by Tim Susman
“Ah, come now. You’re not after believing in Victor now?”
“No. But he’s done something to Richard, and spiritual sorcerers can already ruin someone’s mind. Even if the rest of his magic-draining spell is all a trick, he’s still working with a spiritual sorcerer and they’re crazy enough.”
“There is that. There is that.” Malcolm tapped the bars of his cell.
This reminded Kip to return his cup, so he reached across with it. “Had any brilliant ideas about how to get us out of here?” he asked as Malcolm took the cup back.
“None yet, but the day’s still young. I suppose it’s day because he said we’d be fed again in the evening. This bread isn’t quite the consistency of the stone I’m sitting on. I should’ve saved some of the water to soften it.”
“Thank you for sharing it,” Kip said quietly.
The crunching paused, and then Malcolm said, “Ah, he ruined your bread too, didn’t he?”
“It’s all right. I’m not hungry. And I don’t suppose I’ll be here long enough to get hungry. That’s Farley, though. Thinking of the worst thing he can do right now, not thinking ahead.”
“Seems like he was thinking a little bit ahead.”
“Fantasies. Whatever Victor has planned for us, it doesn’t seem like we’ll survive. Any of us, and I mean Farley too.”
Malcolm was quiet. “You know, if it wasn’t for the manner of going, and the missing of Em and leaving her behind, I wouldn’t be too troubled by passing from the mortal coil at this stage. We’ve seen and done much, enough to fill a life for sure. I’m sure I’ll find ways to fill the years, and there are many left that I could do something with, but…I’ve fought demons, helped rescue thousands of Calatians, won a war, and started a school. I met a good woman and…well, I wish I had more time with her, and with all my good friends. But if that’s how my tombstone reads, I’m well content with it.” He paused. “I really only wish my departure wouldn’t give Victor any satisfaction.”
“I agree.” Kip eyed the tin plate and wondered whether he might break it or crack it enough to have a sharp edge. “But I don’t wish it hard enough to do something about it.”
“No, and that’s a mortal sin anyway.”
“True enough.” Kip leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “Then we keep our ears open for an opportunity and we hope that there’s something Victor overlooked.”
“Faint light is still enough to see by in the middle of the night, me da used to say.” Malcolm shifted around. “And truth be told, though I’d give anything for you to be somewhere else, I’m glad to have your company.”
Kip’s breath caught in his throat. “I wish you weren’t here, too. And I’m grateful that you are.”
18
Kip’s Gambit
Kip and Malcolm talked over the next several hours, and when they didn’t talk, they fell into dozes. The mysterious person in the other cell continued to make some noises without speaking, and at this point Kip hoped it wasn’t Richard, remembering the suave good humor of his student.
The school, the students. At least they still had Charity, but if this turned out the way it looked to be going, they would have lost all their other students and two of their masters. Emily would carry on the school, but without the Dieuleveults’ money, they would be in worse shape than Prince George’s school had been after losing all their apprentices to the attack.
But from that attack had come himself, Malcolm, and Emily, and indirectly Alice. Things might look bleak now, and perhaps he wouldn’t live to see the next upturn, but if anyone could steer the school right, Emily could.
Of course, nothing could last. Look at France: from stable monarchy to brief shining empire to puppet monarchy to revolution, all in Kip’s lifetime, or just about. America had had an insurrection almost fifty years ago now, and another one just two years ago and now was a fledgling country trying to get its feet under it. Change came quickly; it could benefit you one day and crush you the next, like the great Wheel that Chakrabarti had talked about as part of the Hindu faith.
