by Tim Susman
“He’s said that no sorcerer’s listening in,” Abel told the group.
He was going to go on, but Grinda cut him off. “There’s one,” she said, staring pointedly at Kip.
“Yes, well.” Abel rested a paw on Grinda’s. “I thought it might be nice to introduce him to some of the calyxes with experience of the College to let him know what to expect. Now, both Cotton brothers there assisted materially in the defeat of Napoleon.”
“Helped summon six demons,” Callo said, raising a paw. “Charles there summoned ten.” Charles kept his eyes down toward his tankard, from which he drank rather more frequently than the others did from theirs.
“We all helped some,” Grinda growled. “Including Deveren.”
The table fell silent. “Aye,” Abel said. “We lost Deveren over the war.”
“Lost him?” Grinda gripped the back of Kip’s chair. “Those sorcerers bled him dry. They killed him.”
Kip didn’t feel it was his place to speak up, so was glad when Callo did. “Many died during the war. On the whole—”
“On the whole.” Grinda spat his words back at him. She glared down at Kip. “Deveren died from carelessness. Many of us survived. If managed properly, our servitude needn’t be fatal, only a lifetime of humiliation and violation. They’ve rules, you know, because they can’t tell when one of us is too weakened to provide blood. Only so many times in so many days. Have you ever drunk Calatian blood?”
“Grinda.” Abel’s tone sharpened, but didn’t distract Kip or Grinda, eyes locked.
If he said yes, what would happen? Would he lose the friendship of the other Calatians and be forever consigned to the ranks of sorcerers? After all, it didn’t matter that he’d been forced to for the first two weeks of his instruction. He’d found an alternative; he’d summoned a demon without the use of Calatian blood. And what he’d done once, he could do again. If he might never need to use Calatian blood in his rituals, was it a lie to claim he never had? “I’ve summoned a demon without doing so,” Kip said, “so I don’t suppose I shall need to.”
“You didn’t answer the question, fox,” Grinda said.
“That’s enough.” Abel, still speaking sharply, stepped in. “We’re not here to divide ourselves.”
“It seems very pertinent to understand what side your new friend is on before we start airing grievances,” Grinda growled.
“I’m one of you,” Kip said.
“You aren’t dressed as we are.” Charles’s low voice, huskier than his brother’s, echoed lightly from the tankard he spoke into.
Kip lifted a fold of the black robe. “I can take this off if it would set you more at ease.”
Abel set a paw on his shoulder, cheery again. “Now don’t go giving away for free what Miss Bertram charges two pennies for,” he said, and the table laughed, all but Grinda. “No, Kip, we simply wanted you to meet some of the calyxes under different circumstances than you might up at the College.”
Grinda muttered something too low for Kip to hear all of, but which seemed to include the word, “knife.” He ignored her as the rest of the table was doing, and asked his more pressing question to Abel. “You’ve been planning this? You’d heard of me?”
“Only since we arrived a short bit ago.” Abel gave a toothy smile. “I talked to the Cottons and they gathered the rest for us. Some met us along the way.” He gestured to Grinda. “And others preferred to wait with a tankard.”
Pierce lifted his mug. “Why walk around the streets when you can be sitting comfortably here?”
“Comfortably?” Callo squirmed around in his seat. “Has Talla laid in new chairs for you?”
Kip’s wooden chair was not terribly comfortable either, but he refrained from comment. “I’m very pleased to meet all of you. Truthfully, living among humans is difficult. I’m very glad to be among my own kind again. If it weren’t for Coppy, the past few months would have been so much harder.”
And then he had to tell them about Coppy, and most of them remembered him as “the oldest Lutris boy,” though only Pierce knew he’d gone to America; the others thought he’d taken work elsewhere in London or in the north, where there were rumored to be jobs on farms for Calatians. “And some go,” Pierce said, “but life on a farm is much as you’ve described life in the College: among humans all the time. Most of us would prefer to be here among our own kind.”
