‘Oh, a pageboy. How considerate,’ Jeremiah said. ‘My servants have my luggage in hand but you can take my sword if you think you can manage not to drop it. It’s very heavy.’ And with that he unbuckled his sword belt and thrust it into Lex’s arms.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Lex was momentarily speechless and could only gape at Jeremiah in stunned silence, horribly aware of Jesse sniggering beside him.
‘Oh dear,’ the mayor said, flapping his hands in an embarrassed fashion. ‘This isn’t the pageboy, Mr East. This is Lex Trent.’
‘Trent?’ Jeremiah repeated with a slight frown. ‘Can’t say I recall any Trents. You’re not at the Academy, are you?’
Finding his tongue at last, Lex said, ‘My grandfather was Alistair Trent.’
Now, at last, recognition seemed to finally dawn in Jeremiah’s eyes and he said, ‘Oh, the Chronicler’s grandson. I suppose you want my autograph. I’m afraid I don’t have a pen on me right now but catch me later and we’ll see what we can do. I assume we’re to be put up in a tavern whilst we’re here?’ Jeremiah said, turning back to the mayor. ‘We’ve had a very long journey and are anxious to settle in. Can you have someone show us the way?’
And before Lex knew what was happening, Jeremiah had grabbed back his sword and they were all walking away, leaving him standing with Jesse in the crowd.
‘Don’t see what all the fuss is about, myself,’ the cowboy said, before wandering off, no doubt in search of the nearest tavern.
Inwardly, Lex cursed himself. He didn’t know what had come over him. Under normal circumstances he would have said, ‘ I? I want your autograph? Oh, come now!’ in the most obnoxious tone he could muster. But he had been utterly unprepared for Jeremiah’s manner. He had had a nice little image in his head of the two of them embracing like brothers, the crowd going nuts, photographers flashing their cameras, maybe even a bit of confetti thrown their way…
‘Good heavens, it sounds like you were expecting to marry Jeremiah, not merely meet him for the first time!’ Lady Luck said when he expressed his disappointment to her, later.
‘Our grandfathers were best friends,’ Lex protested, turning pink. ‘That should mean something.’
‘Well, perhaps he was just tired from his long journey,’ the Goddess replied airily. ‘I’m sure the two of you will get on like a house on fire at the feast this evening.’
Lex just grunted at this. Jeremiah had not seemed at all tired to him. He had just seemed like rather a jerk, in spite of the shiny gold buttons and the tall, dark, handsome thing he had going on. Lex found it difficult to believe that Jeremiah’s attitude towards him would be in any way changed that evening. He was therefore surprised when Jeremiah caught him as he was passing the Town Hall later that evening and said, ‘Look, Trent, I’m sorry if I seemed a bit abrupt with you earlier. Long journey and all that. And I didn’t realise you were going to be,’ he lowered his voice a little, ‘a fellow player.’
No excuse, Lex thought silently. Everyone knew his name by now because of what he had achieved in the last Game: all the records he had broken, all the things he’d done that had never been done before? like being crowned in the Golden Valley and going down to the Lands Beneath. Those things hadn’t been easy. They had been tremendously difficult and yet Lex had pulled them off spectacularly well. He deserved a bit of respect for that, surely? Even from someone as high born as Jeremiah East. Lex had to resist the urge to say fiercely, ‘I was a king for five seconds, you know!’ just in case Jeremiah didn’t know, which really didn’t seem at all likely.
‘Come on,’ the nobleman said, ‘let me buy you a drink.’
‘I don’t drink,’ Lex replied, still rather suspicious of this sudden change of heart.
‘Oh, that’s right, you’re not eighteen yet, are you?’ Jeremiah said. ‘Well, don’t worry, I expect we can sneak one through.’
‘No, it’s nothing to do with my age,’ Lex replied. ‘I just don’t drink.’
