“What?” Eliot sounded annoyed by the idea. “Why? It’s the ass end of nowhere. And anyway, it’s a treasury matter. We’ll send an emissary. That’s what emissaries are for.”

“Send me instead.”

Quentin couldn’t have said what the impulse was exactly, he just knew that he had to do something. He thought of the circular meadow and the broken clock-tree and the film clip of Jollyby dying started up again. What was the point of all this when you could just drop dead, just like that? That’s what he wanted to know. What was even the fucking point?

“You know,” Janet said, “we’re not invading it. We don’t need to send a king to the Outer Island. They haven’t paid their taxes, which by the way is like eight fish. They’re not exactly powering the whole economy.”

“I’ll be back before you know it.” He could already tell he’d gotten it right. The tension inside him broke as soon as he said it. Relief was flooding through him, at what he didn’t even know. “Who knows, maybe I’ll learn something.”

This would be his quest: collecting taxes from a bunch of backwater yokels. He had skipped the adventure of the broken tree, and that was fine. He would have this one instead.

“Could look weak, with the Jollyby thing.” Eliot fingered his royal chin. “You taking off at the first sign of trouble.”

“I’m a king. It’s not like they’re going to not re-elect me.”

“Wait,” Janet said. “You didn’t kill Jollyby, did you? Is that what this is about?”

“Janet!” Eliot said.

“No, really. It would all fit together—”

“I didn’t kill Jollyby,” Quentin said.

“All right. Fine. Great.” Eliot ticked the item off on his agenda. “Outer Island, check. That’s it then.”

“Well, I hope you’re not going alone,” Janet said. “God knows what they’re like out there. It could be Captain Cook all over again.”

“I’ll be fine,” Quentin said. “Julia’s coming with me. Right, Julia?”

Eliot and Janet both stared at him. How long had it been since he surprised those two? Or anybody? He must be on to something. He smiled at Julia, and she looked back at him, though with her all-black pupils her expression was unreadable.

“Of course I am,” was all she said.

That night Eliot paid Quentin a visit in his bedroom.

When he first found it the room had been stuffed with an appalling amount of hideous quasi-medieval junk. It had been literally centuries since all four of Whitespire’s thrones had been filled at the same time, and in the meantime the extra royal suites had been invaded and occupied by creeping armies of superfluous candelabras, defunct chandeliers listing and deflated like beached jellyfish, unplayable musical instruments, unreturnable diplomatic gifts, chairs and tables so piteously ornamental they would break if you looked at them, or even if you didn’t, dead animals ruthlessly stuffed in the very act of begging for mercy, urns and ewers and other even less easily identifiable vessels that you didn’t know whether to drink out of or go to the bathroom in.