by Tim Susman
“Raise the spirits of armies?” Kip hadn’t heard this. “Here, we have strict rules about spiritual magic being used on people.”
“Without their consent,” Emily reminded him. “If an army consents to be…uplifted, then there’s no ethical problem with it, I suppose. It seems a very large undertaking, especially without calyxes.”
“Four spiritual sorcerers working together may affect the spirits of an army of one or two hundred men,” Chakrabarti said. “So I am told. I have not worked that magic myself. I know only a few spells purely of the mind. My specialty is the connection of mind and body.”
Alice walked up during this remark and sat at the table with them. Without looking at Kip, she addressed Chakrabarti directly. “Do you have any experience interpreting dreams?”
“Dreams?” He looked startled.
“Yes.” Now she looked at Kip.
He put his ears back. “It’s nothing,” he said. “We don’t want to bother Chakrabarti with—”
Alice interrupted. “Kip’s been having the same dream quite often. It’s troubling.”
“Alice, really. There will be plenty of time for this if Chakrabarti comes back to Peachtree with us,” Emily said.
“There’s no harm in asking.”
Chakrabarti smiled and held his hands out. “There are those in Calcutta who will explain the meanings of dreams,” he said. “But not in the schools of sorcery.”
“You see?” Kip gestured. “You might as well ask that old man yelling on the street about Divination.”
“Just because you don’t want it to be anything serious doesn’t mean it isn’t,” Alice retorted.
“Oh, please,” Chakrabarti said. “I beg your pardon. I did not mean to make light of this. A dream that returns may be a message from one of the gods. I only meant that those who could interpret it would be found in the church rather than the school of sorcery.”
“Oh.” Alice’s ears perked up. “We haven’t gone to a priest.”
“We aren’t going to,” Kip said firmly. He’d only just met Chakrabarti and didn’t want to explain the “feelings of betrayal” in the dream to him any more than he wanted to talk about them to a priest. “There’s nothing but the same images, no premonitions of death or anything. Besides, if something were going to happen, it would have happened by now.”
“You’ve been having this dream for two years and you won’t go see anyone about it. How do you know what’s going to happen or when it might happen?”
“Master Chakrabarti,” Emily said, standing, “it’s been a great pleasure meeting you, and I hope we can bring you to Peachtree with us. I’m afraid Alice and I have to meet with some other people now.”
While Chakrabarti explained that he had not attained the rank of Master in his country and Emily responded that they would have to call him that if he were going to teach, Alice gave Kip a look that meant that this discussion wasn’t over. He pushed back his annoyance and reached over to take her paw. “I know you’re concerned,” he said. “I promise that when we get back, I will ask someone to look into it.”
She rolled her eyes in a very Emily-like way. “I’ll believe that when it happens,” she said. “But thank you for thinking to say it.”
Kip and Chakrabarti spent the rest of the afternoon together talking about India and America and about sorcery, a discussion Kip thoroughly enjoyed. After a walk through the first floor’s rooms, they went outside to join Malcolm.
Chakrabarti pulled his robes more tightly around himself as they stepped outside, but the brisk, pleasant chill invigorated Kip. Through the eyes of Ash, he found Malcolm easily, an island of calm in the crowd of loud, boisterous sorcerers, and led Chakrabarti to the edge of the canal where Malcolm sat on a stone post with the cool breeze from the canal in his face. He didn’t seem to mind the smell of garbage that lingered around the water, but Kip wrinkled his nose and held a paw in front of it.
“Hallo, you two,” Malcolm said as they approached. Chakrabarti looked taken aback at this, so Kip reminded him of Malcolm’s raven, perched above them on the roof of Trippenhuis. The Indian sorcerer felt comfortable enough to ask Malcolm what had happened to his eyes, and when Malcolm began by telling him that a demon was responsible, Kip encouraged Chakrabarti to explain his country’s beliefs about demons. He had to speak up to be heard over the sorcerers around them, even to Kip’s sensitive ears.
