by Tim Susman
“It’s Jorey.”
He looked up to see Charity staring at him. “I saw—” Her voice broke. “I saw him cast the spell.”
“Who?” Alice sat on the bed and put an arm around the girl.
“Master Adamson.”
“He’s not a master,” Kip said sharply. “You mean he directed someone else.”
Charity shook her head. “Well—I suppose in a way. There was—I think—a demon there. He told it what to do and it did it? But he spoke the spell.” She shook her head. “I didn’t hear it. He didn’t let me hear. But his lips moved.” She shuddered. “He made me watch.”
“You don’t have to talk about it yet,” Emily said.
“No, I should.” Charity took a breath. “I want to tell you.”
Emily sat on the student’s other side, and Kip and Malcolm sat cross-legged on the floor, Kip still holding the wicker box. Charity looked around at all of them and took a breath. “It feels a little bit like a dream now that I’m back here,” she said. “This is real. You’re all real.”
But then her eyes fell on the box and tears welled up in them again. “But…that’s real too.” She looked up at Emily. “I’m sorry. If I’d been quicker…”
Emily took Charity’s hand in her own. “Just tell us what happened.”
Charity nodded. “We left the Exposition in that chaos, but we weren’t worried. The crowd was excited but not violent and we thought we’d just get back to the hotel. Besides, we knew that the ravens were watching us. And—and we thought we didn’t need to be watched. We had made our own way up until then.
“He came up behind us, and we didn’t touch him—like you taught us.” She looked at Malcolm. “But he said he had been talking to Headmistress Carswell and Mrs. Penfold about giving the school some money, and…then he grabbed all of us and translocated us to a prison. And right away another sorcerer—the one who was on stage with him, I think, the Indian one, touched us all and took our magic away.”
“Master Gupta,” Kip said tightly. “The spiritual sorcerer Victor carries around to do his sorcery for him.”
“He can do sorcery,” Charity insisted.
“Yes, tell us about that.” Emily laced her fingers together.
Charity looked down at the floor. “I don’t know how many days we’ve been gone. It feels like a week.”
“You were taken about four days ago,” Emily said gently.
“The first couple days we didn’t see Adamson. There was only a rat-Calatian of some sort.”
“A marmot?” Kip asked.
“Maybe. Jorey tried to ask him questions but he didn’t talk at all.” She didn’t ask, but went on. “They fed us a little bit. Scraps. After a bit—a day?—they put us into separate cells, Richard next to me and Jorey across from both of us. We talked whenever we thought we were alone, tried to come up with ways we could escape, but there were no windows and no fresh air at all. Our magic had been taken away, and we didn’t know what else to do. Richard tried to scrape at the stones in his cell, but they were all very solid. We figured that eventually they would have to let us out of the cells and we agreed we would all be ready for that moment.”
She took in a breath. “And, uh, that’s when Master—when Adamson came in. He talked to us a lot. He said that we were going to see some sorcery that was more important than anything we would learn at your school, that what he was doing would change the world. He talked about you a lot, Master Penfold. He said there was an imbalance but he was going to correct it, and that there were many different kinds of power.”
“He’s said that before,” Kip muttered.
“I don’t remember all the things he talked about. I was waiting to see if he’d let us out. I think we all were. But then he came back one time and this time the rat-Calatian, or the marmot, and that other sorcerer was with him, the one who approached us, not the Indian one. And he cast some kind of spell so Richard and I couldn’t hear anything that was happening, then he—or someone, maybe it was the marmot—summoned a demon, a kind of old man made of fire. I wasn’t scared of it, and neither was Jorey. He was very brave. And then Adamson’s lips moved, and the demon nodded and stared at Jorey, and then…and then…Jorey just shrank.”
The room was silent. Charity choked back a sob, and Alice put an arm over her shoulders. “He...he disappeared into his clothes, and then the marmot came forward with that box and he cast a spell that lifted Jorey and dropped him into it.”
