The Revolution and the Fox

by Tim Susman

  “A revolution,” Kip murmured. The thought appealed to him. He knew that this was a momentous thing, something that more people than just him and Pierce should be privy to, but he was also curious to know how it would work from a magical standpoint. In addition, there was a little part of him that wanted Victor, who had tried to eradicate his race, to be the instrument they could use to strengthen it. And yet, did he or anyone have the right to change the life of an animal like that? “Let’s wait until all the Calatians have been restored, and then we’ll talk about it again.”

  So Pierce took the non-Calatian mice and kept them aside. They worked all through the night and the next day, Pierce providing Kip with food and tea to keep him awake, Sleek providing him with news of the other cities with Calatians. Sorcerers had been mobilized to help keep the animals all in one place, but they suspected they had lost many of them, especially the smaller ones. In Amsterdam and Madrid, Emily had alerted the sorcerers who were now doing the same, and Amsterdam merchants had made available a number of wire cages for mice and rats.

  It helped that as Kip had, the animals seemed to retain an awareness of their familiarity with each other. There were incidents, but few deaths, and once the sorcerers took control, the predators were kept apart from the prey. In Amsterdam and New Cambridge, sorcerers called first-level demons to help them look for escaped former Calatians, and once Kip had finished with the Calatians of the Isle of Dogs, he dismissed demon-Victor and summoned Nikolon, again without binding her, to ask her to help the other demons look, since she knew what to look for.

  Kip could no longer keep his eyes open, so he went to Ella Lutris’s house. Thankfully, Ella was one of the otters who had slept through most of the ordeal and had not sought refuge in the Thames, so she and her family had been restored. She still had an empty pallet on the floor where Kip gratefully lay down to sleep.

  He slept through the evening and night and woke at the glimmers of dawn. Ella and Malcolm slept near him with Corvi and Sleek nearby, heads tucked under their wings. He translocated to Alice and found her asleep in a small room in Philadelphia in the middle of the night. He sat down next to her, intending to stay in her presence only for a short time, but she woke.

  “Are you finished?” she asked.

  “With the Isle, maybe. The rest of the world needs me, so I thought I’d go to Amsterdam first, then Peachtree and New Cambridge as they wake up.”

  “Did you sleep at all?”

  “Hours and hours. I’m fine. I could stay up another day and night. How are things going here?”

  She rubbed her eyes. “I fear we’ve lost a lot of them. Victor might not have succeeded as he thought, but he’s done a great deal of damage.”

  “I know. The Isle is well-contained and there are still almost a hundred missing from it.”

  “Where’s Emily?”

  “Boston, I think. No—she said she was going to Boston, then Richmond, so perhaps there.”

  Kip nodded and rubbed at the base of his ears. “I’d best get back to wake everyone up. Thousands more to go.”

  “You’re not having any trouble with the binding?”

  “On Victor?” He laughed shortly. “I’m very cautious. He’s about a second-order demon, which I know would annoy him to no end. So I can hold him for as long as I need to.”

  “Doesn’t he fight you?”

  “Constantly, but that’s how I know when the binding is weak. A cleverer demon acts very docile so the sorcerer gets complacent and then tests the bindings sharply. But Victor never had much experience of demons, and even less in being one.”

  Alice was silent, staring past Kip into the dimness. “I still don’t know what to think about our spirits turning into demons.”

  “You haven’t told anyone else, have you?”

  She shook her head. “But I talked to Emily about it after Malcolm told us. Was—was the demon plane a very terrible place?”

  “No. It could be very peaceful. But you lose a lot of yourself when you go there.”

  “You didn’t.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “As long as we maintain a connection to this world, maybe that helps anchor our memories. I don’t know. It’s a lot to think about, and we have thousands more Calatians to rescue.”

  She leaned over and kissed him. “Go do that.”

  “Hug Abel and the cubs for me when you see them.” He kissed her back and then returned to the Isle.

