The Demon and the Fox

by Tim Susman

  Emily and Malcolm’s cheeks bloomed with a bright red flush a half hour later, when by their unofficial count Malcolm was ahead, with Coppy not too far behind. “What’s that at the gate?” Emily asked, distracting Malcolm during a round against Kip so that the dummy flew over the roof, falling to the ground directly in view of the seven-man group being led back to the Tower by a white-maned sorcerer who could only be Patris.

  Coppy reached out, arms glowing turquoise, but Patris shot an arm in the air and the dummy stopped where it was. A moment later, a black dot took off from his shoulder, spreading wings and making its way up to the roof.

  “Uh oh,” Malcolm said. “We’re for it now.”

  Panic flared in Kip, froze his feet to the stone. He couldn’t even extinguish his fires before the raven landed on one of the parapets near them and surveyed them all. Before any of them spoke, it croaked, “What is the meaning of this?”

  “We were practicing,” Malcolm said quickly.

  Kip sagged in relief that the raven hadn’t said, “You’re expelled.” He braced himself against the parapet, even though it was covered in snow, and leaned over. Patris was leading the group of men toward the Tower entrance again, hurrying against the cold.

  “Practicing what? Humiliating me in front of Mr. Adams and Mr. Bayard?”

  “John Adams is here?” Kip hurried to look over the roof at the men disappearing around the corner of the Tower.

  “John Quincy Adams,” the raven said, “and he is here to see…”

  His terror at crossing Patris already forgotten, Kip called magic to himself and climbed over the parapet, dropping down the side of the wall as he cast his levitation spell. The last of the men had disappeared from view by the time Kip’s feet touched the cold stone of the path. He hurried after them, but Emily alit in front of him with her hands out.

  “Kip, you can’t just break in on a meeting with Adams and Patris.”

  “I wasn’t going to.” He heard two more people land behind him and reached out to the fires on the roof, promising them more life later as he extinguished them. “I just want to tell him I admire his father’s writing.”

  “You know why he’s here, right?” The wind blew Emily’s hair back from her face; she turned to avoid taking the brunt of it on her nose.

  “No?” Kip walked toward the Tower entrance. “Come on, at least let’s get inside.”

  She fell in alongside him, Malcolm and Coppy hurrying up behind. “He’s here to talk about independence,” she said in a low voice.

  Kip folded his ears back against the wind. “How do you know?”

  They reached the doors, firmly closed as if nobody had passed through them all day. Kip reached for the doors but they swung open before he could touch them. Nobody held them on the other side, but as they hurried through, Malcolm gestured the doors shut behind them with hands that glowed orange.

  “I know,” Emily said, hurrying toward the fireplace and the phosphorus elementals crowded there, “because Master Hobstone told me that he’d be coming to talk to the sorcerers here.”

  “About independence?” Kip distracted himself from the sinking of his heart by greeting the lizards as they crowded up to the edge of their boundary. There were a few new ones, but he remembered everyone’s names.

  Emily waited patiently for the chaos of greetings to subside. “Yes,” she said in a low voice, though the Great Hall was empty. “They want independence through peaceful means.”

  He’d so wanted to at least meet the son of the great writer who’d defended Calatians in print so many times. But if John Quincy Adams espoused the cause of independence, Kip couldn’t risk talking to him. “Then why come ask the sorcerers for help?”

  “I mean…if the Empire doesn’t want to let the Colonies go peacefully…” Emily frowned. “Master Hobstone explained it better. It isn’t about fighting; it’s about being ready in case the Empire starts fighting.”

  “And making sure the Empire doesn’t have these sorcerers if they want to fight.” Malcolm spoke up.

  Emily opened her mouth to retort, and then her expression calmed and she said, “Yes, I suppose that as well.”

  “So do you want to join them?” Kip asked.

  She held her hands out to the fire and stared into it. As if emboldened by her attention, the elementals answered Kip’s question.

