But then he became aware of the strange feeling. He glanced down at the mantha beast — a sort of shaggy cow thing, with lots of hair — cropping on the scrubby grass at his feet. It seemed to be further away than it should be. He glanced at the seller and was alarmed to find that the man was shorter than him. Lex was not a tall person. He was shorter than most other men. The joints in his wrists ached and so did his feet. And his stomach had that horrible empty feeling, as of one who had spent most of their time during the last couple of days with their head down a toilet. A horrible, incredible, disgusting, revolting suspicion crept over Lex.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ the mantha seller asked, suddenly looking concerned. ‘Only you’ve gone all white and sickly-looking, like.’
Lex automatically went to assure the man that he was fine. He had learnt long ago that it did not do to attract unwonted attention to oneself. ‘Thank you, but-’
And it was after those three words that his usual self-assurance shattered into so many tiny fragments. For the voice he had spoken in had not been his own. There was no mistaking the cold, hard, slightly nasally tones of his employer, Mr Montgomery Schmidt.
He almost screamed. He almost did. But discipline was an inbuilt thing with Lex and he clapped a hand over his mouth just in time. Misinterpreting the action, the mantha seller took a hasty step back and asked Lex if he’d like him to go and fetch a bucket. Lex knew the sensible thing would be to tell the seller that he had just remembered an important engagement and to ask him to hold the mantha for him. But he found he just couldn’t face speaking only to have Mr Schmidt’s voice coming out of his mouth. So he shook his head and stumbled away in the general direction of Jani’s Tavern, tugging the mantha beast behind him. It took him a while to adjust to the longer legs and the added height.
He was in Mr Schmidt’s body. Somehow his consciousness had been transported into the body of his employer… urgh, urgh, urgh! But he was remaining calm. He was being logical. If he was in Schmidt’s body, then it only made sense that the lawyer would be in Lex’s body. Lex was at Jani’s Tavern, about to eat his lunch. It must have been the bracelets, Lex thought, glancing down at the white one on Schmidt’s wrist. The wretched bracelets he had taken from the enchanter. For once, there was no long-term plan in Lex’s mind. All he could think to do was to get the both of them together again. Then everything would surely sort itself all out. Spring back together like a released cosmic elastic band.
It was only once he’d arrived at Jani’s Tavern and was tying the mantha beast up outside that the thought occurred to him that Mr Schmidt… Lex Trent… whoever, might not be in there any more. On discovering what had happened, Schmidt had most likely had the same idea as Lex and set straight off for the mantha stables to find his body. The Farrows was a large town; they could end up wandering about for ever without finding each other.
Not feeling at all cheered, Lex went into the tavern anyway on the off chance that Schmidt would still be inside. Luck, as it so happened, was with Lex, for as soon as he walked in he experienced the strange sensation of seeing himself sat where he’d left him, at the end of one of the tables. Schmidt was holding a soup spoon with a trembling hand and gazing at his reflection in the back of it.
It must have been a twenty-minute walk from the mantha stables. Surely Schmidt had not been sat there staring at himself in the spoon for all that time? A few of the miners had gone back to their shifts and the tavern was now a little quieter. As Lex made his way towards the table he saw Jani approach Mr Schmidt.
‘Is everything all right, lovey? Is there something wrong with the soup?’
‘Yes, it’s cold,’ Lex said, pulling up a chair and inwardly shuddering at the sound of his employer’s voice. ‘Take it away and heat it up, please. He ordered it for me but I was unavoidably detained. Bring a crust of bread or something for the boy too, will you?’
Jani gave him a bit of a dirty look but took the soup away without questions. Lex Trent was a grubby, skinny kid wearing old sailor-boy clothes and Mr Schmidt was an elderly, well-groomed lawyer. It was commonplace on the Globe for distinguished professionals to take young male servants who were lower down the social scale, could be paid a pittance and were expected to be grateful for it, too.
