Bingle was atop the forecastle as usual, just like back in the day, but now he was sparring vigorously with another swordsman. It was Benedict, stripped to the waist, lean and brown, grimacing as he gave ground and then, unbelievably, beating Bingle back and pressing his advantage. The whole time he kept his wrist on his hip, swashbuckler-style. The air rang with the loud scraping of steel on steel, like the gnashing of a huge pair of scissors.

Their swords locked. Stalemate. They broke apart, clapping each other on the shoulder and laughing—laughing!—about some point of technical swordsmanship. It was like watching an alternate-timeline version of himself, a timeline in which he’d stayed in Fillory and learned to hold his sword at full extension for more than two minutes. Quentin caught Benedict’s eye, and Benedict saluted him, smiling with those bright white teeth. Quentin saluted back. They squared off again.

Bingle had found his disciple.

“Those guys are amazing.”

He hadn’t heard Poppy come up beside him. She was watching the action too.

“Can you do that?” she asked.

“Are you kidding?” Poppy shook her head. She was not kidding. “I wish I could. The one on the right, the older guy? He’s the best swordsman in Fillory. We had a contest.”

“It all still looks like a movie to me. I can’t believe it’s all real. Wow!” Bingle did one of his signature gymnastic tumbling passes. “Oh my God. I thought he was going over the side.”

“I know. I was going to take lessons with him.”

“That sounds exciting. What happened?”

“I accidentally went back to the real world. Then a year went by here in three days.”

“Well, I can see now why you wanted to come back. It’s beautiful here. I’m sorry I thought it was funny before. I was wrong.”

Quentin had expected Poppy to be miserable on board the Muntjac . After all, she’d effectively been abducted from everything she knew and cared about and brought here. It was an outrage to every principle she lived by.

And all that was true, and she’d spent a day being outraged about it. Well, half a day. Poppy had spent yesterday afternoon sulking, then she showed up at breakfast this morning with a brand-new can-do attitude. She just wasn’t temperamentally suited to long-haul sulking. Sure, all right, she’d been accidentally transported to a magical world that until recently she had understood to be fictional. The situation wasn’t ideal. But it was what she had to work with, so she would work with it. She was a tough one, Poppy.

“I talked to the other one at dinner last night,” she said. “The kid. Benedict. He’s a big fan of yours.”

“Benedict? Really?”