  “Why not join up?”

  “Independence ain’t so important.”

  “Oh, like you’d know.”

  “When we aren’t here, we’re independent, right?”

  Kip held up a paw to them. “Shh, give us a moment, fellows.”

  “I don’t know.” Emily turned from the fire. “What do you all think?”

  Coppy looked at Kip while Malcolm spoke up. “Sure, independence would be a fine thing, but Mother London won’t let go her revenue-producing children without a fight, and we’ve got to be ready. This whole idea of going peacefully is nothing more than a front, I’d wager my ma’s front teeth on it.”

  “I don’t think we need to fight.” Emily saw where Coppy’s attention was. “Kip? I know you’re worried about Patris. Forget about him for a moment. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t want to start an argument here, now.

  Emily leaned in. “Your John Adams favors independence.”

  “He’s talking in theories and possibilities.”

  “The way he does about the Calatians?” she asked sharply.

  Kip looked away and set his jaw. What little he’d read of John Adams’ arguments in favor of independence had always inspired him, but so had the arguments about the treatment of Calatians, and now in order to pursue the latter, he felt he was bound to ignore the former.

  Malcolm spoke up, either to ease the tension or to fill the silence. “We’ve a few in New York along the same lines. General Hamilton’s the most outspoken. Though to be fair, Hamilton’s outspoken about pretty much everything.”

  Emily cleared her throat. “Adams’s cousin was executed forty years ago, along with the other ‘traitors’ then, and he still talks about it. Mentions things like, ‘a cause worth dying for’ without saying what he means, but if you know about poor Samuel, you know what he’s talking about.” She rubbed her hands together. “So we should go talk to him.”

  Kip looked back toward the staircase. “About what?”

  “About independence.” She cocked her head. “To find out what they plan. We’re powerful now, Kip. We can make a difference. Even if we leave the school, the things we know—we could turn the tide of battles.”

  “You think so?” He gestured to the outside of the Tower. “We’re four apprentices, barely apprentices. You know how many apprentices there are in London? How many Masters?”

  “The right person at the right time can make a difference. Would London send all their sorcerers over here, if it came to that?”

  “You should know,” Kip said, “how easy it is for sorcerers to travel.”

  “What? Oh, this.” Emily gestured with a hand. “Master Argent says that the most skilled translocational sorcerers can take two other people with them, and there are maybe a dozen of those. We have to go to places we’ve been before, or places where someone we know very well is currently. You can’t just tell a sorcerer, ‘go to Fort Duquesne’ and have him translocate an entire battalion there.”

  “No, but he could take one calyx and summon a demon.”

  “There are sorcerers who specialize in military strategy, too,” Malcolm put in. “Should there be a war, I’m sure they’ve thought of all the ways one might use sorcery in battles. In fact, they’re probably chafing at the bit for a war. Imagine making all those lovely plans and never having the chance to use them.”

  “There’s always a war sooner or later,” Coppy said.

  “There doesn’t have to be.” Emily stretched her feet out. “The movement has a number of excellent lawyers and politicians.”

  “Is there a movement to stay with the Empire?�
�� Kip asked.

  “Tch.” Emily glared. “Our entire society is a movement to stay with the Empire.”

  Kip’s ears flattened. Emily lowered her voice. “At least you should be aware of both sides, shouldn’t you?”

  Coppy, at his side, stayed quiet. “Maybe,” Kip said. “But Patris is already angry at us today, and going out of my way to talk to a representative of the independence movement could hardly make my situation here any better.”

  “Forget about Patris!” Emily turned to Malcolm for support, but he only shrugged.

  “I would love to, but I can’t. I’m supposed to be searching the ruins.” Kip raised a paw. “If you see Mr. Adams, do tell him how much his father’s writing has meant to me.”

  4

  Aftermath

  The idea of joining the independence movement still gnawed at him as he strode out of the Tower into the chilly wind. The sun had nearly set by this point and the wind had picked up, cutting through Kip’s fur. He folded his ears down and hurried toward the nearest practice tent—not the one near the gates that Adamson had set fire to, but one more intact.

