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"Anyway, I’uy on such and such a dock at such and such a tiood old-fashioned green-and-white Ans come to this continent will be a uy pulls up to the dock in this fancy-pants launch Not one of your usual Venice craporetto fart-buckets This thing is sleek It’s like a giant knife lides up to the dock, this guy jumps out He doesn’t even tie up, the boat just waits for hiet Little person--sorry, little person But way highend little person He’s so well dressed you don’t even notice he’s a little person He’s from this old Venetian family, a marchese of whatever whatever It takes his go pretty quick He says he represents somebody ants to buy the button I don’t even kno they know about it, but I say who is it He’s all, I can’t say I say, how much, and he’s all: one hundred million dollars And I’m all: two hundred ht? Check that out! And I want to knoho the buyer is Right? Noasted his childhood watching like a million hours of TV? That shit is practically second nature to et takes out an envelope and inside the envelope is a cashier’s check for two hundred and fiftyto say And I’ers I figured he was going to whisper so in my ear, so I stop and bend down, and he’s all, no, and he keeps waving e of the dock, and then he points down into the water And this face loo up toward the surface of the water It’s enor up at me I practically shit on that lives in the Grand Canal! That’s who bought the button"

Quentin knew about dragons, at least in theory There weren’t many of them, and they hly territorial They hardly ever ca at all, just dreamed away the lifetime of the planet in secret fluvial oblivion Except one of theh to talk to an aristocratic little person, apparently And it had bestirred itself to show its face to Josh, and to buy his--their--o to the bank, we verify that the check is valid, then alk back to the dock I take out the button and hand it to the little guy, who’s put on one white glove, Michael Jackson–style He looks at the button through a jeweler’s loupe, then he walks to the edge and chucks it in the water Just like that Then he gets in his launch and drives away"

"That is pretty astonishing," Quentin said It was hard to even be on bought our button?" Josh said "He knoe are! Or who I aon in the Grand Canal I ht? It’s not actually a river, it’s a tidal estuary or whatever I don’t think people know about saltwater dragons!"

"Josh, hoould I go about getting in touch with that dragon?"

That brought him up short

"Well, I don’t know I don’t think you can"

"You did"

"He got in touch with me"

"Well, hoould you try?"

Josh heaved an exasperated sigh

"All right, there is this one girl I knoho knows a lot about dragons I guess I’d ask her"

"Okay, good Listen This is what’s going to happen" Quentin focused his will on Josh Now hear this Heking here, but Julia and I are king and queen of Fillory, and we have to get back there For all intents and purposes we are on a fucking quest here You are now on the quest teaet back to Fillory, and we don’t knoe’re going to do it That’s the proble probleht? So let’s fix it"

He’d give Josh this: ical land where Quentin was a king, but he bought a very nice palazzo with the rotesque heap of fifteenth-century marble The façade on the canal side hite, with its own tidy little dock out front The interior tee to the walls like lichen Josh had accidentally acquired a ht the place

It was a serious palace, and it et it back on its feet Josh had replumbed it and rewired it and put in a restaurant-caliber kitchen and done so up the foundations to keep the whole thing fro forward into the canal He’d done it carefully, too, so that you wouldn’t know the place had been touched until you turned on the shower

And all it had cost was 25 million, plus 10 enius or anything, but he figured that that left Josh with a pretty tidy nest egg No doubt it would be a great coolden years

It was all a reminder that Josh had a capable and deterh for his own private reasons he worked hard to keep that side hidden most of the ti had changed about Josh He was ht in the Neitherlands, and he’d kept it off People changed Tied around on cushions in Fillory

And he could learn soood ti hih: he lost the girl he loved, and he nearly died He didn’t sit aroundabout it He bounced back and set himself up in a palazzo

Quentin slept like the dead till noon the next day, when he enjoyed a for room (Josh was exceptionally proud of the table he set "Over here they use spoons for their ja’!" Wink, wink) They were joined by Julia, who kept her sunglasses on and ate onlysee humanity

They were also joined by Poppy, Josh’s friend, the one as supposed to know soons She was a beanpole, tall and skinny, ide blue eyes and curly blond hair Poppy had been to Brakebills as it happened, but only in a postgraduate capacity as a research fellow She’d learned her e in Australia, which here she was fro and easygoing, and if that was true he could why see Poppy had gotten the hell out of Australia She had a bright, sharp manner and a quick little voice and a lot of confidence She was especially confident when it ca out other people’s mistakes Not that she was a know-it-all--it didn’t see with her She just assumed that everybody shared her desire for everybody to be clear on everything, and she’d expect you to do the same for her Apparently at Esquith, which was the Australian ic school in Tasmania, she’d been the acade to Josh, but Poppy didn’t contradict hiainst her error-hating nature

Poppy was an academic at heart, but she wasn’t the ivory tower type She was into the real world She was into fieldwork Specifically she was into dragons

Quentin supposed it was an extension of the general Australian preoccupation with fatally dangerous animals Start with saltwater crocodiles and box jellyfish and it was just a hop, skip, and a juons Poppy knew about as much about the seen one She’d followed leads all over the world, and now she’d followed one here Josh had put out feelers for an expert on the topic, and he’d been very pleased indeed when his expert had turned out to be as good-looking as Poppy was She’d been there for three weeks, and Josh didn’t feel she’d worn out her welcoiven who Josh was, and given Poppy’s undeniable prettiness, Quentin didn’t think it was uncharitable to assu to sleep with her or had already slept with her He was new and iot on Quentin’s nerves a bit, but she was about to coive her the full download about the dragon of the Grand Canal He told Quentin he’d been slowplaying it in an atte her visit But now the moment had arrived They needed her Needless to say Poppy was beyond excited Her wide blue eyes got even wider