Quentin switched arms again, and then again. It reminded him of his days as a semi-pro sleight-of-hand magician. The beginning, the laying down of the fundamentals, was always the worst part, which he supposed was why so few people did it. That was the thing about the world: it wasn’t that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn’t expect. To take his mind off it he watched Bingle, who was now stalking the deck, staring accusingly ahead of him, whipping his own blade in a complicated pattern, drawing ampersands and Kells knots in the air with it.

A frigid spitting mist was blowing in from the ocean. He could see After Island clearly now; they’d be landing soon. He decided he was done. He should at least change out of his pajamas before he set off in search of the golden key.

“I’m knocking off, Bingle,” he said. He placed his practice blade on the deck next to Bingle’s other two. His arms felt like they were floating.

Bingle nodded, not breaking his own rhythm.

“Come back to me when you can do half an hour,” he said. “With each arm.”

He performed a spectacular no-handed roundoff that looked like it was going to take him right off the forecastle deck, but somehow he swallowed his inertia just in time to stick the landing. He finished with his blade jammed between the ribs of some imaginary assailant. He withdrew it and cleaned the blade on his pants leg.

That was probably a few more lessons down the track.

“Be careful what you learn from me,” he said. “What is written with a sword cannot be erased.”

“That’s why I have you,” Quentin said. “So I won’t have to write anything. With my sword.”

“Sometimes I think I am fate’s sword. She wields me cruelly.”

Quentin wondered what it was like to be so unselfconsciously melodramatic. Nice, probably.

“Right. Well, there won’t be much cruelty on this trip. We’ll be back at Whitespire pretty soon. Then you can go check out your castle.”

Bingle turned to face the wind. He seemed to be living out some story of his own in which Quentin was just a minor character, a chorus member, without even a name in the program.

“I shall never see Fillory again.”

In spite of himself Quentin felt a chill. He didn’t like the feeling. He was chilly enough as it was.

After Island was a low strip of gray rocks and thin grass flocked with sheep. If the Outer Island was a tropical paradise, After could have passed for a stray member of the Outer Hebrides.

They circled it, hugging the shore, until they found a harbor and dropped anchor. A couple of rain-ravaged fishing boats were moored there, and a handful of empty buoys suggested that more were out to sea. It was a hell of a dreary spot. A more enterprising king might have tried to claim it for Fillory, Quentin supposed, except that it didn’t really seem worth it. Not exactly the jewel in the crown.