by Tim Susman
“I just don’t understand what they think they’ll gain,” one of them said.
“Why not be part of the greatest Empire in the world?” The other took up the argument. “If we split in two, we’re that much easier for Spain to conquer.”
“Not splitting in two,” the first said with a great deal of scorn. “More like shaving a small piece off a great whole. But the question remains.”
“I don’t know,” Kip said. “I haven’t really talked to any of them nor read any material.”
That didn’t stem the flow of the conversation, but it allowed Kip to sit back from it while the two apprentices talked about how foolish the revolutionaries were. Neither of them mentioned Master Gugin until Kip brought him up, and then they made the usual disinterested platitudes about what a tragedy it was, and one of them said that it wasn’t a great surprise that he’d choked to death. They exchanged looks and smiles while Kip clamped his muzzle shut.
So the following day, when Cott had announced he would not be working, Kip took advantage to seek out the only person he could be sure would listen to his thoughts without judgment, with whom he could have a private conversation. He summoned Nikolon and asked her to look for a fox named Abel, either on the Isle of Dogs or somewhere in the College. “And if you leave the College,” he said, remembering Master Albright’s warning, “on no account become visible or allow anyone to perceive you.”
The demon returned in a matter of minutes, reporting that a fox with a stub for a tail was in the King’s Tower of the College, but that two more were on the Isle, and she had waited to see them both being addressed to discover that one of those was Abel. “He weaves rope on the dock,” she told Kip.
He dismissed Nikolon, put on a plain tunic without his black robe, and flew down to the Isle, careful to be as discreet as possible in his movements. When he approached the dock of the Isle, again a crowd grew, but this time some people recognized him and raised paws, or called out, “Ho, Sorcerer-Calatian!”
Thomas the dormouse was the first to approach him that Kip recognized. “Penfold?”
“Kip,” Kip said, shaking the proffered paw.
The dormouse flicked his ears with a broad smile and looked around as if to make sure everyone had seen that. “What brings you to our Isle?”
“Ah, I hoped to talk to Abel,” Kip said, and spotted the large warehouse from which strands of rope extended away from him. Along the path, several rabbits ran back and forth carrying strands to the large wheels at either end. Other Calatians walked up and down
Thomas grinned. “Aye, I see.” He followed Kip’s gaze and pointed. “He works the ropewalk today, but for a visit from you he might persuade another to take his place. Shall we walk down and greet him?”
“I don’t want to take him away from work,” Kip said.
“Nonsense.” Thomas waved a paw. “Look at all these fellows loafing about.”
The crowd around them certainly seemed busy to Kip, carrying boxes or sorting through piles of what smelled like rubbish, but there were some sitting with their legs hanging over the edge of the dock. Here where the people hadn’t seen Kip fly up, they paid him little mind in his plain tunic, which eased the tightness in his chest. His tail swished more freely as Thomas walked with him along the edge of the river, chattering about how the chilly weather was lovely for the Calatians. “With our fur, we don’t mind being outside so much while the humans all stay inside. We don’t get much sun to enjoy, but the weather’s lovely, just lovely. How is winter in the Colonies?”
“Sunnier,” Kip said, “but also colder. There’s snow on the ground for much of it.”
“I’d love to see snow more often,” Thomas said wistfully. “When I was a kit we had a week of snow and the Thames mostly froze over! We skated on it and had such fun.”
“My father said they had a hard winter when he was a kit, too. I wonder if it was the same year.”
“It was harder to get food, but it’s always hard to get food.” Thomas pointed inside the building as they came up alongside it. “There’s Abel.”
The ropewalk house didn’t have walls as such; it was more of a few wooden beams supporting a roof over the large mechanisms inside, three great wheels that turned by cranks manned by Abel and two other Calatians. One was a wolf that Kip thought might be Grinda, but he couldn’t tell at this distance by sight, and the breeze blowing from the Thames past him into the ropewalk house made it impossible to identify her that way either.