  Amsterdam, Peachtree, New Cambridge, Madrid, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Savannah. Over the next several days Kip visited each city, sometimes with Emily, sometimes with Malcolm, sometimes with Alice. They talked to the sorcerers in charge, Kip summoned demon-Victor, and they set about restoring the Calatians they could find. He had a sense now of how long he could bind demon-Victor, and though the demon never stopped struggling or trying to find a loophole in the things he said, the restoration spell worked every single time.

  But in every city, Kip heard before he left that there were some still missing. He returned to the Isle to find that two mice and two rats had been found, and one otter had returned, climbing up the bank and over the broken wall. In Amsterdam, four more Calatians waited for restoration when he returned there, and in New Cambridge, six.

  Somewhat to his surprise, the expatriate French nobles threw themselves into the relief efforts in Peachtree, scouring the town for stray animals and helping tend to the ones that had been found before Kip returned. Mme. Dieuleveult brushed off his thanks when he first returned to restore the Calatians. “You’ve taken us in and now you find yourselves in trouble? What would you think of France if we declined to help?”

  “And besides,” her husband said, standing beside her, “it makes us understand that there are worse things than losing your home and possessions. I have prayed to St. Francis for all of you.”

  “Thank you,” Kip said. He decided this was not the time to tell M. Dieuleveult about the properties of his relics. After all, he still was not sure whether the relic had brought him back from the demon plane, if he’d simply used it as an anchor, or if it had not mattered at all and his desperation had proved the difference. He might never know, and at any rate there were more pressing concerns, so he went about his work.

  In Amsterdam, Master Janssen himself met Kip and thanked him for his efforts; in Madrid, Master Galena, who had asked Kip about the story of the Road at the Exposition, found him and did the same. Master Patris had gathered the New Cambridge Calatians; Master Odden had done the same in Boston, Master Sharpe in New York, and Master Warrington in Philadelphia. All the sorcerers pressed Kip about the manner in which the Calatians were being restored (with Master Sharpe adding his conviction that Kip had arranged this all for the Calatians’ benefit somehow), but Kip told them over and over that he was simply reversing an existing spell, not creating a new one. He did not have the original spell, he told them, but this demon was the one that had been used to cast it (a semi-truth) and remembered enough to reverse it.

  In Richmond, Master Vendis helped him, and in Savannah, Master Argent and the young Dutch healer de Koning had taken charge of the Calatians. To Argent and Vendis, Kip was a little more forthcoming, though he hid the truth about his demon’s identity. He would want to discuss it with all the masters at his school first before they made any decisions about disseminating the information more widely.

  In every city, throngs of people crowded around the Calatian neighborhoods, having heard of the crisis and wanting to help. They brought mice and rats by the hundreds, occasionally larger animals. Only twice were any of these animals Calatians, but Kip found himself genuinely moved by the crowds of people and their earnest efforts. One thought that Calatians and humans had not integrated all that well, that New Cambridge was the exception rather than the rule, but here were hundreds of humans stricken by the loss of their Calatian neighbors. He made sure to point this out to the sorcerers in every city, and to the Calatians once they were settled from their ordeal. In some places,
he hoped, people and Calatians would begin to mix a little more readily.

  By the time he’d finished his second tour in every city, ten days later, he felt as though he’d been doing this work for months. But there were few other people, if any, he reflected, who could say they’d personally met every Calatian in the world.

  22

  Another Revolution

  They closed the school for a day because the Great Hall, the wide, airy gathering room on the ground floor which was normally a public space, was the only room large enough for Kip, Malcolm, Emily, Alice, Chakrabarti, Argent, Vendis, and the young Dutch sorcerer de Koning to sit comfortably and have a conversation. Before admitting de Koning, Chakrabarti, and Alice, the other five had discussed whether they should be privy to the discussion. Kip and Malcolm had argued that Alice had seen much of what they were about to discuss already, and that Chakrabarti and de Koning had already shown a great desire to become part of the school. They would no doubt bring this information back to their home countries, but Emily, Kip, and Malcolm all believed that that would happen anyway in time, and it was better that they include their new colleagues. Masters Argent and Vendis, who had seen how much Chakrabarti and de Koning had helped in the recent crisis, agreed quickly.

