by Tim Susman
“It would do me good to hear it.” Kip deliberately raised his ears.
Silence held for three clicks of the clock, and then the older fox exhaled. “What sort of life does the wife of a sorcerer have to look forward to? Brief visits, the burden of raising cubs entirely on her shoulders, scorn from the town…”
He paused there, and Kip took the chance to jump in. “You think there will always be scorn?”
Thomas nodded once, then said, “Perhaps not always as it is now. Familiarity and time may help. But there will always be those who feel that you are taking a dangerous course and pulling the rest of us behind you without regard for our wishes.”
“And do you count yourself among those?” Kip asked, challenging the other in a way he’d never dared before.
Surprise flattened the older fox’s ears. He frowned. “I—I do not believe that is pertinent.”
“I think it is.” Kip leaned forward. “If you thought I was engaged in a noble pursuit, to become one of the first Calatian sorcerers, you’d be proud for Alice to marry me. You’d offer to help raise the cubs. Instead, you construct excuses that would not be excuses if you believed in what I’m doing.”
“All right.” Thomas lay his paws face down on the table and met Kip’s stare. “Yes, I believe it is foolish, because it leads the sorcerers to believe that all Calatians aspire to more than we have. Look around.” He gestured to his house. “There was a time, and it was not so long ago as you might think, when we would not be permitted to have a house such as this, even if we built it with our own paws. We would be required to turn it over to a needy human family. There are areas of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, where Calatians can own homes and live freely. Now we are treated as people; strange people, true, but we are people, and by and large we are left alone.”
“Left alone,” Kip broke in, “as long as we make no pretense of owning land, of voting or participating in politics, of attending the same churches or entering certain trades like the law. As long as we don’t ask to live in certain other areas of New York, Philadelphia, Boston. As long as we accept that we are no more than they believe us to be.”
“And what if we are no more than that?”
“Then we should discover that for ourselves.” The answer shot out of Kip with the speed of thought.
Thomas sat back and rubbed his whiskers. “The colonies are in a similar situation. We are granted a certain amount of self-governance and freedom, and we give up a certain amount to live under the protection of the more powerful Empire. These people who talk of revolution ignore certain truths: how would we defend ourselves against a foe? How would we build roads and cities when the best road-layers work for the Empire? We would have to hire them—”
“We pay taxes to hire them now.” Kip would not have broken in had Thomas not stopped himself, seeming to realize the flaw in his argument. “But the Empire decides where they go.”
“But we are part of the Empire.” The older fox frowned. “Are you in sympathy with the revolutionaries?”
“No!” Kip barked. “No, I love the Empire, but your analogy does not quite work. Within the Empire we are allowed more rights than Calatians are allowed as compared to humans.”
“I feel that you accept one because it suits you, and the other because you have not thought about it enough,” Thomas said.
“Which is which?” Kip raised an eyebrow.
“I am not playing games, Kip. My daughter’s future is at stake.”
“I understand that. And I did not come here to play games, either.” Kip took a breath. “I care for your daughter. I have seen her grow and gotten to know her over the last four years, and I promised when we made the engagement to provide a good home for her. I still mean to do so.”
The older fox folded his arms. “What has become of the sorcerers’ wives who were not killed in the attack?”
Kip kept his ears upright, though they threatened to fold down at the reminder of the danger of being a sorcerer’s wife. “They currently reside in Boston. Sorcerers are able to travel expediently to see them, and Boston is safer than the College. But I believe New Cambridge itself to be safer than either.”
At that, Thomas did smile, very slightly. Kip pressed on. “ And do you not think that a sorcerer would be better able to protect Alice than any other husband? Would you like to see what I can do?”
He’d not thought out that statement, and regretted it as soon as he uttered it, because the other fox jerked back in a flash of panic. Kip held up a paw. “Nothing dangerous,” he said. “And I have won respect even from human sorcerers for my progress.”
Curiosity now crept into Thomas’s features. His ears, which had gone flat, came up again. This was more encouraging. Kip knew that all of his family were possessed of a strong curiosity, and Alice, at least, had shown similar tendencies, so perhaps it was a trait of foxes. “If it is not dangerous,” the older fox said.
“Not at all.” Kip held out his left paw, palm up. Purple flickers grew around both of them, and then he called a small flame into being on his paw.
So far he had only been able to hold it for three seconds before the pain grew too intense, and that was enough in this case. Thomas stared at the small bright flower until it vanished, and then shook his head as though from a dream. As Kip rubbed his paw, Thomas sniffed, becoming alert again. “Would you like some butter for that?”
Kip shook his head. “It’s been burned many times. That’s a challenge one of the sorcerers set me. He can hold the fire without burning himself and I’m to work out how he does it.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t dangerous.”
“I meant to you.”
There was something comfortable in staring into amber slit-pupiled eyes so like his father’s. Kip relaxed into the silence, and eventually Thomas extended his paw. “I’m not decided in your favor, but we will not write to other families about matching Alice just yet. There may be more to the situation than I had seen.”
