The Tower and the Fox: Book 1 of The Calatians

by Tim Susman

  He heaved a sigh. If his father wouldn’t confide in him, there was little he could do. Max himself would insist that Kip remain here as long as he was able, so he should concentrate his energies on finding a Master who would Select him. Resting with the stone of the Tower below him, supporting him, he felt slightly hopeful. He had to find a way to talk to Master Vendis.

  But for now, he should get back to the basement. After making sure the spell was still active, Kip pushed himself off from the stone and lowered himself to the ground, banishing the spell as he did so. He lifted his nose, in case Farley and Carmichael had snuck back out, but no scents came to him on the breeze. He headed upwind, where he could be sure the wind would help him find enemies, until he reached a point from which he could see the path to the Tower. It lay bare, glossy stone in the dim light, and neither his ears nor nose picked up any movement. Cautiously, he padded beyond the path to the wall of the Tower, almost to the place he’d touched it before.

  He hesitated, and then for confidence, placed a paw on the wall. No voice came, no surge of magic, but Kip felt warmth and strength. He belonged here, with the Tower, and no Farley nor Carmichael nor even Patris was going to drive him out. He kept a paw on the stone, sliding all the way to the corner and then listening for thirty seconds until he was sure there was no activity, not even breathing, around the side. Irrationally, he felt as though the Tower would warn him if he were in danger.

  Whether that were true or not, he stepped around to find the lawn and path in front of the main doors bare. Only when he had entered the Great Hall and said goodnight to the elementals did he truly feel safe. He hurried down the stairs as quickly as he could without jarring the bruises on his back, opened the basement door, and fell back against it as it closed.

  “What did the raven want?” Coppy asked. Emily’s door was closed, and the otter read by the light of the sconces, which had not yet gone out.

  “My father was here,” Kip said, “but listen to this.” He told the otter about the attack.

  Coppy’s whiskers lowered and he touched Kip’s chest. “I’ll go after Farley for that. Any harm done?”

  “I’ll be sore. Otherwise I’m fine. I feel…good about it, in a way. I mean, they might have killed me, but I did scare them off.” He met the otter’s eyes. “Don’t go after Farley. I’ll be able to take care of him.”

  “Until they learn magic as well.”

  “Well then,” Kip said, lying back on his bedroll. “I’ll have to learn more.”

  9

  Masters

  One unexpected consequence of the fight was that Kip got to speak to Master Vendis. His chance came on Saturday evening as Kip, Emily, and Coppy were waiting for Malcolm in the Great Hall before dinner. The phosphorus elementals were restless, and Kip was not helping by inviting them down to the basement. “We need the heat and there’s much more room than in this old fireplace.”

  The lizard-creatures clambered over each other, sending waves of warmth over Kip’s fur. Emily and Coppy came up behind him as the elementals started talking. Two new ones had been added to the fire, brighter than the three old ones, and their activity seemed to spur the others to be active and talkative as well.

  “Love to come.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Leave off with the pushing, Ern.”

  “Only pushing your leg out of my snout.”

  “Can’t go past the edge there.” Robby, Kip thought his name was, stared mournfully down at the edge of the fireplace. His tongue reached out and then stopped at an invisible wall.

  “Awful crowded in here.”

  “I’d help if I could,” Kip said. “There was a cold snap and it was terribly chilly down there.”

  “Yes.” Emily didn’t usually pay attention to Kip’s conversations with the lizards, but she was still rubbing her arms, standing near their warmth. “I have told the fox that he had better provide me with some heat or I’ll be forced to violate some of Master Patris’s precious propriety in order to keep from freezing to death.”

  “Pro-Pry-Etty?”

  “What’sat?”

  Kip was attempting to explain that unlike phosphorus elementals, people generally did not sleep all piled atop one another, when his name was called across the hall. He turned and saw a sorcerer whose black robes trailed across the floor, with reddish-brown hair and a goatee. His heart leapt and he turned from the fire. “Master Vendis?”

