by Tim Susman
Even the people looking back toward the British threat as the frigate fled had only seen parts of what had happened. But they’d all felt the thunderclap (as they described it) and the ensuing waves of heat and then water that had rocked the boat, so they understood how the Calatians could have come to be scalded. The sorcerers had known that something terrible had happened when all their magic failed in an instant, and when the Road appeared to be gone, Malcolm had sent Daravont to confirm it.
He hadn’t been able to do that right away: the implosion of magic had unbound Daravont, Malcolm quickly found. He bound the demon again before it could do much mischief. “Just as you must have done with yours,” he said to Kip, “and you in the middle of much more than I was.”
“Yes,” Kip said, “well, it had to be done.” But he had not re-bound Nikolon; the demon had delivered the six Calatians to the frigate and then Kip had dismissed her. He hadn’t noticed that the binding had been broken, because he hadn’t asked her to do anything. Perhaps that last order had remained in force? Certainly Nikolon wasn’t above cursing him if not bound properly, and had done so. But their relationship, to the extent that a person could have a relationship with a demon, had progressed since then. What he knew was that if he’d had to re-bind Nikolon, those precious few seconds would likely have meant that the six Calatians the demon had saved would have boiled alive.
That question, bothersome though it was, could wait until he had to summon her again, and perhaps after that. The larger topic of discussion on the frigate was the destruction of the Road, and the first thing Kip had to do was set the record straight. When he’d returned to the frigate with Ella Lutris and the British sailors, the first thing the sailors did upon landing was hurry to the uniformed first mate sent to greet them and cry, “That fox destroyed the Road!”
They’d seen him wreathed in fire, and a moment later the Road had glowed brightly and “exploded.” It was a reasonable assumption to make, so Kip had to tell the story over and over again, and even then he wasn’t sure everyone believed him. So he excused himself from the ship’s crew and set about walking through the crowd of Calatians with Abel and Alice, finding any who needed the services of a healer and directing them to Callahan and Broadwood to be sent to New Cambridge.
Both the other foxes sensed Kip’s need for silence and did not talk about the battle until they had gone through all the Calatians they could find (some had gone below decks to sleep). Then Alice said, “It must have been terrible,” and Kip hesitated a moment before waving her and Abel toward Malcolm.
The Irishman sat in a quiet part of the deck near the middle of the three masts, and raised a hand at the sound of the three foxes settling down around him. Each fox greeted him so he would know who they were.
“Thank you kindly,” Malcolm said. “How are our charges?”
“Fifteen injured,” Abel said. “The sorcerers have sent them to the mainland. I hope they let you rest before you have to go home, Kip.”
“Jackson will want his briefing,” Kip said, but the adrenaline of the battle had long since left him and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open.
“Fifteen injured and thirty lost out of three hundred,” Malcolm said. “That’s not a bad loss.”
The three foxes remained silent until he said, “What? Come now, I know when I’ve missed something.”
“It’s not thirty out of three hundred,” Abel said. “It’s thirty out of five thousand. Or six thousand perhaps.”
Malcolm tilted his head. “How do you mean?”
“There are more than a thousand humans for every Calatian,” Kip said. “So what would you say if we’d lost thirty thousand people on the Road?”
“Well, aye.” Malcolm’s voice softened. “That’d be worse.”
“And worse still because there are so many different kinds and we can only mate to another of our kind,” Alice added. “In fifty years there might be no more wolf-Calatians.”
“There might not be any Calatians at all,” Abel said darkly.
“What’s that?” Malcolm turned his head. He’d dismissed his demon, so he couldn’t see the expressions on the foxes’ faces. If there were a way to transfer his raven to Malcolm, Kip would have done it on the spot.
“The Road was a Great Feat,” Alice said quietly. “So are we.”
“Everyone thought that Great Feats couldn’t be undone,” Kip added, though Malcolm’s mouth made an ‘O’ and it was clear he understood. “But now we know they can, though at a price.”