Kip took the paw and clasped it firmly. “I would appreciate every consideration you can give me.”
“It means a lot that you came. We were wondering whether you would.”
“Of course.”
They walked into the yard to say good-bye to mother and daughter, and then Thomas escorted Kip out to the front gate. “Tell me,” he said in a low voice pitched for Kip’s ears, “do they treat you poorly up there?”
“Some do. Some respect what I can do.”
“Mm. And you judge it worthwhile, what you’re doing?”
Again, Kip held those amber eyes, reflections of his own. “More than anything I have ever done.”
The older fox nodded. “Godspeed, then.”
Kip felt that there was more he could have said, but he wasn’t sure what. He stopped to see his parents and told them about his visit, but they had no other insights. So he tried to let the matter go for the moment, which proved easier than he’d thought it would be, because there had been frost overnight and the day remained cold, with winds picking up in the afternoon. His furred ears grew numb enough that he thought for a moment about constructing a pair of torches to hold by them and keep them warm, and that returned his thoughts to the problem of heating the basement.
With the Selection just two weeks away, all the students redoubled their efforts to impress the Masters, mostly to little overall effect. Jacob Quarrel, the most advanced after Kip, created a small floating orrery of his marbles in class one day, attracting the attention of the ravens who’d come to watch. Joshua Carmichael attempted to outdo him using his own marbles plus Farley’s, but Farley took his marbles easily back and Carmichael’s clattered to the stone floor, several breaking. The noise distracted Quarrel enough that he lost control of his orrery, though he managed to catch several marbles in his hands and then sat looking ashamed. After that, Master Patris instructed the class to limit themselves to the exercises he set them, and Kip did not get to see any more student attempts to impress Masters, though he hea
rd his classmates talking about them enough to know they continued to happen.
Kip had memorized the summoning and binding spells, but his attempts to bind a magical fire had failed until he’d convinced Master Windsor to bind one for him. He’d leaned in close, studied the fire, tried to smell the difference between it and an unbound fire. He tried all that night but did not succeed, and then the next night he thought about the smell of an old fire, one that had been burning a long time, and with that in mind, he cast the binding spell well enough that Windsor accused him of having also cast the binding spell on the Great Hall fire, which Kip took for a compliment.
It was figuring out where to reach for the elementals that puzzled him. He had asked Odden, who had repeated that he didn’t want to waste his time on that spell, and Windsor had told Kip he was mistaken if he thought elementals as easy to bind as fire.
That afternoon, though, hurrying into the Great Hall rubbing his paws together, he stopped by the fireplace to warm up and said hello to the elementals, and the solution presented itself, so simple he wondered he hadn’t thought of it before.
“Say, fellows,” he said, staring down into gold-bright eyes, “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me a little about where you come from.”
The seams in their skin glowed brightly, and the lizards that had hung back now crowded up to the front, speaking in a babble of voices that Kip could not sort out.
“Home? Oh, it’s lovely.”
“Aye, home, well, it’s much like this—”
“—a hundred times this—“
“—with skippers far as you can reach—”
“—and darkflies—”
“—horrid things—”
“—but the Flower is there—”
“—wouldn’t be home if the Flower wasn’t—”
“—home is the Flower—”
“Truer words never spoken, Ern.”
“But what does it feel like?” Kip asked.
“Feel?”
“Hot,” many of them said at once.
“Delightful.”
“Bright.”
“Alive.”
“Oh, alive, good one.”
“Always moving.”
“Like the inside of a fire.”
“But more so.”
“And different.”
“Very different.”
“But not that different.”
“No, no.”
“Except for the Flower.”
Whenever the Flower was mentioned, the level of chatter rose as each of the lizards pushed its opinion into the mix.
“—Flower’s not different—”
“—it’s more—”
“—more, that’s the perfect word—”
Kip broke in again. “What is the Flower?”
This stymied the lizards for a moment. Then they broke into their chaotic babble again.
“Flower’s the center—”
“It’s the start—”
“It’s our home.”
“But,” Kip asked, “does it look like a flower? What kind of flower?”
They laughed. “Course the Flower looks like a flower.”
“Elsewise we wouldn’t call it the Flower.”
“We’d call it the Scuttle if it looked like a scuttle.”
“Besides, the Flower don’t look like—”
“It just is—”
“And we gathers round it—”
“And dance—”
“I was gettin’ to that!”
“An’ it’s like—”
“Well, you can’t know—”
“Fine fellow, you are, but—”
“Not made of fire, are you?”
At this, they fell silent and contemplated this inescapable flaw in Kip. He bowed to them. “You have been most helpful,” he said, and hoped he was right. He had as much information as he could have hoped for from one conversation, and an idea of what to look for: a dimension of fire and hunger, magical fire living without consuming, a bright-hot Flower at its center.
Master Windsor arrived late that evening, and he had not even completed half a sentence of his customary greeting before his eyes fell on the large half-circle of cleared floor against the right-hand wall. His gaze turned slowly to Kip and Coppy, both covered with dust. “What,” he said slowly, and then realization dawned as he looked at Kip.