Schmidt slowly lowered the soup spoon onto the wooden table where it rocked a little on the uneven boards before settling. He stared at Lex in silence for a while. He still hadn’t said a word and Lex guessed that he too was struggling with the alien sensation of speaking with someone else’s voice. The situation wasn’t at all funny to either of them but, in spite of himself, Lex found he wanted to laugh. Schmidt, despite being a lawyer, was not as accomplished as Lex when it came to hiding his emotions. And right now he looked as he felt: absolutely and completely horrified to the very marrow.
After a few moments of silence, Lex grinned and raised his eyebrows at his old employer in the most insolent manner he could muster. Schmidt scowled, leant forwards across the table and hissed, ‘Is that you in there, Trent?’
Lex was unprepared for the strength of the distaste he felt at hearing his voice coming from someone else’s mouth like that. Especially as he could almost hear Schmidt’s voice beneath it — in the manner of his pronunciation, the clipped precision of the words and the particular way he pronounced his vowels. But he recovered well with a broad grin. ‘My dear Monty, I hope so, or else we have both gone mad.’
‘What do you mean by this?’ Schmidt hissed.
Lex wasn’t sure if the lawyer was talking quietly for fear of being overheard or whether he just hated hearing his words coming out in Lex’s voice.
‘I suppose having me arrested would be a bit futile now, wouldn’t it?’ Lex said, with a nasty smile as the thought occurred to him.
‘So that’s it!’ Schmidt snarled. ‘You’ve done this to escape arrest, you depraved boy!’
Lex was impressed. He hadn’t realised that his face could look so vicious. He must practise in front of a mirror as soon as he got his body back. Viciousness could be useful at times. Of course he was going to get his body back, of course. Of course. He turned his mind away from those thoughts quickly. They must be kept for a more private place.
‘You flatter me,’ Lex drawled. Or tried to. Schmidt’s cold, rather high voice was not built for drawling. ‘But this is no deliberate ploy of mine. The logical conclusion is that it’s the enchanter’s bracelets.’
‘What the hell were you doing fraternising with enchanters anyway? Don’t you know they’re dangerous?’
‘That’s what makes it fun,’ Lex replied, being deliberately flippant in his attempt to irritate. The truth was that he was regretting his recklessness himself at that moment.
‘We’re going back anyway, ’ the lawyer snarled with sudden vehemence. ‘We’re going back to the Wither City, Mister Trent, where you will be locked up and-’
‘Where you’ll be locked up, you mean,’ Lex said. ‘I am Montgomery Schmidt, the great litigator. I have captured and returned the notorious criminal, Lex Trent. Aren’t I clever?’
‘You fool! I’ll explain to them what happened. I’ll tell them-’
‘You know, I’ve heard that Lex Trent will say anything to get out of punishment,’ Lex said pleasantly.
Schmidt gave him an incredulous look. ‘Do you honestly think you could pass yourself off as me? You haven’t the discipline!’
Discipline! Ah, but that was the one thing Lex did have!
He removed his elbows from the table, sat up straighter, narrowed his eyes just a little to give himself a haughtier look and gazed down his hooked nose at Mr Schmidt.
‘I did inform you that that boy was without a stable sense of moral awareness, Inspector, did I not? I believe I did warn you as to the chain of events that would occur should you release him on bail. It is only fortunate that I managed to capture the delinquent before any more atrocities could be committed. Pray, do not lose him again. I did not go to all this tedious bother to watch him slip through your incompetent grasp a second time.’
It was an excellent mimicry. Of course, Lex was helped immensely by not having to alter his voice, but he got the facial expressions just right, the nuances of every sentence, the cold hostility. It was Mr Schmidt down to the very last hair. It threw the lawyer, Lex noted with satisfaction. He suddenly looked much less sure of himself.
‘What do you think?’ Lex asked. ‘I think it could do with being toned down slightly. And there was something a little off about the pronunciation of the rhetorical question. Still, with a mirror and a little practice, your own mother would have believed me to be you.’
‘There is more to it than mimicry… ’ Schmidt began, but there was uncertainty in his voice. ‘There are things I know that you don’t-’
Lex pounced on the uncertainty instantly. ‘I’ll improvise, ’ he said, smiling only with his mouth. ‘I’ll invent a medical condition if I have to, Mr Schmidt. After all, you’re getting on a bit now, aren’t you? Who do you think