“But…could they unmake all of you? Or just one at a time?”
The foxes exchanged looks. “Nobody knows,” Kip said. “And we’d prefer they not experiment.”
“Of course.” Malcolm heaved a sigh. “That’s a blow, aye? Imagine if our Lord came down one day and unmade some people back into clay. Of course, it would depend on who those people were. I wouldn’t be sad to see Albright gone. But we wouldn’t be making those decisions. And of course,” he added hurriedly, “all of you are lovely people.”
Kip couldn’t help a slight smile. “Let’s hope it remains a theory for a long time.”
“But it means we must work as hard as we can to save every one of us.” Alice leaned against Kip. He put an arm around her shoulder and took strength from her confidence and support.
“To my mind,” Malcolm said, “you’ve all done as much as could be expected, and then some. This whole operation feels cobbled together from shoestrings and bent nails and yet you’ve got a frigate full of London Calatians to take back to America.”
Abel rested his paws on his knees and nodded to Kip. “You can’t save every Calatian. Those who came along did so knowing the risk.”
“I know,” Kip said. “I know.”
He shifted his gaze to the raven—his raven—which now sat on the rigging. From there Kip could look down on the ship and see himself and all the other Calatians moving around. The raven did have a personality of sorts, but a quiet one, and right now she—Kip knew she was a she, and that her name was Ash—clung to her bond with Kip, nudging him gently through it every few minutes to check that he were really still there. He had no idea how she had come to bond to him. In Kip’s limited experience, when a sorcerer died, his bonded raven died as well. But of course, nobody else had been present at the destruction of a Great Feat.
A touch on his paw brought him back to himself. Alice said, “We lost some at Savannah, too.”
“This is different.” Kip leaned back and looked up through the ropes. “There were others in charge at Savannah. I was trying to go find my parents, and Captain Lowell was in charge of that expedition. This was mine, beginning to end. You all did as much—more—than I could have asked, but had I done some things differently, maybe some of those people would still be alive.”
“Now, haven’t you said that the plan was Jackson’s?” Malcolm leaned forward and reached out a hand. “Kip, you proposed an idea, and someone else changed it and made you work under their orders. Besides which, people die in war, and nothing will change that.”
Abel cleared his throat. “Losing thirty of our number is a high price. But we have been talking for years and years, and only when you arrived did we see our way clear to action. We will always be grateful to you for that, at least. And I know that you did your best to save every one. Ella Lutris is evidence of that.”
“But what about Tamrin, her friend? I couldn’t save her.”
“Your best is all that anyone can ask,” Alice said. “Do you think I’m not wondering what could have happened if I’d remained by your side? We might’ve stopped your Master Cott. Maybe there would still be a Road.”
“I don’t know if anyone could have stopped him.” What if Kip hadn’t killed the other sorcerer? Would Cott have been driven to madness and desperation in that moment? But if Kip hadn’t killed the other sorcerer, would he have been able to stop the ironclad from catching the frigate? How many lives would have been lost?
Out beyond the railing, c
alm deep blue broken with specks of white stretched out to the horizon as far as they could see. The ocean had absorbed the debris of the battle as though it had never been. Nearer to them, the bow wake spread away from the ship in white ripples that faded to blue. There was something hypnotic about the movement of the waves, going up and down, traveling away and yet never really going anywhere. He could see what some of the traders from Boston meant about falling in love with the sea.
And yet it was terrifying, too, to think that this ocean had swallowed an ironclad, sailors, and Calatians—not to mention the inns and other travelers along the Road—and all those were gone without a trace. What else might lie hidden in its depths? He drifted off, imagining it, and then snapped his eyes open. “Sorry. Did you ask me something?”
Abel smiled. “I asked, ‘what comes next,’ but it’s not important. What comes next is sleep for you, obviously.”
