by Tim Susman
The bags stood near the wall, and his father’s eyes flicked to them, but they could wait. Kip took a breath. “Dad,” he said, “I got in.”
For a moment, his father’s muzzle stayed perfectly still, and Kip could pick out each whisker’s silver shine, the reflections of the stars and moon in the curve of the older fox’s eyes. Then his father broke into a wide smile and reached out to hug Kip, pounding him on the back. “I knew you could do it,” he said, softly against Kip’s cheek fur. “I knew it.”
“I didn’t.” Kip hugged back, and it had been a long time since he’d hugged his father this closely. When he stepped back, he worried that his father would reprimand him for the wagging motion of his tail—showing emotion so publicly—and then saw that his father’s tail was moving quicker even than his own.
“All it takes is one master to be on your side.” Max rubbed his eyes. “How do you know? Did Vendis—Master Vendis—tell you?”
Kip hesitated, but it was too late to conceal his spying. So he told his father about his adventure, leaving out the conversation with the raven, and Max nodded throughout. “If you’d been caught, you could easily have been thrown out simply for that,” he said when Kip was done.
“Yes, I know.” Kip searched for any sign of anger, and found none. “But I wanted to know.” He clasped his paws together and rubbed his fingers against each other. “You’re not mad?”
Max smiled. “You’re grown,” he said. “It was your decision to make, and had you been thrown out, the consequences would be yours to face. Though not completely alone. You might have gotten Coppy thrown out as well.”
“I know. But he went along with it. He and Emily were lookouts.” And, Kip said to himself, Coppy would’ve left if I’d been thrown out regardless.
“It’s done, and no harm has yet come of it.” Max lifted a paw to Kip’s shoulder. “But use caution. All they need is one simple excuse to do what several of them, I’m sure, would like to.”
As if he needed the reminder, so soon after listening to them debate his fate and whether he could be trusted simply because of his nature. Kip gestured back to where his and Coppy’s bloodstained bags sat. “Not only the sorcerers,” he said. “Farley’s one of the candidates.”
They crouched by the bags, and his father’s eyes widened when he smelled the blood. “This isn’t yours, is it? No. Smell’s wrong.”
“Farley slaughtered a wild fox in our tent.”
His father stood, hissing breath through his teeth. “Do you wish me to talk to the sheriff?”
“Why would that make a difference?”
Max exhaled. “Now you’re a student at the college. Or—well, tomorrow you will be, officially.”
“And the sheriff was sent up to prevent me from enrolling. So someone powerful asked him to do that. He’ll just tell me that I won’t have any trouble if I come down.” Kip’s mind raced. “For all I know, he put Farley up to enrolling as well. He certainly didn’t seem bothered to be quit of him.”
“He might also simply have been grateful for the opportunity to rid himself of what was sure to be a troublesome sentry on the Watch.” Max put a paw on Kip’s shoulder. “There are people who don’t want you to enroll there, but I doubt they used Farley as a tool to discourage you.”
“Who doesn’t want me to enroll? The Mayor, I suppose? Some of the council?”
Max shook his head, his ears half-down. “I don’t know. I will try to find out, if anyone will talk to me about it. It’s the way things are, that’s all.”
The way things are. If Kip had a sorcerer’s power and robes, people wouldn’t scheme behind his back. He could exact justice from Farley himself, without having to rely on prejudiced Patris. Even Argent hadn’t seemed too motivated to punish the boy. “Maybe not forever.”
“No, not forever. But change takes time.” His father rested a paw on his shoulder. “These will take time, too, to dry once they’re clean. Will you stay here tonight?”
“Yes.” Kip paused. “If we can also house Emily. I don’t want her to walk back up to the College alone.”
His father smiled. “You could walk her up. It’s not far.”
“Then we might as well stay up there.”
“Mmm. I think we can find a place for her.” His father looked down again at the bags, and touched them. “We won’t tell your mother. Come, I’ll get the bucket. You pump the water.”