Malcolm asked many questions along the same lines that Kip had. When he’d finished, though, he asked, “And has Kip told you that he has some of the same ideas about demons?”
“Ah.” Chakrabarti turned to Kip. “He has not.”
“We haven’t talked much about it, but he doesn’t like to summon demons anymore. He thinks perhaps they have more humanity than we give them credit for.”
“They at least seem like living beings,” Kip said. “I’d never thought that we draw magic from their home, or that it might be harming them.”
“That,” Chakrabarti said, “is considered rather extreme. That sect also will not wear footwear for fear of harming insects. And yet, there is something to the idea. If too many towns drink from the same pond, the water quickly becomes foul. And how can we know the effect if we cannot see the place we draw magic from? We—my branch of Hinduism—believe that the good we do with magic outweighs the imagined ill, but can we be sure?”
“A demon offered to take me to the demon plane once,” Kip said. “To the spirit world. I just didn’t know how I’d get back.”
“Or if it was a trap,” Malcolm said.
Kip smiled and explained, “Malcolm and I have had very different experiences of demons.”
“Aye,” Malcolm said. “If you’d seen the one that did this to my eyes…would you like to hear the story?”
Chakrabarti said he would, and so Malcolm told it, how Farley Broadside had wanted a demon and Malcolm had casually dropped the name of a fourth-order demon, telling Farley it was second-order. How Farley had kidnapped Kip and intended to show his superiority in sorcery by killing him with a demon, but found himself unable to control it once summoned. How Farley had been turned into a marmot-Calatian and had gasped out Malcolm’s name so that the demon summoned him and removed his eyes. And how Kip had somehow found the strength to banish the demon. Here the Indian sorcerer’s eyes flicked over to Kip, studying him, and Kip splayed his ears and looked away.
The sun sank lower in the sky, and their conversation moved on to comparing weather, food, and other local customs. Chakrabarti’s easy manner made Kip even more sure that the sorcerer would work well with the rest of them in Peachtree. If Emily could get enough money to pay him—once they found out what he would want to be paid—then everything would work out.
Their students came out of Trippenhuis as the day ended, talking amongst themselves and still holding their journals. Charity saw Kip and Malcolm and interrupted the chatter of the other two to guide them to the adults. Richard came up to Malcolm first. “Master O’Brien,” he said, standing tall, “we were able to complete our reports even though some of the sorcerers didn’t want to talk to Charity and Jorey. I vouched for them and there was almost a fight.”
“A fight?” Kip’s hackles went up.
“It wasn’t exactly a fight,” Charity said. “One of the Prussian sorcerers got rather loud and told Richard he hadn’t learned enough to be speaking that way, and Richard said—” She looked at him.
“That respect and courtesy didn’t require any kind of scholarly learning,” Richard said. “And he glared at me and I said I could defend myself and my friends, and then one of his colleagues took him and pulled him back.”
Corvi soared down from the roof and landed on Malcolm’s shoulder to glare at the students. “Standing up for your classmates is good,” Malcolm said, “but have a care how you do it. Not every battle that presents itself to you is one you’re obliged to engage in.”
Richard’s face fell, but Charity and Jorey nodded, and after a moment he joined in. “I know,
but it just wasn’t right,” Richard said stubbornly. “What he was saying.”
“Perhaps not,” Malcolm said. “Surely not. But what if you’d started a true fight and been expelled from the hall, or, God forbid, injured? How would you be able to present me with these lovely reports then?”
Charity stifled a giggle, and even Richard smiled. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“You’ve a good heart,” Malcolm told him, “and that’s a fine thing to have, and not something we can teach you. Aye, and I know well it hurts to bridle it sometimes, but fine hearts can run away with you just as wicked hearts can, and sometimes more easily as their motives seem good and just. Now, let’s hear those reports.”
Malcolm introduced Chakrabarti and then listened to their reports, looking through the notes they’d taken and giving a good deal of praise along with ideas for what to look for on the following day. While they were talking, Kip and Chakrabarti drew back farther down the canal to talk quietly together.
