It was therefore with a distinct sense of unease that Schmidt suggested to Lex on his first human day that he put a crumb of bread or something in his mouth at meal-times so that Schmidt could eat his own food without body-swapping. To his surprise, Lex had agreed with a disinterested shrug and said, ‘If I’m going to be throwing up all day anyway I might as well throw up bread as well as muggets.’
It therefore appeared that, if swapping bodies on purpose had occurred to Lex, he wasn’t going to act on it and, to Schmidt’s relief, this remained the case even as the days went by and Lex became more ill.
‘How are you feeling?’ Lucius asked one afternoon as Lex staggered onto the bridge and dropped down onto his blankets.
Lex ignored the question. He felt like he would never be able to eat anything ever again. Being constantly sick drained away all his energy so that he couldn’t believe he would ever want to do anything active ever again either. And the really disheartening thing of it was that he knew he would not even begin to start getting better until he stopped turning into a fish all the time. The idea of this going on for weeks was unbearable.
‘Lex? I said, how are you feeling? Did you hear me, Lex?’ Lucius persisted.
Lex would have shot him if he’d only had a gun in his hand.
‘It’s quite clear that he feels like drowning himself in his own tank,’ Schmidt said from across the other side of the bridge. ‘Why don’t you just leave it at that?’
Lex felt a burst of gratitude towards his employer in that moment and made a silent vow to be nicer to him once he was recovered. At last he drifted off to sleep, but it seemed like mere moments later that Lucius was shaking him awake. ‘Come on, Lex, it’s time to get back down to your tank and have some more of those nice juicy muggets,’ he said, trying to lend a supportive hand. Lex shook him off irritably, suppressing the urge to heave just at the very mention of the word mugget.
‘Don’t fuss me!’ he snapped. ‘Don’t touch me! I can manage!’
‘All right,’ Lucius said, holding up his hands and backing away. ‘Fine. Do it yourself. Here’s your blanket.’
Lex snatched the blanket from his brother’s hand and wrapped it around his shivering shoulders, glaring at Lucius from red-rimmed eyes as he did so. Then he turned and stalked from the bridge towards the kitchen where his tank was, with Lucius trailing along behind him. Lex actually preferred it when Schmidt was the one babysitting him. Schmidt didn’t ask stupid questions or try to help him get dressed when he became human again — he just let him do it on his own.
Lex tried to stop himself from gnashing his teeth in annoyance when he walked into the kitchen and saw his tank sitting on the kitchen table with a slimy-looking mugget all ready for him. There was also a miniature castle in the tank, which Lucius had found on the ship somewhere and had insisted on putting there to make it seem more ‘homely’. Lex picked the thing out with distaste and threw it down on the table. ‘How many times do I have to tell you not to put that in my tank?’ he snapped. ‘It’s demeaning. I’m not really a fish — you do realise that, don’t you?’
‘You like it when you’re a fish,’ Lucius sighed, picking up the tiny castle and replacing it in the tank. ‘I think it makes you feel safe. You like hiding underneath that little drawbridge thing.’
Lex scowled and said nothing. The truth was that he found it hard to remember much of what he did as a whiskerfish. The only thing that mattered to his tiny fish brain was muggets. When he was human he would always promise himself that he was never going to eat another one of those awful things even if that meant he starved to death as a whiskerfish and Lucius had to flush his little fish corpse down the toilet the next morning. But when he was a fish again, it was like he was addicted to the bloody things and all he could think about was how much longer until he’d be given his next mugget. It was exhausting and Lex was thoroughly fed up with it. He was also less than comfortable about his tank being in the kitchen in case someone, in some fit of madness, decided to cook him for a midnight snack or something. But they couldn’t move his tank to the bridge because it was too heavy with all the water inside. And they absolutely had to keep him away from Zachary, for the ferret seemed quite determined to eat him if he could.
‘How many more days?’ Lex asked, shivering as he pulled off his shirt. When you’re ill and longing for warm sheets and blankets, having to get into a cold tank of water with no clothes on and eat slimy poisonous brains and tentacles really is the very last thing you want to do.
‘Mr Schmidt said probably just a few more days,’ Lucius said.
Lex would be interested to find out just how Schmidt knew so much about whiskerfish poison later. But for now, all he could do was concentrate on how ill he felt and how bitter he was that that beautiful, flawless, enthralling crown had been left behind in the dirty fingers of a mad old crone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
At long last, eight days later, Lex was standing shivering in the kitchen, stripped down to his underwear, waiting to get into his tank, glaring ferociously at the slimy mugget already there when… absolutely nothing happened.
‘You should have turned into a fish by now,’ Schmidt said eventually.
Lex sat down on the chair, pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders and said nothing. He didn’t care any more. Fish, human, what did it matter? Another side effect of whiskerfish poisoning was that, for some reason, it made your hair grow. Lex’s hair was now as long as Lucius’s, and lank and greasy because he hadn’t washed it since becoming ill. His skin had turned this greyish colour and he felt thin and everything ached…
Schmidt insisted they wait an hour to be sure Lex definitely wasn’t going to turn into a fish again before letting him crawl into the small room near the bridge that he had taken over. Lex had moved in there a few days after the poisoning because there comes a point in any illness when you feel so awful that you just can’t stand to be around anyone. Besides which, the panoramic windows on the bridge let in far too much light. Lex wanted a small, dark, silent room where he could curl up and just concentrate on not moving. This will pass, he kept telling himself. Jezra had weakened him but he was still in the running and — damn it — he was still going to win. Schmidt had been in charge of the ivory swan that drove the ship whilst Lex had been ill so that it continued to head towards their destination — the Ladder Forest where they would play the third and final round. They were now only a week away and Lex would be recovered enough to play by then.
‘Try and eat some human food as soon as you can,’ Schmidt said when they reached his room. ‘With me, of course… ’ He hesitated a moment before going on. ‘Lex… why didn’t you swap us on purpose?’
‘What do you mean?’ Lex asked, rubbing at his red eyes.
‘Why didn’t you swap bodies with me and make me share some of the illness instead of doing it all yourself?’
‘I was feeling so ill it didn’t occur to me,’ Lex said. ‘It’s a good thing you didn’t ask me that question a few days earlier, Monty.’
‘Huh,’ Schmidt grunted. But he didn’t believe him.
‘Look, do me a favour,’ Lex said. ‘Keep Lucius away from me for the next few days.’
The lawyer nodded. ‘I hope you feel better.’
And he left Lex to crawl gratefully under his blankets at last.
Lex walked onto the bridge three days later, aware that he still looked pale and sickly but feeling much better now that all traces of muggets had left his system. At long last he could look at human food without feeling sick and he’d brought a couple of fruit sticks up to the bridge with him. He was ready to rejoin the others and find out what he’d missed. He was most displeased, however, on stepping onto the bridge, to have Schmidt look round at him from the window and say, ‘Haven’t you found Zachary yet, Lucius?’