Free The Magician King by Lev Grossman Page A

Fenwicks. I think they just think we’re dicks.”
    Quentin remembered the first time they’d met, how odd Eliot’s twisted jaw had looked. Now it was so familiar he didn’t notice it. It looked like something natural, like a humpback whale’s jaw.
    “I suppose I could make a speech,” Eliot said, “but nobody would hear it.”
    “I’ll just act like you’re exhorting me to further the interests of the Fillorian people and show these renegade Outer Islanders, who probably just forgot to pay their taxes, if they even have anything to pay taxes on, or with, that we stand for everything that is just and true, and they’d do well to remember it.”
    “You’re actually looking forward to this, aren’t you?”
    “If you want the truth, it’s taking all my self-control just to stay standing here on the dock.”
    “All right,” Eliot said. “Go. Oh, you’ve got an extra crew member. I forgot to tell you. The talking animals sent someone.”
    “What? Who?”
    “Exactly. Who or what, I never know which. It’s already on board. Sorry, it was politically expedient.”
    “You could have asked me.”
    “I would have, but I thought you might say no.”
    “I miss you already. See you in a week.”
    Light on his feet, Quentin jogged up the plank, which was hastily withdrawn behind him as soon as he was on deck. Incomprehensible naval yells issued from all quarters. Quentin did his best to stay out of people’s way as he picked his way back to the poop deck. The ship creaked and shifted slowly, ponderously, as it leaned and bore away from the wharf. The world around them, which had been fixed in place, became loose and mobile.
    As they cleared the harbor the world changed again. The air cooled and the wind picked up and the water abruptly became gunmetal gray and ruffled. Massive swells came booming through underneath them. The Muntjac ’s enormous sails caught hold of the wind. New wood cracked and settled comfortably into the strain.
    Quentin walked to the very stern and looked out over the wake, swept clean and crushed into foam by the weight of their passage. He felt good and right here. He patted the Muntjac ’s worn old taffrail: unlike most things and most people in Fillory, the Muntjac needed Quentin, and Quentin hadn’t let her down. He stood up straighter. Something heavy and invisible had relaxed its taloned grip, left its familiar perch on his shoulders and winged away on the stiff breeze. Let it weigh down somebody else for a while, he thought. Probably it would be waiting for him when he got home again. But for now it could wait.
    When he turned around to go below, Julia was standing right behind him. He hadn’t heard her. The wind had caught her black hair and was whipping it wildly around her face. She looked outrageously beautiful. It might have been a trick of the light, but her skin had a silvery, unearthly quality, as if it would shock him if he touched it. If they were ever going to fall in love with each other, it was going to happen on this ship.
    They watched together as Whitespire grew smaller behind them and was finally obscured by the point. She’d come here all the way from Brooklyn, just like him, he thought. She was probably the only person in the world, in any world, who understood exactly what all this felt like to him.
    “Not bad, right Jules?” he said. He breathed in the cold sea air. “I mean, this whole trip is ridiculous, basically, but look!” He gestured at everything—the ship, the wind, the sky, the seascape, the two of them. “We should have done this ages ago.”
    Julia’s expression didn’t change. Her eyes had never gone back to normal after the incident in the forest. They were still black, and they looked strange and ancient with her girlish freckles.
    “I did not even notice we were moving,” she said.

CHAPTER 4
    Y ou have to go back to the beginning, to that freezing miserable afternoon in Brooklyn when Quentin took the Brakebills exam, to understand