  The sorcerer beckoned him with one hand. “A word, Penfold.”

  Malcolm had come down the stairs right behind Vendis, and crossed paths with Kip on his way to join Emily and Coppy by the fire. “I’ll be there in a moment,” Kip said.

  The other fireplace in the room lay cold and bare. Vendis stood beside it, hands clasped together in front of him. Kip glanced down at the hem of his robe, and then up at the sorcerer’s eyes. “Sir?”

  “You made two mistakes last night, Kip.”

  Master Vendis was the only sorcerer to call Kip by his first name, likely because Vendis worked with Max so much. “Last night?”

  The sorcerer held up a finger. “One: you did not gather magic immediately upon perceiving a threat.”

  Kip’s ears lowered as he frowned. His back still ached from the attack. “You were watching?”

  “Two: you did not tell Master Patris about the incident.”

  The fox shook his head. His whiskers were tingling and he had that peppermint sting in his nose again. “Why didn’t you do something, if you were watching?”

  “You handled the fight well enough except for that one mistake. You didn’t injure either of the boys, but you showed enough magic to make them back off.”

  “What if they’d hit my head with a rock? Would you have done something then?” He realized his tone was sharp, and so added a belated, “Sir.”

  Vendis smiled and shook his head. “The students at this school are watched over. But there are worse things than physical injuries. Those can be mended. You did well to assert your position here. I fear it will be an eternal struggle for you, even should you be Selected.”

  The weight of that last word silenced Kip for a moment. Vendis turned to leave, but Kip stopped him. “Sir? How do we go about being Selected? I mean—” He searched for a tactful way to ask the question. “Do you need an apprentice?”

  Vendis reached up to brush a lock of hair out of his eyes. He regarded Kip with some sadness. “I may be allowed to choose one, but I would not choose you. My relationship with your father is more important than the three years I would have with you.”

  The stones seemed to shift under Kip’s feet; his knees gave way and he had to brace himself against the wall next to the fireplace, the bruises on his arm protesting as he did. His tail curled in and around his legs, and the chill of the dead fireplace seeped through his fur. “How do I…who will take me? We only see Windsor, Patris, and Argent, and the first two hate me and Master Argent’s got his eye on—elsewhere.” Tact rescued him in the nick of time from saying something about Emily.

  There was no help in Vendis’s eyes. “I do not know,” he said. “You must do your best, and hope that some of the few remaining masters may look beyond your skin to see your talent.”

  It was easy enough for the sorcerer to say, but Kip could not see how to accomplish that. Although ravens regularly crowded the Great Hall and the dining tent, they did so silently, watching without speaking (was that what Vendis had meant when he’d said the students were watched over?). Were they to be judged from afar, summarized in their behavior at classes and meals? It seemed unfair, and yet, perhaps that was how things had always been done. For the human students, no doubt that would work. Kip thanked Master Vendis and walked back to rejoin his friends.

  The other consequence of the fight was that at dinner that evening, Malcolm declared that Kip and Coppy should not go anywhere alone. “With each other if nobody else is around,” he said, “but always wi’ one of us if we can.”

  “We don’t need chaperones.”
Kip’s fur bristled.

  “But we’re delighted for the company.” Coppy countered his sour remark with a smile.

  So on Sunday, when Coppy wanted to walk down to church, Kip and Emily and Malcolm all came down with him. A group of the other students walked down—Farley not among them, though Adamson was—some ways ahead of them, and entered the church for the humans’ service. Kip had not talked to Adamson since the attack, mostly out of an obscure sense that Farley would be pleased if Kip complained about it and the growing certainty that it would not change anything.

