“No, it fell on the deck when the door closed. Bingle heard it and picked it up.”

The conversation stopped, and the drumming rain filled in the silence. It was neither warm nor cold. The deck overhead was watertight, but the air was so wet that Quentin felt like he was soaked through anyway. Every surface was sticky. Everything wooden was swollen. His damn collarbone was swollen. There was a glum scraping as people shifted in their wooden chairs. Above his head Quentin heard the footsteps of whatever poor bastard was standing watch on deck.

“Maybe there was some space in between,” Quentin said. “One of those gaps between dimensions. Maybe it fell in there.”

“I thought the Neitherlands was the gap between dimensions,” Poppy said.

“It is, but there’s a different gap too. When a portal pulls apart. But we would have seen that.”

The Muntjac groaned softly as it swayed in place. Quentin wished Julia were here, but she was below with a fever that might or might not have been related to whatever else was going on with her. She’d been down ever since the fight for the last key. She lay on her bed with her eyes closed but not sleeping, breathing quickly and shallowly. Quentin went down there a few times a day to read to her or hold her hand or make her drink water. She didn’t seem to care much, but Quentin kept it up anyway. You never knew what might make a difference.

“So you searched the whole After Island,” Quentin said.

“We did,” Eliot said. “Look, maybe we should call on Ember.”

“Call Him!” Quentin said it more vehemently than he meant to. “I doubt if it’ll do much good. If that fucking ruminant could get the key He would just do it and leave us out of it.”

“But would He?” Josh asked.

“Probably. He’ll die too if Fillory goes.”

“What is Ember, anyway?” Poppy said. “I mean, I thought He was a god, but He’s not like those silver guys.”

“I think He’s a god in this world, but nowhere else,” Quentin said. “That’s my theory. He’s just a local god. The silver gods are gods of all the worlds.”