  Emily began the meeting by standing and welcoming Chakrabarti and de Koning and thanking them for their help. Then she turned to Kip. “Master Penfold has promised us a full accounting of his recent adventure, and he and I have discussed a proposal that I think will help the future of the school. The two are quite separate, but you all should hear both of them, so…here we all are. Master Penfold?” She sat.

  Kip nodded to her and stood. He cleared his throat. “I suppose this all began at the Exposition, with Victor’s trick…” He told that story quickly, how the stage show had been both a trick to spread fear about the British Empire’s capabilities and a diversion to get their students separated. How Victor had been kidnapping a Calatian here and there to experiment on but wanted Calatians with access to magic, hoping they would give him more power. How he’d somehow bribed March, or maybe March had been his agent all along—March had been restored and was in Grinda’s custody on the Isle.

  Kip did not tell them about his conversation with Grinda, her sharp, “I suppose you want to be thanked for saving us from this trouble you caused,” and her back turned as others stuttered apologies on her behalf, apologies that Kip waved away because he felt that she was at least partly right. He had not committed the great crime himself, but he’d taunted Victor and he’d underestimated the threat the magic-less young man presented. He should have known after all these years that Victor was capable of great evil because he wanted so badly to be great at any cost. Kip would never be able to repair all the damage, restore all the losses. Grinda hadn’t lost any family members (wolves were easy to keep track of), but she felt the pain of others who had and wanted to be sure Kip did too. He did, but the other sorcerers here didn’t need to.

  He did tell them about being captured, about being reduced to an animal (that part was hard and drew gasps from even the ones who knew the story), and about how Victor had done the same to Richard. He told them about Nikolon’s help and the journey to the Æther, how he had seen Victor there, then gone, and then back again without his silver cord, memories sloughing off of him to be snapped up by other demons.

  “Wait,” Chakrabarti said, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “You said ‘other’ demons.”

  Kip nodded. “The demon I’ve been summoning to restore Calatians is—was Victor. He remembers the spell he used, at least, and he knows he doesn’t like me, though he doesn’t remember many specifics about it.”

  Argent stared blankly ahead and de Koning’s mouth hung open, but Vendis spoke. “So when we die, we become demons?”

  “Some of us, anyway.” Kip pressed his paws together to keep them from shaking too much. “I, ah, I’ve thought about it a lot, but I haven’t actually had the chance to do much more study.”

  Vendis laughed, sounding as nervous as Kip felt about this whole subject. “Do you think you could go back to the demon plane? The Æther?”

  “Perhaps, but…I’m not actually very keen to, you understand.”

  Now everyone laughed. “No, of course not. But…this changes everything we know about demons.”

  “Not to mention Heaven and Hell,” Argent said.

  “It does. But…” And Kip told them about Nikolon, without revealing her name, how she had not betrayed him at the Battle of the Road, how he had summoned her without binding, how perhaps, just perhaps, there might be a way for humans to work with demons without the pain of binding them.

  “Is that your proposal?” Chakrabarti asked.

  “No. Well—perhaps, but I rather want to let Emily explain the other thing. I’ve been talking for quite a while here.” He sat.

  Alice reached over and took his paw as Emily stood again. “Yes, well. You all know that we’ve been rather desperately trying to ensure the survival of the school.” Murmurs and nods. “We’d hoped to get some money from the Dieuleveults, and that hasn’t gone very well.” The revolution in France had not died down; the king was in prison, while multiple nobles and two sorcerers had been killed. Paris, reports said, was still burning in many areas. The powers of Europe had withdrawn to see how this would all turn out. “And we’re hoping that the American government will see fit to fund both magic schools, but they seem to place the American School at a higher priority than ours. So Kip and I have been talking the last few days and I think we’ve come up with a good idea.”