Kip yawned. “What comes next is getting all these people to America, and then finding a safe place for all of them during the war, and then finding homes for them after the war, I suppose. For me…” He eyed the bow of the ship and the horizon beyond it. “A debriefing from the Master Colonel that I expect will involve a lot of yelling, and then probably I’ll be confined to quarters without magic until they need me to set fire to another British army.”
“He’ll recognize that you did the best you could,” Alice said fiercely. “If he says a word against you, I’ll—”
Kip held up a paw. “You, like me, will hold your tongue and take it. We still stand to benefit—maybe only marginally—from an American victory, and we’ll do more good for our cause as useful soldiers than we will as prisoners.”
“I wouldn’t say anything that would get me sent to prison.” Alice remained indignant. “I’d just tell him he was wrong.”
He wanted so badly to be deserving of her confidence. But he couldn’t help replaying the encounter in his mind, thinking of the people he could have saved if only this, if only that.
Alice took his paw. “You know that, don’t you? That he’d be wrong? Look at what you mean to the people here, not just that you’ve saved their lives, but what an example you’ve been. Like Abel said, you took action. You made a difference. It’s what’s inspired Malcolm to keep learning spells. It—” She paused a moment, her ears flicking back to the others listening, and then she went on. “You inspire me. You haven’t just taught me magic. You’ve shown me magic. That you care so much and risk so much when you could easily sit in Boston and be a fire sorcerer for the American army? That’s why I want to marry you. Not just because you’re a fox.”
Her eyes gleamed in the sunlight, and the horror of the last hour receded before that brightness. Kip squeezed her paw back.
“She speaks truth,” Abel said quietly.
“Thank you,” he said, and reached his arms out to embrace Alice. She moved willingly into the embrace and rested her muzzle against his.
A shadow fell across them, and Kip looked up to see Callahan, the man’s face lined and as weary as he felt. “Penfold,” he said. “Master Colonel Jackson requests your presence in Boston.”
Despite what he’d just said, Jackson was far away and Kip was very disinclined to get up, even when Alice pulled back to sit beside him. “You may tell him that I will return to Boston when all the Calatians have been sent ahead of me from this boat. My mission is not complete until they all stand on American soil.”
Callahan ran a hand through his hair and squinted down. “You’re refusing a direct order?”
“You said, ‘requests,’” Kip said. “So it’s not a direct order. My mission isn’t over yet.”
“You can play word games with the Master Colonel if you like, but do you expect me and Broadwood to send all the Calatians back? That’ll take hours.”
“Of course not.” Kip closed his eyes. “You could wait until the boat reaches Boston in a month. Perhaps three weeks if Alice graces us with an elemental to speed us along.”
Callahan didn’t move. As an experiment, Kip shifted his view to Ash’s, looking down on the deck as the tall sorcerer stalked away, and followed him around the deck to where he muttered something and vanished.
“You just said all that about being respectful,” Malcolm said, though it seemed he could barely restrain himself from laughing.
“Aye, to Jackson,” Kip said. “That wasn’t Jackson. I don’t have to be respectful to Callahan. He doesn’t outrank me.” He paused. “I think.”
“Go ahead and sleep,” Abel said. “We’ll keep an eye open for you.”
There didn’t seem to be anywhere better to sleep, so Kip stretched out on the deck, laced his paws behind his head, and dozed.
“Penfold.”
A paw rested on his shoulder, Alice’s scent in his nose. Abel and Malcolm were nearby. And also, that scent, that voice. He opened his eyes.
Master Colonel Jackson stood over him, dark against the bright afternoon sky. Besides his own scent, he smelled of laundry soap, and his uniform looked clean and pressed.
Kip blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Sir?”
“Yes, Penfold, in the flesh.” He paused. “Shall I be waiting long for your salute?”
Kip scrambled to his feet, lost his footing briefly with the rolling of the ship, and then braced himself against the mast and saluted.
Jackson returned the salute, a wry smile on his face. “At ease,” he said. “Is there a place on this ship where we might have some privacy?”