They washed the outside of the bag with a cloth until Kip could only smell the traces of blood when he put his nose up close. “None of your clothes were ruined?” his father asked, holding it open but not sniffing inside.
There was a time when his father would have pushed his nose into whatever of Kip’s he felt he needed to investigate. Kip shook his head. “The bags were closed. One of my shirts was out, but that’s all.”
“I’ll have your mother make up another one, or we’ll get one from the Brocks. Is the book all right?”
“Of course. It was in the bottom of the bag, so…” Kip paused. He hadn’t checked for the sorcery book his father’d gotten him, but he’d left it packed in the bag. Only now he was thinking that his bag had perhaps felt a little bit lighter. He reached inside where the book should be, heart racing.
His fingers pushed aside cloth and more cloth, and touched the inside of the bag shell. He rummaged more frantically—it had to be in there—and then his fingers met the old binding, the worn pages inside. “It’s safe,” he said, relaxing. “It’s still here.”
“You’ll get a new one soon.” His father smiled.
“I know, but…” Kip let his fingers rest on the book. He’d read maybe twenty or thirty books, counting the school’s texts, but this one had always felt special to him, weightier than the others or more real. Mathematics and history were interesting but remote. Sorcery had gotten inside him, touched him directly, and was about to change his life. The thrill when his father had handed it to him still echoed in him when he touched it, and he’d felt it every night he opened the book and stared down at its worn pages and fading lettering. “You gave me this one.”
“I’ll get you another book.” His father looked down. “In fact, since you don’t need it…would you like to keep it here?”
It might be safer here, Kip thought. His tail curled around his legs. “I’d like to keep it,” he said softly. “If you think it wouldn’t be dangerous.”
“I can hardly think of a more likely place for an old spell book to be found than a sorcerer’s college.” Max’s grey-touched paw patted Kip’s arm. “If you want to keep it, then keep it.”
Kip let the book go and closed up the bag. “Let’s do Coppy’s now,” he said, just as the otter himself appeared at the back door.
“You two done yet?” he asked. “We’re runnin’ out of small talk.”
Emily agreed to stay in the Penfolds’ bedroom above the shop with Ada, while Max moved upstairs to sleep in the attic alongside Kip and Coppy. The three of them lay in the dark room after Max extinguished the lamp, but Kip could tell from the rhythms of breathing that none of them were sleeping. He was wondering if they’d made a mistake in staying here, if they would come up in the morning to find the demon at the gates politely smiling, refusing to open them. The prospect of the doors so nearly open to him slamming shut tightened his chest, made him pant, and sent him trying to push his thoughts in another direction. Spells and magic, how right it felt when he was doing it, how much it would change his life. His breathing eased. He wondered how many spells he would be able to learn in his first year. It had taken him six months to learn his first one, three more to levitate himself (and that one was shaky when he wasn’t being fueled by a mysterious surge of power).
“You’re lucky to have fallen in with Emily,” Max said presently. “She’s very quick and quite well-read.”
“She’ll make a good sorcerer,” Kip said.
“Will you manage the store well without me?” Coppy asked. “I know we didn’t plan for me to enroll as well.”
<
br /> “I’ll be fine.” Max’s voice echoed from the rafters. “Johnny Lapelli can come in and help. He knows enough and will learn quickly.”
“Not too quickly,” Kip murmured.
“Stop it.” His father’s voice grew sterner. “He’ll be fine.”
“I learned it well enough.” Coppy lay on his back next to Kip staring up at the ceiling. “I’m not the quickest.”
“You’re quicker than Johnny.” Kip flicked his tail.
“The store will be fine,” Max said. “You make sure you work hard at your studies and don’t do anything to upset the masters there.”
Kip’s paw rested on his stomach and he pushed up the fur there and smoothed it down. Too late for that, he thought, unless I could turn myself human.
