The Tower and the Fox: Book 1 of The Calatians

by Tim Susman

  Normally, Kip didn’t mind Coppy touching his tail, but the mention of a ‘regular fox’ only made him think of the poor creature Farley had killed. He slid his tail free to rest on the chilly stone, and Coppy didn’t seem to notice.

  “It’s horrible,” Emily said. “There was nothing of that sort happening in Boston, I’m sure.”

  Kip was only certain that it didn’t happen in New Cambridge, possibly because the woods around were filled with creatures more easily caught with less risk of punishment, here in the shadow of the Tower. He would not have been surprised to hear that in Boston, there was an illegal fur trade, and Malcolm said the same about New York.

  “When Farley tried to cut off tails,” Kip said, “it wasn’t to sell. It was to maim, that’s all.”

  “Well, he’s horrible, isn’t he?” Emily rolled her eyes. “Did I tell you what he said to me at dinner tonight? He invited me out behind the tent if I was through with ‘wearing fur.’”

  “Was he meaning to cast aspersions on your honor?” Malcolm leaned forward.

  Emily simply looked irritated. “I don’t think he thinks of it that way to begin with. I mean, I don’t think he thinks that any ladies have honor to speak of. Come to it, I’m not certain he thinks at all. He may be some kind of incarnation of basic urges on legs.”

  “That describes him rather well.” Kip had had only one encounter with Farley since the stone-throwing had stopped, and that had been leaving a class, when he’d unwisely walked past Farley’s desk and nearly gotten his tail stomped on. Fortunately, his reflexes were quick enough to save all but a few hairs from the heavy boot.

  “He invited me to do something I shan’t repeat in front of a lady,” Malcolm said. “Granted, it was after I suggested he might defeat the Spanish single-handed simply by exposing them to his odor.”

  “I appreciate that you take advantage of the baths,” Emily told him. “These fellows here don’t smell bad, but some of the other students make the class truly uncomfortable.”

  “Anything for a lady.” Malcolm inclined his head graciously. “But I’m not certain that room you found is the bath. I believe it might be the laundry. That’s what those robes hanging up mean, I wager.”

  Emily raised an eyebrow. “Then where did you bathe? For I’m certain you did.”

  “Oh, I bathed there.” Malcolm’s grin widened. “I only meant to caution you in case someone wanders in to have a robe laundered while you’re laundering yourself.”

  “It occurs to me,” she said, “that perhaps one of the first spells I should be interested in learning would be one that could seal a door shut.”

  “Before a heating spell?” Kip indicated the sweater she had wrapped around her shoulders. The air in the basement felt comfortable to him, but when he breathed he could feel the chill, enough to know that Emily and Malcolm were uncomfortable, though the latter bore it without complaint or sweater.

  “Second, then,” she said with a smile.

  “The rate we’re going,” Malcolm said, “we won’t get to locking doors and heating rooms until spring, by which time we’ll all have become so familiar with each other that there’s no more need for either.”

  Emily arched an eyebrow. “You presume much.”

  He looked genuinely stricken. “I didn’t—it was a bit of humor—I mean—”

  Into the awkward silence, Coppy spoke. “Where do the sorcerers bathe, if not there?”

  “They certainly do bathe.” Kip flared his nostrils. “Master Windsor smells of jasmine attar often.”

  “What on earth might that be?” The change of subject revitalized Malcolm. “I thought ‘attar’ was something you put on dead people.”

  “They may put perfume on dead people to mask the smell. But it’s also a perfume. Jasmine is an exotic one; we only got it into the store once as it tends not to escape the rich people of London. I remembered it, though.”

  “Maybe London is where Master Windsor goes when he’s not allowing us to practice magic.” Emily reached out and pushed one of the piles of paper and then brushed her hands together briskly as though she’d forgotten the papers were dusty.

  “Maybe it’s where he goes to bathe,” Coppy said, and they all laughed.

  “Kip, what does Master Patris smell like?” Malcolm wanted to know. “I wager he’s a ‘plain soap’ kind of fellow.”

  “Laundry soap,” Kip said. “And—well, a little bit of fear, too.”

  “Fear? What’s he got to be afraid of?” Coppy gestured around the circle. “Us?”

