The back of Quentin’s head hit the stone terrace hard. Lightning flashed. It hurt, but at the same time it had the effect of sweeping away all of Quentin’s fear, and most of his conscious thoughts, like somebody sweeping the dishes off a table with both arms. In their place it substituted blind rage.
They rolled over each other, both trying to get in a punch and grabbing at the other one’s arms so he couldn’t. There was blood: Penny had cut his forehead open somehow. Quentin wanted to get up so they could box. He wanted to deck Penny, lay him out flat. He was vaguely aware of an enraged Gretchen trying to hit Penny with her stick and hitting him instead.
He was on top and just about had his fist free for a good hard shot when he felt strong arms encircle his chest, almost tenderly, and lift him back and up. With Quentin’s weight off him Penny popped up on his toes like an electric toy, breathing hard, red running down his face, but there were people between them now, the crowd had enveloped them, Quentin was being pulled backward. The spell was broken. The fight was over.
The next hour was a jumble of unfamiliar rooms and people leaning down to talk to him earnestly and dab at his face with rough cloths. An older woman with an enormous bosom whom he’d never seen before worked a spell with cedar and thyme that made his face feel better. She put something cold that he couldn’t see on the back of his head where it hit the terrace, whispering in an unfamiliar Asian language. The throbbing faded some.
He still felt a little off—he wasn’t in pain, but it was like he was wearing deep-sea diving gear, clumping in slow motion through the hallways, heavy and weightless at the same time, brushing past the curious fish that peered at him and then quickly skittered away. The kids his age and younger regarded his battered face with awe—his ear was swollen, and he had a monster black eye. The older kids found the whole thing funny. Quentin decided to roll with the amusement. He did his best to project calm good humor. For a moment Eliot’s face swam in front of him with a look of sympathy that made Quentin’s eyes flood with hot tears that he viciously suppressed. It turned out it had been Eliot and those very same Physical Kids, speak of the devil, who had broken up the fight. Those powerful, gentle arms that pulled him off Penny belonged to Eliot’s friend Josh Hoberman—the fat one.
He’d missed most of dinner, so he sat down as they were serving dessert, which seemed consistent with the backward quality of the whole day. They waived the rule about late arrivals. He couldn’t shake the thickheaded feeling—he watched the world through a long-range lens, heard it through a tumbler pressed against a wall. He still hadn’t figured out what the fight had been about. Why would Penny hit him? Why would anybody do that? Why come to somewhere like Brakebills just to screw it up by being an asshole?
He figured he should probably eat something, but the first bite of flour-less chocolate cake turned to sticky glue in his mouth, and he had to sprint to make it to the bathroom before he threw up. At which point a massive gravitational field gripped him and pressed him roughly and irrevocably down against the grimy bathroom floor, as if a giant had slapped him down with his mighty hand and then, when he was down far enough, leaned on him with all his weight, smooshing him down into the cool, dirty tiles.
Quentin woke up in darkness. He was in bed, but not his own bed. His head hurt.
Woke up might have been putting it too strongly. The focus wasn’t sharp, and his brain wasn’t completely sure that its integrity was uncompromised. Quentin knew Brakebills had an infirmary, but he’d never been there before. He didn’t even know where it was. He’d passed through another secret portal, this time into the world of the sick and injured.
A woman was fussing over him, a pretty woman. He couldn’t see what she was doing, but he felt her cool, soft fingertips moving over his skull.
He cleared his throat, tasted something bitter.
“You’re the paramedic. You were the paramedic.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Past tense is better, that was a one-time performance. Though I won’t say I didn’t enjoy myself.”
“You were there. The day I came here.”
“I was there,” she agreed. “I wanted to make sure you made it to the Examination.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I come here sometimes.”
“I’ve never seen you here.”
“I make a point of not being seen.”
A long pause followed, during which he might have slept. But she was still there when he opened his eyes again.
“I like the hair,” he said.
She was no longer wearing her paramedic’s uniform, and her dark hair was up, held in place with chopsticks, revealing more of her small, jewel-like face. She had seemed so young before, and she didn’t look any different now, but he wondered. She had the gravity of a much older woman.
“Those braids were a bit much,” she said.
“That man who died—what really happened to him? Why did he die?”
