Her voice must have been audible across the entire dying land. She was the brightest thing in Fillory at that moment.
“It is time.”
That word time echoed from coast to coast. Everyone on the battlefield, beasts and humans and whatever else, stood still. Julia commanded bipartisan support.
She walked toward Janet and Poppy; as she walked one of the roots extended and flattened itself and made a bridge to the parapet where they stood. Another root scooped up Josh from where he’d been sitting, exhausted, on the ground in front of the gates, and set him down next to them.
“Insert joke here,” Julia said, in something like her normal, nonamplified, predivine voice, “about how I leave you alone for five minutes and all of Fillory goes to shit.”
Janet didn’t know what to say. She had nothing left. She embraced Julia. It was a bit awkward, what with her being so huge and all, Janet more or less had to throw her arms around Julia’s waist, but it felt wonderful. Her robes were the softest thing ever. Janet thought it might be beneath Julia’s dignity, to be hugged by a mortal, but she allowed it.
“Queens of Fillory,” Julia said. “And king of Fillory. This is it. It is time to go.”
“Where are we going?” It was Josh who asked, in the voice of a lost child. “Can you take us to the Far Side of the World?”
Julia shook her head, no.
“The Far Side is ending too. We are cooling the sun and stilling the waters. We are rolling up the meadows and pulling down the stars.”
“Then where are we going?” he asked again.
“I don’t know,” Julia said. “But you can’t stay here.”
She held out her hands to them. Janet got it; they had to be touching each other for the enchantment to work. Poppy took Janet’s hand on one side, and Julia—her fingers felt big and tingly—took the other.
Janet bent her head and let herself cry. Her face streamed with tears. It wasn’t going to kill her, she thought. She would live. Of course she would, she didn’t have a scratch on her, for Christ’s sake. Everything was going to be fine. It was just that she would never have a home again.
CHAPTER 27
I’m sorry,” Quentin said, when Alice had finished.
“No, you’re not. So don’t keep saying it.”
“I’m not sorry I brought you back. I’m sorry it all happened. I wish it hadn’t been you. But no one else had the courage and the selflessness and the cleverness to do what you did.”
“Fuck your courage and whatever else. I’m glad I did it. I’m just sorry you ruined it.”
Alice continued to regard him with a contempt as inhuman as a human being could make it.
“It’s hard to come back. I get that. I didn’t understand how hard it would be.” Quentin soldiered on under withering fire. “It’s hard to be human, but there’s more to it than that. You knew that before. You don’t remember it yet, but it’ll come back to you.”
Quentin didn’t know if it would or not, but he wasn’t about to give ground now. He sensed that if he even flinched, she would take that as proof that she was right about everything. And she wasn’t right—was she?
Eliot cleared his throat tactfully.
“There’s no very good time to say this,” he said, “but I have to leave.” He clapped his hands on his knees. “The end of the world is coming, and I should really be there for that.”
“Sure,” Quentin said. “OK.”
“Probably I should try to stop it. Probably I shouldn’t have stayed this long.”
“I know. You should go.”
He was being uncharacteristically hesitant. Quentin made him promise to come back as soon as he could, and to give his love to Josh and Poppy, and oh my God they’re married? You didn’t tell me that? Amazing. And pregnant? Good for them. OK, now really get out of here.
“I’ll just get my things.”
“I understand.”
“Actually I haven’t got any things.”
Having gone through the formalities, Eliot still couldn’t bring himself to leave. He of all people was struggling to find the words to say something. He cleared his throat again.
“Will you come with me?” He blurted it out. “If anybody can figure this out, it’s you. Or Julia, but Julia isn’t taking my calls. We need you, Quentin. Come back.”
“To Fillory.” It hadn’t even crossed his mind. “But you know I can’t go back. I can’t leave Alice now, and Ember would never let me in anyway.”
“I’ve been thinking about that second part. I told you how the Lorians invaded us, even though they aren’t supposed to be able to? And then Alice found a way to get here through the mirrors . . . I’m starting to think that Fillory is getting a bit porous in her old age. Border security isn’t what it used to be. If there was ever a moment to get you through, it’s now.”
There was a time when Quentin would have seized on that possibility like a drowning man. Now it gave him a pang, the dull ache of an old wound, but that was all. That time had passed. He shook his head.
“I can’t, Eliot. Not now. I’m needed here.”
Alice snorted at the notion that anybody anywhere might need Quentin.
“I was afraid of that,” Eliot said. “Well look, just come with me as far as the Neitherlands. That’s all I ask. For all I know there’s a smoking crater where the Fillory fountain was. I don’t want to face that alone.”
“Ooooh,” Plum said. Her eyes went round. “I want to go to the Eitherlands!”
“Neitherlands,” Eliot said, suddenly peevish. “And it’s not a field trip for interns.”
They were interrupted by something scratching at the front door. The room fell silent. They weren’t expecting visitors. Nobody knew they were here, or nobody should have. Quentin put a finger to his lips.
More scratching. It stopped and then started again. He got up and walked as quietly as he could over to the door and peered through the spy hole. Empty street. There was nobody there. He looked at the others. Eliot shrugged.
He cracked the door a few inches, keeping the chain on, and something small and frantic burst in past him, and he reeled back a step. It was the blackbird.
It flapped crazily around the room for thirty long seconds, with that special horror that birds have of being indoors, before it settled on the Sputnik chandelier. Even then its gaze darted everywhere, constantly, like it was expecting danger from any and all directions. It looked different: thinner and more bedraggled. It was missing some feathers, and the ones it still had had lost their gloss.
“Do not kill me!” it said.
Plum and Eliot were on their feet. Only Alice hadn’t moved.