“Cheers,” Kip said, because at that moment a tall marten came over with four tankards and set them down, waiting to let them go until four paws steadied them on the slanted table.
“Got them all?” she asked. “Right, whose coin am I taking?”
Abel reached for a pouch at his side, but Kip said, “I’ll pay.” He had a few coins for sundries, and he pulled out a shilling. “Will this suffice?”
“Aye.” The marten took it, examined it, then slipped it into the pouch of her apron, where it clinked. She withdrew a half-shilling and two pennies, but Kip took only the half-shilling. “Ah, thank you, sir,” she said, and executed a clumsy half-curtsy before going back to the bar.
“Reckon it’s the first time she’s seen a shilling?” Pierce asked.
“Now, now,” Abel said. “Kip, you’ll drink with us?”
The ale smelled bad, but not intolerable. For a moment he was tempted and then he remembered his training. “I’m not supposed to drink, as an apprentice. If I should impair my judgment, it might be, ah, bad.”
As he said that, the memory of Mr. Gibbet’s workshop erupting in flames returned to him, and he wondered whether he would ever feel comfortable drinking. If a fire sorcerer lost control, the result could be worse than simply “bad.” But Abel didn’t take his refusal poorly. “More for us,” the other fox declared.
Pierce extended his other paw to hold Kip’s mug. “More for me, you mean to say.” He drained his own mug and set it on the floor. “Cheers, Kip.”
“Cheers,” Kip replied as the rest of them drank.
He sat with them through that round of ales, and then the Cottons declared that they should be going home. Barnard, the polecat, left with them, and Grinda and Thomas soon after. Pierce stayed for one more tankard, mostly because Abel hadn’t finished his by the time the otter had downed all of Kip’s. They told Kip stories of the Isle, mostly half-finished as they had a tendency to distract each other halfway through and launch into a new story while the previous one foundered, forgotten well shy of its destination.
Finally Abel offered to walk Kip back to the dock, and the two of them took their leave of Pierce. The streets of the Isle were less crowded now, with the light reddening, and it was easier for the two of them to walk side by side and talk in low voices only audible to their fox ears. “Thank you for introducing me to everyone,” Kip said as they rounded the first corner.
“Thank you for your patience in indulging me.” Abel smiled and flicked his ears back. “I have a way of seizing the reins of things and driving them to my own ends.”
“May I ask, then, what were those ends here?” Kip asked.
The other fox nodded. “I thought it would be good for you to meet some of the calyxes you may encounter at the College, as I said. And I thought it might be lonely for a Calatian in the College.”
“Yes. Thank you.” Kip paused at a corner, preparing to turn right toward what he thought were the docks. Abel kept going forward, though, and Kip hurried to catch up. “I must be disoriented.”
“Not at all. That road does go to the docks. But I want to take you to one more place before you go. It will be short, I promise.”
Kip nodded and followed, calculating time in his head. Though the sun lay fat and red on the horizon, he had an hour before dark, and as long as he got back before then, he would not incur Cott’s wrath.
So he followed Abel another two streets down, to a corner where a stone column stood with a carved plaque at its base. Unlike the rest of the Isle, this little area remained clear of Calatians; Abel and Kip stood just beside the column, and the other fox spo
ke soberly. “This is the site of the Blackstone Bakery fire.”
“Oh.” Chills lifted Kip’s hackles. He bent to examine the plaque, whose inscription read: “ON THIS SITE IN 1608 THE BLACKSTONE BAKERY BURNED.” The stone was cool to the touch, the column simple and unadorned. “There’s no mention of the Calatians?”
“We all know the story,” Abel said quietly. “The Calatians trapped inside, ten or fifteen or twenty of them, all of them burned to death while the humans stood and watched.”