The change that seemed to be coming throughout the world now was people rising up against governments and tyranny. Kip had seen America go through the idea of rejecting their king in favor of a more representative government (an idea that had not fully taken hold yet), and France was going through the same motions now, albeit more violently. India…he wanted to know more about India. Sorcerers going out among the people had sounded like a strange practice when Chakrabarti had first mentioned it, but now it felt almost vital. Grinda accused him of being out of touch with Calatians; the Dieuleveults and other French nobles had been out of touch with their people. Perhaps he should spend more time talking to other Calatians, not just a visit to a pub in Amsterdam or occasional visits to the Isle. After all, that he had access to magic was an accident of his birth. It didn’t make him better than anyone else. If anything, he should be using his power to help those who weren’t as fortunate.
Thoughts of those less fortunate reminded him of Nikolon. He sent out a call to her every so often, but the demon never answered. Kip believed that the wards were preventing her; although she could be doing anything out in the world, he thought she would be looking for him.
Malcolm answered when Kip talked to him, and agreed with his thoughts on the changes in the world. “Sure, those with power will always take what they want from those without, but the purpose of a king is to protect those under him. Without the king, they’re vulnerable.”
“I’m not sure they are. An army is made up of a lot of people.”
“But who commands it?”
“The person most qualified. Not the King’s nephew or something like that.”
“It sounds good, but…” Malcolm grunted and shifted. “How do you start this happening? If you go the American way, you wind up arguing for years. If you go the French way, you’re likely to be regarded as vandals and nobody will listen to you.”
“They’re burning Paris because nobody was listening to them. The world is listening now. But things shouldn’t have to get to that point. There has to be a way. Maybe in India or in Persia, someone has found it.”
“When we’ve disposed of Victor, we’ll visit all those places.”
“Aye.” Kip paused. “Any new ideas on how to do that?”
“None over here. Still working on it, though. I don’t suppose you can get Ash to bring you one of those talismans Victor was so worried about?”
“If she knew where we were. And if there were a way for her to get in.”
“Right. I keep coming back to that part where nobody knows how to get to us.”
“It’s the big obstacle.”
“Still nothing from your spell?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Ah well. Perhaps he’ll forget about us. I’ll look for loose stones in the wall. In a year or so we might break through to the outside.”
Kip smiled. “Better to be doing something than simply waiting.”
For his own part, when he wasn’t calling to Nikolon, he went over and over the places where Victor might be weak. Master Gupta was the most obvious; Kip had connected with him briefly over the matter of treatment of demons, and if he had the chance to speak to him, he might be able to solidify that connection. But Victor would never allow that; he had sent Farley to feed them in part because he knew Farley would be cruel, but also because he knew Farley would never listen to anything Kip had to say.
Victor himself was the most accessible weak point, but Kip had only ever gotten the best of Victor by going around him, never by out-talking him directly. He was unlikely to fall for anything Kip could concoct on the spot. His main desire was to have magic, and he had already found the way to do that, so unless Kip could offer him an alternative…
An idea took shape, very unlikely to work but the only idea Kip had been able to come up with. He didn’t even tell it to Malcolm because there wasn’t anything Malcolm could do to help, and he’d be c
ertain to object to one part of it.
Hours of reflection yielded no other ideas, nor any response from Nikolon, so when the door opened again in what Kip presumed to be the evening, he was stuck with just the one faint sliver of hope.
“Everyone still here?” called out Victor’s cheerful voice. It sounded like two other people were with him, to judge from the footsteps, and that was good. Master Gupta’s presence increased his hope from vanishing to slim.
But the first person who came into view past the bars of his cell was March the beaver. Kip sat up, startled, and only after a second realized that the beaver floated immobilized a foot off the ground.
March stopped in front of Kip’s cell, hovering there, and then Victor stepped into view, waving to Kip. “Good evening. I trust you’ve had a pleasant day to think about—well, I suppose you’ll have been wondering about my claims and whether I can do what I say.”
“Since you haven’t actually said,” Kip replied with as much coolness as he could muster, “I haven’t given it a single thought.” His tail twitched with the urge to cover himself again, but he restrained it. To do so would be to announce that his nakedness bothered him, and would give Victor some satisfaction.