The wheels squeaked and the Calatians around them chattered enough to make a decent racket, especially beneath the bare wooden roof. Kip didn’t want to disturb Abel at his job, but Thomas strode into the building and called loudly, “Ho, Abel!”
The fox turned, ears canted at a quizzical angle, and then he looked past Thomas and saw Kip. He sniffed the air and his ears perked. “Ho, Kip!” he called. “I’ll just be a moment.”
“No hurry,” Kip called back, because some of the other rope-makers had turned to look from him to Abel.
The rope-spinner, a cunning device Kip hadn’t seen before, consisted of a large wheel with three smaller wheels set into it. As far as Kip could tell, strands of twine or yarn were run along the rope walk by the rabbits and spun into thicker strands on the smaller wheels. Then the larger wheel turned while a rope-maker ran along the tightening rope with a wooden tool that perhaps guided the ropes properly? Kip couldn’t tell exactly. But both the beginning product, the skeins of spun yarn, and the end result, a tightly bound rope, lay in the warehouse in piles he could sniff. They smelled oddly like people.
He turned to find Thomas watching him. “Are these ropes made from fur?” he asked.
“Shed fur, aye.” The dormouse beamed. “And some of the dogbane around here. We collect it and make our own ropes out of it. We’re likely just close to the end of our store of it now, and in the late winter and spring we’ll hire out to people who want cheap rope made, or if we have money we’ll buy the material to make more of our own and sell it. We use a good bit of it for building, for the few ships we have.”
Kip’s parents had collected his shed fur and disposed of it. Nobody had ever wanted it, nor needed it.
Thomas chattered on about the rope and had Kip pull on a length to see how strong it was, and generally made himself good company until Abel walked over, rubbing his paws together. “Hallo, Kip. Happy Christmas and Twelfth Night.”
“Happy Christmas,” Kip said, and extended his paw.
Abel took it and shook gently and quickly. “Apologies,” he said. “The wheel is hard on my paws.”
“No need to apologize.” The presence of the other fox perked his spirits up, whether it was the familiar fox-scent or Abel’s easy smile.
“Let’s go somewhere quieter.” Abel gestured, and Kip and Thomas followed him outside. “What brings you back to the Isle, Kip?”
“I wondered if you might mind a walk over to that plaque again.” Kip lifted his head to the air from the river and turned to the haze of the Isle. The column wasn’t visible over the houses, but he knew about where it was, almost as though it were a fire whose energy he was attuned to. “I have been thinking about death and what we leave behind.”
Abel lowered his ears. “Ponderous subject, though I suppose the dead of winter is the time for it. What brought it on?”
Kip’s chest tightened at the memory, the purple face, the sprawled raven. “I…lost a friend recently.”
The other fox nodded, and then looked around Kip toward the dormouse. “Thomas, would you give us a moment, please?”
“Ah, of course, of course.” The dormouse’s grin widened as he brushed a paw along his whiskers, bowed, and stepped off to the side, looking out over the Thames.
The rest of the dock remained crowded, but Abel spoke in a low fox-whisper, enough to carry over the breeze. “A particular death?”
“A sorcerer,” Kip said in the same pitch. “One I was friendly with. He choked to death and it might have been an accident
. Probably it was.” He took in a breath. “I can’t see any reason for someone to kill him except that he was helping me research the attack on the college. But who knew that? Only a few people. Unless someone was listening with a demon.” But he hadn’t detected any demons when he’d spoken to Gugin.
“So it must be one of the people you told.”
“Or he told someone.” Kip shook his head. “Do you know a Lord Castlereagh?”
Abel laughed. “He wasn’t at the last high tea I was invited to.”
“I’m sorry,” Kip said, but the other fox put a paw up.
“No, no, I shouldn’t make fun. I’ve heard of him, I believe. Doesn’t he hold some position in government? Had something to do with Napoleon’s defeat?”
