The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [135]
“So that’s what you’re doing here. Trying to get on the big power grid.”
She realized she was repeating their words while her mind tried to take in what they meant. So there was more to it. Funny, she had almost been relieved for a minute there, when she thought that that was it, that was all there was.
She’d crammed a lifetime’s worth of magical study into the last four years, and the rest of her, the non-magical parts, was feeling somewhat neglected. Empty. She wouldn’t have minded spending some time filling in those blanks in a big French farmhouse with some close friends. The big energies could wait. Or they could have. But her close friends didn’t want to wait. And Julia would go with them, because—and it was so painfully tender to say it, even to herself, that she didn’t say it, even to herself—she loved them. They were what she had instead of a family. So excelsior. Onward and upward.
“That’s what we’re doing here.” Pouncy sat back and laced his hands behind his head. It was early, but there were already dark patches of sweat under his arms. “Unless you have any better ideas.”
Julia shook her head. Everybody was watching her.
“All right,” she said. “Well, show me what you’ve got so far.”
Read ’em and weep.
CHAPTER 21
They carried Benedict’s body up the gangplank, all together, Quentin and Josh and Eliot, struggling awkwardly with his heavy ragdoll limbs. Death seemed to have made his lanky adolescent body strangely dense. Slipping on the wet wood, they had none of the gravitas that would have been appropriate for pallbearers. Nobody had worked up the courage to take the arrow out of his throat, and it pointed crazily in all directions.
Once Benedict was laid out on the deck Quentin went and got a blanket from his cabin and spread it over the body. His side was throbbing hotly, in sync with his pulse. Good. That’s what he wanted. He wanted to feel pain.
It was Bingle who drew the arrow expertly out of Benedict’s throat; he had to snap it in half to get it out, because one end was barbed and the other feathered. It began to rain steadily, the drops tapping and splashing on the deck and on Benedict’s pale unflinching face. They moved the body inside, into the surgery, although there was no surgery to be done.
“We’re going,” Quentin said aloud, to nobody and everybody.
“Quentin,” Eliot said. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“I don’t want to stay here. We’ve got a good wind. We should go.”
Eliot was officially in charge, but Quentin didn’t care. This was his ship first and he didn’t want to spend another night on this island. It’s all fun and games till somebody gets an arrow through the throat.
“What about the prisoners?” somebody said.
“Who cares? Leave them here.”
“But where are we going to go?” Eliot said, reasonably.
“I don’t know! I just don’t want to stay here! Do you?”
Eliot had to admit he didn’t especially want to stay either.
There was no way Quentin was going to bed. Benedict wasn’t going to get warm tonight, so how could he? He was going to get the ship ready. Looking down at Benedict’s blank, unfeeling face, Quentin was almost angry at him for dying. Things had been going so well. But that was being a hero, wasn’t it? For every hero, don’t legions of foot soldiers have to die in the background? It was a matter of numbers, like the corpse in the castle said. Just work out the sums.
So Quentin, the Magician King, leader of men, helped corral the rest of the defeated soldiers and got the crew watering and provisioning the Muntjac, even if it was the middle of the night and pissing rain. Somebody else would have to plot the course, since Benedict was dead, but that wasn’t a problem because they didn’t know where they were going. It didn’t matter. He didn’t understand what they were doing anymore. It was obviously a very effective way to procure magic keys, but how was that going to help Julia?