by Tim Susman
Kip let Alice speak, as she had the most goodwill with the wolf. “One of our students has come back,” she said. “She escaped. And she said that Victor Adamson had imprisoned her.”
Grinda’s ears perked up. “Did she see any other Calatians there?”
“No.” Alice hesitated. “Only our student.”
“Did he escape too?”
“Um…we aren’t sure.”
The wolf folded her arms. “So you’ve come to tell me you’re returning to America, and the missing are our problem to deal with once again?”
“No!” Alice took a half-step back into Kip as though anticipating that he would object as well, but he kept silent. “We’re going to stay and get the others back.”
“All right. We’ll have another meeting tomorrow morning, then.” She glared around at them. “Unless there’s something else?”
Now Kip did speak up. “What does the news from Paris mean to you?”
Grinda’s ears went back and she narrowed her eyes. “It means that the world is changing even more than it did two years ago, more than you could imagine.”
“We changed a lot two years ago.”
“For some of you. Not for most of us.” She turned and pulled aside her curtain.
“We really want to help,” Kip said.
Grinda huffed and then went back into her house. But the beaver, March, remained outside. He studied the three of them the way one would examine fruit to see if it was rotten, and then said, “Oh, you want to help, aye? Do you not understand what she means? What this news means?”
“It means that the monarchy in France is in danger. But it wasn’t very stable to begin with,” Kip said. “It was put back in place after Napoleon took over.”
“It means,” March said, “that power is shifting, from those who live in the towers to those who live on the streets. So maybe you understand now why she turns her back when you look down from your towers and offer to help.”
“March!” Grinda called from inside.
“We don’t live in towers,” Malcolm said pleasantly. “Modest rooms in a two-story schoolhouse, and a small house down the road from it.” He indicated himself and then the foxes. “And me da used to say, the road is hard, aye, but harder still if you leave your friends by the side of it.”
“You’ve yet to prove yourselves friends,” March said, “and people have been betrayed by supposed friends before. What good is it to make the road easier if your self-styled ‘friends’ lead you to the gallows at the end of it?”
“You think so little of us?” Kip asked.
The beaver opened his mouth and then shut it again. “Honestly? You’re children. You’ve done some good things, aye, but you still don’t understand much. You may not live in towers, but you’re idealists all the same, with no idea what life is like for those in the streets.”
“We lived in the streets too,” Alice said quietly. “I’ve been kidnapped and threatened with death.”
“You’ve seen both worlds,” March agreed. “But you’re sorcerers now. If it came to tearing down the College, would you side with us or with them?”
They hesitated, and he nodded. “Aye.”
“We’d make sure it didn’t come to that,” Kip protested.
The beaver shook his head and went back inside.
“Well,” Malcolm said. “Want to go walk around the College in twilight or have you any other ideas to find Victor’s secret prison?”
“We can wait until it’s darker.” Kip eyed the lavender and orange of the western sky. “But I still want to go. It sounded as though it was underground, so maybe we can find it by walking around the outside of the towers. That wouldn’t be too suspicious.”
“I don’t know that I can sense wards that far away, though I’m willing to try,” Malcolm said. “We’d still need to find a way in, unless you’ve learned how to summon an earth elemental in the past day or think a large excavation of dirt wouldn’t be noticed. Whatever’s been done to Richard has been done, and maybe to Jorey as well, and Charity’s safe, so there’s perhaps no great need to hurry.”
“Unless the other Calatians are still in danger.”
“Charity didn’t see them.”
Alice cleared her throat. “Sending in someone as a calyx would still give us the best excuse to have someone in the College. But whatever we do, we should check with Grinda. I know, Kip, she’s being really terrible and all, but she’s also organizing and doing things and if we don’t tell her what we’re doing, that could be really bad for both of us. For all of us.”
He scuffed his foot along the ground. “If she wanted to know what we were doing, she could have asked us.”
“Trust, Kip. It takes time.”
“I know.” He breathed in and out the thick, humid air. “They don’t have it as good here as we do, or even as good as the Amsterdam Calatians. I wish I could do something about that, but what?”
“Listen to what they want,” Malcolm said. “Did you never have well-intentioned charities come to New Cambridge to help with the plight of the poor Calatians by giving you blankets and lamp oil, or other things you’d no call to use?”
“Once.” Kip flattened his ears. “But I think those groups mostly tried to help the Calatians in the cities. In New Cambridge we were farmers and lived well enough. Except for when some of us would...disappear.”
Alice nodded. “But we knew who was doing that, and there wasn’t anything the humans would do about it.”
“So you take my meaning,” Malcolm said.
“But what they want is to be free of the sorcerers, and if not for the sorcerers, we wouldn’t be protected at all.” Kip waved back in the direction of the stone pillar on the Isle that marked the site of the Blackstone fire. “We’ll be killed openly, not in secret, and nobody will care.”
“Sure, I’m not saying it’s an easy problem to solve.” Malcolm clapped Kip on the shoulder. “And that’s even more reason to listen to all the people trying to solve it.”
“I know, I know.” Kip squinted ahead. “But they’re not listening to all sides.”
