by Tim Susman
That morning, a sorcerer had come down from the College (Kip did not remember whom) to tell Amelia Broadside that her husband had been killed in the war, and her twelve-year-old son Farley, who sat at the back of the classroom and usually spent his time flicking pebbles at the backs of the Calatians’ heads when Miss Partridge was writing at the chalkboard, had demanded to know why the Empire was fighting Napoleon. Michael Warner, a year younger, also had a father overseas, though his was still alive as far as anyone knew.
“Why don’t we just breed lots of the Callies and throw them at Napoleon if he ain’t got any?” Farley wanted to know, and Miss Partridge had spent a long time explaining that in fact the Empire had very few Calatians and that they were very valuable to the sorcerers. She had spent so much time on it that Kip and the other Calatian cubs in the front had grown quiet, unused to the attention and uncomfortable with it. Only Adam, whose father was a calyx like Kip’s, had spoken often about how brave his father was.
That was what Kip was talking to the mouse about as they walked their usual shortcut, through the weeds behind the school. “We don’t even know what our fathers do up there. You shouldn’t say so much about it.”
“Our fathers do as much as theirs,” Adam insisted stubbornly. “My dad looks terrible when he comes down. He won’t play with me at all. And he does that even when we’re fighting.”
“But he won’t die,” Kip said. If he were not so absorbed in the argument with Adam, in the need he couldn’t articulate to be more sensitive to the humans, he would have acted on the scent of oil when it reached his nose. Instead, he walked two more steps.
“He might,” Adam said, and then, “I am glad he doesn’t have to—”
There was a hard pressure under Kip’s bare foot, and then a click.
“—go away—”
Kip jerked his foot up, but not in time. A loud snap, a crunch of fragile bone, a searing pain around his foot.
Adam’s breath quickened, his eyes already darting about. “What happened?” But even as he said it, he saw the iron jaws of the rabbit trap clamped around Kip’s black-furred foot, the blood dripping onto the dry summer grass.
“Go…get help…” Kip whined through clenched teeth, his eyes filling with tears. He sat heavily in the grass, fiery pain, unimaginable pain, lancing from his foot up his leg. Would he ever walk normally again? He tried to lean forward to pull at the trap, but even that motion caught at his foot and he stopped, stomach roiling, his vision wobbly.
“Are you—”
A high-pitched triumphant shout interrupted them. “Mike! We caught one!”
It was the worst voice Kip could have heard in that moment. “Go!” he hissed at Adam. “Get out of here!”
But Adam remained frozen, uncertain, and the voices and shadows resolved into Farley Broadside and Michael Warner, and then Adam ran, then, when it was too late. “Stop ‘im, Mike,” Farley said lazily, and Michael, who was two years older and nearly a foot taller, sprang after the mouse. Kip did not want to hear the thud and the squeak, but his ears, even folded down, betrayed him.
“Leave him!” he yelled, and thick, muscled Farley stepped forward in a fluid motion, his fist like a rock smacking the side of Kip’s muzzle.
“Thought we’d play French and English,” he said. “You pelts can be the French.”
“Ow,” Mike said from a little ways away, but it wasn’t urgent, just mild discomfort. “Stop scratching, beast.”
“French beast!” Farley reminded Mike loudly with a laugh. He turned back to Kip, who was holding his sore muzzle as pain surged through it. He didn’t think that was broken, at least, and he couldn’t taste or smell blood. So he kept silent as Farley went on. “Think we should torture ’em to find out what they know?”
“About what?” Mike called.
Kip wriggled his foot, but the teeth of the trap had bitten hard, digging into the pad and the bridge of the foot, and every movement stabbed him with pain. He would need to reach down and open the jaws himself, but Farley would never let him do that. So he watched the other boy warily as Farley brought one meaty hand to his chin and his small watery blue eyes watched Kip.
“About the sorcerers,” Farley said finally. “Where the French sorcerers are and what they’re planning.”