  He hated that he’d used Patris’s fear as an excuse for his own insecurity, but Patris did control their fates. What if Mr. John Quincy Adams convinced the headmaster that independence was a right and just cause? It would remove the burden from Kip of making the choice: if Patris went along with it, so would he. If he and Emily and Coppy and Malcolm joined the independence movement without Patris’s support, if they were considered useful enough with their current skills—who would continue their education? The few sorcerers who would join them in defecting from the Empire? Spain? France? The Dutch and Portuguese had small colleges, enough sorcery to hold off the larger European powers; the Turks and Slavs and Russians had sorcery as well but Kip spoke no language they would know, and of course Japan and China and others in that part of the world about which he knew even less. But the acknowledged world powers in the realm of sorcery were England, Spain, and France, now in that order. And Kip wanted to learn from the best. He wanted to be part of the best.

  A small fire brought light and heat to the dark practice tent. Kip set aside his worries as best he could, because he needed a clear mind to summon the demon. He recited the words of the summoning in his head to make sure he had them right, and then realized that he had no calyx.

  Did he really need one, though? He hadn’t felt a great increase in power, and Nikolon had not given him much struggle at all. Master Odden seemed to think that Kip did need a calyx’s blood, so perhaps it was safest to continue to use it.

  The thought crossed his mind that he might ask Coppy for his help, but Kip rejected that thought almost immediately. He would never ask that of Coppy, never. He sighed and put out the fire. He would not be searching the ruins tonight.

  But as he left the practice tent, the body of the Tower rose before him. He stopped to look at its ancient stone. There was another Calatian near him, one he’d forgotten, one who had willingly lent him power in the past.

  He curled his tail around his body and hurried through the darkness to the wall of the Tower. Turning his back to the wind, he set his paws to the cold stone. Peter? I need some extra power. Just enough to summon a small demon.

  No response. The spirit was scared and shy; Kip tried again, remembering the feeling of reaching out and finding the presence at the edge of his awareness. I don’t need to talk to you. But if you’re there…

  Still nothing. Kip inhaled. If you don’t help me, I’ll have to go draw blood from another Calatian.

  No words came to his head, but power burst inside him as it had that first day he’d touched the Tower. This time he controlled it more easily, had time to breathe a soft “Thank you” before stepping away from the wall.

  He checked to make sure he was alone outside, as unlikely as it was that anyone without fur would venture out into the lowering temperatures and frigid breeze. The grounds were still as far as he could see, and though his eyes wouldn’t make out fine detail at a distance, they were quite good at spotting movement.

  And then a flash of white caught his eye, eighty or so yards away in the orchard. Probably Forrest moving about again. How did he survive living outside in this weather? Kip made a mental note to go visit him and see if he needed blankets or food.

  For now, though, he had power and a task before him. Back inside the practice tent, sheltered from the wind, he spread his paws, glowing violet with the power in him, and began the spell.

  Nikolon appeared again as a sleek, naked vixen, as tall as Kip but more slender. “I do so enjoy this form,” she purred, sliding paws down her sides and giving him a hopeful look. “Eventually I will find the type that appeals best to your tastes.”

  Alone, without Odden beside him, Kip hesitated. Demons could have corporeal form, and it would be at least two years, probably three, before his betrothed could stand before him like this. Certainly the more he thought about it, the more his body approved of the idea. What would it hurt? Out here in the practice tent, nobody would ever have to know.

  But he had to maintain focus. If he let the binding slip, who knew what Nikolon might do to him? He took a deep breath. “You will become incorporeal and descend below this tent, into the ruins of the building there.”

  She bowed. “As you command, master.”

  “And you will relay to me what you can see and smell there, and will follow my instructions as you search.”