Victor’s face clouded for a moment, as Kip had hoped. “I would have thought that your student told you what she saw, and no doubt you dismissed it as illusion. It’s true that Master Gupta is an accomplished master of illusion, which is something of a lost art here in the West. But I assure you that my spell is real, and I have come up with a delightful way to both convince you of that and tie off one of the loose ends that had been worrying me.”
Kip jumped to his feet and grabbed the bars. “Don’t hurt March. Don’t hurt anyone else. It’s my power you want.”
“Of course it is.” Victor smiled at him, composed again. “But more than that, I want your respect. No—I want you to understand how very completely I deserve your power.” His jaw tightened as he said that, his eyes hard despite the smile. “You wave your hand and set things afire, a force of unchecked destruction. I have learned how to manipulate the very fabric of magic itself.”
“That’s all well and good,” Malcolm called from the other cell, “but have you learned how to cultivate real friendships? Because the only people I’ve seen you with have been, well, me ma used to say, it doesn’t matter if you walk out of the gutter if you still carry its stink around with you, and—urk.”
“Thank you, Farley,” Victor said. “Release him. He’ll understand what will happen if he interrupts again.”
Malcolm drew in several harsh breaths. “Strewth,” he gasped.
“Now.” Victor addressed Kip. “If you don’t wish Farley to throw you against the stone again, please go stand flat against the back wall and remain there.”
Kip stared into Victor’s eyes. “Don’t do this. I believe you.”
“I’ve told you already, I have to do it regardless, and I want you to watch. Now go.” He shooed Kip with a delicate motion of his hand. “Farley, deal with the clothes, would you?”
The fox turned and walked to the back wall where he stood and faced the sorcerer. Victor produced a key and opened the door to Kip’s cell. Behind him, Farley cut through March’s clothes with a knife, struggling through a few of the seams but eventually tearing everything away. He pushed the beaver into Kip’s cell, and as soon as Victor had shut the door, March dropped to the floor.
“You said you’d stop,” he rasped to Victor. “You said that all you wanted was Penfold.”
“I said I would stop taking Calatians,” Victor replied, “once I had performed my experiment on Penfold. Which, as you can well see, I have not.” He replaced the key in his pocket and drew out a thick white rock, which he tossed through the bars. “Penfold. Take that chalk and make a mark on the beaver’s fur or tail, somewhere, anywhere, and don’t tell me where it is. Gupta is nowhere around.”
March turned toward Kip. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to do it. He said he’d stop. I thought I was saving my people.”
“Oh,” Victor said silkily, “now you’re making me feel like I didn’t have to also give you so much money to infiltrate the rebellious group. If I’d known you would have done it merely to save your people, I’d have treated myself to…well, a moderately fancy dinner, at least, instead.”
March hung his head and sat motionless on the stone floor. Kip remained where he was, trying to figure out how his plan would work if Gupta wasn’t here. “I’m not going to put a mark on him,” he said.
“Ah, well.” Victor leaned against the bars. “You see, it’s rather important to your understanding that you do. I’m trying to remove any possibility that this might be an illusion so that you’ll understand how real it is before understanding is removed altogether. It’s quite important to me.”
“I already told you that I believe you.”
Victor’s smile tightened. “Put a mark on him, or I’ll have Farley begin to break bones in O’Brien’s body. He’s very good at that, you know.”
“Don’t you worry about me,” Malcolm called, and then was silent, whether of his own volition or Farley’s, Kip couldn’t tell.
“I have another idea,” Kip said. “You don’t have to do this to him. Or to any Calatians.”
Victor’s smile disappeared, and he put his hand up to the bars. “What I don’t have to do is listen to you,” he said. “Pick up the chalk, now, or O’Brien suffers.”
“But I—”
Victor turned to his right. “Farley, go ahead.”
“All right!” Kip hurried forward to pick up the chalk. He knelt next to March, who was mumbling to himself with his paws clasped together in front of him, and said, “I’m sorry,” as he rubbed the chalk on the beaver’s knee.
