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Johnny King. It sounded like the name of a Golden Age superhero.

Jesse Jonas Alvarez, not-so-resplendent in his Hillworth Grammar uniform, tapped his foot as he waited in line at Sovereign Heights' reception desk. Somewhere in the back of Jesse's head he had naïvely thought that cavaliers would be vetted by him, which was why he and Dylan had had an argument when he realised that Marc and Cleveland weren't in line to become Prince Alexandros' bannermen. Naïve? Just stupid; that there was any kind of powerplay to be had or ever would be. He'd been too long a leader. He'd never prepared for Dylan, which was a thought that had mostly plagued him in the first days of his ceasefire, he didn't know how to do this. Alexandros could pick his men better than Hector could, couldn't he. He wasn't about to gripe like Veronica Harvey over who was chosen in his absence and who wasn't.

Except --

Someone else's memory provided a chess set. Laocoon's fingers were steady on the castle as he smilingly moved to check: Alexandros' laughter joined his own, maybe the burr a little softened by wine, as both sat back to admire their handiwork. Chess sets annoyed him. They were too clean. It was an antiseptic massacre, and when he sat to the side and watched and didn't read a book the clink clink clink wore into his brain:

-- another memory, overlaid. He sat down in the chair Alexandros had occupied, the Prince bonelessly sloshing onto a sofa as his twin took his place. Laocoon's pale-brown eyes looked at him, then the board, and he fancied the smile was altogether too mocking when he moved a center pawn out to start the fray. Hector was checked in ten moves. Alexandros' laughter at that was --

"We're running closed campus at the moment," said the receptionist to the person in front of him. A pushed flyer. "Our open days are going to be on the tenth and the twenty-third of this month. Students have to make visits off-site otherwise. It's for safety purposes, I'm sorry."

She was nice. The whole reception room was nice. It smelled like Lemon Pledge and had stuck-up art of the kind that was mainly primary-coloured swirls.

"I'm here to see my brother."

In a sense, it was true.

"Do you have a scheduled family visit?"

"No, I don't have a scheduled family visit because I go to Hillworth and I get like, ten minutes off per month," he said. (When in doubt, put down the concrete for a full-frontal assault.) "He never schedules me in anyway."

"Oh, er -- " She was a nice receptionist. She had a worried face.

"If I don't see him today I'm just going to leave him a note that he can see me in June if he wants to remember his brother's alive. Whatever."

"Look, I have a nephew who goes to Hillworth." She really was nice. "Why don't we see what we can do?"

After they talked, he got a badge labelled Dylan Monroe as living testament to his inability to ever put his real name around. Turned out her nephew had been somebody he thought Cleveland knew, a swimmer, and when he turned on the charm she let slip the authority bullshit and sent him off. He had a printout of Johnny King's timetable. Useful if he was going to shoot him. Also useful for an insider view on the subjects the other cavalier liked: Criminology and Criminal Justice? Introduction to American Law?

The Sovereign Heights uniforms were rhapsodies of beige, ducky yellow and pale blue. It all looked like hell. The only uniform he'd ever wear after mint stripes, so help him God, would be that of the Destiny City Police Department. Jesse stuck his hands in his pockets and dreamed about burning ties until he got into the cafeteria.

In there it was a literal sea of blue blazers and laughing older students who didn't have to worry about real college yet. Dylan was going to hate this stuff if he went. It was thin; it was just a trussed-up high school; same s**t, different day, though the vests were a lot sloppier and the pants hiked down a lot more than those at Hillworth. He loosened his tie and walked, inexorably, to Johnny King's table.

Jesse sat down without being asked. In this body Laocoon's eyes were very blue, rimmed with thick Coke-bottle lenses tied around with tape, long-fingered hands. Something about the shoulders didn't fit the Hi, I'm A Card-Carrying Whiteassed Nerd bill. Quarterback arms. The glasses were of somebody Jesse would've given a toilet shampoo, but the way he carried himself -- wasn't.

"I'm Jesse," he said. "Jesse Alvarez."

And he extended a handshake to start round two of Laocoon and Hector: The Argument Series.

The hand thunked down on the table, turned into a motion of snagging a napkin. There were the same sandpapery pieces of paper in a dispenser on each table. It was picked at listlessly -- nervousness? -- as the green eyes flashed up again.

"Yeah?" His shoulders hunched, pressing his elbows into the table. This was a b***h action. Instead, Jesse sat himself up and arranged himself back on his chair, one arm slung over it like he didn't care how louchely he was sitting. A tiny fingernail of napkin was ripped of, flicked into the air. "So you're the genius. I decided to stop by and see how you were doing, you know, in the name of brotherhood."

Brotherhood was drawled out into its separate syllables: bro-ther-hood. "Actually, it was assault and repeated disobedience while being poor and Mexican, but I'll forgive you for not having all the details. I'm big like that. I also made a guy open a window with his head, but that's incidentals."

'Incidental' was spoken in the manner of somebody who wasn't quite confident with the word. 'Incidentals' was indeed not quite grammatically correct. Jesse felt the first pinpricks of sweat on his palms and hated them. The glasses annoyed him. Nobody who obviously played football in the past had the right to have white-and-nerdy glasses. The Sudoku puzzle annoyed him; he could never do them. And the sideways glance had set his teeth on edge as icing on the cake.

Another fingernail of tissue went on its way to the floor. "I hear you helped out my boy Dylan the other day," he said.

In fact, Jesse Alvarez did appreciate Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, his main appreciation of Sherlock Holmes stemmed from Jude Law playing Watson and Robert Downey Junior playing Holmes, so this was possibly worse than not appreciating Arthur Conan Doyle in the first place. Words skipped off the page when he tried to read them. They slithered together in irritating vectors, and he felt stupid the moment he sat down as though the book itself was making fun of him. Jesse had stopped. He'd read bits of Twilight over Taylor's shoulder making fun of it the whole time --

Quid pro quo. He was doing this on purpose.

