The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)(127)

He winced. Thank God he hadn’t hit an artery. It didn’t try to flee, just sat stiffly on its haunches like an injured cat. He had the impression, from its resigned expression, that the Questing Beast had to go through this kind of thing once a century or so. The cost of doing business. Its blood looked black in the pre-dawn twilight.

It showed no fear as Quentin approached. It reached back with its supple neck and grasped the arrow firmly in its square white teeth. With a jerk the shaft came free. It spat out the arrow at Quentin’s feet.

“Hurts, that,” the Questing Beast said matter-of-factly.

It had been three days since Quentin had spoken to anybody.

“What now?” he said hoarsely.

“Wishes, of course. You get three.”

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KINGS AND QUEENS


AS THE JUNIOR member of the PlaxCo account team, associate management consultant Quentin Coldwater had few actual responsibilities beyond attending the occasional meeting and being civil to whatever colleagues he happened to bump into in the elevator. On the rare occasions when actual documents managed to make their way into his in-box or onto his desk, he rubber-stamped them (Looks good to me!!!—QC) without reading them and sent them on their way.

Quentin’s desk was, as it happened, unusually large for a new hire at his level, especially one as youthful as he appeared to be (though his startling white hair lent him a certain gravitas beyond his years), and whose educational background and previous work history were on the sketchy side. He just appeared one day, took possession of a corner office recently vacated by a vice president three of consummate . de entire he got times his age, and started drawing a salary and piling up money in his 401(k) and receiving medical and dental benefits and taking six weeks of vacation a year. In return for which he didn’t seem to do much of anything beyond play computer games on the ultra-flat double-widescreen monitor the outgoing veep had left behind.

But Quentin didn’t inspire any resentment in his new colleagues, or even any particular curiosity. Everybody thought somebody else knew the story on him, and if it turned out that they didn’t, they definitely knew for a fact that somebody over in HR had the scoop. And anyway, supposedly he’d been a superstar at some high-flying European school, fluent in all kinds of languages. Math scores through the roof. The firm was lucky to have him. Lucky.

And he was affable enough, if a little mopey. He seemed smart. Or at least he looked smart. And anyway, he was a member of the PlaxCo account team, and here at the consulting firm of Grunnings Hunsucker Swann everybody was a team player.

Dean Fogg had advised Quentin against it. He should take more time, think it over, maybe get some therapy. But Quentin had taken enough time. He had seen enough of the magical world to last him the rest of his life, and he was erecting a barrier between himself and it that no magic could breach. He was going to cut it off and kill it dead. Fogg had been right after all, even if he didn’t have the guts to make good on his own argument: people were better off without magic, living in the real world, learning to deal with it as it came. Maybe there were people out there who could handle the power a magician could wield, who deserved it, but Quentin wasn’t one of them. It was time he grew up and faced that fact.

So Fogg set him up with a desk job at a firm with large amounts of magician money invested in it, and Quentin took the subway and rode the elevator and ordered in lunch like the rest of humanity, or at any rate the most privileged 0.1 percent of it. His curiosity about the realms invisible had been more than satisfied, thanks tremendously much. At least his parents were pleased. It was a relief to be able to tell them what he did for a living and not lie.

Grunnings Hunsucker Swann was absolutely everything Quentin had hoped it would be, which was as close to nothing at all as he could get and still be alive. His office was calm and quiet, with climate control and tinted floor-to-ceiling windows. Office supplies were abundant and top-notch. He was given all the balance sheets and org charts and business plans to review that he could possibly have wanted. To be honest, Quentin felt superior to anybody who still messed around with magic. They could delude themselves if they liked, those self-indulgent magical mandarins, but he’d outgrown that stuff. He wasn’t a magician anymore, he was a man, and a man took responsibility for his actions. He was out here working the hard, flinty bedrock face of it all. Fillory? He’d been there and done that, and it hadn’t done him or anybody else any good. He was damn lucky he got out alive.

Every morning Quentin put on a suit and stood on an old elevated subway platform in Brooklyn, raw cement stained with rust by the bits of iron rebar poking out of it. From the uptown end he could just barely see the tiny, hazy, aeruginous spike of the Statue of Liberty out in the bay. In the summertime the thick wooden ties sweated aromatic beads of liquid black tar. Invisible signals caused the tracks to shift and shunt the trains left and right, as if (as if, but not actually) directed by unseen hands. Nearby unidentifiable birds swirled in endless cyclonic circles above a poorly maintained dumpster. magic is real. But you and the dwarvesg

Every morning when the train arrived it was full of young Russian women riding in from Brighton Beach, three-quarters asleep, swaying in unison to the rocking of the car, their lustrous dark hair dyed a hideous unconvincing blond. In the marble lobby of the building where Quentin worked, elevators ingested pods of commuters and then spat them out on their respective floors.