“Er.” Kip looked up at the crow’s nest. “I can’t think of any.”
“Willoughby offered his cabin, but I quite like the fresh air. Let’s go to the stern. Captain Lowell will make sure we’re not disturbed.”
Only then did Kip see the captain, also in a fresh uniform, standing stiffly behind Jackson. He met Kip’s eyes briefly and then fell in behind the two of them as Jackson led him to a sheltered part of the stern where the wind from their passage swirled about them rather than rushing past. The smell of the sea still overwhelmed everything else for Kip, except for Jackson’s scent as the Master Colonel settled himself barely a foot from Kip along the railing.
Captain Lowell positioned himself between the two of them and the rest of the ship, and Jackson said, pleasantly enough, “Now, Penfold. Debrief.”
Kip took a breath and started with meeting the barge on the Thames, a night that seemed weeks ago now. He took Jackson through lifting the barge over the weirs, sending some of the Calatians back to New Cambridge, arriving at Lechlade, going back to New Cambridge himself to see that everyone was settled and finding a demon name, lifting the Calatians to the Road, finding the raven, and meeting the British ship.
At every point he expected Jackson to stop and question him, but the man merely watched him intently, nodding every time Kip paused. He did ask for further description of the ironclad, saying, “Very interesting, very interesting.” When Kip reached the battle with Cott, he paused. His description wouldn’t do it justice, and Jackson was a spiritual sorcerer. He could see Kip’s memory.
Kip ran briefly through those events in case there was anything he wouldn’t want Jackson to see, but the only thing he would want to keep private was Nikolon’s behavior, and that wasn’t related to the Road. Besides which, it would be nice to have someone else know for certain that he, Kip, had not in fact destroyed a Great Feat. “Sir, would you like to see the destruction of the Road?”
Jackson’s mouth twitched. He parted his lips and seemed about to decline, and then stopped himself. “I…yes, I would. Thank you, Penfold.”
Kip inclined his head forward, and Jackson cast a spell, a feather touch in his mind. Kip reviewed as faithfully as possible the events that led to the ironclad being stranded on the Road, his own desperation that led to him incinerating the other sorcerer, Cott’s answering desperation and the sudden catastrophic disappearance of the Road.
Jackson withdrew as soon as that event happened, not even waiting to see Kip regain his magic, so he also mi
ssed Kip’s communication with Nikolon. “Fascinating,” he said, staring off at the sea. “Absolutely incredible.”
Kip waited until Jackson’s sharp eyes returned to him. “Do you think Cott was trying to destroy the Road?”
“No” The fox shook his head. “I think…he was trying to destroy one part of it, to get his ship back in the water. But also he knew the Calatians were getting onto the Road and that may have been part of it. He wanted to stop us, but he didn’t want to harm us if he could avoid it. I’m sure he didn’t set out to destroy the whole Road.”
“Likely not, although you never know. I suppose you knew him better than I did, eh?”
Kip nodded. He swallowed against the memory of Cott’s dead eyes, of the whispered “Get away” that his teacher had tried to spare him with at the end. “He would use fire to scare, but he was very aware of how easy it would be to destroy something, and he kept himself in check. He didn’t have many friends because of the fire, but he wanted to be liked.”
“Could he have killed you?”
“I don’t think so. He wasn’t a killer at heart.” Kip pushed away the memory of the soldier and the sorcerers he himself had killed so far in this war.
“Tch, no. I mean, had the battle gone on longer, could he have found a way to kill you? He had the power, apparently.”
“Oh. I don’t know. I don’t think I could have killed him. We know fire too well.” Kip took a breath. He hadn’t told anyone else this, but now it was irrelevant. “There was an old technique that he never taught me—I found it in one of his books. When you call up fire, you can let it know you, and then it won’t turn against you. He sent fire around me and that’s why the men say I was wreathed in flame right before the Road exploded.”