It was a trick, an illusion. It had to be. That spiritual sorcerer had to be around somewhere where they couldn’t see him, hiding and casting the illusion so that the real Jorey couldn’t be heard. To remove the magic from a Calatian…that shouldn’t be possible. Kip stared at Alice and saw the same thoughts in her eyes. What if this spell were real? What if they could be reduced to the animals from which they’d come hundreds of years ago?
“And then the silence spell lifted and Adamson held out his hands and they were glowing.”
This didn’t prove anything. Adamson knew what magic looked like and what it would look like to a couple of students.
Emily leaned forward. “Did he cast a spell?”
“I…I think so.” Charity’s eyes skipped from Emily to Malcolm to Kip and Alice. “He said, ‘Not as much as I’d hoped,’ and then lifted himself off the ground. He floated away without saying anything else to us.”
Jorey was safe. They’d translocated him somewhere and brought in a squirrel.
“Richard and I talked about what we’d seen. It was like what he did on the stage, but worse. And Jorey—the squirrel—kept scratching around in the box, and every time he did I thought, that’s my friend, and we have to find a way to put him right.”
Nobody said anything, but Emily put a hand on Charity’s knee. Charity turned to her. “There’s a way to do that, right?”
“If there is, we’ll find it,” Kip said, trying not to think about Malcolm’s eyeless face. “Can you get back to the prison?”
The girl’s eyes widened in horror, and Alice held her more tightly. “Not this minute,” Emily said, “but do you know it well enough to translocate back there?”
“Probably?” Charity sniffed. “But I can’t take another person.”
“It’s likely warded anyway,” Malcolm said, “but perhaps Chakrabarti can get the location from you and we can try ourselves.”
“How did you get away?” Alice asked.
“Oh, yes.” Charity wiped her eyes. “Adamson came back later. I don’t know how much later; I’d slept a little and we’d gotten a meal. He told me and Richard that we had only seen the beginning of what he hoped to accomplish. He talked like he had been studying sorcery forever and had found things nobody else had.”
“He was in school with us,” Kip said.
“He sounded very impressive and scary.” Charity folded her hands in her lap. “He had that fire-demon with him and he ordered it to pull Richard to the bars of his cell. I couldn’t see what was happening, but that other sorcerer, the one from the stage, he went up to the cell. Adamson said they had to be very careful with the timing, and the other sorcerer touched Richard and then Adamson said a spell. I could see from the side of my cell the way they did it, and the demon did something but I didn’t know what.
“Richard fell. I heard the thump. And then Victor’s hands glowed again and he told the demon that he could do the physical magic this time. He cast a spell and pulled me to the bars.”
She stopped and looked around, sitting up straighter. “He’d taken something from Richard and then he had magic, so I figured the other sorcerer must have given Richard his magic back and then Adamson, or the demon, took it and put it in Adamson. So I’d get my magic back for as long as it took him to cast his spell.
“I stared at Jorey’s cell, and as soon as that sorcerer touched me, I pulled magic and translocated there. I didn’t know if I could, I only knew…I was good as dead if I couldn’t.” Nobody spoke as Charity drew in a rasping breath. “I wanted t
o get Richard but I can’t take another person, and as soon as I bent down to get the basket, they’d turned around and I only had time to come back here.” She swallowed and rubbed her eyes again, making them redder. “I had to leave him behind.”
Then she leaned into Alice’s shoulder and all the weight of her ordeal fell on her and she began to cry.
Alice wrapped both arms around her and held her. “You were very, very brave,” she said.
“I’m so proud of you,” Emily added, and Kip and Malcolm echoed her.
“You,” Charity gulped, “you, you can save Richard, can’t you? And set Jorey right?”
In Alice and Emily’s faces, Kip saw the determination he also felt. “Absolutely we can,” Malcolm said before any of the others could speak. “An’ we will.”
Movement behind Kip tickled his whiskers. He turned to see Chakrabarti standing in the doorway. The sorcerer inclined his head and coughed delicately. “Headmistress,” he said. “You requested my presence here?”