“Aye.” They had turned down a narrower street and now had to weave to avoid people. Fortunately, there were no vehicles on the street as there were in New Cambridge; everyone walked on the Isle of Dogs. Kip kept his pitch low. “He’s the Foreign Secretary. The sorcerer had worked with him and refused a post.”
Talking these things out with Abel was nice. Kip would’ve preferred to talk to Coppy about them, or Emily, but he still hadn’t heard from either of them, and especially here among all the Calatians he missed Coppy and it was difficult to think of him. Though he’d only known Abel for a day—less than that—he felt more comfortable with the fox than with anyone else he knew in London.
“I don’t see why it couldn’t be an accident,” Abel said. “Coincidental, of course, but still possible.”
“There’s someone else investigating it who thinks it might be suspicious,” Kip said. “Of course, I don’t trust him completely either.”
“I was going to ask why you’re talking to me rather than him.” The other fox smiled.
Kip exhaled. “I just want someone else to know that something’s going on, and I can’t reach my friends in the Colonies.”
“Did you really want to see the plaque?” Abel asked as they approached a corner Kip remembered.
“Yes.” A paper fluttered past Kip’s sleeve to the ground.
He glanced at it, but Abel picked it up just as Kip realized what it was. “This yours?”
He held it out, and Kip took it. “I think so.” Unfolding it, he recognized Emily’s writing. Tonight, it read. An hour past sundown, the Founders Rest. Urgent.
Urgent? He looked up at the sun. A good portion of the day remained here, and even more back where Emily was. How could she write “Urgent’ on a paper when there were hours and hours before he could talk to her? And what could be so urgent? Had something happened to Coppy? To Malcolm?
“Kip?”
He looked down into Abel’s eyes. “My apologies. Message from a friend of mine.”
“Something wrong?”
“I think so. But I won’t know until…” He looked up again. “Well after sundown.”
“Hope it’s not too bad.” Abel smiled. “So, the plaque then?”
The column stood between buildings with nowhere to sit nearby, but Kip didn’t mind standing. He and Abel leaned against a wall as they gazed at the plaque, and Kip thought about the Calatians who’d stood on that spot, who’d burned in the fire, not knowing that their deaths would be meaningful. They only knew pain and fire, and then nothing. But people had remembered their deaths and made them meaningful, and from them had come laws and the Council of Birk, and better living conditions for most. All these things that the people had never seen, could never know, stemming from that one tragedy. Was Master Gugin’s death going to result in anything? Did most people’s deaths?
“Do you think,” Abel asked quietly, “that this sorcerer’s death was part of a war?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? Kip scratched at the base of his ear. “I don’t know. I think so. I think some people want me to think it is and some people want me to think it isn’t.”
“That many people are interested in what you think?”
Kip nodded slowly. He weighed his next words, but they weren’t anything Abel couldn’t find out by asking some sorcerers—perhaps already had. “I’m a fire sorcerer. It’s a rare ability.”
Abel took that in. “In a war, then, you’d be valuable to whichever side you choose.”
“I serve the Empire,” Kip said.
“As do we all,” Abel responded quickly. “And some of us wonder whether the way we are currently serving it is the best way.”
“Maybe sometimes the best way to serve it is by dying.” Kip clasped his fingers together and stared down.
Abel put a paw on his shoulder. “That’s not true of you for sure, nor for me or any of my friends, we think. War or no war.”
It took Kip a moment to remember that Abel had mentioned calyxes who’d died in the Napoleonic War. Was the fox saying that those sacrifices had been in vain? Could have been avoided? He heard Grinda’s growl again, and as when he’d looked at the rope made of shed fur, wondered whether his assumptions born in New Cambridge might bear further challenging. “I think,” he said, feeling comfortable speaking aloud to Abel, “that London has much to learn from the Colonies, more than they think they do. In New Cambridge, we look to London for guidance, but it is not always the case that London looks to New Cambridge for insight.”
“So the practices in New Cambridge are different?” Abel tilted his head.