The sun had not yet come up when Kip opened his eyes, but the pink-shaded early morning sky told him dawn wasn’t too far off. He’d woken in this bed nearly every morning of his life, and the last time he’d been abuzz with excitement about going up to the College. Now the excitement had a slightly different tone. Four days ago, he’d worked himself up to challenge a College he’d been sure would try to keep him out. Now he was part of it, and that belligerent challenge lingered in him, but at the same time he knew he had his chance. He couldn’t charge into the College with his teeth out and his ears back; he would have to show them that he could thrive within their rules, that he could learn as well as any human student—better, even—and that he would be the kind of sorcerer they couldn’t afford to ignore.
“Thinking about the College?” Coppy said softly beside him.
“Aren’t you?”
“A bit. Thinking of home too.”
“Going back as a sorcerer?”
Kip could see Coppy’s smile perfectly well in the dim light, even though the otter didn’t show any teeth. “The two of us, aye. Go back and mend walls and…” He laughed softly. “Set fires, I s’pose?”
“I’ll learn more than that.”
“You will indeed.” Max’s voice joined them. “And you’d best be on your way up the hill to begin that education. If I’m not mistaken, your mother’s brewing tea.”
Even through the perfumed air of the house, the scent of tea was impossible to miss. By the time they made their way down two flights of stairs, it was already steaming in a flowered china pot and five cups sat out on the small table in the parlor where they often took their meals. “I thought that before you returned to the college,” Kip’s mother said, pouring tea for all of them, “we might visit the Cartwrights.”
“I don’t know if we have time,” Kip said, taking his cup and pressing his paws around its warmth. The thick, rich aroma of the tea rose with the steam and filled his nostrils without him having to put his nose close to the cup, as Emily was doing.
His mother filled the last cup and set the pot down on the table with a sharp knock against the wood. “You’ll make time.”
“If I hadn’t come back down,” Kip protested.
“But you did. And the Cartwrights will be expecting us, so drink your tea and we’ll go over and then you can get on back up to your College.”
Kip looked to his father for help, but Max would not meet his eye, only sipped his tea slowly and then, in the silence, said, “I suppose I should open the store soon enough. Would you be so kind as to stop over at Bess Lapelli’s house and ask Johnny to come over today?”
“Of course,” Ada said, sipping her own tea. “Emily, if you and Coppy would like to walk up to the College, you needn’t wait for us.”
“Oh, no,” Emily said brightly. “I’d be delighted to meet the Cartwrights.”
So Kip and his mother walked ahead of Emily and Coppy back up Half-Moon Street toward the church and inn, where many townsfolk, human and Calatian alike, had already begun going about their daily business. Many of them carried fresh-baked loaves of bread under their arms, and the smell as they passed the bright, busy baker’s shop and saw white-aproned Mr. Scort behind his counter made Kip’s mouth water and his steps slow, but his mother kept up her pace. They passed behind the church to the neighborhood beyond, where the small one-story clapboard houses spread out amidst vegetable gardens and low fences. Here lived most of the Calatians who worked out on fields or for human businesses in town, and the streets here were quieter, as most of them had left with the sunrise. But at the house where his mother knocked, which had a neatly painted sign over the door proclaiming it the residence of “The Cartwrights,” the whole family had remained home: Thomas Cartwright, a fox a few years older than Kip’s father; Laurel Cartwright, barely a decade older than Kip himself (Thomas’s second wife); Alice; and Alice’s younger brother Daniel, who proudly informed the visitors that he would begin attending school the following week.
“Welcome,” Laurel said with a smile at the door. Her blue eyes sparkled when the sun caught them, and her dark brown ears had no hint of grey yet, unlike her husband’s. She showed them into a small kitchen with a plain wooden table and four chairs around it, two of them occupied by Alice and Daniel. Thomas stood stiffly behind his daughter’s chair, one paw on the chair back, leaning to one side as a result of an old leg injury that had never fully healed. Alice had grown half a foot in the last year, and her ears now reached Kip’s chest, but she hadn’t grown into her height yet, so her arms and legs appeared thin even though her fur shone and her eyes were bright and healthy. Laurel gestured to the two free chairs. “I’m sorry—we weren’t expecting so many of you.”
