The Magician's Land (The Magicians, #3)(26)

“So we’re looking for Bertie Wooster,” Quentin said.

Nobody laughed.

“We’re pretty sure it’s on the eastern seaboard.” A map appeared on the dead TV, showing the eastern states with possible sites pinpointed and annotated. “We’re also pretty sure that the people who have it don’t know what they have. As far as we know they haven’t been able to open it.”

“Why don’t you just buy it off them?” Plum said. “If they don’t know what it is. You obviously have plenty of money.”

“We tried,” Lionel said. “They don’t know what they have, but they’re pretty sure they have something big, and they don’t want to give it up till they’ve figured out what. They acquired it as part of a cache of artifacts from a dealer, who we presume they killed. Unfortunately our attempts to purchase it from them have only confirmed their estimate of its value.”

“Wait,” Stoppard said. “They killed him?”

“Her. And yes.”

Stoppard’s eyes were wide. He looked more excited than appalled. He took another hasty swig.

“One thing you don’t have to worry about with these guys is your conscience,” Lionel said. “They’re *s, major league. They call themselves the Couple.” Two photographs appeared, side by side, a man and a woman, both good-looking and in their early thirties, evidently taken from some distance away with a long-range lens. “They’re manipulators. They work behind the scenes, messing around with the civilians. They get off on it; it’s all a big game to them.”

Quentin frowned. He’d heard about magicians who did that: competed with each other to move the stock market, throw elections, start wars, choose popes. The mundane world was a big chessboard to them. Supposedly the whole electoral debacle of 2000 was mostly a shoving match between two magicians who were trying to settle a bet.

“How are we going to find them?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I still don’t understand why you want this thing,” Plum said.

“You don’t have to,” the bird said. “We are not paying you to understand.”

“Well, no. I guess not. It all seems kind of sketchy though.”

Betsy cackled.

“Sketchy! I love that. You’re talking to a bird in an airport Marriott.”

Betsy had a point. Quentin badly wanted to get Plum alone and ask her why she was doing this and what she knew about it and if she was all right. He was worried about her, and what’s more he needed an ally, and she was the likeliest candidate. Betsy picked up the phone and began whispering confidingly to room service.

“You’re sure we don’t need more people,” he said. “What about a psychic? A healer?”

“I am sure.”

“When do you expect this all to happen?” Pushkar asked. “How soon?” Of them all he looked the least like a master thief. He didn’t look like a magician at all. Maybe it was camouflage; he certainly seemed to be the most comfortable with the whole situation.

“We don’t know,” Lionel said.

“Yes, but weeks? Months? I must notify my family.” He was also the only one of them wearing a wedding ring.

“I am not living in Newark Airport Marriott for months.” Betsy broke off her phone conversation. “FYI. Or weeks. Or one week singular. The only natural fibers in my room are the hairs in the bathtub.”

“We’ll tell you as soon as we know.”

“So to recap,” Quentin said. “Two bad people—known killers who are, with respect, much scarier than we are—have a suitcase somewhere on the eastern seaboard, precise location unknown, contents unknown, under an incorporate bond. And we are going to take it away from them.”

“We have the numbers,” the bird said. “And the element of surprise.”

“If this works I for one will be very surprised,” Pushkar said cheerfully. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”

“What about that incorporate bond?” Plum said. “How are we going to break it? What with that being impossible and all.”

“We will have to do the impossible,” the bird said, “which is why I hired magicians and not accountants. I mentioned resources earlier. We will discuss each of your needs individually.”

The meeting gradually disintegrated. Quentin stood up. They could talk about his needs later, whatever they were. For now he needed some air, and some food, and maybe a drink to celebrate the beginning of his new life of crime. Something soft brushed his ear and prickled his shoulder, and he had to resist the instinctive urge to slap at it. It was the bird.

“Christ!” he said. “Don’t do that.”

Maybe you got used to it. Julia had.

“Do you know why I asked you here?” it whispered, putting its beak right up against his ear.

“I could make a pretty good guess.”

“It is not for your skill at mending.”

“That wasn’t going to be my guess.”

The bird flew off again, back to Lionel’s shoulder, which Quentin now noticed was worn and stained with use.

—

Plum agreed to meet him in the hotel bar.

The lights were too bright, and there were too many TVs, but it was a bar, and that was another place, like bookstores, where Quentin felt at home. Drinks were a lot like books, really: it didn’t matter where you were, the contents of a vodka tonic were always more or less the same, and you could count on them to take you away to somewhere better or at least make your present arrangements seem more manageable. The other patrons appeared to be business travelers and tourists who’d been stranded by canceled flights; looking around Quentin was pretty sure there was not one single person in the bar who was actually there by choice.