“We didn’t use magic to clear it,” Kip said, dust rising from his tail as he curled it against him.
“Obviously. Where is Miss Carswell?”
“Bathing.” Coppy brushed some dust from his fur. “We said we’d wait for you and she said she hoped the place would be warm when she returned.”
The sorcerer stared at Kip. “You believe you can perform the summoning and binding?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“You realize that if you meet this task with the carelessness that has characterized much of your spellcasting that you risk starting an inferno in this room?”
Kip gritted his teeth. “Aye, sir. I will be precise.” As I always am, he added silently.
“An’ Kip can deal with fire anyway. He put out that one that Broadside started,” Coppy chimed in.
Windsor turned his attention to the otter. “Lutris. You will be prepared to levitate into the air any creature that escapes the binding. Away from the paper, it will be relatively harmless until I manage to banish or confine it. Which,” he added, “I will be prepared for the necessity of doing in the three seconds you will be able to hold it.”
“Yes, sir.” Coppy closed his eyes, and a turquoise glow spread up his arms from his fingers.
“Penfold. Where have you been researching the elemental planes? Did Florian give you Loudermilk’s treatise?”
Kip blinked. “I asked the elementals upstairs.” When Windsor frowned at him, Kip added, “They were very helpful. They told me about the Flower, and I think with my understanding of fire, I’ll be able to…”
The sorcerer shook his head slowly. “At the very least, I suppose this will be an exercise in how much energy is wasted when spells are cast without the proper research. Proceed, then.”
He seemed to relax and didn’t even ask Kip about the binding spell. Kip flicked his ears down but didn’t allow them to stay down. He pulled magic to him and held the summoning spell in his head. He would have to speak the binding spell as soon as the summoning was done, but he knew the form and was confident he could do it.
The syllables of the summoning spell came to him as he closed his eyes and reached out as he’d done to the fire in Odden’s office. Here, there was no actual fire, and he faltered at first, missing a point in space to hold on to. Then he felt a clear note of understanding: the fire was all around him because the potential for fire was all around. He could build the world in his mind and then go questing into it, into a place of thick phosphorus scent around dancing glowing lizards, of unquenchable hunger and dark spots like flies around them and in the center of it all…
The Flower unfolded before him, a magnificent pillar made up of the hearts of a thousand fires. It consumed hunger, burned flame, and gave off the heat of a sun. Kip’s body would have fallen to ash had he approached the Flower with it, but his mind simply admired it from a safe distance, watched the cavorting of the lizards around it, and wondered if he might be seeing an aspect of God.
Moments passed, and he felt himself slipping back and out of the world as the strength of the spell faded. He reached out to the lizards dancing around the Flower and drew their attention. Their eyes burned bright as the Flower itself, here in their home, all turned to him. “Come,” he said, and readied the binding spell as he felt the weight of one of the lizards on his spell. It was heavier than he would have expected, but it came back with him all the same.
With a snap, he fell backwards into a pile of paper, but he continued to speak the binding spell even as a burst of heat and an acrid wave of phosphorus odor washed over him. He reached out and caught the lizard with
his spell, closing it in the clear half-circle they’d prepared, and he was just congratulating himself when he heard Windsor cursing.
Kip’s lizard stood in front of him, skittering back and forth in front of the piles of paper. To his right, Windsor had both hands out facing two more elementals, one floating in the air and kicking its feet and tail out, the other lunging toward the stacks of paper.
With a snap, the one on the floor disappeared. Papers fluttered in its wake. Windsor exhaled and turned a fearsome eye on Kip. “Penfold,” he said in a low growl worthy of any Calatian, “see if you have also mastered the banishment spell.”
He gestured to the floating elemental, which was now calling out, “Lemme down! Not fair!” in a high-pitched voice.
When Kip did nothing, Windsor snapped, “Quickly, now, before Lutris lets it fall into the paper.”
“I…” Kip swallowed. “I haven’t prepared the banishment spell, sir. I didn’t think there would be need…”
Windsor nodded grimly and waved his hand. The elemental in the air vanished with another snap, and the air of its passing ruffled Kip’s whiskers lightly. “And yet there was need. And you were unprepared. Without myself and Lutris here, you might well now be in the center of a conflagration. Work on your focus; there was no need to bring back three elementals. And always be prepared for any eventuality your spell may bring about. Is that clear?”
“Yes.” Kip nodded.
“Very well.” He turned to Coppy. “Lutris, it appears you can now command the levitation of a single object. Let us work on multiple objects tonight.”
And without even a word of praise for Kip, the sorcerer began instructing Coppy on the movement and suspension of multiple objects at once.
The fox lay back on his elbows and then lowered his head to meet the glowing eyes of the lizard he’d summoned, patiently watching him. Or maybe it was looking past him at the mounds of paper. He hoped that was why it licked its lips.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Kip Penfold. What’s your name?”
“Penfold,” it said in a low voice. “Pleasure t’meet you. I’m Neddy.”
“Welcome to our room, Neddy. We’re pleased to have you.”