The War and the Fox

by Tim Susman

  “How goes it?” Emily asked.

  “Well.” Kip took a flask from Abel and gave it to one of the sorcerers. “Start with all the people in that house.”

  “I’ll come in with you,” Abel said, and accompanied the sorcerer into the house.

  “How will we do this?” asked another of the sorcerers.

  “Each of you will go house to house, working our way across the Isle,” Kip said. “We will meet on the docks when we finish, hopefully in two hours. And if you run into any trouble, have them come find me or—”

  “No need.” Abel came out of the house leading five people: two of the mice, two rabbits, and the hedgehog. “These people will try to explain what’s happening and keep everyone calm. I’ll go with another of you, and Kip can go with Emily. Thomas.”

  The polecat who’d arrived with Abel stepped forward. Abel rested a paw on his shoulder. “This is Thomas Pole, one of the Isle’s leaders. He will go with another of you and will select another Isle resident to accompany each sorcerer. I hope this will help accomplish our task quickly.”

  “And what do we do for calyxes?” the tan-skinned sorcerer asked.

  “Use the flasks.” Abel passed his bag around. “Use it sparingly. Fill them only in empty houses.”

  “Most houses,” Kip said, “should have enough people that you can send them in one or two tries, and then rest in the time it takes to go to the next house. There are a dozen of us so you each need to send only a hundred and fifty or so.”

  Each of the Calatians chose a sorcerer and took a flask. When all the flasks had been given out, they were short three, so Kip, Abel, and Thomas took cups from Abel’s house and made sure they had knives.

  Emily did not like this. “It was bad enough when I didn’t know them,” she told Kip, eyeing the cup and knife.

  “I’ll do it where you can’t see it,” he said. “But we need to do this quickly.” When she still hesitated, he put a paw on her shoulder. “I am asking much of you. The least I can do is give more of myself.”

  “All right, stop talking.” She shook free. “I suppose that’s the best way to do it.”

  The next hours passed in a blur of houses and scents, beavers and foxes and otters and mice, polecats and squirrels and one more family of wolves. “You’re in danger from the war,” Kip told them. “We’re here to send you somewhere safe.”

  In about half the houses, this was enough. A few wanted to know more, and he told them the sorcerers at King’s College planned to use more calyxes to death in the war, that he was trying to end the war and keep them out of danger. Some had to be woken from sleep, and some objected; if they took too long Kip sent them without their permission, though he hated doing it and knew they would hate him for it.

  The decision weighed on him as he went through the town, so that it was nice when once in a while someone recognized him. “Master Penfold,” an older hedgehog said. “I knew you’d come to save us.”

  He held on to these words as he watched Emily send an angry mouse with her husband and two sons to Australia. “I’m sorry,” he told the next house, less angry and more stubborn. “I’ll bring you back as soon as possible, I promise.” And off they went.

  Halfway through, he sent his perception to Ash to see how everyone was settling in. Alice was trying her best to accommodate all the arriving Calatians, but people were squabbling over the best places to sleep. The earlier arrivals had taken the sandy spots near the water, and many of the Calatians from the Isle had started to range away from the inlet, despite Alice and Malcolm’s warnings. Alice had twice given Malcolm blood to strengthen his ward. Bryce and the other leaders were doing their best to keep an uneasy peace, and there was nothing Kip could do from where he was.

  The sight of a vast sea of Calatians cheered him, and also reminded him of how vulnerable they were. The last part of this would have to go as quickly as possible, even if he had to wake up John Quincy Adams and the other leaders once they got back to America.

  They had almost reached the docks. He listed the remaining steps on the Isle: send Emily and Abel and the Dutch sorcerers away, collect Peter. Nikolon, be ready to bring the stone back to me. Soon now.

  Yes, master.

  The sorcerer is still untroubled?

  He is pleasuring himself. With this came a picture of a portly man with unkempt hair and a very distracted look on his face.

  All right. I don't need to see more. And Kip went on to the next house with Emily.

