by Tim Susman
“Just thunder,” Coppy said without believing it.
“It doesn’t smell right,” Kip replied, nose lifted. He swung his legs out of his narrow bed and checked for the precious spell book beneath it before padding to the window. The new moon offered no light, and clouds hid the stars, so even Kip’s eyes could not pick out the shape of the White Tower atop the hill. His fur prickled and rose on his neck and shoulders; there was electricity in the air, but of a different sort. The chill spring air held little scent of flowers, many closed for the night, but the smell of wood and pitch, of stone and earth, and the lingering scents of the people (furred and non) of the town held no trace of menace. And yet, something was different.
He stared through the night until Coppy called out, “Whatever it is, it’s over.”
Kip’s tail flicked anxiously, not believing it. “I’m going outside.”
“Why?”
“Just to see.”
“Don’t climb the hill.”
It bothered and reassured him that Coppy knew him that well. “Just far enough to see.”
“Whatever it is,” Coppy said, “if it’s to do with the College, they’ll handle it, and Master Vendis will tell your father, and he’ll tell us.”
Kip flexed his paws, itching to gather magic into them, to do something. He had not heard from Saul since the Feast of Calatus, and wondered if his friend would be able to get word to him if he were in trouble.
Other noises, softer, disturbed the night. He angled his ears toward the open window to catch them. People were stirring: not the Brocks next door, but his parents downstairs were talking, and farther along the street, he heard a door open, footsteps on the cobblestones. “I can’t go back to sleep.”
“Suit yourself.” Coppy yawned. “I’ve slept through worse than this. The night Napoleon surrendered? Fireworks and singing all night.”
Kip scrambled down the ladder and found his father awake in the living room, waiting. “Did you hear it?” Kip asked, excited.
Max nodded. “It doesn’t feel right to me. Shall we walk?”
They stepped out into the street, and the sense of wrongness grew. Kip had no idea what time it was, but there was no dawn showing in the east, and the street should have been deserted. Instead, he heard low speech and footfalls all around, scattered but still present, like a gathering of thieves setting a plan in motion.
Bryce Morgan hailed them from down the street with a hissed, “Penfolds!” The hedgehog stood with the Coopers, a family of dormice, and the Branches, red squirrels. “Thunder,” Morgan said, “and yet my spines don’t tell me there’s rain. I don’t like it. Cooper, Penfold, any word from the College?”
Both the dormouse and fox shook their heads. Morgan’s brow creased over his small, dark eyes. “That College will be the death of us.”
Normally, Max would step in to remind Morgan of the benefits they gained from the sorcerers’ protection, but when Kip turned, anticipating the reply, he saw his father gazing up the hill, silent.
“If they want us, they’ll send for us,” the elder Cooper said.
“A walk up the hill might not be amiss,” Max said, and Kip’s heart leapt.
“I’ll go along,” Kip said. “I mean, I think many of us should go. Just in case.”
Max laid a paw on his shoulder. “Only Cooper and myself, for now. But I’ll have Master Vendis send Brightbeak if you can be of assistance.”
Morgan scowled. “Unnatural ravens. Less I see of them in town, the better.”
“They serve a purpose,” Max said mildly.
“As you do?” Uncertainty made Morgan’s words sharp and bitter.
They were interrupted by a hoarse croak, far away, and the hedgehog glowered up with the rest of them. Kip strained to see toward the sound, and eventually five small shapes detached themselves from the blackness of Founder’s Hill, speeding toward the town. Wings outstretched, the ravens reached the Inn at the base of the hill and sped along Half-Moon Street, and when they spotted people below them, their croaks became words, and the words they spoke would echo forever in Kip’s mind.
“The College is gone!”
“Only it wasn’t, not entirely,” Kip said unnecessarily. The phosphorus elementals in the fireplace had arrayed themselves at the front of it, remaining quiet as Kip told his story.
“Half the Masters and all the apprentices dead.” Coppy, more sober than usual, looked down at the stone and traced a claw along it. The carpet in the Great Hall did not extend all the way to the fireplace, because often the lizards grew rambunctious and sent sparks drifting a foot or two from the edge.
“More than half. And all those tents? Used to be two-story buildings.” Kip thought again of Saul’s smile. They put the students in the new buildings and keep the drafty, cold Tower for themselves, his friend had said, laughing. They’re welcome to it. Kip had protested that he would give anything to live in the Tower, and Saul had patted his shoulder and said it didn’t matter for Kip anyway, because he would only be coming to visit. “When we got here, they were nothing but piles of rubble.”