  “Don’t know.” Kip shook his head. “And it’s not all the time. It was strongest when he grabbed me after I levitated myself that first day.”

  “So he has someplace to wash off the stink as well.” Emily turned to Kip. “Why don’t you ask your father? Perhaps he’s seen a bath on the upper floors?”

  Kip lowered his head and ears. “I’m not sure when I’ll see him. He doesn’t come up on a schedule.”

  Two evenings later, a hard rapping sounded on their basement door as he and Coppy were going through their books with Emily. All three looked up; the rapping was not Malcolm’s quick cadence, which they knew well, and in fact it did not even sound like human knuckles, but like a hard stick being tapped against the thick wood.

  Kip got up, tail swinging behind him, and navigated the piles of paper easily, his bare paws used to the cold stone. He swung the door open and saw nobody there.

  “Penfold,” croaked a familiar voice from below his knees.

  On the stoop, a raven looked up at him, eyes glinting in the dark basement stairwell. “Come,” it said with Master Vendis’s voice, and hopped up the stairs without waiting for him to acknowledge it.

  “I need to go,” he said, turning to the others, but they had already seen the raven and both of them nodded.

  Once it reached the Great Hall, the raven hopped along the floor past the fireplace. The student desks had already been cleared away, by what agency Kip could only guess (demons), but the great glowing lizards remained in the fireplace, coiled around and over each other.

  He’d spent so much time staring at their flickering forms over the past few days that he’d felt it rude not to talk to them, though more than one sorcerer had advised him not to waste his time on them. “Evening, fellows,” he said as he passed.

  “Oh, the fox.”

  “It’s ‘Penfold,’ Robby. Use his name.”

  “Aye, you’d not like being called ‘the fire-thing.’”

  “Where you off to?”

  Kip indicated the raven. “I’ve been summoned.”

  “Oh-ho.”

  “Hope you come back!”

  “We all been summoned.”

  “He knows that, Chez.”

  “We got to stay here for years.”

  “It ain’t years.”

  “Months.”

  “Days.”

  “Centuries.”

  “Who can tell?”

  “If you count the times the stone cools down…”

  The raven croaked again, impatient. “Sorry,” Kip said, raising a paw. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Oh, aye.”

  “When you’re summoned, you got to go.”

  “Don’t mind us, Penfold.”

  They were usually not quite so garrulous; maybe the loneliness of evening and the chill of the sun’s warmth fading made them restless. Kip made a note to come up and speak to them again in future evenings.

  Outside, in the dim light, he worried that he would lose the raven when it took flight, but it remained on the ground, hopping agilely ahead. He followed it around the corner of the tower toward the dining tent and what had been the admissions tent, and then the breeze brought a familiar scent to him. He squinted ahead into the twilight and broke into a run.

  “Dad!”

  His father held out arms to welcome him, and Kip tumbled into his embrace. Max’s fur smelled lightly of perfumes and of incense, but mostly of the older fox himself, familiar and st
eadying. “You’re up here for Master Vendis?” Kip asked when they stepped apart.

  Max nodded. One paw went to his left elbow while he talked, as though it were injured, but Kip smelled no blood and the arm appeared to be working well. “I asked if I might speak with you, and he sent Brightbeak to fetch you.”

  The raven clacked its beak. “Do not tarry long,” it said, and then it did launch itself into the air. It flew once around them with a brush of wind that ruffled Kip’s whiskers, and then disappeared into the night.

  “How is the shop?” Kip asked.

  His father smiled. “The shop runs well, but I would not waste the time we have speaking of it. What of your classes?”

  “Boring.” Kip told him briefly of their concentration exercises and of Farley’s stone-throwing. “How do the people in town feel about me and Coppy being up here?”

  “Coppy is not a New Cantabrigian,” his father said, “and most people feel he may do what he likes, although they also feel he is following you more than his own mind.”

  “That’s not true.” Kip said the words heatedly, then relaxed; it wasn’t his father he was angry at. “Not entirely. He wants to learn sorcery and go back to London.”

  His father held up a paw. “Be that as it may, the perception is that you are the instigator. I hear little enough about it, but I hear less these days than I used to.”

