by Tim Susman
Kip coughed into a paw. “It’s the smell of a newly-dead person.”
Emily frowned. “That has its own smell?”
“I’m pleased to say I’ve had little occasion to use it,” Max said, “except for the times we were asked to cover it.”
“People like myrrh for that,” Kip said. “But cinnamon is less expensive and works better.”
“It’s not as solemn,” his father added. “But you didn’t ask for a lecture on funereal perfumes. We should take our leave now.”
Emily extended her hand to Max. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, sir. I may send Kip with orders for some of your stock betimes.”
“You’re welcome to it. I’m delighted you’ll be studying alongside my son.” Max shook her hand.
When he turned to Coppy, though, the otter clasped his paws before him, kneading his fingers. “I was thinking, sir…if Broadside is to be up here, then perhaps I ought to apply as well. I would worry about Kip otherwise.”
Kip’s heart leapt. He wanted to tell Coppy that he would be able to take care of himself, but he also badly wanted the otter’s company. “An’ it might make things easier on Kip, you know, not being the only Calatian. I’m not born to magic like he is but I know a little, and I reckon I can last as long as Broadside can. If they send me home it’ll be no great loss.”
The older fox considered Coppy and then nodded, turning his muzzle toward Kip. “I’d be glad to know Kip had more company up here,” he said. “I doubt I’ll be able to have more than a few words a week with him.”
“Will the store be all right?” Kip asked.
Max laughed. “The store will be fine, Kip. Don’t act like you don’t want your friend to stay.”
“Lovely!” Emily clapped her hands together and took Coppy’s paw. “Let’s go tell Master Argent and leave these two to say their goodbyes.” She looked meaningfully at Victor.
He took her hint and bowed. “Farewell, sir. I look forward to getting to know your son.”
Coppy pulled free from Emily long enough to throw his arms around Max. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I’ll look after Kip.”
“Don’t forget to look after yourself as well.” Max embraced him back.
Kip watched Coppy’s thick tail, Emily’s dress, Victor’s starched coat as they rounded the corner of the tower. Then he and his father were alone on the path, rain tickling the tips of his ears. If he turned them back, he could hear Farley’s loud bray through the canvas wall of the admissions tent, so he kept them forward, toward his father, but he couldn’t think of what to say.
“You’ll do well here,” his father said gently, and lifted a paw. Kip grasped it, and his father pulled him into a hug. “But whatever happens, for you to have come this far…I am very proud of you.”
“But I haven’t done anything yet.” Kip’s voice was muffled against his father’s cheek fur.
“You have dared. You have raised your head up and said, ‘I wish to do this,’ and you have forced them to pay attention. If they send you home, then the next Calatian to attempt it will have an easier time.”
“I don’t care about him,” Kip said, and then thought of Emily. “Or her. I want to be a sorcerer.”
“You will.” Max released him from the embrace. “If it is not here, then we will find another place.”
“Where? Prince Phillip’s is gone. I’d never get into the King’s College in London. Where would I go? Spain?”
His father smiled. “Let us worry about that when the time comes. It may be that you will become a sorcerer in these very walls. I hope that comes to pass.”
“Thank you,” Kip said. “I don’t know if I could have come up here alone.”
“That, too, you will learn.” His father leaned forward until their noses touched. “Now, go study. I will see you soon, whatever happens. I am up here with Master Vendis every other week, these days.”
“All right.” Kip stood up straight and smiled. “I still feel all…
Coppy had reminded him of their scent-words, and so the word for a superficial scent, one that didn’t belong to the thing it was on, came easily to him. His father smiled and rubbed his shoulder. “Give it time, Kip. And remember that no matter what else you are, you are a Calatian. That scent will never leave you.”
“Yes, sir.” Kip didn’t know why his father thought he would ever forget that, but it was not the time to argue.
His father looked him in the eye, the goodbye unspoken. Then the older fox nodded briefly and walked past Kip toward the gates.
5
Testing
Coppy’s application went smoothly, so he left with Max to pack a bag to bring back up. In the meantime, Victor asked Kip to demonstrate some magic for them, pointing out that the designated practice tent remained empty of the other applicants. Kip had been thinking that after his scare that morning with the Tower, he wanted to practice on his own before doing it in front of a Master, if that was indeed part of the test, so he readily agreed.
Sitting cross-legged on the canvas floor, he closed his eyes and reached out into the earth with his mind. He hardly needed the relaxing chant anymore, but just to be safe, he recited the nonsense syllables to himself. The power beneath him opened up as it always had, no stronger up here than it had been down in his little attic room above the shop. He might feel the White Tower and all its sorcerers and demons (and inexplicable voice) outside their tent, but the power in the earth was constant. It flowed into him, manageable, controllable, and when he opened his eyes, his paws were lit with a soft purple glow.
Emily’s eyes were closed too, and her hands flickered with lavender light. “Yet the Masters, when they cast spells, do not evince this glow.” Victor leaned close to Emily’s hands, and as Kip was wondering if he had any ulterior motive in getting so close to her, the boy leaned over and inspected Kip’s paws as well.