"No," he said, and another tiny confetti-piece of napkin went down after its twin brothers. "He took his time picking me." Yet another. "Hear he picked you in something of a rush, Mr. Johnny King."

Yet another. It twirled in drunken bell curves, a miniature off-white snowflake, and he didn't bother watching it. He knew when someone had immediately taken badly to him: that was acceptable with Ronnie, but with this cavalier it was a battle and couldn't be borne. Laocoon had been a prickle in his side, not a hated enemy. "We keep an eye out for each other -- me and Dylan. You know. Brotherhood. That little thing you, me and him have going on now."

The grin was a trifle strained. "The three Musketeers."

Thankfully, Jesse did not cleave to instinct for once. His first instinct was: all right, that's fine, I dig Jeremy Irons and Charlie Sheen, but that would have made Johnny either pound the table hooting with laughter -- or derision.

But he was more concerned with the what now. They looked at each other as unfamiliar brothers. Warm strangers. A ticking time bomb. Jesse's eyes flicked down to the Sudoku, then Johnny's bent dark head, then the Sudoku again. At least he'd set the pen down. That was good, that was heartening. Hector might have smiled and said, well, you're the one with the brain, brother, why don't you tell me? Jesse was not altogether Hector.

"You're asking me?" His hand was splayed out briefly, fingers exposed, a dramatic handwave. Everything for Jesse seemed irritably melodramatic. He had noticed the emotional pulling-away, the hard-drawn mouth, the inability to look at him, and he had no idea what to do with it. "I don't know. This was a friendly call -- you know, social." (Yes, Johnny knew 'social.') "How about you tell me, Athos."

Johnny got John Malkovich.

Their eyes met. Johnny King had very blue eyes. Jesse Alvarez's were very apple-green, nearly fluorescently so. He was staring. Then, suddenly, he broke out in a peal of laughter and dropped the ripped-up napkin, a pile of sad little shredded folds on the tabletop. People looked.

"You crack me up, son," said Jesse. 'Son': aggressive man psychology 101. The moving of a pawn forward. "Public humiliation! No, I would've just gutpunched you the moment I got to your table. Can you take a punch any better? Yes? No? I'm thinking yes. You were a QB, weren't you."

Quarterback. It was probably the first interesting act -- that of deduction -- that Jesse had done. He was grinning broadly. With a flicker of his hand, he yanked the Sudoku book from the table and stood up before Johnny could yank it back. The pages were fluttered through as he gave a low whistle. "Looks like somebody's got time on the can," he said. "You like Soduku?" ('Soduku' had to be him baiting.) "How about we suss you out right now, numbers boy."

The Sudoku book was flapped. "Never assume, brother mine," said Jesse.

Jesse's grin was beatific. "Don't you?" he said. "Or, how about this, you're afraid that my stupid Hillworth a** can beat yours hands down."

The smile was immediately gone. The Sudoku book was held behind his back as he leant down, one hand on the table, his face close to Johnny's now. The older boy was in an obvious state of agitation and disarray. He knew it. Jesse knew it. "Hands down," he repeated, softly. "So if you and your huge IQ can bear to be around me, let's put it to the test. Won't take long. Me and my mediocre intelligence versus you and yours."

Slowly, he drew back. If he regretted it -- if humiliating Johnny was something that got under his skin too -- it didn't show. For Jesse, humiliation was a pretty shabby way to be treating a cavalier, and he was inwardly wincing at what would happen if it got back to Alexandros. No getting off of the train he was on. No guilt. "Come on," he said. "If you win, you get your Soduku book back. Easy as that."

Jesse didn't speak. He just put his other hand out and crooked his fingers, imperiously: come with me.

There was no other option but to go.

*

Sliding into Hector's skin seemed to not switch Jesse back to his other self as Laocoon's captain. It was not a given. Although the eyes were as violet as his own were pale gold, it was Jesse Alvarez who stared out of them.

Jesse had mirrorwalked both through the convenient reflective art that lived next to the English building at Sovereign Heights. Scrolled in handwritten dramatics above the mirror-door had been: take a look at yourself!. It was pretty. It was also a Parallel's dream. The mirror had rippled over their skin, the glass insubstantial as smoke, and when they came out it was in an alleyway with a slightly cramped panel window. It was tinted look-out nothing-in. Obviously Hector had gone through it before.

At that point they'd both clambered up the fire escape and seen the lay of the land from a building. "Too bad we don't have Alex," said the Cavalier of the Hollow, but it was still Jesse with a hand over his eyes to squint at the people below. "My brother attracts them like flypaper."

Another sally: remember Alexandros? He's my twin brother.

"We wait as long as we have to," said Hector. Another very Hector way of doing things. "Where'd you leave your sense of adventure?"

His boots cracked on the roof. A little way away was a boarded maintenance box with a halfhearted padlock on it, the sort you could buy at any hardware store. The sunlight was chill and thin and yellow. Hector paced. "Your choices are also suspect," he said, and that was more the leader Laocoon used to know. "Considering you've seen him hungover."

An impatient hand was run through his hair. Jesse was regretting his decision. In the end all that would happen was they'd wait on top of a building, and when Laocoon was tired of it Johnny would go ha! and demand his book back. His gut instinct had been wrong. He hated that. Dylan could do much worse than rake your a** over coals: he'd just detach, give his smile away to someone else. He said, "Look -- "

He was stopped by a scream. In the built-up area that was nothing, but it was joined by other screams like fruiting mushrooms. His irritated expression turned to that of aggressively relieved excitement, pooling adrenaline, and he vaulted down the fire ladder with Laocoon expected to follow.