  It seemed a full day later, but the moon was only halfway up the sky when they came to the end of their street and the stiff breeze from the Thames cut across them. Three of the other pairs already stood out on the plaza, huddled together, and as Kip and Emily walked out, another sorcerer and Calatian joined them.

  “Anyone have problems?” Kip asked.

  Nobody had, although one of the pairs had seen a cloaked figure running between houses, and the Calatian, a mouse, hadn’t recognized it. “Thought it might be a mouse,” he said, “but wasn’t any I knew.”

  “We’ll keep an eye out,” Kip said. “All of you send the Calatians on, and go back home. We will come get you when we need your services for—I hope—the last time.”

  Six more sorcerers emerged with their Calatians, including Thomas Pole and Abel, and all of them left the dock except for Abel, who refused to go until the last two pairs had returned. Kip argued quietly with him, hoping that the others would return while the argument was going on. They did not, and his fur prickled with worry.

  Nikolon, Kip said, please go find the last two sorcerers and their Calatians.

  There was no response. Now his hackles stood up. “Get out of here,” he told Emily and Abel. “Something’s wrong.”

  “But—”

  “Take him!” he yelled at Emily, pushing the other fox against her. “Go! I’ll follow.”

  Abel vanished, but Emily didn’t, staring stubbornly at him. “You’re the most important part of this now,” she said. “I’m staying until you leave, and for God’s sake, why are you still here?”

  “I need to get—” Peter. “One more thing. It’s vitally important.”

  “What?”

  “Not here. After.”

  She searched his eyes. “All right. Where is it?”

  The picture Nikolon had sent of the sorcerer had been in a house somewhere. It must be near the Isle, probably one of the houses facing it along the Thames. “Near here, but I’m not sure where, and Nik isn’t answering me. I might have to summon her again—”

  Emily wasn’t moving. A shadow emerged from the houses behind her, and he lunged toward Emily to send her away, but a hand seized his arm from behind and he felt a now-familiar blankness as magic was ripped away from him.

  “Well, Penfold,” Master Albright’s voice said, “you have been busy.”

  19

  The Battle of the Isle

  Kip’s ears flattened as he turned to see the very satisfied smile on Master Albright’s face. “Stealing away the entire Isle, are you? Well, most of them. I admit we were a step behind you—again—but I think you will find there were a few who hid from you, and my young apprentice’s lackey there has probably rendered a few more incapable of leaving.”

  The shadow from the houses came into sharper focus: a marmot, but one from whom all the fur had been shaved, whose head and snout were a mottled canvas of nicks and scars and whose triumphant smile looked crooked and terrible and, worst of all, familiar. “Farley,” Kip said.

  “Aye.” Master Albright avoided looking at Farley even as the shaved marmot reached a furless finger up to brush Emily’s cheek. “Still with magic, still useful here and there, and with an ever-larger hate for the people he now finds himself—”

  “I ain’t no animal,” Farley growled. “Victor’s going to cure me.”

  “Once the war is over.” Albright spoke as if to a child insisting on a treat. “Which we must accomplish soon, and I think your help here will be invaluable. Cott was relucta
nt, you know, and a bit on his guard around me. I might have you to thank for that.”

  “Or maybe you shouldn’t have murdered Master Gugin.” The longer he kept Albright talking, the more time he had to come up with a solution. “I suppose that would put everyone on their guard around you.”

  “You would be surprised.” Albright narrowed his eyes. “You realize that you were responsible for that, don’t you? That you made him dangerous enough to be eliminated?”

  “Why?” Kip asked. “Because of Azelart?” He deliberately misspoke the name.

  “Have a care, Penfold. You walk a knife’s edge between useful and dangerous yourself.”

  “Victor needs him to fix me!” Farley stepped forward, dropping his paw from Emily.

  “Yes, yes.” Albright drew in a breath. “Now, let’s speak reasonably, Penfold. We need not be enemies, you know.”

  “You’re going to hand me over to Victor to do experiments on and we need not be enemies?”

