The Tower and the Fox: Book 1 of The Calatians

by Tim Susman

  “And maybe they’re working with the revolutionaries.”

  “Yes.” Odden peered at him. “Sharp, you are.”

  “I hadn’t thought the revolutionaries were anything but talkers,” Kip said. “People with ideas. They don’t seem to have done anything yet.”

  “No, but they would hardly move openly, not while their influence is still so weak. But this is all for a future discussion. I feel Windsor might enjoy participating as well.”

  Kip drew his shoulders in and nodded. “Perhaps I will ask him,” he said, knowing that he would have to have at least one conversation with Windsor before too long.

  Odden linked his hands behind his back, his broad stomach protruding, and paced back and forth again. “My response to Patris’s points, in inverse order, is as follows: I believe that the third is unprovable. You have shown no revolutionary bent, and your admittedly iconoclastic attitude seems solely aimed at improving the lot of yourself and your fellows. Someone willing to fight for his people is just the kind of sorcerer we want, if only you will recognize that the sorcerers here at the College are now your people. Do you?”

  His bushy eyebrows rose, and Kip nodded. “The Calatians—the town drove my father out of business. I don’t owe them anything.” Even as he said the words, his chest fluttered, but he sat up straight and didn’t let the flutter touch his voice.

  “Good.” Odden stopped pacing. “I believe that with a small amount of further study, you may be ready to spend time studying with Master Cott at King’s, which would further cement your loyalties and address Patris’s worries on that score. On the second point, that the calyxes might revolt upon seeing what you have achieved? I feel it is as likely that they may revolt if you are prevented from achieving your potential. In any event, that is beyond your capacity to influence. I do not see that it should have a strong bearing on whether you are allowed to pursue an education.

  “But the first point, that one troubled me the most. I believe you have the best of intentions in your pursuit of sorcery. Left to your own devices, there would likely be no problem.”

  “Farley Broadside won’t be continuing,” Kip put in. “So I think that will reduce the problems still further.”

  “Yes.” Odden inclined his head. “But Victor Adamson remains, and Patris himself, not to mention the people of New Cambridge. You’ve told me they drove your father out of business. As you master fire and learn to summon demons and other destructive magics, the damage you will be able to do with a single impulse will be greatly increased. So from you I need a promise that in addition to studying sorcery, you will study self-control, that you will never use your abilities against another person except to save your life, and then only as much as is needed, no more. Can you promise me that?”

  That was what he had done to save Coppy, he’d thought, and wouldn’t any sorcerer need to promise that? But what was needed here was agreement, not argument. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Good. Now, to the less pleasant parts of our talk.” Odden leaned back against the wall next to his door. “You can imagine that Patris was not inclined to agree to your apprenticeship, even given my rebuttal to his points. So you will be taking over one of his duties, as his own apprentice is not suited to do so.”

  The flare of anger at Adamson rose again; Kip suppressed it. “Which duty, sir?”

  “Scanning the ruins of the attacked buildings for remains and other clues.”

  Kip kept his voice steady and nodded, trying not to picture Saul’s twisted, shattered body. “Yes, sir. How do I do that?”

  “You will be told when you are ready to start. I have to teach you some basic mastery and summoning of demons, but I believe your facility in summoning elementals indicates you will not take long to learn it.” Odden rubbed his hands together and met Kip’s eye. “You have a rare talent, Penfold. I would not see it wasted, and that is why I have taken a great risk to help you foster it. I hope you remember that.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m very grateful. I promise you I will do the best I can.”

  “I know you will.” Odden reached across his desk to clap a hand on Kip’s shoulder. “There is the matter of having you work with a calyx, which will be rather awkward, I’m afraid, but I feel certain you can manage that as well.”

  “I can,” Kip said, though he felt less certain about that than about anything else he’d agreed to in the past hour.

  “All right, then. I’m sure your friends will want to celebrate with you. No classes today, but tomorrow they will start again, except that Tuesday and Thursday mornings, instead of Patris’s class, you’ll come have a private class with me.” Odden clasped Kip’s paw in his hand as the fox rose to his feet. “Ah, and if you wish, you may move to the outer quarters there. They’ll be vacated by tomorrow, and it’s traditional. All the apprentices are moving to their masters’ outer quarters.”

  “Must I?”

  Odden raised his eyebrows. “I thought you’d be pleased to escape the basement. Of course you may continue to live there if you wish. I don’t believe Windsor will have Lutris up at his quarters, and if the two of you would prefer to remain together…”

  Kip had been thinking more that Emily would not want to live with Master Argent and would want company, but he nodded as though that had been his main concern. “We will discuss our situation,” he said.

  The sorcerer opened his door. Outside, Farley was nowhere to be seen (though his smell lingered, another reason for Kip to choose the basement), but the other two students were packing up their clothes. Kip stepped through, and Odden called out as he left.

  “I look forward to being quite proud of you, apprentice,” he said.

  “I’ll do the best I can.” Kip held his head up and walked out.

  Coppy had finished with Master Windsor by that point, so with the day free, Kip asked if he would come to say good-bye to Kip’s parents. Emily asked if they would come back for dinner—“We plan to have a celebration, and maybe you can burn Broadside’s stench off the bench in the dining tent,” she said with a sparkle in her eye.

  “I’ll be sorry to miss it,” Kip said, “but if my parents want us to stay for dinner, we will.”

  So he and Coppy left the gates, passing Corimea who was present again, and walked down the hill. Coppy remained silent, so Kip tried to nudge him into conversation. “Master Odden is going to be pretty strict,” he said. “Told me I’d best not put my nose out of line or he and I would both be in trouble with old Patris.” Still Coppy didn’t respond. Kip cleared his throat. “How was Windsor?”

  The otter walked with him a few more paces, then shrugged. “Same as always. Told me I’d got a long way to go. Said I’d better show more work than I had the last two months. Said I could be kicked out at the end of the year as easily as now.”

  “You will work hard, though,” Kip said. “And it’ll be easier without so much distraction. Now you’ve learned a little, we can work with some other spells. I bet you’d do well with water.”

  “I don’t understand why he chose me!” The words burst out of Coppy, and then he ducked his head.

  Kip set a paw on his friend’s shoulder. “You’re not unhappy he Selected you, are you? We get to stay together and learn together and all.”

  “Oh, Kip, I’m not sad about that.” Coppy stepped closer to him, their tails touching and hips almost bumping, and then he stepped away again. “But I don’t understand it. I never thought Windsor saw any value in me and of all the Masters, I never thought he would want to work more with me. He’s always so angry and he makes me nervous like nobody else. Why would he want to torture me more? He gets no joy of it.”

  The outburst caught Kip by surprise. He almost confessed his role in it, but what would happen to Coppy’s confidence if he knew Windsor had only Selected him at Kip’s request? “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe he sees something in you…”

  “He sees someone he can bully,” Coppy said. “I don’t know. If it weren’t for you, I’d likely sa
y ‘good day’ and go back to the Isle. I could be useful there, and there’d be nobody to yell at me for not lifting something as fast or as steady as everyone else can do it. There’d be nobody else.”

  “You’d be arrested.”

  “Not if nobody knew about it. My people wouldn’t tell. I’d be discreet.” The otter rested a paw on Kip’s arm. “We were discreet before coming here.”

  “But…” That all felt wrong to Kip. He tried to put his finger on why. “But if there’s nobody to challenge you, you’ll never get better. Think of it, Coppy, think of what you could do. More than just lifting rocks, you could, you could maybe get fresh water to flow. Or you could learn to translocate, or you could be a healer like Master Splint.”

  “Aye…” Coppy exhaled. “Sorry. I know I should want to do more. But sometimes I want to leave it all behind. You won’t need me around to protect you no more, and I can’t help you with your studying, so what good am I?”

