The sky was bright, humming, and gold above them. It was midmorning and raining but every day in The Brass City seemed like a perpetual sunless sunset. All bronze, buttons, and blaring noises, it was a tidy town of modest size and silent, polite, mechanical people. The place was more engine than city. Every building, pavement, and plaza seemed like a copy of the last. It was a city of precision, on the surface at least. Eliot had been right about the device hidden inside the high bronzed gates, and it was anything but mechanical.
And he didn't let anyone forget it. "Must I always shine the brightest?" he said, waving the small scrimshaw box and preening back at the group over sleek aviator shades. "Now remember what she said—The hardest work for the happiest fool. I already know what mine is. You dullards better start thinking." They were each given brass sunglasses at the gates to ease the city glare, Quentin's being the least stylish by far. Julia said they suited him.
She was examining the brass map as she walked next to him, screwing up her face and squinting like it was in another language. "The gates should be south of where we are now, but somehow they're not. We need to go east," she said searchingly. Quentin liked her best when she was solving a problem, in her glory, and the way she bit her lip during it.
"The gates move," said Alice from behind him. She had been entranced since they got here, drinking in the cityscape so deeply Margo practically had to push her around the streets to keep up. "The big sun dial skyscraper at the center of the city, it's like a ratchet timer. It's the only thing high enough to cast a shadow, and the gates are on a loop to follow it based on the time. Haven't you guys heard anything these loudspeakers have been saying?" She smiled at him innocently and something in Quentin's gut flipped.
"Sorry we've been preoccupied with more pressing issues," Margo piped. Alice nodded and pursed her lips.
The Brass City and its wonders had been a welcomed distraction from their grave mission, and now it was fleeting. They had only just arrived yesterday and Fillory felt like home. Quentin did find himself in waves of awe, but he knew all there was to know about every corner of this world. Brakebills was the kind of magic he wasn't ready for, the kind that rocked him; this magic was second-hand, in his fabric. It was in Julia's too. Always the de facto commander since their battle against The Beast began, in Fillory they shared the lead, the strategist and the tactician. They spoke it. They had lived these moments many times before. Eliot, Penny, Margo, and Alice were essential as well, but any plan would have been half-complete without Julia and him. So why couldn't Quentin think right now, his only task?
"Good going, Miss Alice. Allow me to light the way." And Eliot was reveling in his moment of brilliance because of that. "Shoe shine, anyone?" He pointed with the scrimshaw box at a little brass man waving with a wet yellow rag on the corner. Quentin didn't like how carelessly he was handling it, and sped up his walk.
After getting lost and getting Penny enraged enough to throw his sunglasses for the third time before noon, they reached the towering brass gates. Before they knew it, brass citizens began to crowd around them, silently celebrating and cheering them on. Quentin noticed one miniature brass boy waving at them, almost sadly. He watched him as the gates opened. The green hills beyond looked darker and more dead than they had left them, and Quentin still hadn't discovered what he needed to.
Penny stretched and cracked his neck. "He could be anywhere out there as soon as we step outside. Everyone sack up. It's time to slay."
"We know where he is. The doppelganger enchantment was foolproof. He thinks we're in the Great Bramble and that's where we're going to catch him," Julia retorted. Quentin noticed her stretch a bit as well.
"If you think he can't see through every ounce of our magic, you haven't been paying attention. He's inhuman. He knows where we are and he can probably hear us. He's laughing. I've heard him laughing at us before." Penny was marching ahead now, and Margo was following suit.
They stayed close as they trekked, unconsciously. By midafternoon they had made it to the edge of the immense, spindly thicket of trees that was The Great Bramble. A magic continental forest, it was the best place he could think of to provide natural obstacles when the moment with The Beast came. Little did they know, the moment would come as soon as they stepped into the green darkness.
He rose suddenly laughing, and Julia cast a ward quickly enough to allow Eliot to open the box.
Quentin wasn't ready.
Out of the pearly box crawled a small, orange, glass ram-girl, shining brightly and about the size of his hand. Amber, created by Ember and Umber in their likeness to preempt this type of event. She had bid them protection and salvation from The Beast, and all they needed to give her was hard work and happiness. They needed to think of what they needed to work hardest that would make them happiest in their lives, their fulfillment.
Quentin thought of Julia, he was sure of it. But something was getting in the way of that certainty. It was a smile that he had seen earlier. Without all of their thoughts and their truths, Amber was powerless. He heard her glass began to crack as he heard The Beast began to laugh, and he knew that he had failed. He had failed because he hadn't truly seen Alice and all her brilliance.