“All right. I’ll go walk around the outside of the College looking for a warded spot. You two occupy yourselves here, and then around sunset we’ll go back to Grinda and tell her our idea and plan. Maybe she’ll be in a better mood then. Maybe I’ll know where the prison is.”
They had come to the fallen wall. Kip eyed the stones and the Thames beyond them. “And maybe the rocks will leap out of the Thames and assemble themselves on the wall.”
Malcolm laughed. “That’s the spirit. Always think positive.”
After a productive hour, the light faded, but Kip and Alice continued working. Even when Malcolm returned with the disappointing news that he had sensed several warded locations both above and below ground, and there was no way to tell which might be Victor’s, Kip put off going to meet with Grinda.
There had been Calatians in New Cambridge who hadn’t wanted him to pursue sorcery, but that had been because they worried that the humans would resent a Calatian seeking power. At least, that’s what he’d thought their problem was. If there had been a movement in New Cambridge to topple sorcerers, he’d never encountered it.
“Should we go now?” Alice asked.
“A little longer,” Kip said.
But barely fifteen minutes later, the ravens alerted them to a beaver coming down the street purposefully toward them, and when he called out, “Ho, sorcerers,” they recognized March.
“Good evening,” Malcolm said. “We were planning to come seek you and Grinda out in a short while here.”
“Grinda would like you to join a meeting,” the beaver said. “So come seek her out now.”
Kip blinked. “She wants us?”
“Aye.” The beaver gave him a slight smile. “Someone mighta told her it’d be more useful to know what you might be doing rather than leave you to your own devices.”
“Funny,” Malcolm said. “We had thoughts along those ve
ry same lines.”
“Well then, with our goals aligned, let’s get back to the meeting house. One of our calyxes returned today and said nothing happened and he couldn’t find out anything about the missing ones.”
They asked him more questions but he said that was all he knew. So they sent the ravens to the roofs nearby to watch out and followed him into the large house.
Grinda saw them enter but didn’t acknowledge them, occupied in conversation with a black rat in a blue tunic. Pierce waved them over to sit near him, so they took seats on the floor around him. “That’s Mace,” he said. “He went up yesterday and they thought he’d disappeared, but he said Master Cross just asked him to stay because he was casting several spells.”
“He doesn’t know anything?” Kip whispered.
“Not that he’s said to us, but he might be saying more to Grinda now.”
They conversed in quiet tones about life on the Isle; Pierce, though he wanted conditions to improve, generally seemed very happy with his life. He thought that the Calatians who’d gotten to go to Amsterdam, like the Cottons, were very lucky and only wished he could visit more easily. Passage on boats was more than most could afford unless they worked, and it was hard to secure working berths on ships because there was a lot of competition for them.
“All right,” Grinda called after a few minutes. “This won’t be a long meeting, but I wanted to talk to everyone now that Mace is back. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, and he tried to explore but didn’t get anywhere. It doesn’t feel like asking calyxes to find our missing brothers is useful.”
The rat shook his head. “Nah. We can’t wander around the school or we’re seen right away.”
Grinda looked at the sorcerers. “So if we’re going to find them, it’ll have to be with sorcery. We have three sorcerers here who claim that they’re willing to help us. What sorcery can they provide?”
Through Ash to Corvi outside, because Malcolm couldn’t see, Kip said, “Go ahead and start. I should speak last.”
Malcolm turned a fraction and nodded in understanding. “We haven’t a spiritual sorcerer here, so we can’t look into minds or anything like that. I can put wards up around someone, Kip can work with fire and fire elementals, and Alice can summon air elementals. Though an elemental on its own wouldn’t be able to get through a ward.”
“But,” Alice said, “if the calyx breathed it in, it could travel through a ward that way maybe?”
“Oh, interesting.” Malcolm rubbed his chin. “We could test that.”
March leaned forward from Grinda’s side. “What about summoning a demon? Could you do that?”
“Demons are detectable by other demons,” Malcolm said smoothly. “And our student told us that Victor has a very powerful demon there. It’s unlikely that one would be able to do anything useful before it was found out and imprisoned or destroyed. We couldn’t use a more powerful demon because it would be too hard to control from a distance and for that length of time.”
March nodded and settled back. “It’s not much,” he said. “Haven’t you any sorcery that finds people?”
“Not through wards. Those are to stop people from being found. We can find people through translocation—sometimes—but that can be stopped by a ward. The good news, such as it is, is that one of our students is still in there, so if we can get around the ward, we can get there through translocation.”
“Yes.” Grinda cleared her throat. “How did one of your students escape but not the other? It was the human who escaped, wasn’t it?”
“One of them,” Malcolm said. “The other human is still there.”
“And the Calatian?” Malcolm paused, and Grinda half-rose. “Why the hesitation? You said earlier you ‘weren’t sure’ if he’d escaped. What secrets are you keeping?”
“Ah, now,” Malcolm said, “we think our student was told some lies about Jorey and we’re still sorting out what’s real. We don’t want to spread Adamson’s lies for him, if that’s what they are.”
“Why don’t you let us judge the truth of them?” The wolf folded her arms.