Charity looked up at the voice and jumped when she saw Chakrabarti. “You!” A second later, she sank back to the bed. “No, you’re the sorcerer we met in Amsterdam,” she said. “I’m sorry. For a moment you looked like—like Adamson’s sorcerer.”
“I assure you,” Chakrabarti said, “I have never met this Adamson, and he does not sound like the sort of fellow I would work with.”
“He isn’t.” Emily rose. “Charity, Master Chakrabarti is a healer and a spiritual sorcerer. I asked him here so that, with your permission, he can see if Adamson did anything to you and can help with it.”
Charity looked up at Emily. “And see where the prison is?”
“Yes.”
The girl nodded. “If you say it’s all right, Headmistress, then you have my permission.”
“Very good.” Emily smiled at her. “Thank you, Charity. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal, but it’s going to be all right. Come on, the rest of you.”
Kip and Malcolm got up, but Charity clung to Alice, and the vixen said, “May I stay with her?”
Emily nodded and shooed the others out of the room, then closed the door behind them. They walked across the Welcome Hall and up the other side to Kip’s office, which was nearest. “Well,” Emily said when they were inside. “What now?”
“He still has one of our students,” Malcolm said. “Two if you count what he did to poor Jorey.”
“It was a trick,” Kip insisted. “It has to be. He can’t undo a Great Feat. Look what happened to Cott when he did. It would be...” He groped for words.
“A lot of magic released into the world?” Malcolm asked.
“Yes, but—” Kip stopped. He believed still that Cott had died from the undoing of the Great Feat, and what little research he’d managed to do into Great Feats had led him to another conclusion, little more than suspicion at this point: that the casting of a Great Feat would similarly kill the sorcerer. There were no records of Calatus surviving to guide Calatians into society; the creator of the Road had perished after his work was complete. It made a sort of intuitive sense to him; magic was a product of will, and if you poured enough of yourself into making your will permanent, none would remain to keep you alive. But Great Feats were so rare that he could not, and likely never would, prove his theory.
When he didn’t articulate an objection, Malcolm went on. “Maybe if you undo just a small part of a Great Feat, you get just a small bit of magic. And maybe he can funnel that into himself somehow.”
“Ugh.” Emily shuddered. “Like drinking someone’s blood.” She caught Kip’s expression and a stricken look passed over her face. “But worse. Like drinking all their blood.”
“I’m not going to argue that the calyx ritual isn’t grotesque,” Kip said. “It’s probably where Victor got the idea. I’m sure he thinks we’ll believe this is real because it’s based on a reality like that.”
“I hope it’s not real,” Emily said, “but we have to behave as though it is. If it isn’t then what is he after?”
“I don’t know. Why was he asking French nobles for money when he’s already funded by the British Crown?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him to simply be keeping money away from the American schools. He’s already tried in other ways.”
Malcolm nodded. “And the Crown would be happy enough to watch us fail.”
Emily ran a hand through her hair. “They can’t know we’re close to failing.”
“He can,” Kip said. “The one thing he was good at, if not sorcery, was finding things out.”
“Regardless.” Malcolm rested a hand on Kip’s shoulder. “We have at least one more student and more Calatians to rescue.”
“Two students,” Emily said. “Whether that’s Jorey or not, we have to rescue him.”
“Agreed.” Kip sighed. “And we can’t leave the Isle Calatians now, or Grinda will be right about me.”
“Would that be so bad?” Emily asked. “Why does one person’s opinion matter so much?”
“She has a voice. And…” Kip searched for the way to articulate his concern. “If we want to remain on good terms with the Isle Calatians, to have them send students here, then she’s an important ally. But it’s more than that. She’s pulling me to be responsible for all Calatians, not just the American ones.”
“But you’re American,” Emily said, “and they should be your primary responsibility.”
“Yes, but…I took responsibility for all of them during the war. I still feel I need to live up to that.”
“For how long?”