  The day was one of those pleasant fall days in which the clouds drift lazily across the sky and humans and Calatians are equally comfortable in the cool air. The scent of maple trees surrounded Kip on the walk down, and as they approached the Founders Rest, the smells of the town intruded and overwhelmed the maple. Kip breathed in the familiar air of ale and barrels from the inn, bread and people and wood, horses and dirt and manure, all the things he hadn’t realized he’d missed on the hill. They greeted Old John, leaning in the doorway of his inn, and John raised a hand gravely in response.

  “Doesn’t he go to church?” Emily asked.

  “He says the Calatians and godless need refreshment as well, and he can feel God’s blessing from where he stands.” Kip smiled, leading them around the corner of the inn.

  “This is our church,” Coppy said, mostly to Malcolm as Emily had seen it before. Clouds dimmed the glow on the golden cross above the steeple, but the church still stood proudly above the town.

  Kip and Coppy made for the small group of Calatians below a spreading oak tree some ways from the church. Squirrels and dormice sat on the benches, and there were the Cartwrights, a group of red-furred foxes standing apart on the brown and green of the dying lawn. Kip looked for his parents, but did not see or smell them.

  “Aren’t you going in?” Kip asked Malcolm and Emily when they lingered with him and Coppy.

  They shook their heads at the same time. “Rather go to church with our own, even if they aren’t our own,” Malcolm said.

  “Elegantly phrased.” Emily smiled at Kip. “Church is about family and friends.”

  That was also what Kip had learned, but looking around the small leaf-strewn area, he did not see many people anxious to come greet him. Only Adam’s mother and younger brother came over to congratulate him and talk to him, and as more Calatians arrived in anticipation of the service, a few came to talk to him and Coppy. But many of them, many of the cubs he’d attended school with and parents who’d helped look after him, stayed a short ways away, and talked in tones meant to remain hidden from fox ears. Even the Cartwrights only greeted him perfunctorily, though Alice gave him the same big smile she usually did and looked cross when dragged away.

  “Is it because we’re here with you?” Emily asked Kip while Malcolm and Coppy were comparing the technique of magic gathering to the practice of meditation.

  Kip shook his head. “Maybe a small amount. I think from what my father’s said…many of the people here feel that it’s hubris for me to attempt to become a sorcerer.”

  “Hubris? To try to reach your potential?”

  “I’ll let him explain.” Kip gestured behind Emily, where Max and Ada were approaching with a pair of hedgehogs: the Morgans. Bryce was the unofficial Calatian mayor, his wife the town’s best seamstress. They spotted Kip, parted ways quickly with his parents, and walked off to greet another group.

  “We didn’t expect to see you here.” Max embraced his son and Coppy, while Ada smiled and told Emily how lovely it was to see her again. Kip introduced Malcolm.

  “Do you think they can come in to our service?” he asked.

  His father regarded Malcolm and Emily. “I would welcome you, but it might be prudent to wait. Or to go in now, while the other humans are hearing theirs.”

  “We’d rather go with you,” Emily said.

  “Or stand outside.” Malcolm lifted his eyes to the steeple. “In my experience, God doesn’t much fuss about where you worship Him so long as you do it with your heart.”

  “Doesn’t feel right if it ain’t in church,” Coppy said.

  “To each his own,” Malcolm agreed amiably. He blinked as the sun came out again, and shaded his eyes. “Tis a lovely church, I’ll say that much. In New York—”

  “They’re far more grand?” Emily asked acerbically.

  He smiled back. “Some are, aye, but I was going to say they’re beset with buildings on all sides and none have the quiet dignity to stand apart as this one does.”

  Singing came from the church faintly through the closed doors. Emily turned from Ada to Max. “If it will cause problems, Malcolm and I will wait outside.”

  Max turned to Kip and Coppy. “What do you two think?”

  The otter said, “I’d have them in, but I’m not from here and don’t have to live here. Kip?”

  Kip looked at his friends’ faces, and then at his parents. He wanted Emily and Malcolm with him, but it would make life difficult for his parents, worse than he was already making it. It wasn’t fair that he had to keep making these decisions, he thought, and yet he couldn’t put them off onto anyone else.

