Beneath them oily black gondolas poled along, spinning off miniature spiral whirlpools after them, and sturdy vaporetti chugged, and long thin barges glided, roiling the green water behind them into milky smoothness. Debauched, listing palazzi lined the canal, all tiles and terraces and colonnades. Venice was the only city he’d ever seen that looked the same in real life as it did in pictures. It was consoling that something in this world met expectations. The one factoid Quentin remembered about the Grand Canal was that after Byron was done screwing his mistresses he used to like to swim home along it, carrying a lighted torch in one hand so that boats wouldn’t run him over.

He wondered what was happening in Fillory. Would they wait around on After Island for them? Hold an investigation? Put the locals to the sword? Or would they go back to Whitespire? The truth was, whatever was going to happen had probably already happened. Weeks could have gone by already, or years, you never knew how the time difference would work. He could feel Fillory floating away from him, into its future, leaving him behind. Hell must have broken loose when they vanished, but life would go on, they’d get back to normal. Right now Janet and Eliot could be growing old without him. They’d miss him but they’d live. Quentin, king of Fillory, needed Fillory more than Fillory needed him.

In Dorsoduro the streets were narrow and quiet. It was less like a stage set and more like a real city than the part they’d come from—people actually seemed to live and work here, they weren’t just putting on a show for the tourists. As much as Quentin wanted to hurry through it, to get on with getting back to Fillory, even he couldn’t ignore how conspicuously beautiful Venice was. People had been living here for what, a thousand years? More? God only knew whose crazy idea it was to build a city in the middle of a lagoon, but you couldn’t argue with the results. Everything was made of old brick and stone, with carved blocks of even older stone stuck into the walls at random intervals as ornaments. Old windows had been bricked up, and then new windows had been bashed through the brick, affording glimpses of silent, secret courtyards. Every time they thought they’d left the sea behind they’d stumble on it again—a dark angular vein of water branching in between the buildings, lined on both sides with bright-colored skiffs.

Just being here made Quentin feel better. It was more suitable for a king and a queen than suburban Boston. He didn’t know yet whether they were getting any closer to Fillory, but he felt closer.