Kip spread his paws. “I don’t know. Maybe the rest of my life?”
“That seems a bit much,” Malcolm said. “Even our President Adams has said he won’t hold that office more than a few years.”
“If someone else comes along to take charge of the Calatian race, I’ll gladly step aside,” Kip said.
Chakrabarti came in, followed by Alice. “She is sleeping now,” the Indian master said, and went to Emily. “I took the location of the prison from her, with her permission, and I can convey it to you if you would like.”
“Please.” Emily extended a hand to him and reached out her other arm to Malcolm and Kip, who both grasped it. “We’ll have to try.”
They stood still for a tense moment and then Emily shook her head. “It feels like a horrible place but I can’t go there. The wards are too strong.”
Kip let go of her arm. “All right. Let’s go back to the Isle and tell them what’s happened. We’ll search for Victor from there.”
“I’ll stay with Charity,” Emily said, “and I’ll send a note to Philadelphia advising them that Americans have been kidnapped by a British citizen. But I don’t expect anything to come of that in time to be of use.”
“We need to try every possible avenue,” Kip said. “We won’t give up until we have Richard and Jorey back as well.”
“And Victor behind bars,” Malcolm added.
“Or in an ocean,” Emily said darkly.
15
Desperate Measures
When Alice, Kip, and Malcolm returned, everyone was hurrying to the landward side of the Isle. “What’s happening?” Kip asked, shading his eyes against the late afternoon sun.
“News!” a dormouse cried. “There’s a crowd over on High Street.”
The newspaper sellers didn’t come to the Isle, but if the Calatians stood on the landward side they could hear across the water. Kip and Alice started in that direction and then stopped themselves. “We haven’t time for this,” Alice said. “Whatever it is. We’ve got to tell Grinda.”
“I’ll send Ash,” Kip offered, and the raven took off from his shoulder. They moved out of the main street into a smaller one as he contemplated sorcerer-hating Grinda’s reaction to the news that Calatians could possibly be unmade. “Is there nobody else we can work with?” he asked. “You two have been here longer; is there someone Grinda trusts who is more sympathetic to us? Who might temper the news before it reaches her
ears?”
“Not that we’ve been able to find,” she replied. “Your friends the otters like you the most, but she doesn’t place a lot of faith in them, not that I’ve seen. Maybe that beaver; she trusts him and he seems reasonable. Besides, if you want her to trust you, you should go talk to her directly.”
“I know.” Kip shook his head. “I worry that if we tell her what Charity said about Jorey that she’ll distrust us even more. And especially if it’s just a trick, we’d be scaring her—and everyone—to no purpose.”
“Do you really think it’s a trick?” Alice asked.
“He as much as admitted in Paris that the Exposition spell was a trick. What if he intended Charity to escape and tell her story?”
Malcolm frowned. “To what end?”
“To scare us? I don’t know. I can’t imagine what game he might be playing at.”
“Well,” the Irishman said, “trick or not, I agree we should wait for proof before scaring people.”
Alice nodded. “As long as we don’t outright lie.”
“We won’t.” Kip stopped and listened through Ash. “Ah, the news they’re calling is that Paris is still in flames.”
“Still?” Malcolm asked. “Or is this the first they’re hearing of it?”
“I don’t know.” Kip shook his head and brought his awareness back to himself. “Let’s go on to Grinda.”
Alice led him to a small house that smelled strongly of wolf, where Grinda, three other wolves, and a beaver looked up as they pushed aside the curtain. When Grinda saw them, she sprang up. “How dare you enter my house? Get out, out!”
“We have news,” Alice said.
“I’ll hear it in the street. Is it about Paris burning? I’ve heard that already and we don’t need your help to understand it, thank you very much.”
Understand it? What was there to understand? But Kip, Alice, and Malcolm retreated out into the street. Behind the curtain, Grinda said, “All of you stay here. March, you come with me.”
A moment later, she pushed the curtain aside and came out into the street trailed by the beaver. “Now, what is it?” she demanded.