  “Let’s stay outside,” Malcolm said. “It’s a lovely day, and as me ma used to say, sure, didn’t the Lord make the sun and trees and grass just as surely as He made the church and pews and glass?”

  “Quite.” Emily nodded to Kip. “It will likely be one of the last nice days we’ll see. We shall enjoy it while you attend your services.”

  “Thank you,” Kip said. “I’m sorry that the town feels this way.”

  And as comforting as it felt to kneel in the warm embrace of the church and breathe in the scents of his fellow Calatians in the large open space, present without being oppressive, he could not stop thinking about his friends waiting outside for him and Coppy to have their services separately. His mind returned to a question he had often pondered with Saul, and later with Coppy: if God had indeed made humans, and humans had made Calatians, did that mean that God loved the Calatians less? The Church’s position was that because the Calatians were made from humans, they possessed human souls, and God loved all souls equally. But the churches did not seem to follow God’s rule in that case, and the New Cambridge church had always offered separate services.

  Even so, the words that washed over him from the human preacher gave him comfort. He’d never felt excluded from God’s love, and Father Gregory had always made sure to assure him and the other Calatian cubs that they were part of His kingdom. If he listened to the words and let Farley and Patris and the other Calatians slide away from him, they gave him a warm comfort that felt elusive in other parts of his life.

  When they left the church, Kip stood with his parents on the lawn. Malcolm and Emily came over to join them. Around them, the business of the town proceeded, Calatians chattering merrily together, but the six of them stood alone.

  “I’ve never been in such a group,” Malcolm said, looking around. “Feels a bit unsettling, to be honest.”

  “You’ve nothing to fear,” Kip said.

  “I meant no offense. Only that I haven’t been somewhere where I was so aware that I don’t belong.” He rubbed his forehead. “Save for Penny Lawrence’s bedroom, but that was entirely another matter, and there were excellent reasons for being there.”

  “Charming,” Emily said. “We belong here as much as Kip belongs in the college. Fur or skin, what difference?”

  “You’re enlightened indeed.” Max smiled. “Sadly, there aren’t many who share your view. And because you can go where you like while we cannot, your presence here may be seen as intrusive.”

  “Oh, dear.” Emily’s face fell. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Were they all standing apart like this last week?” Kip asked.

  His father hesitated, but his mother spoke up. “No,” she said. “Not everyone came to talk, but some did.”

  “We should probably leave.” Emily sighed. “I didn’t m
ean to cause trouble. It’s only that since Kip was attacked, we’ve wanted to—”

  Kip flattened his ears. Both his parents stared at him, and his father broke into Emily’s sentence. “Attacked? By whom?”

  “Whom do you think?” He told them the story briefly, leaving out his conversation with Master Vendis. “I’ll be more ready next time.”

  Coppy stepped up beside him. “And he’ll have company. We all will.”

  “I wager,” Malcolm said with a toothy grin, “that they like Irishmen about as little as Calatians. And Miss Carswell might face different kinds of attacks.”

  “I am perfectly capable of handling myself,” Emily said.

  Max surveyed the four of them with upright ears and a smile. “I’m pleased you’re all in this together. It will take more than one of you to succeed.”

  And if he didn’t succeed, Kip thought, looking around at the town he’d once been a part of, what did he have to come back to? His eye strayed to the Cartwrights, walking away with Alice without even having said good-bye. Would he have a chance to start a family here, even if he wanted to? He saw himself coming to church with his family every Sunday, alone, isolated from the rest of the town for years; he saw himself married to Alice and the rest of the town arrayed against the foxes; he saw the Cartwrights break the engagement, leaving him and his family alone.

  Saving his parents, there was nobody in town who meant as much to him as Coppy did, as Emily and Malcolm had come to after only two short weeks. But more than that, he did not think he could bear to return to the town, to live again in the shadow of the Tower after having lived within its walls.