“All right,” Eliot said. “So let’s talk about it. What do we think happened today?”

They looked at each other, feeling jittery and shell-shocked. Quentin wanted to do something, or say something, but he didn’t know what. The truth was, he hadn’t really known Jollyby all that well.

“He was so proud,” he said finally. “He thought he’d saved the day.”

“It had to be the rabbit,” Janet said. Her eyes were red from crying. She swallowed. “Right? Or hare, whatever. That’s what killed him. What else?”

“We can’t assume that. The hare predicted his death but it may not have caused it. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It’s a logical fallacy.”

If he’d waited even another second he would have realized that Janet wasn’t interested in the Latin name of the logical fallacy that she might or might not have been committing.

“Sorry,” he said. “That’s my Asperger’s flaring up again.”

“So it’s just a coincidence?” she snapped. “That he died right then, right after it said that about death? Maybe we’ve got it wrong. Maybe the hare doesn’t predict the future, maybe it controls it.”

“Perhaps it does not like being caught,” Julia said.

“I have a hard time believing that the history of the universe is being written by a talking rabbit,” Eliot said. “Though that would explain a lot.”

It was five o’clock in the afternoon, their regular meeting time. For the first few months after they’d arrived at Castle Whitespire Eliot had left them to do their own things, on the theory that they’d naturally find their own courses as rulers, and take charge of the things that best suited their various gifts. This had resulted in total chaos, and nothing getting done, and the things that did get done got done twice by two different people in two different ways. So Eliot instituted a daily meeting at which they sorted through whatever business of the realm seemed most pressing as a foursome. The five o’clock meeting was traditionally accompanied by what may have been the most gloriously comprehensive whiskey service ever seen on any of the possibly infinite worlds of the multiverse.

“I told the family we’d take care of the funeral,” Quentin said. “It’s just his parents. He was an only child.”

“I should say something,” Eliot said. “He taught me bugling.”

“Did you know he was a were-lion?” Janet smiled sadly. “True story. It went on a solar calendar—he changed only at equinoxes and solstices. He said it helped him understand the animals. He was hairy everywhere.”

“Please,” Eliot said. “I would give anything to not know how you know that.”

“It helped with lots of things.”

“I have a theory,” Quentin said quickly. “Maybe the Fenwicks did it. They’ve been pissed at us ever since we got here.”

The Fenwicks were the most senior of the several families who were running things at the time when the Brakebills returned to Fillory. They weren’t happy about being kicked out of Castle Whitespire, but they didn’t have the political capital to do much about it. So they satisfied themselves with making mischief around the court.