The Magician's Land (The Magicians, #3)(66)

These people were thieves, like them. They let Quentin and his pals be the fall guys and take out the security, then they walked in and robbed the robbery. In his concussed, addled state Quentin mostly felt admiration for their calm competence. They were doing a good job.

Moving in sync they backed away toward the windows, a coordinated withdrawal, each one keeping one of the opposition well covered. Quentin got his elbows under him and propped himself up to watch, trying not to pose a threat to anybody. They were organized as hell, whoever they were. Two of them were commandeering Pushkar’s carpet, unrolling it flat onto the air outside.

“No!” Betsy said. “You can’t!”

She was handling this way better than Quentin was. Already she was back on her feet and walking toward them, launching wild attacks with both hands, lightning and then fire flowing from her fingers, flooding the room with light. But three of the robed people had joined hands to create a defensive barrier, and her magic died against it. Quentin sat up all the way now. His head was clearing. She was right: this was their job. That case was theirs. Those people had no right to it. He got to one knee.

Now he knew why their magic sounded so familiar: they were speaking a distorted kind of archaic German, which he happened to know well, because it was the same language the page from the Neitherlands was written in.

The last one climbed out onto the stolen carpet.

“Stop!” Betsy shrieked.

She ran to the window as they slid away. The bird hopped out from under the pool table.

“They cannot open it,” it said, maybe to itself. “They still cannot open the case.”

Quentin staggered to the windows, but he could only send a futile, fugitive heat ray after them, which whanged straight back off their shield and burned a scribble on the wall of the house next to him. Plum was kneeling by Pushkar, who was shaking off the spell that dropped him. Lionel was still on his hands and knees staring spacily at the floor.

The banging on the door started again, more urgent now. The wood was splintering. Even the blond guy on the couch, the one Betsy had shut down, was stirring. But Quentin felt only calm. Fear and confusion were gone, he’d lost track of them in the fight. And they weren’t done fighting yet. They were going to finish this thing if he had to do it himself.

“Pushkar.” His voice sounded weird and distant in his bruised ears. He cleared the dust out of his throat. “Pushkar. Is there anything here that can fly?”

Still leaning heavily on the pool table, Pushkar looked around the room.

“Yes,” he said.





CHAPTER 14


They swarmed out through the empty windows like angry bees out of a hive. Plum and Stoppard rode leather club chairs; Betsy had a small prayer rug that had been in front of the fireplace, which she handled standing up, surfboard-style; Quentin got the penny-farthing bicycle. Pushkar himself, along with Lionel and the bird, had taken command of the enormous pool table, which despite its size and weight had turned out to be surprisingly amenable to flight spells. It was slightly wider than the window frame, but it bashed its way out anyway in an explosion of brick and plaster dust, shedding a stream of multicolored billiard balls from its innards.

The sun was setting, and it was twilight at ground level, but as they surged up above the tree line the sunset picked them out in thin golden light. They raced up into the freezing blue air, up into the early evening sky, accelerating as they went, up and to the west, chasing the dwindling speck of the fleeing carpet.

Pushkar’s spellwork was master-level, and the speed was exhilarating—Quentin had done a little flying on his own, but this was totally different. Already the house was shrinking behind them. The bike’s leather seat was rock-hard, but beggars can’t be choosers. At least it wasn’t the double bass. He wondered if it would go faster if he pedaled.

Quentin stuck close to the pool table, drafting off it. Through it all Lionel had managed to keep that long brown paper package clamped under his arm. No one spoke, they just bent over their makeshift aircraft, eyes streaming, urging all the speed out of them that they could. Betsy already had a lead on them on her rug, her short hair blown straight back from her face, leaning forward on her toes staring fiercely ahead like a ski jumper in mid-jump.

Foot by foot they began to overhaul the carpet, reeling it in. The thieves—the other thieves—were using Pushkar’s spells too, but he hadn’t set the carpet up for speed. Whatever the hell was in that case, they were going to take it back. Mile after mile of Connecticut woods rolled by underneath them; maybe they were already out of state, he couldn’t even tell. The carpet dove, skimmed the treetops, rolled and turned, then clawed back the altitude. Quentin shadowed it.

After ten minutes they’d closed the gap to a few hundred yards. The people on the carpet sent a couple of fireballs back at them, and something else that flashed and popped, but nothing they couldn’t see coming in time. Stoppard was riding sitting down; Plum had turned her chair backward and was kneeling on the seat. There was no question they could overtake. But what were they going to do when they got there? Board it? Quentin was high on speed and risk now—he had to keep reminding himself that this wasn’t a video game, he only got one life, and magic wasn’t going to grow back any limbs he might lose along the way.

Maybe Pushkar could undo whatever he’d cast on the carpet, stop it in mid-flight. Quentin veered his bicycle over toward the pool table to try to talk strategy, but as he did a deep rumbling came from behind him, getting louder, and he risked a look over his shoulder.