Kip nodded, staring down at the simple plaque and the ground around it. “And from that fire came the rights we have today. All this
“Ah.” Abel took a step to come up next to him. “The fire brought some support to the movement, but it was the sorcerers who gave us our rights. Because they wanted to use us. And we remain
Lefet: living but sick. The sense of community he’d gained from the plaque faltered. “I’m only an apprentice,” he said. “And I’m one person. I don’t have the power to change anything.”
“One person has one person’s power,” Abel said. He touched the column. “Sometimes one person, the right person in the right place at the right time, can wield great power indeed. You know of Archimedes?”
Kip’s eyebrows rose. “Aye,” he said.
“‘Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the Earth.’” Abel smiled. “We have schoolbooks and teachers on the Isle, too.”
“Of course.” Kip nodded.
“So. Perhaps one day you will need a place to stand.”
Kip took in the plaque again, and then looked up at the column, a simple stone monument. He breathed in and felt the weight of it; it almost seemed to anchor the whole Isle. “I’ll remember that.”
The stub of Abel’s tail made a wagging motion, and he patted Kip on the shoulder. “Now let’s get you back to the dock.”
The other fox started on down the street, and Kip fell in beside him. “Ah, but Pierce won’t be there to see it.”
“No,” Abel said. “But perhaps next time.”
12
Spiritual Sorcery
The visit to the Isle prompted Kip to write a letter back to Coppy in which he described all his adventures over the past week, with most attention paid to the Isle and all the otter’s family. He left his meeting in the pub deliberately vague, thinking he would explain it to Coppy in person, because he was going to have to find a translocation sorcerer to send this to Prince George’s school who might very well read it before transporting it. Abel’s caution about sorcerers listening made Kip wary about giving away any information.
The only sorcerer he knew at King’s with translocation ability was Master Albright, so for a day Kip held the letter hoping to find someone else. Over the course of two nights, though, he couldn’t help but imagine what his friends would advise him if he could talk to them. If Albright had put a spiritual hold on him, they would say, he had the countermeasure. He just had to remember to use it, and if it worked, he would be sure that Albright was working against him. Best to be sure, Emily would tell him. Actually, perhaps Emily would tell him he was foolish to trust any master at all. Coppy would tell Kip to be careful no matter what he did. Malcolm, of course, would not want him to run from Albright. So he resolved to approach Albright, and a not inconsiderable part of that decision was his desire to have someone to talk to other than Cott.
Whether it was lingering resentment over Albright excluding him from dinner or something else, Cott did not bring Kip down to the dining hall anymore. He took his meals in the workshop with Kip and never gave the fox a reason to leave other than to use the necessary at the end of the hall. Not that Kip was ever forbidden from leaving; when he asked about taking a walk on the grounds, Cott would say, “Why do you want to do that? It’s cold outside.” Kip did insist once, and though he enjoyed the freedom the walk provided, the grey and dreary evening and the damp air drove him quickly back to the workshop to dry himself in front of a fire.
On the brighter side, Cott was teaching him finer control over fire, not only the spread but how to dictate what it would and would not consume, and it was during the lessons that he found Cott’s company most pleasant. The master was not only willing but delighted to talk on any aspect of fire that Kip wanted to explore, and late in his second week, brought out powders that could turn the fire different colors. “Here’s copper, that’s for blue, and lithium, that will give you red. Sodium will burn yellow and barium green. Just a pinch will do. Eventually you may use alchemy to infuse your fire with those elements, but that is, hah, that is rather advanced.” And to show off, Cott conjured a blue flame in his hand.
Again Kip wondered about holding the flame in his paw. He’d tried holding the fire while telling it not to burn his fur, and while it didn’t leave him with burns as it previously had, the heat remained intense enough that he could not stand it past seven seconds. This frustrated him, but less than he would have thought; four to five hours a day learning fire magic from Cott were worth a full week with Master Odden. Who, though still his master, had not sent any communication to check on Kip’s progress nor to ask when he would return.
