The Magician's Land (The Magicians, #3)(28)

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like it,” Plum said. “There’s something about me you should probably—”

“Chochachos!” Somebody clapped them both on the shoulder at the same time. It was Stoppard. “What are we drinking?”

He looked happy the way only somebody who was inebriated for the first time in his life could be happy. It was incredible that they were even serving him here, considering that he was both underage and overdrunk. He frowned at them blearily.

“Wait,” he said. “You two know each other or something? From before?”

“You could say that,” Quentin said.

“It’s not what you think,” said Plum.

“Uh-huh.” Stoppard leered knowingly.

“It really isn’t.”

“I just ruined his life, that’s all,” Plum said. “And mine. And I think maybe I’ll have that drink now after all.”





CHAPTER 7


You could say it all started out as an innocent prank, but that wouldn’t strictly be true. Even Plum had to admit it wasn’t all that innocent. And maybe, deep down, that was why she did it.

Plum was president of the League, unelected but undisputed, and also its founder. In enlisting the others she had presented the League as a glorious old Brakebills tradition, which it actually wasn’t, though since Brakebills had been around for something like four hundred years it seemed very likely to Plum that there must have been another League at some point in the past, or at any rate something along the same general lines.

You couldn’t rule out the possibility. Though in actual fact she got the idea from a P. G. Wodehouse story.

The thing was this: Wharton was behaving badly, and in the judgment of the League he would have to be pranked for it. Then maybe he would cut it out, or behave a little less badly, or at least the League would have the satisfaction of having caused Wharton to suffer for his crimes. You couldn’t call it innocent, but you had to admit it was pretty understandable. And anyway, was there even any such thing as an innocent prank?

Plum loved Brakebills. It was November of her senior year and she still wasn’t sick of it, not a bit. She loved its many and varied and intricate traditions and rituals and mythologies with an unironic and boosterish love that she refused to be embarrassed about. If anything she thought there should be more of them, which was one reason she started the League.

They met after hours in a funny little trapezoidal study off the West Tower that as far as Plum could tell had fallen off the faculty’s magical security grid, so it was safe to break curfew there. She lay full length on her back on the floor, which was the position from which she usually conducted League business. The rest of the girls were scattered around the room on couches and chairs, limp and spent, like confetti from a successful but exhausting party that everybody was kind of relieved was now all but over.

Plum made the room go silent—it was a little spell that ate sound in about a ten-yard radius. When Plum did a magic trick, everybody noticed.

“Let’s put it to a vote,” she said gravely. “All those in favor of pranking Wharton, say aye.”

The ayes came back in a range of tones: righteous zeal, ironic detachment, sleepy acquiescence. From Plum’s vantage point on the floor, with her eyes closed, her long brown hair splayed out in a fan on the carpet, which had once been soft and woolly but which had been trodden down into a shiny hard-packed gray, it sounded more or less unanimous.

She dispensed with a show of nays. They were doing this. Wharton’s crime was not a matter of life and death, but a stop would be put to it, this the League swore.

Darcy, sitting slumped down on the couch, studied her reflection in a long mirror with a scarred gilt frame. She had a big poufy 1970s afro; it even had an afro pick sticking out of it. She toyed with her image in the mirror—with both of her long, elegant brown hands she worked a spell that stretched it and then squished it, stretched then squished, stretch, squish. Her head blew up to the size of a beach ball; it stretched out like a sausage balloon. The technicalities were beyond Plum, but then mirror-magic was Darcy’s discipline. It was a bit show-offy of her, but it’s not like Darcy had a lot of opportunities to use it.

The facts of the Wharton case were as follows. At Brakebills most serving duties at dinner were carried out by First Years, who then ate separately afterward. But by tradition one favored Fourth Year was chosen every year to serve as wine steward, in charge of pairings and pourings and whatnot, and trusted with the key to the wine closet. Wharton had had this honor bestowed upon him, and not for no reason. He did know a lot about wine; or at any rate he could remember the names of a whole lot of different regions and appellations and whatever else.

But in the judgment of the League Wharton had sinned against the honor of his office, sinned most grievously, by systematically short-pouring the wine, especially for the Fifth Years (the Finns, in Brakebills parlance), who were allowed two glasses each with dinner.

Seriously, these were like two-thirds pours. Everybody agreed. Plum wasn’t much of a drinker personally, but the League took any threat to its wine supply seriously. For such a crime there could be no forgiveness.

“What do you suppose he does with it all?” Emma said.

“Does with what?”

“All that extra wine. He must be skimming it off. I bet he ends up with an extra bottle every night, off the books.”