Quentin took Poppy’s hand, and they followed him out into the square. Quentin was coasting on an endorphin high. He wasn’t going to die—probably—and after that all news was good news. Penny talked as he floated along. His head was still a couple of feet above theirs. It was like having a conversation with somebody who was riding a Segway.

“Did you ever wonder,” Penny said, “where magic comes from?”

“Yes, Penny,” Quentin said dutifully. “I did wonder about that.”

“Henry had a theory. He told me about it when we were at Brakebills.”

He meant Dean Fogg. Penny only ever referred to the Brakebills faculty by their first names, to show that he thought of himself as their equal.

“It seemed wrong to him that humans should have access to magic. Or not wrong, but strange. It didn’t make sense. He thought it was too good to be true. As magicians we were taking advantage of some kind of cosmic loophole to wield power that by rights we were never meant to have. The inmates had found the keys to the asylum, and we were running amok in the pharmacy.

“Or think of the universe as a vast computer. We are end users who have gained admin-level access to the system, and are manipulating it without authorization. Henry has a whimsical mind. He isn’t a rigorous theorist, by any means, but he does have moments of insight. This was one of them.”

They had left the square, Poppy and Quentin walking with their arms around each other now, pooling their heat. The zone of warm air was centered around Penny and moved with him, so that the cold nudged them along if they lagged too far behind him. He had a captive audience. Even being lectured by Penny was preferable to freezing to death.

“Now push Henry’s theory a little. If magicians are hackers who broke into the system, then who are the system’s rightful administrators? Who built the system—the universe—into which we have broken?”

“God?” Poppy asked.

It was good to have her here when dealing with Penny. Penny didn’t get on her nerves. He didn’t push Poppy’s buttons the way he pushed Quentin’s. She just wanted to know what he knew.

“Precisely. Or more precisely, the gods. There’s no need to get overly theological about it: any magician who could work magic on such a fundamental scale would be, almost by definition, a god. But where are they? And why haven’t they caught us and kicked us out of their system? They must have worked spells on an energy scale that to us is no longer conceivable. Their power would have dwarfed even that of the mages who built the Neitherlands.