“My father says that none of the advanced sorcerers show that glow, but Master Vendis says that all apprentices do. It takes a good deal of work to learn to suppress it.” Kip turned his paws over, but the light clung to them as though it were part of his fur.
“I see.” Victor leaned back. “All right, what spells can you do? All physical, you said.”
“Yes.” Lifting small objects was easy for Kip now, and that he felt confident he could do in front of the sorcerers. Here he wanted to try something a little more impressive, so he spoke the syllables to activate the spell and then envisioned it around himself, spreading space between himself and the ground. But as he lifted, the tent flap came into his vision, sparking the memory of Farley’s thick fingers prising it apart. Distracted, he lost sight of the spell, and magic crumbled around him. The purple glow around his paws flickered and faded, and he fell to the ground with a thud.
“It was a good effort,” Victor said to Kip. “I know that lifting yourself is more difficult than lifting even the heaviest of objects.”
“I can do it.” Kip glared at the tent flap. “And that’s very good and steady, Emily.”
Emily had found a small pebble and was holding it off the ground. “Kip shot himself to the top of the tower this morning,” she said, as her stone dropped to the canvas floor.
“So you said.” Victor steepled his fingers together. “And what was different about that time and this?”
“I didn’t know Farley was a candidate then.” Kip wanted to avoid talking about his experience that morning as much as he possibly could, at least until he understood it better. He believed he could trust Emily, but his father’s warning about Victor remained in the back of his mind, and he could not forget the image of the elegant boy talking to the crude Farley. What could he have had to say to him, if not talking him into applying?
“He’s only a candidate,” Victor said, “not yet a student, nor even an apprentice.”
Emily wanted to know the difference between the three, and Victor explained that they were candidates until they passed the test, then they would be students for a
year. Those with the highest aptitude for sorcery would be selected to continue on as apprentices for three more years, while those who did not make that grade would be assigned to practice magic for the Public Works (roads and building, at the lowest level) or the Royal Army (the higher level).
“The road-builders came through to improve the New Cambridge road two years ago.” Kip talked while he decided whether he wanted to try lifting himself again. “They didn’t go up to the College at all, and none of the sorcerers came down to see them.” They had been loud, swaggering men who’d made a game of lifting the large rock slabs and dropping them in the road as if they were playing horseshoes. Kip had watched because he rarely got to see magic up close, and their arms had glowed, he remembered now. They’d brandished the glows and called each other filthy names, and they’d taken cider from Mrs. Worrington and told her to send the bill to Boston (she had; nobody had paid).
“We’ve seen the road-builders too,” Emily said. “Never the military, though.”
“I’ve seen the military,” Victor said. “In the Boston parade after Napoleon was defeated. You didn’t go?”
This was to Emily, who scowled. “Mother worried about young girls in large crowds.”
“It was quite a sight.” The young man gestured with his slender hands. “They made fireworks like you’ve never seen, huge glowing frigates and exploding smoke-demons and sea monsters diving through the clouds. It was a sight.”
The parade in New Cambridge had been more modest and had mostly consisted of reading the names of the New Cantabrigians killed in the war, which had been an excuse for Farley to seek out Kip after the parade and attempt to take out his frustration on the fox again. Emily asked Victor how many sorcerers marched with the army, and while he answered, Kip closed his eyes and gathered magic again.
The conversation died down as power and its associated tension coalesced inside him. He opened his eyes to look down at his paws and spoke the words of the spell again. This time, he lifted himself two feet into the air. His tail hung behind him; he tried to extend the spell to lift it, wobbled, and decided to leave that for another time. He could do this. Damn Farley to Hades anyway.
At the thought of Farley, his concentration lapsed again and he listed to one side. He tried to shore up the spell, but dropped almost to the ground before he regained control, slamming one paw down to the canvas in anticipation of the fall that never came.
“That was much better.” Victor said it kindly, but with an edge of condescension that prickled Kip’s fur. He kept his teeth together and lowered himself slowly, letting the spell go completely when he sat on the ground.
Emily came to sit beside him. “Farley again? Why does it bother you so?”
Kip searched his memory. “It’s like…it’s like reaching the kingdom of Heaven, you know? And then finding out that all the wrongs and ills of the world followed you up.”
“That seems a lot to put on the shoulders of one young man,” Victor said.
“He’s got big shoulders,” Kip replied.
Emily leaned forward. “Why does he hate you?”
“It’s not just me.” Kip sighed. “Or maybe it is. I have trouble keeping my mouth shut sometimes. His father died in the war and his mother had to sell the store to pay their bills.” The British army hadn’t paid more than a pittance, his father had told him, but one of the farming families had allowed the Broadside widow and her son some land. “A Calatian family bought it, the Porters. So he started picking on the Calatian kids in school. And a bunch of the other kids liked him for it.”
“Look,” Victor said. “I’m willing to talk to him, to try to get him to moderate his views of Calatians. Nobody who’s talked to either of you can deny what intelligent, worthy people you are. But you will also have to give him a chance to reform. If you persist in treating him like a scourge, he will instinctively behave as one.”
“I will leave him alone if he leaves me alone,” Kip said. “Aside from that, he can go to the Devil for all I care.”