“Somewhat.” Kip sighed. “The Calatians are part of the town, not segregated. Well…not entirely. And even during the war, none of us died. From the war, I mean. In the regular course of things, Calatians are sometimes beaten up, kidnapped, killed—”
“By humans?”
Kip nodded. “There’s always one or two who resent us, think they should be able to do what they want. Especially—well, the one I knew was my age, and big. He was a bully, but one who knew if he was smart about it he could injure Calatians and nobody would punish him for it.”
Abel nodded. “Human children often throw stones when we go out into London proper. The police are rarely around, and don’t stop them even if they are.”
“In New Cambridge, there was at least one ‘accident’ most years I can remember. Sometimes the people were only injured, a few times they disappeared, but once or twice they’d be found at the bottom of a quarry, or trampled by a horse. Nobody could prove they’d been killed, but there was talk.” Kip sighed. “In my eighteen years, I lost five classmates. Three disappeared, one was found dead, one died after being hit on the head.”
“Calatians disappear from here, too,” Abel said quietly. “Once or twice, one turns up floating in the Thames. Last year, someone brought Richard White’s body back to the gate, a knife wound in his chest, and said he ‘tripped and fell.’” He sighed. “At least the calyxes, whatever Grinda says, died for a cause.”
Kip winced. “The one calyx we lost disappeared the night of the attack on the College, not even during the war at all.”
Abel nodded. “He must have been at the college during the attack?”
“I don’t—” Kip paused. Abraham Lapelli had been mourned by the town, but nobody in the College had mentioned him, nor which sorcerer he’d been bound to. Kip and his father had talked about it, but none of the Calatians knew his fate either. Abraham had previously been the calyx to a sorcerer who’d died, and he was called up occasionally for other duties but had not been formally or informally bound to another sorcerer. His wife hadn’t even known he’d been called away that night, not until she was woken by the noise of the attack and found her bed empty. “I don’t know. He just disappeared. It might have been a coincidence.”
Abel rubbed his whiskers. “You don’t believe that.”
I have learned to be suspicious of coincidences. Master Albright’s words echoed in Kip’s head as he brought his ears up. “No. I hope to solve the mystery of the attack, but I don’t know where he fits in. His wife saw him before they went to bed. She didn’t wake up when he left. Nobody else heard anything.” And there was no plaque commemorating his death, no more th
an any plaque commemorated Saul’s death or the deaths of the other students and sorcerers at either College. They were gone, buried, turned to glass beads under bricks and timber and soon would be forgotten. Had one of the glass beads been Abraham, Kip wondered? Would a Calatian turned to glass be noticeably different from a human?
The other fox took in the crowds around them and lowered his voice again. “Last-minute summonses without explanation are not uncommon here. Definitely not during the war, but few sorcerers give any warning to their calyxes about when they will be needed next, and only perhaps half of them go to the trouble of keeping the same calyx over months or years.”
“They said they don’t summon demons often,” Kip said. “What do they use calyxes for, then? I thought it was mostly demon summoning.”
Abel raised his eyebrows. “They rarely confide in us, but I know that they use calyxes for any spell they think will take a large amount of energy.”
Perhaps they summoned demons for use far away, for communication with territories or exploration or other purposes. “Did Master Gugin have a calyx in years past?” Kip asked.
“The name isn’t familiar, but I can ask around.” Abel’s body shifted, and it took a moment for Kip to realize that he was moving his stub of a tail. Slowly, not wagging, but relaxedly. “It feels like the way of doing things in New Cambridge is worth thinking about. We have been arguing about how to talk about change here, but it will be easier if there is a real town to take lessons from.”
“I wish you could come see it,” Kip said. He envisioned Abel and Coppy’s family coming to New Cambridge, and then returning with new ideas about how Calatians should live. In a flash, he understood what the response to those ideas here in London would be from people like Mr. Gibbet. And for the first time he thought that the independence movement might not be about pushing away the old, but about protecting the new.