“I know. Sometimes I wonder if he’s trying to get out.”

“Now this fellow,” he said, moving on to a full-length portrait of a knight in armor. “I wouldn’t mind getting into his tapestry, if you get what I mean.”

“I get what you mean.”

“Pull that sword out of its scabbard.”

“I get it.”

Eliot was building up to something, but there was no rushing him. Though if he took much longer Quentin was going to fall asleep.

“Do you think if I did you’d see a little tapestry version of me running around in there? I don’t know how I’d feel about that.”

Quentin waited. Since he’d made the decision to go to the Outer Island he felt calmer than he had in ages. The windows were open, to the extent that they could be opened, and warm night air flowed in, smelling like late summer grass and the sea, which wasn’t far off.

“So about this trip of yours,” Eliot said finally.

“About it.”

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

“Do you have to?”

“Something about quests and adventures and whatever. Sailing beyond the sunset. It doesn’t matter. We don’t need you here for the Jollyby thing. One of us really should go out there anyway, they probably don’t even know they have kings and queens again. Just pass along any prurient details as a matter of state security.”

“Will do.”

“But I want to talk to you about Julia.”

“Oh.” Whiskey time. Trying to drink lying down, Quentin took a bigger swallow than he meant to, and it ignited a brush fire in his guts. He suppressed a cough. “Look, you’re only High King,” he gasped, “you’re not my dad. I’ll figure it out.”

“Don’t get defensive, I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Did I ever tell you,” Eliot said, sitting on one of the two chairs, “how Julia and I met?”

“Well, sure.” Had he? The exact particulars were fuzzy. “I mean, not in granular detail.”

The truth was that they hardly ever talked about that time. They talked around it. No good memories there for anybody. It was after the big disaster in Ember’s Tomb. Quentin had been half-dead and had to be left in the care of some irritating but ultimately very medically effective centaurs while Eliot and Janet and the others returned to the real world. Quentin had spent a year recovering in Fillory, then he went back to Earth and gave up magic. He spent another six months working in an office in Manhattan until Janet and Eliot and Julia finally came and got him. If they hadn’t he’d probably still be there. He was grateful, and he always would be.

Eliot stared out the window into the black moonless night, like an oriental potentate in his dressing gown, which looked too heavily embroidered to be comfortable.

“You know Janet and I were in pretty rough shape when we left Fillory?”