  It was unsettling to watch her talk. Her ears didn’t behave normally; they remained upright all the time. And her tail hung like a piece of cloth from her back unless she remembered to wave it around, when it animated briefly before falling back against her legs. “As you command, master,” she said again.

  “Now go.” The feeling of ordering another person about did not sit well with him, even if it was a demon that only looked like a person. He was certain that watching through her eyes as she explored the ruins of a building where some fifty people had died was not going to improve his evening.

  Nikolon’s form vanished, but the telltale sharpness in Kip’s nose remained, diminishing only slightly over the next few seconds. And then more sights and smells crowded into his perception, overlaid on what his own eyes and nose told him. He closed his eyes to focus better on what the demon was sending.

  The first sight he saw was a jumble of broken bricks and pieces of something black. Only when Nikolon approached one of the black things and sent him the faint smell of tar did he recognize them as shingles from the roof of the building.

  “Lower,” he said aloud, and Nikolon must have heard him, because she descended through the rubble. Wooden beams, broken wooden laths, and pieces of lime plaster dominated as the demon made her way through the buildings.

  “What should I look for in the ruins?” Kip asked.

  Master Odden had walked him out to the tents while the sun was out and the weather not too cold, not because Kip didn’t know where the ruined buildings were, but because it was a nice day and he wanted to walk around. That was what he’d said; Kip suspected that there might be other reasons: Patris still upset over his previous day’s Selection and that of Coppy, or perhaps Kip’s perfumed scent in Odden’s close office. If he didn’t wear the perfume, his natural musk was strong enough to be objectionable to some people, but there were also people who didn’t like excessive scent of any kind. Odden had never complained, but Kip had been asked to “take a walk outside” enough times in his childhood to consider his perfumes a possible reason whenever that happened. It was on his mind now too because his store wasn’t going to be replenished, with his father and mother gone to Georgia, unless he went and bought more perfumes from Boston.

  “The Masters have cleared all the spell books and spell items,” Odden said, stroking one hand along the canvas of the tent, its shadow deep black against the canvas. “We have found a great quantity of burned wood, but little or no burned flesh. I believe that your affinity to fire may help you discover some cl
ue that the rest of us overlooked.”

  “Like what?”

  Odden shook his head. “All we know is that some kind of magic was worked here, of course. Fire was involved, but was it the primary attack or a secondary effect? Most of us feel it was primary, but we have no direct evidence of that. If we could identify the type of attack, we could narrow down the list of demons who might be responsible, and with some luck might be able to summon a few of them. They might be made to tell us who had previously summoned them, though questioning demons is never a sure proposition. Or we could definitively say it is a demon not on our lists, which would probably point to the Spanish as the attackers.”

  “How will I know what kind of fire was used?”

  “You won’t, not at first. But once you’ve investigated, we can send to London for Master Cott to come take a look at what you’ve found.”

  Kip’s pulse quickened. “The fire sorcerer? He would come here?”

  “Aye.” Odden brushed the canvas again and looked at the ground below which the rubble of the building rested. “He has already asked to meet you. There are not many fire sorcerers in the empire, you know.”

  “I know,” the fox said.

  Now he searched through the sights and smells Nikolon sent him for anything that reminded him of fire. Once they’d passed the roof, the signs came thick and fast: wood burned black, great quantities of ash, burned cloth and furniture still in its original shape but now made of charcoal. Some spans of charcoal looked so fragile that Kip winced as the demon’s sight came up to and passed through them, but not a speck of ash was disturbed by the spirit.

  Worse, the feeling of desolation grew with every second. Burned and broken walls, furniture, clothing—there a piece of paper half-consumed with a drawing on it, but the drawing was nothing important as far as Kip could see, so he didn’t instruct Nikolon to wait or go back. At one point Nikolon passed through a jewelry box, open and empty. Which one of the masters had taken the jewelry, Kip wondered? Or had it been emptied before the attack or during it? Was the demon one that had a taste for gold and silver, perhaps?