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On deck he was the only person who had nothing to do The crew of the Muntjac was s the captain, and all the crewed in steering the ship and splicing ropes and scrubbing the deck and cliht, and Adational nicety with a degree of aniht either one of them was capable of
Quentin supposed he would consult on weather ic if any was required, but Julia was better at that stuff than he was, and anyway he couldn’t iine how even Julia could improve on what they had, which was a clear sky and a cold stiff wind out of the northwest He decided to climb up the mast
He walked over to the last and least of the Muntjac’s threeup his shoulders It was probably a stupid idea But who hadn’t at so ship in full flight? It always looked easy in --there weren’t any rungs or steps or spikes He put his foot on a brass cleat Thea mast, citizen And no, he doesn’t kno Deal with it
It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t that hard, either Where there weren’t cleats or spars there were at least ropes, though you had to be careful not to pull anything that wasn’t supposed to be pulled He skinned a knuckle, then another one, and a fat splinter stabbed straight into the soft ball of his thumb and broke off there The mast hummed with tension--he could sense it rooted deep in the hold, taking the force of the wind and balancing it with the force of water on the keel The thing he hadn’t counted on was how cold it got, right away, like he’d climbed into another climatic zone, orhe hadn’t counted on was the angle of the ship He barely noticed it ot from the safety of the deck theover He had to keep reer of rolling right over and drowning theot to the top he was no longer over the deck at all He could have dropped a plu below hiray shape was keeping pace with them below the surface about fifty feet off their starboard side It was huge Not a whale--its tail was vertical, not horizontal A gigantic fish, then, or a shark Even as he watched it, it swa fainter and her you get theis
Going doas easier Once he was safely on deck Quentin decided to keep going the other way, down to the hold The noise of the bright, busy outside world vanished as soon as he stepped through the dark hatch in the deck There wasn’t far to go: three short flights took him to the bottom of the Muntjac’s hollow little world
It ar in on hi wood The hold was so full of supplies there was hardly roo his way back to the ladder, back up to reality, or what passed for it in Fillory, when a weird, furry, upside-down face loomed out of the darkness at him
He gave a high and not very kingly bark of alar in ing upside down from a crossbeam, so comfortably that it looked like it had been there its whole life It had an alien, half-melted look
"Hello," it said
That was oneaniliest mammal Quentin had ever seen
"Hi," Quentin said "I didn’t realize you were down here"
"Nobody seems to," the sloth said, with equanimity "I hope you’ll come visit Often"
It took theot hotter They left the autumn beaches and steel waters of Whitespire for aeast, instead of north or south, which eird to the people from Earth, but none of the Fillorians seemed surprised It made him wonder whether this world was even spherical--Benedict had never even heard of an equator The crew changed into tropical whites
Benedict stood by Admiral Lacker’s side at the helm with a book of charts that laid out the approach to the Outer Island, page after page croith technical-looking dots and blobby concentric isobars Working together they threaded their way through a maze of shoals and reefs that no one but they could see until the island was actually in sight: a little bule on the horizon, with a modest peak in the ined They rounded a point and entered a shallow bay
TheThe Muntjac coasted into the center of the harbor on the last of its reen surface as it went The sails flapped limply in the silence It could have been a sleepy hamlet on the Côte d’Azur The shore was a narrow sandy strand littered with dry seaweed and the fibrous bits that pal in the afternoon heat A wharf and a fe structures stood toward one end, and one rather ht have been a hotel or a country club Not a single person was visible
Probably they were taking a siesta In spite of hi sense of anticipation Don’t be an idiot This was an errand They were here to collect the taxes
They lowered the launch in silence Quentin clile and Benedict, who lost his sullen self-consciousness for ahis survey At the last minute Julia appeared fro coh it enjoined the, shadowed eyes, to remember that if they came across any particularly succulent shoots, or even a s, skinny, rickety pier projected from the wharves out into the water, with an absurd little cupola at the end They rowed for it The bay was as shout this entire operation they hadn’t seen or heard a soul
"Spooky," Quentin said out loud "God, I hope it’s not one of those Roanoke deals where the whole place is deserted"
Nobody said anything HeEliot to talk to, or even Janet If Julia was aot the reference, she didn’t let on She’d been keeping to herself since they left Whitespire She didn’t want to talk to anyone, or touch anyone--she kept her hands in her lap and her elbows drawn in
He scanned the shoreline through a folding telescope that he’d chars both visible and invisible, or enuinely, authentically deserted If you adjusted the telescope--it had an extra dial--it ran the view a little ways backward in time too Nobody had visited the beach for at least an hour
The pier creaked in the stillness The heat was , but Bingle insisted He was taking his duties as royal bodyguard very seriously He wasn’t anywhere near as jolly as his nah that would have been almost impossible since his name made him sound like a cloho entertained at children’s parties
The big building they’d seen earlier was made of wood and painted white, with Ionic colu It looked like an old Southern plantation house Bingle pushed open the door and stepped inside Quentin pushed in right behind hiet a little thrill of the unknown, however short-lived It was pitch-black inside after the glare of the afternoon, and pleasantly cool
"Have a care, Your Highness," Bingle said
As his eyes adjusted Quentin saw a shabby but grandly appointed rooirl with straight blond hair coloring fiercely on a piece of paper When she saw them she turned around and shouted up the stairs: