by Tim Susman
Alice nodded and sat down on the bench. Captain Lowell came over to Kip and spoke in a whisper. “Speak to the wind?” he said. “Did you just tell her that to keep her out of your way?”
Kip’s ears flicked back. “Careful,” he said, “she can hear what you’re saying.”
Lowell flinched and then settled himself, his face going neutral. “And anyway,” Kip went on, “no, it’s something she has to learn.”
Malcolm, standing next to them, chimed in. “It took me a few tries to get the hang of demons. Tricky business, that, but thinking about it between spells helped immensely.”
“I don’t know how to speak to the wind, but Alice feels an affinity to it and I think she’ll be able to figure it out.” Kip withdrew the knife from his belt and then hesitated. “Captain, could you give us a moment of privacy?”
“I have witnessed the calyx ritual,” Lowell said, “but if you prefer to perform it without my eyes…” He turned and watched Alice, who stood with her ears and nose to the wind and her eyes closed, lips fluttering.
The more Kip ventured into the world beyond New Cambridge, the more people he encountered who knew the supposedly well-kept secret of the calyx ritual. Still, it made sense for a captain attached to a sorcerer’s unit to know, so he pierced his elbow and then put his mouth to the wound. When Captain Lowell turned back around, he held a strip of cloth which he offered to Kip without an emotion visible in his expression.
The captain reacted much more visibly to the parade of demons Kip summoned, who appeared in various guises: a towering man in a cloak of flame, a cloud of fiery bats, a small golden dragon only a little taller than Kip, a small sun so bright it hurt to look at. Only that last one gave him so much trouble that he had to signal Malcolm to banish it. The others strained against his control but he estimated he could hold them for ten to fifteen minutes, easily enough to wreak havoc on a battle.
After four of them, though, Kip sagged and sat heavily on the bench, his nose almost hurting from the tingling that came with those powerful demons. “No more for now,” he said, panting. “Did anyone bring water? I’m parched.”
“Should be.” Malcolm looked toward Lowell, but the captain spread his hands and shook his head. “We’ll fetch some water on the way home.”
Alice had stopped to watch the demons as well, and now came over to Kip. “Can I try the summoning again? I’m quite encouraged by all those terrifying things you summoned. Air seems much less threatening now.”
Kip laughed. “I’ve never known you to be scared of a spell yet.”
“I’m scared of not being able to do it.” She raised her paws until they glowed turquoise. “But I believe I will do it, if you believe I will.”
“I do,” he said, and sat on the ground in front of her.
She practiced the spell, again unsuccessfully, while Captain Lowell and Malcolm went in search of water. They returned shortly at a brisk pace, or at least as brisk as Lowell could manage with Malcolm, and when Kip looked up he saw another soldier trailing behind them.
Neither Malcolm nor Lowell had water with them, but that was explained when Lowell stopped and pointed the soldier to Kip. “There he is,” he said. “Penfold, something has happened. There’s a message for you or something like that. He’s not being very clear. But we should return immediately.”
“They sent a messenger.” The soldier, no more than a boy of sixteen, saluted uncertainly. “It’s a fox like you, but he just says the same thing over and over.”
A fox like him. His father? Kip jumped to his feet, his thirst forgotten. “Take me there.”
They walked back at a brisk pace, through the encampments of the Chasseurs-Volontaires and then the white soldiers, past the house where the sorcerers were housed, to a large church that overlooked the harbor. As they hurried in, Kip saw on a rooftop a hundred feet past the church a sentry in a red coat standing stiffly at attention, facing the Americans.
Two guards admitted them through a small wooden door around the side. Inside the church, a low murmur of voices greeted Kip in the thick, stuffy air. Twenty men, mostly officers and three men in sorcerer’s uniforms, clustered in one area that had been cleared of pews, while another dozen or so sat around a large table.
The soldier who’d come to fetch them brought Kip forward. As the crowd parted he caught the scent of another fox. Not his father, not anyone he knew. Relief drained the tension from him and he had to pause for a moment.
Captain Lowell half-turned, but Kip nodded to him and continued on forward. “Sir,” Lowell said, coming up behind a stocky bearded man, “Penfold is here.”
Kip recognized the bearded man as General Hamilton, but his attention flew from that flash of recognition to the figure kneeling at the center of the group. The fox, dressed in a plain tunic, stared blankly ahead into space and spoke in a low tone that Kip had to focus his ears to hear. Even before hearing the message, he could tell that something was very wrong with this person.
He caught the words, “will be repeated every day,” and then Master Colonel Jackson, standing next to the fox, spoke loudly enough to cover what came next.
“Penfold, attend. This message is directed at you.”
“At me?” Kip snapped his gaze up to Jackson’s severe face. “What—?”
The sorcerer shook his head and pointed back down at the fox, and the other officers fell silent.
The dull-eyed fox had stopped talking, but after a moment, he started again. “This message is for Kip Penfold of the American Army, from General George Prévost. Penfold is advised that should he renounce his American affiliation and accept his birthright as a full citizen of the British Empire, he will be welcomed as a full sorcerer with all the rights and privileges accorded to him thereto. To help him make his decision, a message like this one will be repeated every day with a different Calatian until he joins the British.”
Two seconds of silence and then the fox started talking again. Jackson talked over him. “He says the same thing. Won’t stop, won’t change his message. I took a quick look with Chavill’s Small Window, but the general insisted I wait until you heard his message before going farther.” He stared at Hamilton. “May I proceed?”
General Hamilton inclined his head toward Kip as the fox droned on in the background. “Penfold, you don’t need to hear the message again?”
“No.” Kip tried to compose himself. “Sir, you don’t imagine I’ll go to the British?”
“I didn’t think so,” Hamilton said as Jackson placed one hand between the Calatian’s ears. “I am pleased to hear it confirmed from your lips. Do you know this fox?”
Kip shook his head. “He speaks like a Georgian. How many Calatians lived in Savannah, sir?”
“We believe two hundred, maybe a few more. It was not a large community compared to others.”
One of the men beside Hamilton, nearly as decorated, said, “What does he hope to accomplish? To show us how little he values Calatian lives? In half a year he’ll have no more messengers.”
Kip’s throat tightened, imagining that, and he could not have spoken even if it had been asked of him. Hamilton gave Kip a shrewd look, perhaps guessing his thoughts. “In half a year we hope this battle to be long over. But I know this General Prévost. He means to cause uncertainty among us as to one of our weapons and thereby perhaps curtail our use of him.”
“The sooner we defeat the British here,” Kip said, “the sooner these messages will be brought to an end. You need have no fear for my loyalty.”
“Good man.” Hamilton gave him an approving nod. “I know that Master Colonel Jackson has plans for you in this upcoming battle.”
“It’s a deep compulsion,” Jackson said.
Kip looked up, startled, but Jackson had lifted his hand from the fox’s head and clearly was addressing that problem. “I don’t know if I can break it without breaking his mind. But I’m not sure how much of his mind is left.”
“Albright,” Kip said.
“What?�
�� Hamilton turned to him.
“Master Albright, sir,” the fox repeated. “He’s a spiritual sorcerer and he knows me well.”
“Well enough to translocate to your side?”
“Probably.” Kip met Jackson’s eyes. “But the sorcerers’ quarters are well warded, and my friend Malcolm—Malcolm O’Brien—keeps us warded when we go out.” Though, he realized, they hadn’t been when they were out in the plaza this afternoon. Lowell glanced at him, perhaps realizing the same thing, but kept his mouth shut.
The general turned away from the fox to face Kip fully. “Good. I have been told of your abilities and I believe they may provide the lynchpin for this war.”
“But sir.” Kip felt emboldened by Hamilton’s sympathy. “When is our attack planned? How many more Calatian minds will be ruined by Albright?”
“Maybe not ruined,” Jackson growled. “I haven’t tried Kobalt’s Regrowth yet.”
The other officers mostly looked at Kip as if this was the first they’d heard of a secret weapon the American Army had, but the one on the other side of Hamilton said, “If we rush into battle, we risk losing more lives than a single Calatian.”
One Calatian life a day? Calatian lives were rarer than human lives by far. Kip didn’t know how many Calatians fought in the Army, but it was a single regiment, and only those who had already fathered cubs were allowed to fight (having already ensured their next generation). The populations of the towns of Peachtree and New Cambridge numbered in the hundreds, the boroughs of Boston and New York a little less than that. They only numbered a few thousand total—maybe as many as five or six thousand—between the British and Spanish Empires, so he’d been told by his father. And for each of the species, the number was smaller. Legend had it there had once been twenty species, now down to nineteen, but nobody could say which was the one that had been lost. If all the foxes were killed, there would be no more.
And yet, how many human lives were worth one Calatian life? One fox? This fox looked young; he might not have fathered cubs yet. If he died, would that be one fewer fox for Kip’s potential cubs to marry?
“Penfold.”
Kip blinked out of his reverie to find Jackson staring at him. “Return to your quarters,” he said. “There’s no reason for you to witness any more of this.”
Hamilton looked for a moment as though he might argue, but in the end let Captain Lowell guide Kip out of the church.
7
The Battle of Savannah
The following day, nobody came to tell Kip there had been another Calatian messenger, but he knew there must have been. He told Alice and Malcolm about the fox, and while Malcolm was appropriately horrified, Alice felt the impact the same way Kip had, sitting down in a chair with her tail curled tightly around her hips, her eyes wide and ears back. “Do…do you think he’ll be okay?” she asked.
“If it’s Albright,” Kip said, “then no, I don’t. I think he wiped out the fox’s mind and replaced it with a message. I don’t know how you could do that.”
“Spiritual magic is awful.” Alice buried her muzzle in her paws.
“It certainly doesn’t seem to do much good to those who study it.” Malcolm spoke in a subdued tone. “Haven’t met one yet who’s not crazy in one way or another.”
“There’s Master Colonel Jackson,” Captain Lowell interjected.
“Aye, of course, I’d forgotten.” Malcolm didn’t have eyes to gesture with, but Kip felt sure that what his friend meant was that he’d forgotten that Lowell was in the room.
Kip didn’t leave his quarters that day, worried about venturing outside the wards. Alice practiced her spell but still fell short of summoning an elemental. Kip suggested she try fire—there at least he could summon one for her to talk to—but she did not seem excited about it, so he let it drop.
And the following day, the sun had not yet risen before horns jolted them awake from their beds. Outside the small bedroom’s thin wooden walls, wind rushed past their shutters, howling unnervingly in the dimness. In the first waking moments of disorientation, Kip thought he was back at Prince George’s College and it was under attack again. Then Captain Lowell, already standing, barked crisply, “Attack. Get dressed.”
They fumbled clothes on, Lowell somehow ready before Kip even had both arms through his tunic. Alice did not bother to go to her changing closet, using darkness for modesty. “Kip,” she said, standing by the window pulling a uniform jacket over her gown and petticoat. “Do you think—”
“No time for that,” Lowell snapped as Kip reached for his sorcerer’s robe.
A moment later, a loud concussion flattened the ears of the foxes and caused Malcolm to steady himself against the wall. Seconds later, the crunch of something heavy hitting a brick wall followed. “Cannon,” Lowell said, his eyes wide. “We should’ve been on our way down by now.”
Indeed, when they arrived downstairs, the rest of the military sorcerers had already assembled and some of them been moved out. “Penfold!” Jackson roared when he spotted the fox. “To me.”
Kip hurried over to him. “You remember my orders?” the sorcerer demanded.
“Yes, sir.”
“The ships aren’t landing, so forget about waiting. They’re anchored just south of the harbor, bombarding the city. The British troops have all moved into the city, leaving the harbor clear. I’m sending you there, where you’ll have a better view out to sea and they won’t be firing at you. As soon as you find the ships, do it. Every moment’s delay costs lives.”
“Yes, sir.”
“O’Brien, your defenses are ready? Good.” He barely seemed to see Alice. “Then Callahan, take them.”
“Can’t we have sorcerers knock down—”
Kip finished his sentence on a windy pier on the harbor, the smell of the sea bursting in his nose so that he coughed in the middle of saying, “—the cannonballs?”
They stood on a long stretch of wood, choppy water splashing against the pilings below them. Nobody else that they could see stood anywhere on the pier, but behind them, just past the Customs House, a few red-coated soldiers ran toward the center of town and then were gone.
Malcolm murmured his warding spells. Kip drew his knife and poked at the wound he’d made the previous day, then put his lips to it and tasted the blood.
Alice and Lowell arrived beside him. Alice lifted her nose to the breeze, ears perked. “Kip,” she said.
He held up a paw. “I need to focus on the demon,” he said. “Give me a minute.”
“You’re warded,” Malcolm told him.
Magic came strong and fast to him. He chose one of the demon names, the most biddable one from the previous day, and spoke the summoning.
“Make no move save on my order; speak no word save on my order; exert no power save on my order.”
The cloud of fiery bats he’d summoned hovered in mid-air, not even flapping, which was somehow more disturbing. “There are ships out on the water firing cannons. They’ll be one to two miles off the coast to the south, in range of the city proper. Find them,” he ordered.
The bats disappeared. “And destroy them?” Captain Lowell asked. “You forgot to tell them to destroy them.”
“One thing at a time,” Kip said.
“This is war! There isn’t time for ‘one thing at a time’!”
As if to punctuate his point, a cannonball screamed through the air not fifty feet from them and smashed into the pier, shaking its foundations. Overhead, a cannon answered from the American side, and a second later, a flame-wreathed missile streaked overhead, reminding Kip of his mission. “Alice,” Kip said tightly, keeping communication with his demon, “can you handle cannonballs as they come in?”
“There are other sorcerers handling them,” Lowell said, but his eyes flicked to the impact. “They’re not supposed to be landing here. That one must have missed.”
“I can keep us safe here,” Alice said. “I’ll have a spell ready. But Kip, there’s wind here.”
The demon reported back to Kip that it could not find any ships, but there were other demons out there and that they had sent minor attacks against it. It had defended itself but not counter-attacked.
Show me the area of the sea where the demons are, Kip ordered, and his vision doubled. There was a stretch of ocean, choppy with the wind. He gathered magic again—
The other demons are attacking again.
Defend yourself but you need not attack them. Kip reached for fire and found it, eager as always. He sent it in a quick wave along the surface of the water and listened for it to find wood and cloth to consume. The snap and roar came, but smaller than he would have thought for a whole fleet; only two ships, perhaps only one? All those cannonballs couldn’t be coming from just one ship, could they? Master Colonel Jackson had said there was a whole fleet. The fire swarmed eagerly over the one or two ships it had found and Kip pulled it back, ordering it to consume only wood, not human flesh.
“One ship and two minor demons,” he said aloud. “That’s all I’ve found so far.”
“There’s a fleet out there,” Captain Lowell insisted.
“This feels wrong.” Kip told his demon to return to them. For a battle, the air was eerily silent. If he focused his ears back, over the hiss of wind and the splashing of waves he could hear shots, but they felt as remote as the horizon. “Where are the cannonballs coming from?”
“Can’t your demon see that?”
Another cannonball crashed into a building on the harbor front, a hundred feet to the other side of them. “They’re attacking their own side,” Lowell said. “Why not throw the cannonballs over those buildings to the American army?”
“I thought they were doing that,” Malcolm said. “Isn’t that why we’re here?”
“They were.” Lowell paced back and forth and looked out at the horizon, where a sliver of sun just showed over the water. “We should get to cover.”
“Into one of those buildings?” Alice asked. “Isn’t that more dangerous?”