  “What good are you?” Kip wrapped an arm around the otter’s shoulders. “What good are you? You’re my best friend.”

  “Aye.” Coppy smiled brightly. “I reckon there is that.”

  They reached Kip’s house a little after noon. Kip heard one person moving around inside and opened the door with a sharp knock to alert them.

  His mother dropped the apple she was holding and ran to wrap her arms around him. “We didn’t know when to expect you,” she said against his cheek ruff, and then kissed him. “Your father is off making sure of the carriage. It’s for the first thing in the morning.”

  Their trunks stood against the wall of the kitchen, and beyond the kitchen door, the parlor furniture was stacked and wrapped in burlap cloths. All of Kip’s life up until two and a half months ago lay here in these rooms, wrapped to be sent a thousand miles south. He turned away from it as his mother moved to embrace Coppy as well. “What’s the news?” she asked, stepping back, her eyes fluttering between the two of them.

  “We’re both apprentices,” Kip told her, his tail wagging.

  She couldn’t hide the flicker of disappointment in her whiskers before masking it with joy. “I’m so delighted for you,” she said, and embraced them again. “Your father will be so proud. Two apprentice sorcerers in our family!”

  “The first two Calatian apprentices,” Kip said, with a guilty flick of the ear as he remembered Peter Cadno. “And Emily’s the first woman to be an apprentice.”

  “And all here in New Cambridge. It’s history in the making.” His mother picked up the apple and set it with the plate of simple cheese she’d been preparing, her tail swishing back and forth. “Would you like to have lunch with us? We’d be quite happy for your company.”

  The amount of food was about what Kip and Coppy were each accustomed to eating by themselves at lunch. They looked at each other and then Coppy said, “We already ate, but thank you.”

  “Mom.” Kip stepped forward and took her paw. “It’s a good thing, it really is. They’ll hear about us in London. Calatians down in the Bronx and in Boston and Philadelphia and down in Georgia will know that if they show magic, they can be considered as students.”

  She squeezed his paw back. “I know that,” she said. “I am proud of you, really I am. But it’s hearing about you that worries me. The good people will hear about you, and the bad ones, too.”

  “Coppy and I can defend ourselves.” Kip started to call magic, to show her that he could make a fire in the stove, but she waved him down before he got very far.

  “I know you can,” she said. “But every mother wants an easy life for her cubs. You know how I admire those bluestockings in Boston and Miss Clotilde here, running her own farm, all those women trying to make it easier for the rest of us.”

  “But that’s what I’m doing, too.”

  “Yes, but Kip, all those women are making their lives harder for themselves. And on top of that, you’re in the College, and…oh, I know it’s a good thing, a very good thing, but if you could find a less dangerous way of doing good, something that might not end with you killed…”

  Coppy had turned to see Kip’s reaction, and now chuckled. “It’s little use, Mrs. Penfold. You know Kip better than I do. When his mind is set on a thing, there’s no shifting it. But we’ll stick together, we two, and two have it easier than one.”

  “We’re four if you count Emily and Malcolm, and I do,” Kip added. “We’ve got friends among the sorcerers, too, Mom. We won’t be in more danger than anyone else.”

  Her ears slid back, and she lowered her voice. “I had nightmares the past two months. I woke up with that noise in my ears again, that awful thunder, and I knew for certain it was you under the rubble. I couldn’t stand it, Kip. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Mom.” He hugged her again. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  She kissed his cheek and pulled back. “Don’t give me anything to be sorry about.”

  Steps sounded outside. A moment later Max came through the door, his mouth creasing into a smile when he saw Kip and Coppy. “Good news?”

  “Good news.” Kip ran to his father and hugged him, and his father returned the embrace powerfully, patting Kip on the back. “Good news for us both!”

  “Ah, that’s wonderful. Oh, son.” Max pulled his head back, his nose an inch from Kip’s, his eyes shining already. “I’m so bloody proud of you.”

  “Max!” Ada said.

