The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)(29)

“This,” she said grandly, “is welters!”

Quentin was pretty much resigned to death by scorn. “So it’s a game.”

“Oh, it’s so much more than a game,” Gretchen said.

“It’s a passion,” Surendra said.

“It’s a lifestyle.”

“It’s a state of mind.”

“I can explain it to you, if you have about ten years.” Gretchen blew into her hands. “Basically one team stands at one end and one team stands at the other end and you try to capture squares.”

“How do you capture a square?”

Gretchen waggled her fingers in the air mysteriously. “With maaaaagic!”

“Where’s the broomsticks?” Quentin was only half joking.

“No broomsticks. Welters is more like chess. They invented it about fifty million years ago. I think it was originally supposed to be a teaching aid. And some people say it was an alternative to dueling. Students kept killing each other, so they got them playing welters instead.”

“Those were the days.”

Surendra tried a standing long jump over a water square, but he slipped as he took off, shorted it, and caught one heel in the water.

“Shit!” He looked up at the freezing blue sky. “I hate welters!”

A crow took flight from the top of a winter elm. The sun was subsiding behind the trees in a frozen swirl of pink cirrus.

Surendra walked off the board, swinging his arms.

“I can’t feel my fingers. Let’s go in.”

They walked back down the path in the direction of the Sea, not talking, just blowing on their hands and rubbing them together. It was getting even colder as the sun went down. The trees were already black against the sky. They would have to hurry to change for dinner. A powerful atmosphere of late afternoon futility was descending on Quentin. A gang of wild turkeys patrolled the edge of the forest, upright and alert, looking oddly saurian and menacing, like a lost squadron of velociraptors.

As they crossed the lawn Quentin found himself being quizzed about Eliot.

“So are you really friends with that guy?” Surendra said.

“Yeah, how do you even know him?”

“I donem;  margin-left:1.8em;  margin-right:1.8em;  text-align:justify;  text-indent:m of this place.go’t really. He mostly hangs out with his own crowd.” Quentin was secretly proud to be connected with Eliot, even if in reality they hardly spoke to each other anymore.

“Yeah, I know,” Surendra said. “The Physical Kids. What a bunch of losers.”

“What do you mean, Physical Kids?”

“You know, that whole clique. Janet Way and the fat one, Josh Hoberman—those guys. They all do physical magic for their Disciplines.”

In the Maze their white breath streamed up against the darkness of the box hedges. Surendra explained that, starting with the Third Year, students chose a specific magical topic to specialize in, or, more exactly, had it chosen for them by the faculty. Then students were divided into groups based on their specialties.

“It doesn’t matter that much, except Disciplines map loosely to social groups—people tend to hang out mostly with their own kind. Physical’s supposed to be the rarest. They’re a little snobby about it, I guess. And anyway Eliot, you know about him.”

Gretchen raised her eyebrows and leered. Her nose was red from having been out in the cold. By now they had reached the terrace, and the pink sunset was smeared anamorphically all over the wavy glass in the French doors.

“No, I don’t think I do know,” Quentin said stiffly. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“You don’t know?”

“Oh my God!” In ecstasy Gretchen put her hand on Surendra’s arm. “I bet he’s one of Eliot’s—!”

At that moment the French doors opened and Penny came striding quickly toward them, stiff-legged, his shirt untucked, no jacket on. His pale, round face loomed up out of the dusk. His expression was blank and fixed, his walk hyperanimated by a crazy energy. As he got closer he took an extra little skip step, cocked his arm back, and punched Quentin in the face.

Fighting was almost unheard of at Brakebills. Students gossiped and politicked and sabotaged one another’s P.A. experiments, but actual physical violence was vanishingly rare. Back in Brooklyn Quentin had seen fights, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who got mixed up in them. He wasn’t a bully, and his height made it inconvenient for bullies to pick on him. He didn’t have any siblings. He hadn’t been seriously punched since elementary school.

There was a freeze-frame moment of Penny’s fist, close up and huge, like a comet passing dangerously close to the Earth, and then a flashbulb went off in Quentin’s right eye. It was a straight shot, and he half spun away and brought up his hand to touch the spot in the universal gesture of I’ve-just-been-punched-in-the-face. He was still trying to get his mind around what had just happened when Penny hit him again. This time Quentin ducked enough that he caught it on his ear.

“Ow!” Quentin yelled, scrambling backward. “What the hell?”

Dozens of windows looked out on the terrace from the House, and Quentin had a blurred impression of rows of fascinated faces pressed up against them.

Surendra and Gretchen stared at Quentin in white-faced horror, their mouths open, as if what was happening were his fault. Penny obviously had some theatrical notions about how a fight should go, because he was bouncing on his feet and doing little fake jabs and weaving his head around like boxers in movies.