“Your students seem very intelligent,” Chakrabarti said. “I had heard that many in the British Empire are too proud for instruction, but that does not seem to be the case.”
“No,” Kip said, “although when I was in school a few years ago there were certainly some of those.”
Chakrabarti asked him about his schooling, but at that moment he noticed Jorey trying to catch his eye, so he beckoned the squirrel over. “What is it?” he asked.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Master Penfold,” Jorey said, “but I thought you should know that Charity was very brave as well.”
“Oh?”
The squirrel nodded. “When Richard said that to the sorcerer, it was because he made a very rude remark to Charity, but she stepped back and didn’t say anything. And then when Richard made ready to fight, Charity came up with me to hold him back even though it meant coming under the eyes of those sorcerers again.”
Kip nodded. “That’s brave indeed. Why did she leave that out?”
“She didn’t want to have to say what the sorcerers said,” Jorey whispered. “I don’t want to tell you. It was very cruel.”
“All right, we’ll leave it at that. But thank you for telling me,” Kip said.
Jorey remained by him as he told Chakrabarti a little more about the classes at the Lutris School, but in the middle of it a loud argument approached them through the crowd. He tried to ignore it, but the two men’s voices increased in volume and sharpness until he couldn’t shut them out even by flattening his ears. From the roof, Ash showed him two men moving toward the canal, not directly at them but definitely in their direction.
They were loud enough that even Chakrabarti noticed. He saw Kip’s ears go down and said, “With your sensitive hearing, it must be difficult to keep your concentration in public places.”
“You learn to filter things out.” Kip smiled tightly. “But sometimes you just can’t.”
“I would worry in a place like this.” Chakrabarti looked back toward Trippenhuis. “When sorcerers have disputes, it is the innocents who suffer. There is an old story that there was an ancient village called Hanumana where two sorcerers fought over a woman. They fought for twelve days, it is told, and at the end of it there was no sign that the village had ever stood, and everyone in it was gone.”
“I hope there are enough sorcerers here to stop these two before they erase Amsterdam.” The two did look as though they might come to blows, and at least one of them sounded drunk. Kip readied himself in case someone needed to intervene, very aware of his students so close by. In the crowd around him, a few other sorcerers watched the argument intently as well. They were talking in what sounded like German, so he couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the louder one’s words slurred into each other while his companion spoke more precisely.
As they approached the canal, the drunk sorcerer shoved his companion away, pointed at Richard, and yelled something in German. Richard looked startled and said something to Malcolm, but a moment later he rose into the air. His arms glowed with ruby light, but before he could cast a spell, the drunk sorcerer had thrown him into the canal.
While this was going on, Charity had lunged toward the drunk sorcerer but Malcolm gripped her arm to stop her. The drunk, noticing, turned his attention to them while the sorcerer he’d been arguing with tried again to hold him. This time the drunk shoved his companion away and yelled something at Malcolm, at which point Jorey took a step forward and Kip grabbed his robe. “Malcolm has wards up,” he said, casting a spell himself to pull Richard from the canal and keeping his awareness heightened. It would do no good for him to enter the fight now, not when he had students to protect, but he could not help wishing that Emily were here to translocate the drunk.
Richard, feeling Kip’s spell on him, had focused his magic elsewhere. Water rose in a great wave from the canal toward the shore. Kip cursed. He summoned magic to try to cast a second spell, but before he could, the drunken sorcerer pushed the wave back toward Richard with a jeering yell. Kip only just lifted him out of the way in time.
By this time, several sorcerers had formed a circle around the drunk, but he wouldn’t let anyone get close enough to translocate or cast spiritual magic on him. As they closed in, he shot up above the crowd, laughing, and then his laughter turned to a startled yell as he arrowed toward the canal himself, his physical magic no match for the combined spells of several of the people below.
Kip relaxed; it looked like the fight was over. But he did not let go of Jorey, and it was a good thing, because a large tree that stood beside the canal toppled over unnaturally quickly with a loud rumbling as the roots broke the surface, dislodging stones that fell into the canal. Most of the people below got out of the way, but a few were struck by its branches. Whether the drunk had done this from the canal or someone else had used the fight as cover wasn’t clear.
