The Magician's Land (The Magicians, #3)(63)

“OK?” she said.

Lionel studied it, then pursed his lips but nodded grudgingly.

“What did you make it out of?”

“Leaves. That’s all there was. He’ll look fine from a distance.”

“OK. Do it faster next time.”

The carpet drifted silently forward in its invisible bubble, now just fifty feet up, passing over the outer wall of the estate, then an outer lawn, a clay tennis court, a swimming pool, drained and covered for the winter. It was hard to believe no one could see them—Quentin didn’t feel invisible—but there were no shouts and no alarms. They cast no shadow. When they spoke it was in whispers, even though Stoppard insisted that they could have had a rock concert inside this thing and nobody would hear it.

Betsy and Plum dropped and then re-created four, five, six guards. Plum’s doppelg?ngers were convincing, at least from this distance. They were made from whatever she could grab from the immediate area—grass clippings, mulch, clay from the tennis court, just nearby shadows—but they wore the same clothes as their victims, and though they didn’t walk, they could shift their weight and turn their heads alertly the way a real guard would have, like minor enemies in a video game.

“There,” Lionel said. “It’s that window. The wing on the right, top floor, middle window.”

“That’s where the case is?” Quentin said.

“That’s where we get in.”

For a second Quentin didn’t know what was missing, then he did: Stoppard’s machine had stopped ticking. Stoppard reacted faster than he did—he lunged across the carpet from where he’d been trying to talk to Betsy, fumbled the crank into its hole, and cranked the handle madly. The device started up again almost immediately.

“You f*cking shitbag!” Lionel hissed. “How long were we visible for?”

“I don’t know!” Stoppard didn’t stop cranking. “Couple of seconds maybe! I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened!”

They all waited for the alarm to go up. Everyone held still. It was not unlike being in a submarine and waiting for the depth charges to start dropping. The carpet kept sailing forward, unfazed. Quentin stepped rapidly through a very hard shield spell that would stop a bullet, probably, if he were facing in exactly the right direction.

But the depth charges didn’t come, and they kept going. When Stoppard got tired Quentin dropped the spell and cranked instead, until the mainspring protested. This is ridiculous, Quentin thought, but coldly—he wasn’t going to let himself panic. We’re making it up as we go along.

Pushkar slowed them down and commenced fine adjustments, drifting a little left, then right, up and down, whispering patiently to his steed, a pilot steering a tanker into a narrow slip. They were close to the house now, passing over a tiled terrace strewn with weathered Adirondack chairs, and they could see into a few rooms where the lights were on. Quentin got a glimpse of a woman standing up at a counter, drinking coffee and reading a magazine. Two men stood outside on the patio smoking; they held their cigarettes Eastern European style, like darts. They could have been anybody, in any house, anywhere. The carpet was going to pass barely ten feet over their heads.

The invisibility field brushed a tree branch. Instead of just passing through it the branch snagged, as if the field were a bubble of tacky glue, then curved and bent. They watched helplessly until it finally gave and a handful of oak leaves tore off.

Quentin’s toes curled. But at the same moment the oak branch snapped something fell inside the house—a coffee cup, it sounded like—and smashed on the floor. The two men turned. Someone swore, a woman. They were distracted. The moment passed.

That wasn’t luck; luck doesn’t come that good. Somebody must have—yes, Lionel was finishing up some arduous piece of probability-warping magic, breathing hard with the effort.

“Nice,” Quentin said.

“Shouldn’t have needed it.”

“It’s not his fault,” Quentin said. “He never even got to test it. We’re lucky we got this far.”

Lionel looked at him more surprised than angry—like he didn’t realize Quentin had the power of speech.

“Shut the f*ck up,” he said, and turned back to the house.

They came to a stop in front of the window and hovered there, the tasseled edge of the carpet pushed up against the white clapboard of the house. There was no light inside. Stoppard took out a little brass scarab from one of his cases and placed it on the window. It crawled around it in a large square, and wherever it crawled it left behind a cut in the glass. When it was done Stoppard placed the cut square on the carpet, carefully, and returned the scarab to its case.

“Quentin, you’re up,” Lionel said.

“What am I up for?”

“That.” He pointed to the hole in the window. “Time to pull your weight.”

It had actually occurred to him that he was the only one who hadn’t done anything so far. Quentin peered into the hole. It was scary, but he was glad the wait was over, he needed something to do. Quentin thought back through his brief inglorious history with wet ops. Invading Ember’s Tomb with Dint and Fen; attacking the castle on Benedict Island. He was less terrified than he had been the first time, and less manic than he had been the second. Maybe that was experience.

“Give me a minute. OK to do spells?”