March did not acknowledge having heard him. “…and forgive us our trespasses,” Kip caught before his words were lost in breathy sobs.
“Is it done?” Victor’s tone had grown impatient.
Kip dropped the chalk. It had left a white smudge in the fur, barely perceptible. “It’s done.” He sat back on the floor, heart pounding, dreading what was going to come next. “Please, don’t.”
“Ah, as much as I love hearing you beg, I’m going to enjoy showing you how foolish you’ve been even more.” Victor gestured Farley over. “Summon it.”
Farley spoke a summoning spell, and out of habit Kip listened for the demon’s name. It wasn’t familiar to him—Poatancia—but he committed it to memory as a whoosh of air and the smell of burning plants signaled the arrival of the demon somewhere out of sight. A sharp tingle in Kip’s nose told him that the demon was likely around a third-order demon. Not the most powerful, but powerful enough.
When Farley had finished the binding spell, though, instead of the litany Kip knew from every demon summoning, Farley said, “You will obey every command of this man, Victor Adamson. You will make no move save on his order, speak no word save on his order, use no magic save on his order.”
“Thank you, Farley,” Victor said pleasantly. “Now, Poa, you will look into my mind only enough to see the spell I am holding there, and you will take that spell exactly and cast it on the beaver right here.”
“Yes, master.” The demon came into view then, a small crooked man with smoldering skin like that of a phosphorus elemental and wisps of hair around the crown of his head that gave off a constant stream of smoke. His eyes, at the level of Victor’s chest in height, glowed the bright yellow-orange of a fire, and he moved with deliberate slowness, as though his body were made of stone.
Victor rested one hand on the bars and focused. “This spell,” he said. “You have it?”
“Yes, master.” The demon’s voice hissed and popped like a slow-burning fire. It walked through the bars as though they weren’t there, its body parting and re-forming around them, and then reached a hand down to March’s shoulder.
The beaver cried out and flinched, but the demon’s hand stayed pressed to his fur. A moment later, the demon’s
other hand reached back through the bars, and Victor grasped it. For a heartbeat, nothing happened, and then March made a choked cry and his body—his body collapsed in on itself, legs shortening, head sinking down into his neck, the whole of him shrinking as Kip watched in horror. The beaver-Calatian let out a long low moan, swinging his head from side to side, now the size of a child. Now he was smaller, short and squat.
Kip backed away on the stone floor, unable to look away. Now the demon lifted his hand from the body of a beaver, an animal the size of Kip’s chest. The beaver wobbled on his legs for a moment, then looked around as though he had just woken from a nap. He took two steps forward and sniffed at the stone wall, then ambled curiously along it.
“Your mark is still there,” Victor said. “Go look.” When Kip didn’t move, Victor’s tone grew steely. “I said, go look.”
His arms glowed, Kip saw now, but with a dark kind of light that hurt his eyes to look at. Turning back to the beaver, Kip tried to get close enough to see the fur where he’d placed the chalk, but the beaver raised his head in alarm and ambled away as Kip approached.
“I’ll just hold him still for you, shall I?” Victor spoke a basic physical sorcery spell, and the beaver lifted from the ground, his legs waving around and head turning in alarm. He rose to the height of Kip’s head and then remained there. “Go on now.”
Kip drew close enough to see the white smudge on the fur, unnecessary now because he believed in what Victor had done. He stared at the beaver that minutes before had been a person and imagined himself reduced to a fox, an animal bereft of understanding. What would he experience? Would it be like dying, his consciousness snuffed out in a moment? Or would he simply be stricken of reason and retain whatever limited intelligence was allowed in that form? He imagined Alice and Abel and Abel’s cubs as foxes running around Peachtree on four legs, and his eyes closed against that future. He would do everything in his power to prevent it, for as long as that power lasted.
“Have you verified that it’s there?” Again the impatient, bored tone.