  “Not just to save the school,” Kip interjected, “but a good idea in general.”

  “Yes.” Emily smiled. “It was partly inspired by talking to you, Master Chakrabarti, about the practices in India, where sorcerers have to go out to the towns and help people. It was partly inspired by talking to the Calatians of Amsterdam and the Isle, providing a great service to their sorcerers and receiving nothing in return. And it was partly inspired during the past week as Kip and I and many others, you included, watched hundreds of humans give their time, as well as some material benefits like food and shelter, to help restore Calatians to the world.

  “When Kip was expelled—unjustly—from school, he lived at an Inn and paid for his room and board with small sorcery jobs. When I suggested out of desperation that we try something of the sort again, he did not think it would work. Sorcerers might barter our services one on one, for favors, but to codify that sale of services feels wrong. I agree with him on that.”

  The sorcerers around the room nodded. Emily went on. “But in talking over the last few days, with all of these new experiences, we wondered if we were perhaps viewing our problem incorrectly. Sorcery colleges in the British Empire have always been funded by the Crown, and in return they do work for the Crown. We have been hoping for funding from our new government, but the American College has taken what little of that there is. We were hoping for funds from one or two benefactors, but that route has been thrown into chaos, and it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which we could offer equal value for an investment. A charitable donation, yes, but then we would find ourselves beholden to a few wealthy donors.”

  Kip spoke up. “Just as we were pressed to take the Dieuleveults back into a dangerous situation when their house was burning.”

  “Quite. So we tried to think more creatively. We are a young country, and our military and civil sorcerers are stretched very thin. East Georgia, again, seems to be last on their list of stops, and everywhere south of Virginia in general feels neglected, at least according to many of the politicians I’ve spoken to. So we, the sorcerers of the Lutris School, will go help people in the surrounding cities and states. Savannah, Charleston, Richmond, maybe farther if need be.”

  “It sounds like we’re selling our services.” Argent frowned.

  “Not exactly. We won’t be funded by the country’s government, but we can approach cities and states and territories for help, and may
be to point us to areas of greatest need. The government of East Georgia has offered a little money, and we can take barter: food, woodworking, whatever people can spare. The sorcerers of the Athæneum can perhaps begin to offer their Calatians travel home to see family in exchange for their services, but if not, we can help them too.”

  “We used to have sorcerers come down into New Cambridge to help the town.” Kip appealed to Master Vendis. “You remember.”

  “The idea,” Emily concluded, “is that we shall become part of our community rather than sitting apart from it, as King’s and the American College do.”

  “New Cambridge supplied calyxes to us,” Vendis said. “We didn’t take any money from them.”

  “I’m not saying this will be easy to work out.” Emily’s grey eyes surveyed the room. “But if anyone else has a suggestion, I will be happy to entertain it.”

  No-one spoke. Kip leaned in again. “If people see us as something of value to them, they’ll be willing to support us, we hope. Nobody has a lot, but a lot of people have a little, and a bit of food here, a bit of coin there…it could see us through the next several years.”

  “It still feels like whoring ourselves out,” Vendis grumbled.

  “If I may?” Chakrabarti looked between Kip and Emily, and Emily nodded to him. He stood. “In my country, this going out into the town, as Headmistress Carswell said, this is regarded as a great pleasure, a gift to the sorcerer. It is true that not all sorcerers perceive it in this way.” He chuckled gently. “Still, many of us find it very rewarding, a reminder of how important our great power is, at how much a small gesture may make a large difference to another.”

  “There will undoubtedly be some who will think that their donation entitles them to preferential treatment or services,” Emily said. “We are right now only a few, including the students. But we are starting this from whole cloth and it will require some tailoring as we go along.”