The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [188]
“Wait.” Quentin said. “Hang on a minute. I think you’re missing something.” It was almost dark out now, and the sky was a riot of stars. “Do you two have any idea what she’s been through? What she lost? And you’re talking about consequences? She’s had plenty of consequences. And oh, by the way, not that it counts for much apparently, but she saved the world too. You’d think she was due a bit of a reward.”
“She made her own decisions,” the man who sat by the door said. “All is in balance.”
“You know, I’ve noticed that you people, or whatever you are, are pretty free with assigning that kind of responsibility. Well, Julia wouldn’t have done what she did if I’d helped her learn magic.”
“Quentin,” Julia said. “Cease.” She was still powered up, ready to make her move.
“If you want to play that game, let’s play it. Julia did what she did because of me. So if you want to blame somebody, blame me. Put that wrong on me where it belongs and let her go through to the Far Side. Where she belongs.”
The silence of the beach at the end of the world descended again. They saw by starlight now, and by the light of the impending moon, leaking through the half-open door, and by Julia-light: she was glowing softly, with a warm white light that threw their shadows behind them on the sand and glimmered on the water.
Elaine and the well-dressed man conferred again for a long minute. At least they weren’t quibbling about passports. Probably Julia hadn’t needed hers to get into the underworld. She slipped in under the radar.
“All right,” the man said, when they were finished. “We agree. Julia’s fault will be upon you, and she will pass through.”
“All right,” Quentin said. Sometimes you win one when you least expect it. He felt strangely light. Buoyant. “Great. Thank you.”
Julia turned her head and smiled at him, her beautiful unearthly smile. He felt free. He’d thought he would carry his share of that unhappiness for the rest of his life. Now, suddenly, he had shed it when he least expected it, and he felt like he was going to float up into the air. He had atoned, that was the word for it.
Julia took both his hands in hers and kissed him on the mouth, a long kiss, full at last of something like real love. Demi-goddess or no, at that moment she seemed fully herself to him in a way she hadn’t for years, not since their last day together in Brooklyn, when both their lives had been changed beyond recognition. Whatever losses she’d suffered, this was Julia, all of her. And Quentin felt pretty whole now too.
She stepped up to the doorway, but she didn’t kneel. She straightened and squared herself like an Olympic diver and then, disdaining the ladder, she dove off the edge, straight down, and disappeared.
When she was gone the beach was a little darker.
It was over and done with at last. He was ready for the curtain to come down. He wasn’t looking forward to the all-night slog back to the Muntjac, and God knew how they were going to get home from there. Surely there must be some trick, some more magic lying around somewhere that would enable them to skip over that part. Maybe Ember would come.
“Where’s the damn Cozy Horse when you need it?” Josh must have been thinking the same thing.
“And how should Quentin pay?” the Customs Agent said. She was speaking to the man in the black suit.
Suddenly Quentin felt less tired.
“What do you mean?” he said. They were whispering again.
“Hang on,” Eliot said. “That’s not how it works.”
“It is,” said the man, “how it works. Julia’s debt is now upon Quentin, and he must settle it. What is it that Quentin holds most dear?”
“Well,” Quentin said, “I’m already not going to the Far Side.”
Brilliant. He should have been a lawyer. A thought froze him: they were going to take Poppy. Or do something to her. He was afraid to even look at her in case it gave them ideas.
“His crown,” Elaine announced. “I am sorry, Quentin. As of this moment you are no longer a king of Fillory.”
“You exceed your authority,” Eliot said hotly.
Quentin had been braced for