The Magician's Land (The Magicians, #3)(69)

He should have died right then. But even before Lionel fired Betsy was between them, holding the blade—she’d moved faster than Quentin could follow. The bullets sparked and clanged off the silver knife, two quick metallic triplets, and ricocheted off into the bushes. Whatever that knife was, it came with a lot of fringe benefits, and one of them was that it wasn’t going to let its wielder get hurt.

Quentin stared at Lionel.

“What the f*ck? You fat piece of shit!”

Five minutes ago he’d felt so empty it was like he’d never cast a spell again, but there was power in fear, and in anger, and he got to his feet. He felt like he might be able to get a spell out of it, but before he could try Betsy took three running steps and launched herself at Lionel like a big cat—the knife must have given her a whole suite of powers, strength as well as speed and protection. Lionel turned quick and got off another burst, but the knife ate them up effortlessly, and then she was too close to shoot. They waltzed drunkenly around the pool table, Lionel grunting as she butchered him standing up.

Curiously, there was no blood. The knife met very little resistance—it sliced up through his torso, down through his collar bone, then she forced it deep into his chest. It went through him like a wire through wet clay. The next cut took his head off.

It fell and rolled through the leaves. It didn’t speak, but its eyes blinked. The stump of the neck looked like gray stone.

“Huh,” Betsy said, standing over the headless corpse. “Golem. It figures.”

Huh. Though it seemed like a notable fact that she hadn’t known he wasn’t human before she started murdering him. Only now did Betsy start breathing hard, like it was all catching up with her at once: the job, the flight, the fall, the killing, the case, the whole comprehensive fiasco.

“Where’s the money?” Stoppard asked.

“There isn’t any,” Quentin said.

It was catching up with him too. They’d been blindsided by the monks and then double-crossed twice: first by Betsy, then by the bird. It must have planned to kill them all along instead of paying them off. There never had been any money. He was farther back than when he started. Farther from home. Farther from Alice.

Though they did have the case, or whatever was left in it, unless the bird was coming back for it. For now it was gone; Quentin hadn’t even seen it go.

Betsy jumped down from the pool table, and her knees almost buckled when she landed. All the strength had gone out of her.

“I thought they’d try that.” She sounded weary and, for the first time since he’d met her, very young. She couldn’t have been more than a couple of years into her twenties. “Figures. Never trust anything without hands. Or with hands for that matter.”

“Thank you,” Stoppard said. “You saved my life.”

“Eyes are up here.” Betsy pointed. “But you’re welcome.”

“What is that thing?” Quentin said.

“This?” Betsy held up the knife, studying its edge. “This is why I’m here. This is what I’ve always wanted. This is a weapon for killing gods.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Have you ever met a f*cking god?”

“I guess I can see your point.”

Plum picked up the book that Betsy had tossed aside. It had a blank leather cover—it looked like a notebook or a diary.

“Are you sure gods can even die?” she said.

“I’m going to kill one and find out and then maybe I’ll let you know.” Betsy pushed the knife through her belt. “I’ll see you guys around. Don’t look for me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Quentin said. “Take care of yourself, Betsy.”

“Yeah,” Stoppard chimed in. “Take care of yourself!”

“The name’s Asmodeus, bitches,” she said. “And if you see Julia, tell her I’ve gone fox hunting.”

She turned around and walked away into the night.





CHAPTER 15


Following a restorative stop in Barion, Eliot and Janet forded the Great Salt River, half a mile wide and six inches deep, a vast gray-brown ribbon spilling through the green countryside like somebody left a hose on somewhere. They passed a low, grassy hill on which an enormous white figure was etched; the grass and soil had been cleared away in lines so that the white chalky substrate underneath showed through. It was a simple cartoon of a man holding a staff horizontally above his head. He was usually there, or thereabouts—sometimes he wandered, but he was there today. It was good to see him still at his post.

They trotted through open country, following paths in the grass like an old carpet that had worn thin. They crossed sun-blessed fields with stone walls crisscrossing them, real classics, almost pristine. Every way you looked the landscape of Fillory composed itself into even lines, ridgelines and tree lines, near, middle and far distance, each one a shade paler than the last, gently sloping to the left and the right and the left. A long, heavy tranche of cloud lay above the horizon, utterly still, its outline etched finely against the sky, like the silhouette of a breaking wave cut out of paper.

“Look at it all,” Janet said. “Just look at it. It’s almost like the world isn’t ending.”

“Almost.”

Even now it still felt unreal. With so much beauty everywhere it was easy to forget that Fillory was a dying land. Maybe this was Fillory’s hectic glow.