a lift? Didn’t he understand the concept of them being on different sides?
Still, Lex slowed Sally down just a little. For, although he knew the way back well enough, what he really wanted to do as soon as he got to his ship was raid the larder. And he couldn’t do that unless Jesse was there. So he went on just far enough ahead to look defiant, but not so far that he would lose sight, or sound, of the wagon behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
After a good meal, a good bath and a good night’s sleep on board his ship, Lex felt one hundred times better. His headache had gone entirely by the next morning and Heetha’s horrible sun had been replaced with Saydi’s. As Goddess of Beauty, her sun always brought the loveliest? not to mention the most comfortable? weather on the Globe.
Lex had the sword; he had triumphed against the odds and he had even managed to rescue his companion from certain death, as well. Now, finally, the third and final round was to start today and already Lex felt that he couldn’t wait. He and Jesse were back on speaking terms? mostly because Lex found he couldn’t overly resent Jesse for taking the sword, when it was exactly what Lex would have done himself. He respected Jesse more for being a man who was entirely, unashamedly, out for himself, than he would have done if he’d been some charitable, do- gooder sap. Besides, just because he didn’t trust Jesse, didn’t mean that he didn’t like him.
‘You’re not entirely useless,’ Lex said generously. ‘Which is a step up from my last companion, at least.’
Of course, spending half the night gloating over the Sword of Life had improved Lex’s mood immeasurably. Just as the legend went, the red blade was hot to the touch whilst the blue blade was icy cold. The red blade took