“Right,” Mike called, and then, “Tell me what you know, French scum!” Kip heard Adam’s half-squeak, half-sob, and then the sound of an impact that could have been a fist hitting a face, or a head hitting the ground, and Mike’s, “Don’t cry, little baby! Tell me where the sorcerers are!”
Adam weighed little more than half what Mike did. Kip acted without thinking, the need to save Adam burning away the pain. He lunged at Farley and bit him hard on the arm, long canine teeth sinking into the unprotected skin.
Farley screamed, and tried to club Kip on the face again, but in close quarters, his punch was less effective, and Kip knew better than to keep his jaws sunk in Farley’s arm. He drew back and punched the older boy in the gut, and then swiped at his side, but Farley had jumped back by this time. Blood trickled down his arm and now Kip could taste it in his mouth. He collected it and spit it on the ground. “Leave us alone,” he said again.
“Mike!” Farley yelled.
“Right,” Kip jeered, even though it was what he’d wanted Farley to do. “Call for help, cowardly—cowardly English! We French will defeat you.” The thought flickered across his mind that he could say something about Farley’s father, but even in this circumstance, the thought of his own father, both his disapproval and the thought of him dying on a French field, held the fox’s tongue.
And then big Michael Warner was on the other side of him and he dragged himself back through the grass, the heavy iron trap on his foot, trying to keep them both in view. “Having trouble with this Froggy chap?” Mike said. “You think he knows something valuable?”
Farley had a hand pressed over the bite on his arm. “Give me your knife,” he said.
“My—” Mike’s hand went to his waist, and he looked at Kip. “My dad told me never to—”
“Give it!” Farley held his hand out, and Mike, looking much less comfortable, unsheathed his knife.
“We’re not going to…” He trailed off as he walked around Kip to hand the knife over. Kip could have outrun them both, but not with the trap on his foot, and now not even if it were removed. His whole leg was cramping up and his foot throbbed in agony. He shut it out of his mind as best he could.
“I just want a trophy,” Farley snarled. “Hold him down.”
Kip couldn’t hear if Adam was moving; Mike was tromping through the grass toward him and all his attention was focused on that. “Watch the mouth,” Farley added.
“I know how to hold an animal,” Mike said, and he approached Kip with none of the reckless emotion Farley had. He judged the fox and lunged, and when Kip moved to block the lunge, Mike revealed it to be a feint, already dodging to jump on Kip’s chest and pin him to the ground.
“Not like that,” Farley snapped. “The other way.”
There followed some verbal struggles as Mike tried to understand what Farley meant, while Kip struggled against the physical weight on him. Finally, Farley’s meaning came through, and Mike said, “I ain’t turning him over. You can get at it that way too.”
“Well, hold the free leg, anyway.” And Mike, who wrestled when he could find anyone to wrestle him, twisted and caught Kip’s untrapped leg behind the knee, pulling it easily toward the fox’s chest while keeping his weight there. Kip lashed his tail, but couldn’t do anything else, and even with the burst of strength borne of terror, he couldn’t shift Mike.
Farley knelt behind him and grabbed his tail, yanked it straight. Compared to the pain in his foot, the jolt to his spine was minor, as was the sharp pain of biting his tongue. Kip’s mind raced, but there was nothing he could do, no way out, he was going to go home with a bloody stump where his tail had been and even the sorcerers couldn’t grow one of those back, he was going
to be like Matthias and Delilah who had had their tails cut off by bullies and God he couldn’t breathe—
A whoosh and rush of heat. Farley jumped away with a yell as the dry grasses around him exploded into flame.
The weight of Michael Warner, the painful pressure on his leg, all vanished in a moment. The two boys yelled, “Fire! Fire!” and ran.
Kip pried open the trap with difficulty, as quickly as he could. Heat licked at his face and ears, and his pants leg caught fire, but he put it out with a hurried patting of his paw. He limped on one foot to where Adam lay in the grass, on his back.
The mouse was breathing, but very quickly and shallowly. Kip looked down into his staring eyes and saw no recognition. When he lifted Adam’s head, he saw the jagged rock below it, and smelled the blood.