  “Adamson’s experiments need not be fatal, nor even more than a mild inconvenience.”

  “To you.”

  Albright frowned. “I can have the rodent silence you if you are unable to let me finish my proposition.” Kip clamped his muzzle shut, mind still working furiously. “Perhaps, despite David Windsor’s history lessons, you have forgotten where you stand in the world. The British Empire traces its roots back for three quarters of a millennium. This island has withstood invasion, division, revolution, and competition, and we remain the greatest power in the world. I was raised on stories of Cromwell and William the Conqueror and Alfred the Great. I have advised Nelson and Wellington and seen us push back the greatest powers the world can muster against us. This trans-oceanic civil unrest will not bring down my Empire, but without my intervention here, you may have the capacity to weaken it. The Holy Roman Empire lasted hundreds of years. I believe this Empire can endure even longer, and I will give my life and as many other lives as necessary to ensure that it will.”

  He stood tall, seeming to look down at them from the summit of history. “Now. You and Miss Carswell here are extraordinarily capable sorcerers. David Windsor believed so, and though I doubted him at the time, further events have proven him right beyond even my considerable capacity for doubt. Therefore. If you two will forswear your allegiance to the rebels and join the British Empire into which you were, after all, born, the Empire that has sustained you and nourished you and to whom all your accomplishments owe a debt…if you will return to her, then I can promise you a full royal pardon for your rebellion. In addition, you and Miss Carswell, yes, and O’Brien if you like, will be made full and recognized sorcerers of King’s College with the right to work and teach anywhere in the Empire. Here, or New Cambridge, or Peachtree, when it reopens. In addition,” he held up a finger, “we will open one of those colleges to women and Calatians. My interest is in sustaining the British Empire, and you have made it abundantly clear that ignoring a full half of the potential sorcerers in our midst is a fool’s game.”

  While he was talking, Kip tried to find Ash in his consciousness. The link felt blank, but he spoke along it anyway, trying to get the raven to tell Alice that he and Emily had been captured and to be alert for enemies coming in. He could not see whether the message had been delivered, but he hoped that, like Nikolon in Savannah, Ash could hear him but not relay anything back.

  Albright waited for his response at the end of that speech. Kip came back to himself. “And if we refuse?”

  “Oh, then I will find where you’ve sent all these Calatians, and you and I will go there and you will believe that your dearest friends are under attack. You will set fire to all of them.”

  Kip gaped. He had gathered most of the Calatians in the world in one place, a place he’d thought safe, but of course their safety was in being spread out. Lowell, being human, would not have seen this flaw, but Kip should have. “You—you—”

  “Ha ha!” Albright put a hand to his chest. “You should see your expression! My simple fox, of course I would not destroy the Calatians. They’re far too useful. But see what horrors you believe of me? You still do not understand that I value the Empire above all. No, if you refuse, you and Miss Carswell will be put on trial for treason and likely executed, while we find the inhabitants of the Isle and crush the rebellion. The Calatians will no doubt suffer from having to wait until we find them—have they food for a week or a month?—and the continuing war will cost both your Americans and your British hundreds or thousands of lives.

  “If you join us, however, I suspect that well-placed conflagrations in the cities of Boston and New York will lead to an American surrender before long, and we can have our Calatians back in their homes in a day.”

  Kip registered the words, but his mind kept working on a plan. He almost had it; he just had to think of a way to get Albright to the defensive sorcerer. Weren’t foxes supposed to be cunning in all the stories? “Minus the ones you’ve let Farley kill.” Albright started to respond, but Kip forestalled him. “Why did you not have Cott set those fires in New York or Boston?”

  “For one thing, you would have been whisked there in moments to remove them. For another, as I’ve said, Cott was suspicious of me, and for as much as he loved fire, he spent a lifetime learning to restrain his deep desire to use it.”

  “He was a good man,” Kip said. “Better than you know, better than you deserved.”

  “Yes, I see his influence in this plan of yours. He would have approved. Which is no doubt why you have failed.”