Richard came safely down beside Kip and Jorey. “That was the Prussian sorcerer,” he said, dripping and breathless.
“Are you all right?” Jorey ran to him before Kip could get the question out.
“Only my dignity was harmed, but the rest of me is quite wet,” Richard said.
“There are wounded.” Chakrabarti gathered his robes about him. “I should go. They have restrained the sorcerer now, I see.”
Indeed, a Dutch sorcerer Kip recognized had come to the edge of the canal and another had translocated to the middle of it, one hand on the shoulder of the drunk Prussian. A moment later, the two of them stood on the canal’s edge where the other sorcerer met them, and together the two Dutchmen led the Prussian away.
Kip followed Chakrabarti to watch him minister to the wounded, leaving Richard and Jorey with Charity, who looked upset. “I tried to translocate to Richard so I could send him to safety,” she said, “but I couldn’t do it quickly enough. I couldn’t follow him as he was moving.”
“That’s advanced,” Malcolm said gently. “It was well thought, though. You’ll learn that skill soon enough, and we will be working on wards and defensive magic that will also serve in a situation like this.”
Hopefully there wouldn’t be more situations like this, not for the students. Kip sighed and trailed Chakrabarti as the sorcerer, along with two or three other healers, attended to the half-dozen wounded. It looked like the worst injury was a deep cut to the forearm of a Dutch sorcerer, who kept saying over and over that they shouldn’t have allowed liquor at the Salon even as Chakrabarti mended his wound.
When everyone had been healed, Kip and Chakrabarti walked back to Malcolm. “I should’ve expected,” Kip said, but his words trailed off as he saw Victor Adamson lounging outside the nearer doorway of Trippenhuis. The young man surveyed the crowd and then met Kip’s eyes and smiled, lifting a glass as though making a toast.
“Expected what?” Malcolm asked.
Kip shook his head. “Oh. There’s alcohol here. That’s all.” He scanned the area around Malcolm, where Charity and Jorey were at the canal’s edge. “Where’s Richard?”
“Of all the…” He must have gone around behind them while Chakrabarti was healing. Kip excused himself and pushed through the crowd toward the tree, which now stood upright amid a circle of sorcerers—including the still-dripping Richard.
The tall boy looked satisfied until his eyes lit on Kip, and then he saw right away that the fox was mad at him. He stepped away, his expression changing to confusion. “I was only trying to help,” he said as Kip strode up and grabbed his arm. “It’s partly my fault the tree’s knocked down.”
“You’ve got to stay with us or with your fellow students.” Kip looked around again, but Victor was gone. “This fight wasn’t your fault. It might have been provoked.”
“What?” Richard looked genuinely startled.
Kip stopped, still some twenty feet from Malcolm and the others. He lowered his voice. “I don’t want to alarm any of you, and I don’t want you to say anything to Jorey. But you deserve to know why you shouldn’t go off on your own. There’s someone here who has a particular interest in magical Calatians. This fight might have been a gambit to separate you two from Jorey, and if he hadn’t been talking to me at the time, it would have worked. So if you see a hooded figure or that blond man standing by the door, and we’re not around, take the others and get away as fast as you can.”
Richard absorbed this and then looked about for either of the people Kip had warned him about. It didn’t take long for him to spot Victor, but to his credit, he didn’t point. “Is the blond man this Adamson fellow you warned us about?”
“Yes,” Kip said. “He’s very dangerous, even if he doesn’t appear to be.”
“I think if we saw a ‘hooded figure,’ we should quite definitely run the other way,” Richard said. “But would someone really kidnap Jorey? I’d have thought our greatest danger was drunken sorcery. That fellow disliked me from the start, and liquor fed his anger.”
“Liquor that someone might have given him. And how would it look for our school if our students were seen publicly brawling? We’re trying to convince teachers to come work with you, so you must be on your very best behavior.”