  Kip’s stomach stirred with unease at the thought of making trouble for his father, or hurting his business. “From the Calatians as well as the humans?”

  “The Calatians mostly. The humans are not the least bit concerned about your ambition. At least, they frequent my shop and make conversation as they always have. They are more worried about the coming winter or when the Spanish may attack again than about how you and Coppy will fare at the school.”

  “I’m not trying to make anyone else’s life difficult,” Kip said. “I want to make mine better.”

  “You cannot separate your life from theirs.”

  “Why not?” He curled his tail, then relaxed it and folded his arms. “What have they to do with me?”

  “You’re betrothed to Alice Cartwright, for one thing.” His father’s eyes held his, stern.

  Kip lowered his ears. “I know. But I can be a sorcerer and have a wife. And that’s not what they are mad about.”

  “No. But this gate,” one paw swept back toward the iron bars, “does not separate lives. You may pass through it freely. And the things you do here will be heard below and will be felt below, and you would do well to remember that.”

  “They would be pleased if I fail,” Kip said bitterly.

  “Some would. Not all.” The paw that had indicated the gate returned to grasp his arm. “Breaking a new path is difficult when those behind you would rather use the old, worn one. It is your job to show them why your path is the true one.”

  “I don’t see why they have to be on my path at all. Why can’t they stay to theirs and leave me to mine?”

  Max smiled. “Someday perhaps you will see more clearly.”

  The creak of the tower’s front door caught both their ears. Kip’s swiveled back toward his father as the older fox patted him on the shoulder. “I shouldn’t tarry, as Master Vendis warned. Study hard and persevere. You’ll make a sorcerer yet.”

  Kip smiled and embraced his father again. He stood in the chill night as the gates creaked open and let Max through, then closed again with a heavy clunk. The bobbing white tail tip moved down the hillside road and out of view, and only then did Kip turn back along the path to the tower.

  He’d walked three steps before a low sound made him snap his head up. Two shapes stood on the path right at the corner of the tower, but he had only a moment to register that before something struck him hard on his chest below the shoulder.

  He stumbled backwards, twisted and almost fell, but kept his balance. Alert now, he still failed to dodge the second rock, a fist-sized missile that caught him in the side. Footsteps sounded, loud on the stone path, and he whirled to look for the nearest cover. He’d only taken two steps toward the dining tent before they were on him.

  One person crashed into him from behind and bore him to the ground; the other, upwind of Kip, hurried to join. Farley’s rank scent and heavy footsteps sent Kip’s tail between his legs, and he would have curled up into a ball if not for the lighter weight on his back. This other assailant was one of his fellow students—definitely not Farley. Even if he’d weighed fifty pounds more, Kip would have known it wasn’t Farley because the boy hadn’t grabbed his arms, pinned him down with one twisted behind his back. He was simply sitting on the fox, trusting his leverage to keep Kip pinned down. It worked for the moment, because even though he wasn’t Farley’s weight, he was heavy enough, and Kip had landed at an awkward angle. But at least he’d protected his tail and managed to get one arm over his head.

  So that arm took the brunt of Farley’s kick, a savage blow that struck Kip’s shoulder. Another landed in the same place, and then one in his upper back that made him grit his teeth. “Go home, worthless vermin,” Farley snarled.

  “Easy,” said whoever was sitting on Kip’s back. Carmichael, he guessed. “Argent warned you…”

  “Good thing about the animals is they don’t bruise,” Farley said. He kicked again, but Kip, squirming harder now, deflected the blow that had been aimed at his kidneys. “Hold ’im still, you corn shuck, and show me his belly.”

  Carmichael obediently tried to wrestle Kip around, but the fox fought him, taking advantage of the fact that Carmichael feared his teeth. Farley would have sent a fist to his muzzle by now. “Get…off!” Kip huffed. Of course they’d waited until he was away from Coppy to attack him, and had brought two to handle one scrawny fox.

  “This’s what happens to critters that come up to live among men,” Carmichael sneered, getting a grip on Kip’s paws and turning him over despite the fox’s struggles. “G’wan, Farley, knock him into a cocked hat.”