  “Why don’t you just go into my mind and find out where the Calatians are?” Kip hoped that Albright would interpret this bravado as evidence of a trap.

  “Ha ha!” This laugh held much less humor. “We will get there, once I’m certain you’re of no further use to me. By now I’m sure that Jackson has figured out my little trick of protecting minds against spiritual intrusion, so I will have to be nimble and extract the information before his spell renders your mind worthless. I prefer not to do it now and leave you useless to the British cause. Now look, I understand that this is a large decision to make, but really, we have very little time left.”

  “You’ve left out one of our allies,” Kip said. “Your Master Godwin.”

  He prayed he’d heard the name right, and apparently he had, because Albright’s smile vanished. “Godwin? What's this?”

  “How do you think we got in here? I suppose you didn’t notice that the wards were down for a short time.”

  “A-ha!” Farley barked. “That’s why you couldn’t come back in here the normal way.”

  “Stay here,” Albright ordered him. “We’ll soon see to the truth of this.” He gripped Kip’s arm, and a moment later they stood in a dark room lit only by the dim light filtering through a window. In front of the window sat Master Godwin just as Nikolon had shown Kip, breathing rather heavily. The air stank of his recent activity.

  “Godwin!” Albright snapped.

  The sorcerer fairly jumped out of his chair, hastily arranging his robes, and in the process sending a chunk of stone tumbling to the floor about three feet from where Kip stood. “M-master! I was—my attention had not—I—”

  Albright wrinkled his nose. “What have—never mind. Penfold here has told me of the part you played in tonight’s events.”

  “What—what part?”

  Kip took two steps toward the window, pointing out even as his bare foot landed on the stone. “From there we signaled him,” he said, and in his mind said, Peter?

  Kip! I could not see through your eyes anymore and I feared you had been—

  “Signaled?” Godwin turned to Kip and then back to Albright. “Sir, I—”

  Yes, I know. I’m cut off from magic; can you reverse it?

  Albright frowned at Kip. “Have you lied to me?”

  Yes.

  “Of course not.” He tested his link with Ash, and he could see through the raven’s eyes again. “This is our ally.”

  Thank you. Can
you cut someone off from magic?

  Godwin stared at Kip and then turned back to Albright. “I swear to you, I have never seen this fox before.”

  Yes.

  “How would you know?” Kip demanded, spreading his arms to show his dirty tunic. “How could you tell me from any other fox?”

  Be ready to do so the moment Albright touches you.

  “I—I haven’t spoken to any fox?” Godwin appeared disoriented and bewildered. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  I am ready.

  “Oh no?” Kip bent to pick up the piece of stone and moved deliberately to be nearer to Albright. “Then what is this, if not a message telling you that we were ready?”

  He held the stone out, prepared to toss it to Albright, but as he’d hoped, the sorcerer seized it himself. He turned it over and back. “I see no message.”

  “And yet,” Kip said, “there is one there.”

  He gathered magic. The moment the purple glow lit his arms, Albright’s eyes widened. He dropped the stone and his hand shot out to Kip’s shoulder, but nothing happened. Kip reached out to Godwin and sent him to the roof of Lord Winter’s Tower at King’s College.

  Albright stared at the stone on the floor, and then lifted his gaze up to the fox. “If you do this,” he said, “you are driving a knife into the back of the greatest empire the world has yet seen. She will survive, bloodied and weakened, make no mistake. And she will not forget.”

  “Your empire is built on the backs of me and those like me,” Kip answered. “We aren’t driving a knife into her; we are standing straight like men, and if she is thrown from our backs, let her stand among us rather than atop us.”

  “You think the Americans will treat you any better?”

  “We shall see.” Kip reached down to pick up Peter’s stone.

  Albright followed the motion, his eyes lingering on the stone. “You will have to teach me that trick sometime.”

  Kip gathered magic again. “Not in a thousand lifetimes,” he said, and reached out to send Albright to Australia.