  The older fox laughed and moved to hug Coppy as well. “There’s a time for profanity, and this is quite definitely it. You realize what our son and our adopted son have accomplished? What they’ve shown the world?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We were just talking about it.”

  Kip gave them more details about the Selection, about Master Windsor’s surprise Selection of Coppy and the argument with Patris, about Vendis taking Malcolm. “Are you going to continue to be his calyx?” Kip asked his father.

  “No,” Max said. “I’m done with that once we move. I’ve set him up with Johnny Lapelli.”

  “And you’re leaving in the morning?” Coppy asked.

  “First thing.” Max smiled and shook his head. “I am not looking forward to this trip. The better part of a month, some wild roads…but we’ve the company of two other families from Boston headed south for the climate, and we’ve pooled our money to hire a guard—a human guard. So we’ll be in less danger than you will, I daresay.”

  “Max!”

  “I’m joking.” He reached out to take Ada’s paw, and leaned over to kiss her. “I’m sure we’ll be in terrible danger.”

  “I don’t want any of us to be in danger,” she said, but she smiled and leaned into his kiss.

  Kip and Coppy stayed through lunch, and then Kip pointed out that they could load the carriage much more quickly and easily than his parents could, so Max brought the cart around and the two apprentices (Kip got a thrill out of thinking of them that way) floated all the luggage and furniture into the cart bed.

  “Perhaps it’s not so terrible, this sorcery,” his mother said. “If only it was available to us more often.”

  Kip set his ears back, feeling guilty that he wouldn’t be going with his parents. His father saw it and took him by the arm. “I’m going to talk to Kip for a moment,” he said. “Excuse us.”

  They walked through the house, to the bolted door that led to the closed shop. His father unbolted it and gestured for Kip to go through.

  The smell of dust and neglect hit him first, and then the sight of the empty shelves, bare wood where there had been bottles he’d run his fingers over countless times, sniffed the stoppers of, catalogued and counted and wrapped for customers. A thin layer of dust coated the counter that had seen him grow up; it had been nose height, then neck height, then chest height. Now it came to his stomach and he rested a paw on it, trying to focus on his father and not on the silent, empty space that had once been a thriving shop.

  “Your mother wasn’t asking you to come along,” Max said. “In a way, she was telli
ng you how proud she is. You’re bringing sorcery to the Calatians of New Cambridge. We have been afforded certain protections because of our association with the college, but the sorcerers still do not offer us services as they do the humans. Master Splint, for example, will come down for certain extreme cases—of humans. Never of Calatians.”

  “He healed me once.” Kip remembered again the teeth of the steel trap on his foot.

  “As a favor to me. My relationship with Master Vendis allowed for certain privileges. I tried not to abuse them, but only used them when you needed them.” Max shook his head. “I’m pleased for Emily, too. Like Calatians, women have never had an outlet to develop any magical abilities. Think about what your life would have been like had you never entered the College, and then think of hundreds or thousands of women around the Empire who face the same fate. Emily is doing for them what you are doing for your people.”

  “My people.” Kip looked around the empty shop. “How can you say that after what they’ve done to you? They’re not my people. They don’t care about me or my family.”

  Max reached out and gripped Kip’s arm tightly. “They are always your people. Don’t forget that. Not all the Calatians in New Cambridge ruined this business. Some humans did too, and many Calatians came to support me. Many spoke well of you but could not afford to support the business. Humans may borrow money, but not so much us.” He released Kip’s arm and sighed. “Those are matters I hope you will never have to concern yourself with. Suffice to say that if you must be angry—and it serves you little purpose, and I would counsel you against it—then be angry at the persons who have taken action. Don’t reject the town. Don’t reject your people.” He rubbed claws through the fur on the back of one paw.

  “Master Odden said I’m part of the College now.” Kip folded his arms. “I’ll look out for other Calatians, but this town doesn’t deserve my help.” He couldn’t keep his eyes from the empty shelves, and every breath of neglect made him angry all over again.