Malcolm, through Corvi, said, “What should I do?” to Kip.
“I don’t know,” Kip replied through Ash.
Alice touched his arm and when he met her eyes, she mouthed, “Trust.”
If only Malcolm hadn’t paused. If only Victor hadn’t hit on the most dangerous rumor to spread. If only Kip had been better at looking after his students in the first place. He would have to tell them now, because otherwise they would never trust him. Not that Grinda would anyway…
His ears, which had splayed to the side, perked up. “We would be happy to tell you in private, Grinda,” he said, “and then you can decide whether it is worth telling more people before we have determined the truth of it.”
Her ears flattened back. “If it’s something you can tell me, you can tell this whole room. Don’t try to divide us.”
“We aren’t,” Alice said. “But it really is a thing we don’t know is true. If it isn’t, then why tell everyone?”
“You can tell the people in this room.” Grinda swept her paw out in front of her. “We have already sworn that anything said in these meetings remains between us, but we can swear it again if you need to witness it.”
Alice splayed her ears. “I think we should tell them,” she said to Kip in a low voice.
“As long as it does not go beyond these walls,” Kip replied.
When he didn’t go on, Alice stood. “Victor claims to have changed Jorey into—a squirrel. An animal.”
For a second, Kip thought she would have to explain further, and she must have too, because she opened her mouth to go on. But before she could say anything, everyone in the house seemed to understand all at once. “Preposterous,” someone said, as several others gasped and Grinda sank back in her seat.
“You had to wonder whether this was truth?” Grinda asked. “That he could undo a Great Feat?”
Was she calling them stupid? What did she think she knew about sorcery? “We have seen a Great Feat undone,” Kip reminded them.
“You have,” the wolf retorted.
“Yes. And this isn’t an undoing of an entire Great Feat, but merely a small part of one.” Kip didn’t stand even when everyone watched him. “We think it’s a trick, because Victor is good at tricks, but we have to weigh the possibility that it isn’t. At least, until we know for sure.”
“And how will you know for sure?”
Kip fixed his gaze on the wolf’s skeptical expression. “I hope we never do.”
“Then answer me another question. If you do rescue everyone from this Adamson, what’s to stop him from kidnapping Calatians again immediately? Are you going to kill him?”
“I…I don’t know.” Kip looked to Alice and Malcolm, but neither of them had any idea either.
“So how are you going to stop him? Take him to the police?”
That wouldn’t work, and Grinda knew it wouldn’t work as well as Kip did. “We’ll tell him we’ll come back any time another Calatian disappears,” he said, feeling the weakness of the words as soon as they left his muzzle.
Grinda barked a short laugh and the Calatians in the room followed her lead. “Aye,” she said, “that’s how we dealt with the humans who came for our cubs’ tails. Gave them a stern warning.”
Abel had told Kip that humans sometimes raided the Isle looking for the tails of fox and squirrel cubs, which they could pass off as wild animal tails and sell to the rich as stoles. But he’d never told Kip that some Calatians fought back. “We can’t just throw him in the Thames,” he said.
“Then maybe you’d better work out what you can do to stop him.” Grinda sat down again. “That’s where you might actually be useful.” She looked around the silent room. “This meeting is over.”
16
Summoning
Kip managed to keep his temper under control until they got back to Ella Lutris’s house, where the torrent of words he’d been
keeping bottled up exploded out of him so strongly that Ash, newly settled on his shoulder, fluttered to the back of a chair with an indignant croak. “Work out what you can do,” he said. “Like it’s so simple. What does she want us to do, just kill him?”
“I’ll be honest,” Malcolm said. “Em’s thought to drop him in the middle of the ocean is sounding better and better to me.”
“You can’t just—kill people. Then we’re no better than he is.”
“We could send him to Australia,” Alice suggested.
Kip shook his head. “He’d find his way back. There aren’t sorcerers in Australia, but there are ships.”
“You know, when we needed to fight as a country, we didn’t shy from some violent acts.” Malcolm reached up to stroke Corvi’s beak. “Would you not say this is a war?”
“Grinda would.” Alice found a crust of bread in the pocket of her robe and broke it into pieces to give to each of the three ravens. When she got to Sleek, she said, “Emily? Have you been listening?”
There was no response. “It can’t be more than afternoon there,” Malcolm said. “It’s only been a few hours since we left.”
“She’s probably occupied with the French people.” Kip paced. The thought of Australia felt like a reminder of something he ought to have thought of, but he couldn’t put a finger on what it was.
A few moments later, Ella poked her head in the door. “Meeting all done with?” she asked. “I’ve got the makings of a stew.”
“We’re done,” Alice said.
So Ella bustled in and set about cooking. Kip lit the fire for her, after which she went on about how marvelous that was until the fish and vegetables were well into the large iron pot. Even after that, he noticed that she gave little looks toward the fire, as though unsure whether it was real.
The stew was delicious, if a little blander than Kip was used to from Peachtree, where after all they had access to several spices that probably never made their way to the Isle. Malcolm and Ella provided most of the conversation, talking about Ella’s job at a weaver’s shop in London proper.