For someone who put such a high premium on having a sharp mind, a quick tongue and always being one step ahead of everyone else, Lex stayed well away from drink and drugs of any kind. But Jeremiah once again seemed to misunderstand him, for he said, ‘Dear me, you are a stickler for the rules, aren’t you? I used to be like that? terrified of breaking a rule and getting into trouble. Don’t worry. You’ll grow out of it in time.’
‘I’m not scared of breaking the rules-’ Lex began at once, rather heatedly for the very suggestion couldn’t have been any further from the truth. If he wanted to drink alcohol then he most certainly would? rules be damned. It was mere coincidence that his own preference happened to coincide with the rules just this once.
‘Well, a pint of Grandy then,’ Jeremiah interrupted, in such a jovial voice that Lex had to refrain from his protests because to continue them would appear churlish. ‘You can still drink with me and the lads if you just stick to the soft stuff.’
And Lex found himself being manoeuvred into the tavern that was attached to the Town Hall. Well, what could it hurt? The feast wasn’t due to start for another hour. He had told Jesse where and when he had to be there and he was sure the cowboy would turn up because there was going to be food and he knew that Lex could force them to switch if he wanted to, just by biting into the nearest pork pie. Besides which, a cowboy never passes up the chance of free food. When they went into the building, the hall was on their right and the tavern on their left. As they walked past the doorway Lex noticed that the hall was already set up for the feast? with rows of long tables lining the huge room and colourful bunting hanging from the walls and the ceiling.
‘My friends were going to meet me here,’ Jeremiah said as they walked into the tavern. ‘Oh, yes, there they are at the back.’
The feast was invitation only? so that just the important people would be there and not any plebs gobbling up the free food and drink. It seemed that quite a lot of people had had the same idea as Jeremiah and his friends, to come to the tavern for a couple of drinks first, for the place seemed to be stuffed with city officials and lawyers and important men who were no doubt all on the guest list. Jeremiah bought a round at the bar and then they went to the table at the back where he introduced Lex to his five friends. Lex could hardly tell them apart for they were all tall, dark and handsome with names like Jones and Smith, and they all persisted in calling each other things like Jonesy and Smithy and Williamsy and Easty. It was quite baffling to Lex who, of course, had not been privately and expensively educated at the prestigious Academy.
‘What are you drinking, Trenty?’ one of the friends asked, peering at the pint of Grandy with a puzzled expression.
‘Don’t call me Trenty,’ Lex said.
‘He’s having a pint of Grandy, poor boy,’ Jeremiah said, thumping Lex on the back so hard that his face almost ended up in his drink. ‘He’s not eighteen yet.’
‘You don’t say?’ One of the friends? Lex thought it was Jonesy? practically goggled at him in astonishment. ‘I didn’t realise they let children play in the Games!’
Lex stared at him. With a tremendous effort of will he just about managed not to hurl his Grandy in the twit’s face. ‘I am seventeen years old,’ he said coldly. ‘In the last Game I defeated a minotaur and a medusa simultaneously; I became a king? my name is on the Royal Monument in the square out there; I went on to the Space Ladders; I saw an underworld pass by with my own eyes; I went down to the Lands Beneath and? at the end of it all — I won the bloody thing!’
Lex felt extremely vexed. There was something most undignified about having to tout his own victories in such a way. Usually, whenever anyone said anything to him about the previous Game, Lex made a great show of being modest about it. ‘It was nothing,’ was his usual response. But he was only going to say that if the person he was speaking to knew full well that it was quite far from nothing. Modesty only worked when people knew just how splendid he really was. And these nobles didn’t seem to have the faintest clue.
‘You did follow the last Game, didn’t you?’ he said.
‘On and off,’ Jeremiah said. ‘But we had studying to do, too, you know. After all, we are Academy educated.’
‘Well, some people have to bother about things like that I suppose,’ Lex said.
The root of the problem was that Jeremiah and his friends seemed like stuck-up snobs to Lex, and Lex seemed like an irritable little upstart to them.
It was Jeremiah who came up with the brainwave of spiking Lex’s drink.
‘Take him down a peg or two, eh?’ he said to Jonesy when they were getting another round at the bar. ‘Do him the world of good.’