He held his friend until the Watch arrived.
“Good Lord,” Emily breathed. “What happened to Adam?”
Kip exhaled. “He lived for a few more years. He never talked much after that, and he suffered from seizures. One in his sleep killed him.”
Emily dropped the strands of hair she’d been twirling and put her hand to her mouth. “What happened to the bullies?”
“Nothing, then.” Kip glanced at his father. “Nor any time.”
“Aye,” Max said tiredly. “That was the most extreme, but Kip here had more broken arms and legs than I can count.”
“We have lighter bones.” Kip straightened his back. “I can outrun any of the boys in town.”
“And I can outfight ’em.” Coppy curled one paw into a fist. “Kip’s had no bones broke since I came to town.”
Kip smiled. “Coppy came seeking his fortune in Boston, but he and I got to talking and he decided to stay in New Cambridge.”
“Felt time was about right for a change. A town where Calatians can live in separate houses, where they live alongside humans and share the town? I grew up in the Isle of Dogs and there wasn’t much to love about being a Calatian there ’cepting other Calatians.”
Emily nodded thoughtfully. “I will miss Boston, but there is something to be said for air that doesn’t smell of salt or fish.”
“It does some days.” Kip stuck his tongue out.
“To you.” Coppy tapped his nose, looking at Emily. “If you was just thinking about a fish dinner, his sniffer could pick it up.”
Kip laughed. “Not quite.”
Emily rested her elbows on the table, turned toward Kip. “Extra-sensitive nose and ears. You’ll be a good friend to have. Can you spot a fly at a mile away as well?”
“Actually, I’m not so good at seeing distances.”
“But better seeing at night,” Coppy put in.
“Marginally.”
Emily shook her head. “I suppose it’s a fair trade for having to wear that fur all the time. And you can cast fire spells?”
Kip shook his head. “Not consciously, but that’s why Father got me the spell book.”
“He’d wanted to do magic since he was old enough to talk,” Max said. “And the fire was an extreme example, but there’d been other fires. And sometimes he would seem to be listening to things, or concentrating hard. Once or twice things wouldn’t be where we’d left them and we couldn’t figure out why.”
“Oh, that happened to me all the time.” Emily grinned at Kip. “That’s plain absent-mindedness.”
“Well, by ‘not where we left them’ I mean he would get vials of perfume from closed drawers over his head, things like that. Things that the sorcerers say are signs of a strong affinity for magic.”
“But aren’t you all magic anyway?” Emily looked around. “That’s what my sorcerer told me—yes, did I mention I worked with a sorcerer as well?—that the reason you’re used as calyxes is because of your magical nature?”
“That is true.” Max nodded. “But being magical and using magic are different things entire.”
Kip was about to add something when the tent flap opened. Argent’s raven fluttered its wings and shifted on the perch, and Max and Coppy turned to see the newcomer.
He was a tall boy, slender and immaculately groomed, with neat pale hair and ice-blue eyes, and he strode into the tent ahead of an older man whose nose and eyes were so similar that Kip knew immediately he was the boy’s father. Both wore finely tailored white shirts under formal black jackets, with cravats knotted at the front—blue for the boy, steel-grey for his father—and identical trousers and gleaming black leather shoes. The faint perfume of orange blossom met Kip’s nose.
The boy surveyed the tent with a slight sneer, and then his eyes widened as he spotted the foursome at the table. “Look, Father,” he said. “We’re to be assigned calyxes from the beginning. And…” His gaze lingered on Emily. “Oh, they may not be done setting up the tent. Really, there will be time for gossip when the work is done.”
Master Patris pushed his way into the tent behind the boy and his father. “The accommodations are rather rough, but we are still rebuilding from—what are you doing here?”
His tone grew sharp as he followed the boy’s gaze. Emily rose. “Master Argent said we might sit here and talk,” she said. “And for your information, sir, we are candidates for admission just as I imagine you yourself are.”
Kip stood beside her. “Both of us,” he said, anticipating the boy’s question.