  Kip struggled to free his paws, and then over the hulking shadow of Farley he saw the grey stones of the Tower glimmering against the night sky. The realization came to him that he wasn’t helpless anymore. He began to gather magic, using some of the techniques Patris had been teaching them to focus—

  Farley’s boot came down on his stomach, the boy’s weight behind it. For a moment, Kip’s world narrowed to that feeling, the air driven out of his lungs, the waves of pain, the thick smells of Farley and Carmichael like a miasma around his head. When he emerged, Farley was drawing his leg back and Kip found to his surprise that he was still gathering magic, that his focus had only wavered, not broken. Purple flickered around his arms, growing stronger.

  “Ho!” Carmichael released him and sprang away. Kip fell back onto his arms, the purple glow so bright now that it dimmed his perception of his attackers. But he could hear well enough.

  “He won’t do nothing,” Farley said. “Can’t do nothing to us.”

  “You can stay and find that out.” Carmichael was halfway back to the Tower by the time he’d finished that sentence.

  When Farley turned back, Kip had his arms behind his back so he could see the other more clearly. Their eyes met. “G’wan, then,” Farley said. “Magic me. We’ll see how long you stay up here.”

  The cramping in Kip’s stomach made it hard for him to speak loudly, but he forced the words out. “Such…a shame,” he said. “No idea…how Farley got up on the roof. But he sure came down in a hurry.”

  Farley squinted at him and backed up a step. “You can’t.”

  “Right now…” Kip got one leg under him and pushed, slowly standing upright. “I am closer than I’ve ever been.”

  The stout bully stepped back again. Kip brought his arms out, the purple flickering and dancing like fire around his fur, and that was enough. “This ain’t over,” Farley said, turning on his heel. “You don’t belong here and I’ll run you off soon.” Despite his bravado, his steps as he made his way back to the Tower were faster than
the casual walk his pose affected.

  Only then did Kip exhale and sink to the ground. His arm, back, and stomach still hurt, and he had gathered magic that he still didn’t know how to dispel. As much as he wanted to go inside and lie down, he had to do something with the magic. So he recited one of the two spells he knew and pushed himself gently off from the ground.

  A few feet would have done it, used up all the magic and let him float back to earth, but he kept going up and up, past the windows, until he was again level with the roof of the tower. Nearby, the rough stone crenellations shone in the moonlight, bare of any black winged shadow. Slightly disappointed, Kip moved himself over to the tower and sat on the stone, careful to keep the spell going. From there, he looked out and down upon the town of New Cambridge.

  Somewhere among the maple trees, his father trudged down the hill toward his shop. Farther still, the lights of the town glittered and danced in the night. The people down there wanted him to leave the school—his people, the Cartwrights and the Morgans and the Porters and the Brocks. Maybe all of them or maybe only some of them. And at least three of the people up here wanted him to leave the school. More than that, but he was only sure of Carmichael, Farley, and Master Patris.

  Master Windsor, he reflected, might want him to leave, but it would only be if he failed to apply himself, to live up to his potential. He could respect that; Master Windsor appeared to treat all people with equal disdain, whether they were male or female, human or Calatian. Kip would have preferred a friend, but impartial teacher would do.

  The attack from Farley was an unpleasant reminder of what his life had been without Coppy around. If he returned to New Cambridge while Farley remained up here, how long would it be before the boy was back down in the town, using sorcery to throw stone blocks and maybe lift Calatians and drop them? Such things wouldn’t be legal, of course, but how many would be hurt before he was stopped? There was the man in Boston who’d killed six Calatians before the police moved to stop him, the one in New York who’d drowned three, and how many more who’d never been caught?

  There were plenty of reasons for Kip to stay: the ease with which he’d flown up to the roof with barely more than a thought; the worry over what Farley might do unchecked; the nascent friendships with Emily and Malcolm (and, he added after a hesitation, Adamson). There was only one good reason to leave, and it wasn’t the bruises now forming under his fur (Farley was wrong factually but correct in the effect that mattered, which was that Kip’s bruises would never be visible). It was that his father might be in trouble. Max had told Kip that everything was fine, but even over the soft lavender scent he favored, Kip had caught the sour tang of worry.