“I suppose that’s a place to start.” Victor smiled a thin smile. “You know, I suffered from bullying as a child as well.”
“Did you indeed?” Kip stopped himself and moderated the tone of his voice; of course the young man wouldn’t know anything of being a fox-Calatian, of feeling your bones snap, of feeling rough hands on your tail and panic at the gleam of the knife, of knowing there would be no justice no matter what happened. His friends had not sometimes disappeared, or turned up crippled, or been turned out of their homes and sent to Boston or New York when their businesses failed while humans with struggling farms or shops received charity. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes, there are those even in private schools who look down on the students who prefer books to swords.” He sighed.
“I imagine your father’s money made school somewhat easier for you.” Emily leaned back with arms folded, making less of an attempt to hide her feelings than Kip was.
Victor smiled evenly at her. “There is a limit even to the powers of money. It can punish, but it cannot force sympathy or collaboration.”
“Why are you so invested in seeing everyone get along?” Emily asked, with some intensity.
Victor spread his hands. “Should I not be? Why would it not be in my best interests to make sure that all of us students—for I feel sure we will be studying together—can work in harmony? I have watched my father keep peace on the shipyards and have learned that a building crew that can work together is more productive than one that is constantly at odds.”
“But we’re not going to work together.” Kip curled his tail around his side. “Some of us will go off to build roads, some of us to the army, and some to learn more of the secrets of sorcery.”
“I can tell which appeals to you,” Victor said, raising an eyebrow. “Nonetheless, we will all learn faster if we learn together.”
A scuffling sound came from the top of the tent, and a moment later, as they all looked up, a raven dropped in.
“Dinner is served,” it said. “During the dinner, Master Patris will address all the candidates.”
“About time.” Victor stood. “I’m famished. Tell me, do they traditionally wait until sunset to serve supper here in New Cambridge, or is it a sorcerer’s custom?”
“We usually ate right after closing the shop,” Kip said. “I don’t know when other people had supper.” He looked up and asked the raven, “Have all the candidates arrived? Is Coppy back already?”
The raven clacked its beak, croaked once, and climbed back out the flap at the top of the tent without answering.
“I suppose they must.” Emily got to her feet. “The announcement clearly said applicants would be accepted today only.”
“Usually down at the Founders Rest there are thirty of them staying the day before admissions.” Kip stood as well, still holding a stone in his paw. He uncurled his fingers and let it fall to the ground.
“There were only twenty tents,” Victor said.
He was closer to the tent flap but did not move in that direction, so Kip strode forward and pulled the canvas aside, holding it for the others. “I don’t think they intend for us to stay in them very long.” He wondered whether Coppy would get his own tent.
The rain had stopped, though in the twilight the clouds still massed overhead and the air smelled damp. “Three days.” Emily turned and met Kip’s eyes. “Then we go into the Tower or go home.”
The fox looked up at the stone walls of the Tower. From this side it looked identical to the side he’d touched, austere and grand. In there the earth elementals that had destroyed Fort Duquesne had been summoned; from there the new world that stretched out to the west was being explored; within those walls, the Great Road had been researched. “I’m not going home,” he said tightly. “No matter what Patris says.”
“Nor I,” she said.
Victor, who had walked on ahead, turned with a half-smile on his thin lips. “I don’t believe any of us wishes
to go home, but it isn’t up to us, is it?”
Other candidates emerged from the tents as they passed, and Kip saw the raven flying back around the tower ahead of them. Emily, spotting the others, hurried ahead, and by the time Kip arrived, she had established herself at their table, sitting upright with a fierce smile. Otherwise, the tent was empty save for two ravens sitting on the long perch, facing in opposite directions.
Kip sat next to her, eyeing the space where Coppy would have sat. Victor stopped at their table and set one hand down on it. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’m going to continue to talk to the other candidates. Several of them probably have the same prejudices.”
Indeed, as other candidates walked in and looked around the tent, though they were dressed in garments ranging from farmers’ tunics to lawyers’ shirts and coats, the one thing they all had in common was the startled look they had when passing the Calatians at the front of the tent. Sometimes they noticed Emily first, and the startled look became a smile, only to vanish as their eyes slid over to the tall black ears on the furred head of the fox sitting beside her. Only the red-headed boy they’d met earlier did not gape, but smiled and nodded, and he did not sit with them. The six tables in the dining room, with benches that would allow three Kips or two Farleys to a side, had ample other room for them.
Platters appeared, bringing with them the tingle to Kip’s nose. They were now laden with fresh bread, whole roast fowls, carving knives, and steaming bowls of potatoes cooked with onions. Forks and plates clattered to the wood table beside the food, and then the tingle was gone.
“Potatoes and onions,” Emily said, making a face as she scooped them onto a plate. “Thomas adored onions.”
While Kip served himself, Emily looked around the tent. “I make it seventeen, counting us and Coppy,” she said.
“Aye.” Kip counted again: at six tables there were three, three, two, four, three, and two people. Adamson and Farley had been joined by a plump boy in a formal white shirt and black jacket whose sour expression didn’t even lighten when he laughed at something Adamson said.