“We can’t stay long,” Kip said before his mother could accept any invitation. “I only wanted to come over and tell you…well, you all know I applied to study sorcery up at the College. We went through the tests—you know Coppy, and this is Emily, another one of the applicants.”
His speech then waited for Emily’s introductions to the Cartwrights, and vice versa. He smiled at Alice as everyone was clasping paws to hands and saying names, and she smiled back shyly. As usual, he felt an odd mix of imposed obligation and responsibility when looking at her; he hadn’t asked to be her husband, but together they would be responsible for continuing the line of foxes in New Cambridge, and his job would be to keep her safe. At least, he reflected, with Farley up on Founders Hill with him, he wouldn’t have to worry about that.
The introductions finished, and the group returned their attention to him. “As I was saying,” he went on, “we’ve all been tested, and…well, we feel very confident about our chances.”
Laurel smiled, and Alice clapped her paws together in delight, but Thomas’s ears flicked back and his rigidly polite demeanor did not change. “I understand that the sorcerers’ wives don’t reside at the College with them,” he said.
“Master Loman’s lived here in the town,” Kip said, and then snapped his mouth shut. Master Loman had been one of those killed in the attack, and his widow had moved to Providence to live with relatives.
“What of the builder sorcerers who spend all their time traveling around the Empire? Or the military sorcerers who can’t tell their families where they live?” Thomas kept his eyes on Kip.
“Are you all three going to be sorcerers?” Alice asked with wide eyes, and then turned to her father. “I want to be a sorcerer too.”
“Absolutely not,” he said.
“Marriage certainly is much more difficult for those sorcerers living at the College,” Ada said. “Max tells me that the strenuous life they live allows for little in the way of family, and those few who are married have sent their wives away. But that is only a temporary measure until the current war is resolved.”
Thomas shook his head. “When this war is resolved, there will be another, and another. We have only just defeated Napoleon, and were promised years of peace. Before Napoleon there were the Spanish again, and the French monarchy’s colonists before that, and that is as long as I’ve been alive. London has her ancient rivalries and we cannot escape from them.”
This felt uneasily like a column Kip had read from Boston advocating independen
ce for the colonies, which Max and Kip and Coppy all thought was foolish, especially since the Colonies’ magical resources had been effectively cut almost to nothing, not counting the builders nor the military, who owed a more direct allegiance to the Empire. In any war, Britain’s superior forces, both physical and magical, would be nearly impossible to overcome. “Three years is a long time,” Kip said, because nobody else seemed inclined to respond to Thomas’s words. “I remain committed to providing a family for Alice.”
Alice smiled up at him, her tail wagging where it hung below the chair. Emily stepped up beside Kip. “After all,” she said, “if a Calatian and a woman may become sorcerers, then not all traditions are rooted in stone.”
Thomas did not relax nor smile at this. “There may be reasons for Calatians and women not to be sorcerers,” he said.
Emily straightened, and even after only a few days, Kip knew her well enough to think, oh no. He raised a paw quickly. “If that is the case, then we will certainly find out, I’m sure.” He had no idea what Thomas was talking about, but he didn’t want to give Emily the chance to say anything. “The sorcerers would not have admitted us if there were insurmountable barriers.”
“I’m not speaking of what the sorcerers know.” Thomas scowled, his ears going back and his lip twisting up to show some of his teeth. “I’m speaking of the people in this town…” He looked around at them. “None of you work next to humans every day.”
“They shop at our store.”
“But you do not work alongside them. You don’t hear how they think of us.”
“I know well how they think of us.” Kip wanted to ask, why are we arguing? We’re both foxes, we’re on the same side. “You know that.”
“Aye, I do.” Thomas lowered his eyes a moment, and then raised them again to meet Kip’s. “And I know you don’t know everything. Listen.”
“Thomas,” Laurel said. “Please.”
He raised a paw. “I will keep it brief, I promise. We have grasshoppers here, you know? You have seen them?”
“Of course,” Ada put in. “They are harmless.”