It was easy to remain in the small world between Cott’s office and workshop, and there was plenty to do: poring over the list of demons, searching Cott’s book for spells to use on the glass bead, practicing his control of fire until bright golden glows danced before his eyes even when they were closed. But after a week of this, and after Cott had put off his inquiries about reaching Master Albright several times with vague promises of finding him later, those pleasant tasks grew repetitive and Kip felt there might as well be bars on the window. Even back at Prince George’s, though the basement was smellier and full of dust and insects both living and dead, he’d been able to leave, had had more exposure to fresh air than a two-foot square opening.
From the workshop’s window, all he could see were the green fields outside and a few scattered houses. People walked from those houses to the College in the morning and back at night, all dressed in plain tunics, so he surmised that they worked at the College. Most likely they lived in the small village where stood the Clock and Pull pub and The Darby, though the village itself lay out of of Kip’s line of sight. As he watched from his window, the thought of the village gave him an idea on how to contact Albright.
The days shortened as Christmas approached, and Cott retired early some evenings that second week. Taking the opportunity afforded by his absence, Kip pulled the black robe around himself (the College still had not provided a purple apprentice’s robe for him) and lifted himself out the window and gently to the ground. He kept his fingers to the College wall, here nothing more than stone that reminded him of Peter when he touched it, and walked around the wall until he caught the smells of the pub. Then he headed along the path to the village and found The Darby easily.
Bridget remembered him, which was a comfort in this new world Kip was adjusting to, and pressed food upon him. He insisted on paying her, though she protested and would only take a pittance for the meal. It made for a worthwhile evening anyway, and Cott made no mention of it the following day, to Kip’s relief. He surely would have said something if he’d heard from another master that his apprentice was seen dining in the village.
He slipped out twice more that week when Cott left him alone, and on his third excursion to The Darby, Kip opened the door to find Master Albright sitting at one of the tables. His ears perked as he hurried in, smiling widely.
The silver-bearded master looked up from his dinner and after a moment’s confusion, his brow lifted and he smiled. “Ah. Penfold. Yes, Bridget tells me you’ve become a frequent patron of hers.”
“Yes,” Kip said. “The dinners are far superior to what’s served at the college.”
Bridget, who had just come back with a mug of ale for Master Albright, said, “Oh, go on, you. Where will you be sitting today?”
There was the table Master Albright occupied alone; there were two tables in the other room, one of which held two other dinner guests. Kip hesitated. “If you wouldn’t mind, sir?”
“Of course, of course.” Albright gestured to the place across from him.
“Thank you, sir.” Kip took the seat as Bridget swept away, no doubt to fetch him ale and a plate of the roast pork that Albright had in front of him.
“Now,” Albright said around a mouthful of meat, “Is this merely a coincidence built around a mutual appreciation for Bridget’s kitchen or have you been seeking me out?”
Kip fidgeted, his ears lowering. “I have been seeking you out, sir.”
“And to what purpose?”
“Well, er.” Kip did not have an impulse to tell Albright everything about his life. Perhaps he’d been mistaken about the spiritual hold, or Albright was simply not casting one now. “You see, I bore a letter from my friend to his family here in London, and I would like to let him know that it’s been delivered. But I have no way to get the letter to America.”
“I see.”
“And you did mention that translocation is your specialty, sir.”
“So I did.” Albright swallowed a mouthful and followed it with another. “I will of course be pleased to help. I have never been to Prince George’s, though, so I will need your help to direct the letter.”
“Of course.” Kip’s tail swished once before he calmed it.
“And…I would like to ask a favor of you in return.”
Kip perked his ears. “Yes, sir?”
“Mmm.” Albright finished his mouthful and his dark eyes met Kip’s. “Cott is often very close-mouthed about his researches. Has funny ideas about who does and doesn’t like him rather than who needs to know such things.”
Bridget returned with Kip’s ale and dinner, and he took a drink but refrained from eating, though the smell of the roast made his mouth water. Was Albright going to ask him to spy on Cott? “I see?”