that, Lex. I’m sure you’ll do just fine. I fully expect you to win.’
‘I will win,’ Lex replied vehemently. ‘But I don’t want a companion. I don’t need one.’
‘It’s compulsory, I’m afraid. You must have one. The two of you must eat every meal together, until the Game is over, otherwise you’ll switch bodies. It’s a companionship thing.’
‘All right, but why Schmidt? If I must have a companion, why can’t it be one of the raven-haired, doe-eyed variety-’
‘Yes, I did think Schmidt was an odd choice. I rather thought you might go for that little gypsy girl but the lawyer was the first person you had direct skin to skin contact with and that’s how the Binding Bracelets work so-’
‘But nobody told me!’ Lex wailed, thinking of Cara and mentally comparing her to Mr Schmidt.
‘I am sorry, dear. I meant to let you know but it must have slipped my mind.’
Lex could have shaken her. Instead, he gritted his teeth and said, ‘What do the runes say?’
‘ So Begins The Game,’ she said, dropping her voice dramatically. ‘Of course. It starts at Khestrii the day after tomorrow. Make sure you are there at the Black Tower by sunset. When you get there, everything will be explained and it will be announced to the stadiums. It will be glorious, Lex. You and I are going to win this by a long shot.’
CHAPTER SIX
Lex decided not to say anything to Schmidt about the Game or anything else the Goddess had told him. After all, he didn’t owe the lawyer anything. He hadn’t asked him to come chasing after him across the sea to try and arrest him and drag him back to the Wither City.
Lex had talked Jani into letting them purchase a wagon she had stored in the courtyard. The mantha beast was tethered to it and was plodding along a country road out of the Farrows with the slow, consistent gait peculiar to its kind, seemingly oblivious to Gersha’s cold winds whipping about them. Lex and Schmidt were sitting on the narrow wooden seat at the front, with some food and their bags stored in the back. It was not a particularly comfortable way of travelling, but it was certainly preferable to travelling on the mantha’s back.
It was an odd thing because, in Lex’s experience, no one was usually that upset in the aftermath of his crimes. After all, most of his thieving in the Wither City had been limited to large museums that would be insured anyway. He’d never managed to successfully steal anything from Schmidt himself or the partners of his precious firm, so why all the fuss? It surely couldn’t stem only from dislike, for Lex was likeable. People liked him. He had an honest, open face, he could be charming and he was accomplished in the vital art of showmanship.
‘What was it?’ he asked, suddenly eager to know, raising his voice to be heard over the gales that whipped about them.
‘What was what?’ the lawyer snapped.
‘What gave me away?’ Lex asked. ‘How did you know that I was a conniving thief rather than a hard-working sucker-of-a-student?’
When he was playing a part, Lex was always very, very careful not to give away just how clever he really was. He wanted to appear industrious and hardworking at the law firm, certainly, but not clever. Clever people were watched and accused and suspected and Lex had to be careful not to draw unwanted attention to himself. He had to appear incapable of hatching devious plots, let alone carrying them out. He had learnt, right at the start, that one of the most important things a fraudster should aim for was to be underestimated. If they were scorned and ridiculed as well then so much the better.
Before coming to the Wither City, when he’d still been travelling across the Globe, moving from place to place and scamming people blind, he had almost always chosen to play the part of a young man who was fabulously wealthy but at the same time extraordinarily dim, with a dash of rakishness thrown in as well. The trick was to make the merchant or the jeweller or the pawnbroker or whoever think that they were the ones scamming him.
One scam he often used was to buy a brooch — the cheapest he could find — and then dirty it up with some grime, put it in a velvet box and cover the whole thing with dust. Then he would put on his poshest clothes, his sulkiest, most superior expression and saunter into a jeweller’s with the most arrogant manner he could summon up — which was not such a very difficult thing for Lex. And then came the fun part.
‘Ai say!’ he would whine as soon as he was in the door. ‘Is someone going to attend to mey or am ai just to be left standing hereyah all day? Ai am not accustomed to being treated in such a mannah!’
‘I beg your pardon, sir. How can I help?’ the jeweller would ask, hackles raised already.
Lex would give him a haughty stare. ‘Ai am Trent Lexington IV of the Galswick Lexingtons.’ Of course, there was no such family but the jeweller would nod anyway and look suitably impressed. ‘Ai’ve come to talk about a brooch that was recently discovahed in the attic at the country home, you know.’
‘Very good, sir. Do you have the brooch with you today?’
‘Yaas, naturally. Ai made the discovery maiself and ai would like to sell… ah, that is… ai have come to get it valued at the bequest of mey parents.’
The jeweller would smile knowingly, for most of them had seen this sort of thing before — young Lords dissatisfied with their allowances coming in to try and fob off some of the family jewels, no doubt pinched straight from dear Mama’s jewellery box itself — the sort of women who had so very many little trinkets that they wouldn’t miss one here and there. But attic jewellery was the very best kind for no one was going to miss that and, being older, it was usually more valuable, too.
It was all in how the thing was presented. Of course, if Lex had walked in wearing second-hand clothes and talking like the country boy that he was then he would never in a million years have been able to pass some cheap bit of costume jewellery off as the real deal. But — between his own immaculate outfit and sneeringly aristocratic manner and the dust and grime of hundreds of years with which the brooch was covered — the jewellers believed him every time. To begin with. Of course, later on, under a more careful inspection, they would instantly discover the piece to be a fake. But at the time they would be so preoccupied with their greedy eagerness to scam the arrogant young toff that they would see in the velvet box only what they fully expected to see.
After a very, very great deal of practice, Lex was even able to blush on command. This turned out to be exceedingly useful as he had taken to carrying a pack of cards into the jewellers with him. At some point, he would reach into his pocket for something, and the cards would come tumbling out — apparently quite by accident — and one of the jewellers would hurry to help him pick them up and Lex would blush crimson and mutter a bad-natured word of thanks before snatching the incriminating cards back — the clear implication being that he was indulging in gambling, very probably without his parents’ knowledge, that he was in over his head and that that was why he needed to sell the brooch in a hurry.
It was very important to make it as easy for the jewellers to believe the scam as possible and Lex had learnt that the little details were very important — and added a certain authenticity to the proceedings. He had therefore taken to spending as much time as possible in smoky bars or taverns whilst he was wearing the posh clothes so that they would smell of smoke when he went to the jewellers as if he had spent all night in a gamblers’ den. Sometimes he even rubbed a tiny amount of alcohol around the collar for good measure. He found that jewellers would fall over themselves to short-change a gambling, smoking, drinking, arrogant young aristocrat — there appeared to be a sort of special satisfaction for them in it and the nastier Lex was, the more eager they would be to get him. They would offer a sum that was far less than the brooch would be worth if it were genuine, but actually far more than it was really worth seeing as the item was, in fact, quite as fake as Lex himself.
But the day he had made his deal with Lady Luck it had all gone a bit wrong because there happened to be a ruby expert in that morning who was promptly called over in order that Lex could be given a more accurate estimation of the brooch’s worth. And, of course, it was immediately apparent that, wherever the brooch had come from, it had not come from any attic — stately home or otherwise.
‘It’s a fake,’ the jeweller said flatly, looking accusingly at Lex.
‘A fake?’ Lex repeated shrilly, looking genuinely horrified. ‘A fake, you say? Mey good man, that is quaite,