Light blue eyes measured him, and disbelief melted into smooth courtesy. “My apologies,” he said, and executed a stiff bow. The orange-blossom smell deepened. “My name is Victor Adamson. This is my father Josiah.”
The elder Adamson regarded the foursome with bored indifference. Though his eyes shared a color with his son’s, age had dulled their brightness. Out of courtesy, Kip gestured to his father, who was also standing. “I’m Philip Penfold—Kip. My father, Max,” he said.
Victor bowed again but did not extend a hand. His father turned to Patris and whispered in a voice that was clear to Kip’s large ears, “What the devil is this, Patris?”
Emily and Coppy introduced themselves as well, and though Victor’s eyes flickered to Emily’s dress, he returned his gaze quickly to Kip. He said something, but the fox had his ears focused on Patris’s whispered reply about the liberal interpretation of the rules and the testing process making sure that only the most qualified applicants would be admitted. Kip only became aware of the conversation when his father replied to Victor’s question.
“I have experience as a calyx,” Max said, “but Kip is a candidate, and we hope he is talented enough to gain admission to the College.”
“There have been no Calatian sorcerers, have there?” Victor rubbed his chin. “It might be possible, had a Calatian deserted to the Spanish army, or the French, ten years ago. But I have not heard of it. Which means that if you succeed, you two will be the first.”
“Oh, I’m not applying,” Coppy said. “Just escorting our candidate here.” He gestured to Kip.
“And I’ll be the first female sorcerer,” Emily spoke up.
“Indeed.” Victor looked from Kip to Coppy and back again. Behind him, his father and Patris had retreated to the corner of the tent away from the brazier, and between that and the conversation, Kip could no longer hear what they were saying. He supposed that Patris, at least, might have experience with the hearing of foxes. “Well,” Victor continued, coming up to their table, “as we are all candidates, perhaps we should join forces.”
He sat between Max and Coppy, but the others remained standing. Then, slowly, Kip lowered himself to the bench. “How do you propose we join forces?” he asked, while the others followed.
“Share information,” Victor said promptly. “I applied for candidacy two years ago and was not admitted—obviously,” he drawled, “but I cannot imagine their tests have changed overmuch.”
Kip met Coppy’s eyes. They had talked so many times about not knowing what the tests consisted of, wondering if they would be tested on magic or simply on knowledge, and here the answers had dropped in their lap. “What can we offer yo
u?”
Here, for the first time, Victor hesitated. “I…” He looked down at the wood grain of the table and traced it with a fingernail. “I admit that despite having studied magic extensively, I still have not managed to manifest it to my satisfaction. I presume that if you—you two, my apologies, Miss Carswell—are confident enough to apply to the school, that you have attained at least some level of familiarity with the magical arts.”
The three of them looked at each other, and then Emily said loudly, with a wicked eye back at Patris, “Kip flew to the top of the tower by himself. It was dashed impressive, if you ask me.”
Victor did not turn, but Patris looked up from his conversation to glower at them. Kip sighed and nodded to Victor’s scrutiny. “I’ve worked with magic, and I believe Emily has studied as well.”
She waved a hand. “I’ve learned to gather magic and simple lifting spells. Master Hobstone said I should not learn more without more instruction than he could give.”
They talked about the practice of gathering magic, but Victor knew the theory; he was more interested in what it felt like. Their conversation only lasted a few minutes before Victor’s father approached and pulled him away to have a word outside the tent.
Two more candidates walked in as Master Patris was leaving, a short red-headed boy, younger than Kip and obviously from a farming family given his weathered skin and plump physique, and a tall, pale youth whose skin looked stretched over his face, his clothes patched with the same fabric in an attempt to make the patches inconspicuous. They, too, were taken aback by the presence of the Calatians and Emily, but politely introduced themselves. When they moved on, they clung together in the way two strangers will create a bond to see them through their first days alone in a new community, the chance of meeting first sealing this temporary friendship. At their own table, they talked in low voices about the rubble of demolished buildings below their feet. Kip focused his ears away from them after the first few words.