“What are you doing here?” Quentin said. “Are you alone?”
“I am alone!”
“Why should we believe you?” Plum said. “You fucking asshole. You betrayed us. And you probably murdered Pushkar. He had a family, you know. Quentin, should we kill it?”
“Maybe. Not yet.” If this was a trap, or a feint, or a diversion, it was a weird one, if only because he figured the bird for a physical coward. It wasn’t like it to lead from the front. “Plum, watch it. I’m going to look around for anybody else.”
But there was no one else, not in front or in back or on the roof or in any immediately adjacent planes of existence, not that he could detect. Maybe it really was alone.
“I take it this is that bird,” Eliot said. “The one who hired you.”
“It’s that bird. What are you doing here?”
“I have no more money,” it said. “I tried to hire more magicians, but without Lionel it went poorly.”
“No money, no magicians,” Quentin said. “Those are the breaks. I think you should leave now.”
“I did not want Lionel to kill Pushkar! I did not tell him to. I don’t know why he did. I was afraid of him!”
It already seemed incredible that they’d been so scared of the blackbird. It wasn’t very frightening now. It must have run through all its resources staging their job, and without Lionel and its hired hands it was just a talking bird, nothing more.
It didn’t appear to want to leave.
“You have to help me.”
“No,” Plum said, looking up at it. “We really don’t.”
“The birds here despise me. I am very hungry. I have eaten garbage.”
“I don’t care what you’ve eaten,” Quentin said. “We’ve got more important things to worry about. Leave or we’ll throw you out.”
Though he wasn’t exactly sure yet how they were going to catch and expel the thing. He wasn’t looking forward to that chase scene.
“Please,” it said again. “He will kill me!”
“Who?”
The blackbird didn’t answer, just stared around the room anxiously, from one to the other of them. It didn’t want to say. Quentin didn’t feel the slightest bit sorry for it.
“It’s talking about Ember.”
Even the bird jumped, as if it hadn’t realized Alice could talk. Her expression didn’t change. She wanted everybody to know that her emotional investment in this drama was nil.
“What did you say?”
“That’s Ember’s bird. I met it in the mirrors. It begged me not to kill it. I can’t think why I didn’t. I’m going to bed.”
On her way out she nearly walked into a wall out of habit—as a niffin she would have gone right through it. She left an uncomfortable silence behind her. From behind the drawn curtains they heard a truck come rattling slowly down the narrow street. Quentin waited for it to pass by.
“Is that true? Ember sent you?”
“Please.” It had lost all of its avian loftiness now. It trembled. “He will kill me.”
“He won’t,” Plum said, “because we’ll kill you first.”
“He sent me to get the suitcase. I do not know why. He would have sent a bigger animal,” it added almost apologetically, “but He needed one capable of flight. To go through the mirrors. He gave me some money, and the spell to make Lionel once I got here.”
“Why did He want the case? Was it the knife, or the book? Or both?”
“I don’t know!” the blackbird wailed. “I don’t know! I didn’t know what was in it! Truly!”
And it began to cry. Quentin thought he had never heard a more pathetic sound. The bird fluttered down from its perch on the chandelier like a pheasant creased by a bullet. It landed on the coffee table and squatted there, sobbing.
Something coherent was forming in Quentin’s exhausted brain, like a crystal forming in a murky liquid. He’d been looking at chaos for so long, he barely remembered what a pattern looked like, but now he thought he saw at least a fragment of one.
“Hang on,” he said slowly. “Let’s think this through. Rupert stole the stuff in the case, Ember wants it back. He sends a bird to Earth to recover it for Him. The bird hires us to find it.”
Plum picked up the thread. “The stuff in the case was Umber’s, not Ember’s, according to Rupert, but I guess they’re brothers so it’s all in the family. But so why would Ember want it?”
“Why wouldn’t he? Cool knife? Spell for making a magic land? Who wouldn’t want that?”
“A god?” Eliot said. “Who already has a whole magic world?”
“Except He doesn’t.” All the lights came on in Quentin’s head at once. “He doesn’t though. Fillory is dying, and Ember has nowhere to go. He wants the spell so he can use it to make a new world! He’s going to give up on Fillory—abandon it and start over!”
It came out in a rush, which was followed by a pause. Plum made a skeptical face.
“But it fits!” Quentin said. “He’s not even trying to save Fillory! He’s a rat who won’t go down with his ship!”
“That,” Eliot said, “is a mixed metaphor. And listen to me: I know you’ve got no reason to love Ember, but that seems a little cowardly.”
“Yes, because He’s a coward!”
“Plus you know the spell doesn’t make a whole world, right?” Plum said. “Just like a land?”
“Maybe that’s just us. Maybe a god could do more with it.”
She looked up at the ceiling, considering. The blackbird watched all three of them desperately.
“Even if that’s true,” Eliot said, “what would we do about it? It’s kind of depressing me actually. Just more proof that there’s no way out of this.”
Quentin sat down. Maybe he was getting ahead of himself.
“We still have the spell,” he said.
“Destroy it,” Eliot said.
“No.” He couldn’t do that.
“We have the bird,” Eliot said. “We could turn the tables. Take it hostage.”
“Oh, come on. Ember doesn’t give a crap about the bird, the bird’s expendable.” The bird didn’t object to this; it would’ve been hard to argue with. “We should go to Fillory, confront Him, make Him stay there and try and save it. He is the god of it. And we’ve got the spell. God, what a bastard!”
“Or,” Eliot said, cautiously, “maybe we want to get in on this shit. Maybe he’s got the right idea. Maybe we should give Him the spell and tell Him to make a new world and take us with Him.”
“Eliot,” Quentin said.