“We all owe each other debts. I always thought you must hate me, for the way I used you.”

Janet shrugged.

“You did what you had to. It’s not like you got off easy—your brother’s dead. And without you we never would have found our way to Fillory at all. Call it a wash. Though I did wonder what happened to you. What the hell are you doing all the way out here?”

“I study with the dwarfs now. They’re teaching me clockwork.”

“I didn’t know there were any dwarfs out here,” Eliot said. “I thought they only lived in the mountains.”

“There are dwarfs everywhere. They’re like ants—for every one you see, there’s fifty more you don’t. These ones are underground.” She tapped her foot on the floor. “There’s tunnels all the way under the barrens. You’re sitting over one of the entrances.”

Huh. Janet had the wrong fairy tale, she should have said Snow White. He suppressed an urge to look under his chair. It made him a bit uncomfortable to think that Fillory might be riddled with dwarf-tunnels. They’d never done anybody any harm, yet, but Jesus. They were like termites.

Though it did explain who’d run a gas line into her cottage.

“There’s an entire city down there. I would show you but the dwarfs are touchy about their secrets. They’re terribly polite, but they’d find some reason not to let you in.”

“How come they let you in?” Janet said.

“I’ve paid my dues. Plus I did them a few favors.”

“Like what?”

“Like saving Fillory.”

There was a funny kind of competitiveness in the room, a rivalry: the first generation of Fillorian royalty versus the second. Jane Chatwin didn’t seem especially fazed by Janet’s bluntness. On the evidence it was hard to imagine Jane Chatwin being fazed by anything.

“We saved Fillory,” Janet said.

“Twice,” Eliot said.

“But who’s counting.”

“It’s a start,” Jane said.

When they’d finished their tea she showed them into the next room, which had a pleasant smell of very pure mineral oil and raw-cut metal. The walls were studded with hooks, and on each hook hung a pocket watch. There were brass watches, steel watches, silver and gold and platinum watches. They had white faces with black numbers and black faces with white numbers and clear crystal faces that showed the movements behind them. Some just told the time, some were crowded with tiny subdials that displayed the temperature and the season and the positions of celestial bodies. Some of them were as fat as softballs; some of them were the size of cuff links.

“Did you really make all these?” Janet said. “They’re awesome.”

You could tell she really thought they were. Eliot also got the impression Janet wanted one but wasn’t quite up to asking.