She had gone native: she wore a light brown cloak over a practical gray traveling dress that was slit up the sides far enough to show some leg. But it was unmistakably her. The paramedic, and the woman who’d visited him in the infirmary. And yet that wasn’t who she was at all.
“You’re Jane Chatwin, aren’t you?”
She smiled brightly and nodded.
“If you like I can autograph that.” She pointed to the manuscript. “Imagine what it would be worth. Sometimes I think about turning up at a Fillory convention just to see what would happen.”
“They’d probably think you were a cosplayer,” Quentin said, “and getting a little old for it.”
He set aside the manuscript on the bed. He had been very young when he met her for the first time, but he wasn’t young anymore. As her brother Martin would have said: My, how he’d grown. Her smile was not as irresistible as it used to be.
“You were the Watcherwoman, too, weren’t you?”
“Was and am.” Still sitting, she sketched a curtsy. “I suppose I could retire now that Martin is gone. Though really, I’ve only just started to enjoy myself.”
He expected himself to smile back at her, but the smile did not materialize. He didn’t feel like smiling. Quentin couldn’t have said exactly what he was feeling.
Jane remained very still, studying him as she had that first day they met. Her presence was so laden with magic and meaning and history that she almost glowed. To think she had spoken to Plover himself, and told him the stories Quentin had grown up on. The circularity of it all was dizzying. The sun was setting, and the light stained Quentin’s white bedspread a dusky orange-pink. The edges of everything were softening in the twilight.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he said. He had never felt less tempted by a pretty woman’s charms. “If you were the Watcherwoman, why did you do all those things? Stop time and all that?”
She smiled wryly.
“This item”—she produced a silver pocket watch as thick and round as a pomegranate from talking aboutbool andgsomewhere in her cloak—“did not come with an instruction manual. It took a bit of experimenting before I got the hang of it, and some of those experiments weren’t so successful. There was one long afternoon in particular …” She grimaced. Her accent was the twin of Martin’s. “People took it the wrong way. And anyhow, Plover embroidered all that stuff. What an imagination that man had.”
She shook her head, as if Plover’s flights of fancy were the most incredible part of all this.
“And you know, I was only thirteen when I started out. I had no training in magic at all. I had to figure everything out on my own. I suppose I’m a bit of a hedge witch that way.”
“So all those things the Watcherwoman did—”
“A lot of it did actually happen. But I was careful. The Watcherwoman never killed anyone. I cut corners, sometimes at other people’s expense, but I had other things on my mind. My job was to stop Martin, and I did what I had to. Even those clock-trees.” She snorted ruefully. “Brilliant idea those were. They never did a bloody thing. The funniest part is that Martin was terrified of them! He couldn’t figure them out.”
For a moment her face lost its composure, just for a moment. Her eyes welled with tears, and she blinked rapidly.
“I keep telling myself that we lost him that first night, when he walked away into the forest. It was never him after that, not really. He died a long time ago. But I’m the only Chatwin left now. He was a monster, but he was the last family I had.”
“And we killed him,” Quentin said coldly. His heart was palpitating. The feeling he’d had trouble identifying earlier was clarifying itself: it was rage. This woman had used him, used them all like toys. And if some of the toys got broken, oh well. That had been the real point of the whole story all along. She had manipulated him, sent him and the others into Fillory to find Martin. She had made sure he got there. For all he knew she’d planted the button for Lovelady to find in the first place. It didn’t matter now. It was over, and Alice was dead.
He stood up. A cool, grassy evening breeze stirred the green curtains.
“Yes,” Jane Chatwin said carefully. “You killed him. We won.”
“We won?” He was incredulous. He couldn’t hold back anymore. All the grief and guilt he’d been salting away so carefully was coming back to him as anger. The ice was cracking. The pond was boiling. “We won? You have a damn time machine in your pocket and that’s the best you could do? You set us up, Jane, or whoever the fuck you are. We thought we were going on an adventure, and you sent us on a suicide mission, and now my friends are dead. Alice is dead.” Here he had to swallow hard before he could go on. “Is that really the best you could do?”
She dropped her eyes to the floor. “I am sorry.”
“You’re sorry.” The woman was unbelievable. “Good. Show me how sorry you are. Take me back. Use the watch, we’ll go back in time. We’ll do it all again. Let’s go back and fix this.”
“No, Quentin,” she said gravely. “We can’t go back.”
“What do you mean, no? We can go back. We can and we will!”
He was talking at her louder and louder, staring at her, as if by talking and staring think about itl0Hegohe could force her into doing what he needed her to do. She had to! And if talking wouldn’t do it, he could make her. She was a small woman, and apart from that watch he was willing to bet that he was twice the magician she’d ever be.
She was shaking her head sadly.
“You have to understand.” She didn’t back away. She spoke softly, as if she could soothe him, placate him into forgetting what she’d done. “I’m a witch, I’m not a god. I’ve tried this so many ways. I’ve gone down so many different timelines. I’ve sent so many other people to fight Martin. Don’t make me lecture you on the practicalities of chronological manipulation, Quentin. Change one variable and you change them all. Did you think you were the first one to face Martin in that room? Do you think that was even the first time you faced him? That battle has been fought again and again. I’ve tried it so many different ways. Everyone always died. And I always wound back the clock.
“As bad as it was, as bad as it is, this is by far the best outcome I’ve ever achieved. No one ever stopped him but you and your friends, Quentin. You were the only ones. And I’m sticking with it. I can’t risk losing everything we’ve gained.”
Quentin folded his arms. Muscles were jumping in his back. He was practically vibrating with fury. “Well, then. We’ll go back all the way. To before The World in the Walls. Stop him before it all starts. Find a timeline where he doesn’t even go to Fillory.”
“I’ve tried, Quentin! I’ve tried!” She was pleading with him. “He always does! I’ve tried it a thousand times. There is no world where he doesn’t.
“I’m tired. I know you lost Alice. I lost my brother. I’m tired of fighting that thing that used to b, so that she