“But the Tower stood.” Emily touched the stone as Coppy was doing, looking down at it.
“The Tower stood.” Kip’s tail flicked across the warm stone. “We didn’t know it would last the night.”
“Didn’t know if any of us would,” Coppy said softly. “But there were no more attacks. Not here.”
“Any of you here for it?” Malcolm looked into the red glow of the fireplace at the elementals.
“Us?”
“Nay.”
“None of us been here longer than a day.”
“A month, you mean.”
“It’s two months, properly.”
Kip smiled at the lizards, who now stirred and pushed at each other as they talked. “These three have been here since we arrived, but they’re getting more restless and I think they’ll be sent back soon. Hodge,” he indicated the lizard that had a pattern like a four-leafed clover on the top of its head, “has been summoned several times, and he says they get sent back when their glow fades. Ern and Julienne are newer and you can see their glow is brighter.”
“All seem pretty glowy to me.” Coppy leaned forward.
“Less than they were two weeks ago,” Kip said.
“Too right that,” one of the lizards replied.
“Fair faint from chill.”
“Missing the Flower.”
Emily touched Kip’s tail to get his attention, and he flicked it away from her hand. “Sorry,” she said. “Do you know all their names?”
He nodded, pointing. “There’s Hodge, that’s Ern, and Robby’s on the left. Chez is the big one, and the one up here at the front is Julienne.”
“Are there boys and girls, then?”
Kip laughed. “You try asking them that. I think they just take names the sorcerers give them, if they haven’t had one before, or can’t remember what they had before, or do and didn’t like it.”
“Names don’t matter,” the lizard he’d called Julienne said. “We’re all part of the Flower. The names is for you lot.”
“I think Julienne got a girl’s name because she has a higher voice.” Kip reached into the pocket of his trousers and came out with a creased paper. He crumpled it in one paw and tossed it toward Julienne. The elemental lifted her head to watch the paper as it descended, right up until it hit her between the eyes. It fell to the floor, already glowing in parts, and she casually grabbed it in her jaws. Another elemental, Ern, bit at the other part of the paper, causing it to explode in a burst of flame that sent ash spraying out of the fireplace.
“You carry around paper to burn?” Malcolm arched an eyebrow at Kip.
“I bring it up from downstairs sometimes.” The fox gazed into the fire.
Coppy drew his knees up and chuckled. “Don’t know why you ain’t tried the fire spell yet. Seems you’re halfway to casting it already.”
Kip started to protest and then realized he’d been humming
that very spell under his breath. “Anyway,” he said, “we all came up the hill, and the Tower was still here. We could only see the top—there was some magical darkness cast around it. Dad said the sorcerers here had done that for protection. So we didn’t see anything until much later.”
“Did they let people in to clean up?” Emily, too, drew up her knees and rested her chin on them. “I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been.”
Coppy shook his head. “Offered, we did, but nah. Sorcerers kept much to themselves after that.”
“Master Vendis used to come down to the shop. Now he sends a raven.”
“If we solve this mystery, aye, that’d get us a Selection, wouldn’t it?” Malcolm grinned around at them. “Figure out who destroyed most of this college and all of Prince Philip’s down south?”
“I’m certain you’re right.” Emily brushed a hair back from her eyes. “I’m also certain we could be Selected if we manage to bind a major demon to our bidding. To my mind, that seems more likely to happen in two months.”
“We’ve got resources the other sorcerers haven’t.”
“Really.”
“Aye.” Malcolm’s grin broadened. “Why, there’s not a single woman among them.”
Emily’s stern expression softened almost into a smile. “Nor a Calatian.”
“Well, they have calyxes,” Coppy said.
“Not that they’d listen to them.”
“Master Vendis does listen to Dad,” Kip said.
Coppy inclined his head. “Though he has said that that is an exception and is a result of their being together for ten years.”
“Ten years.” Emily laughed. “It’s like a marriage.”
Malcolm chuckled, but the fox and otter remained silent. “I’m sorry,” Emily said, touching Kip’s tail again. “I didn’t mean to offend.”
Kip nodded. “My mother used to say the same thing. I think she’s jealous.”
“Jealous? Whyever…” Emily frowned. “What do the sorcerers do with their calyxes?”
“I think…” Kip hesitated. “I think it involves blood. But it wasn’t that. It was a question of loyalty and…”
All three watched him. Emily spoke after some silent seconds. “Your father wouldn’t choose the sorcerer over your mother, would he?”
“Well,” Malcolm said slowly when Kip remained silent, “and what if he was needed for the defense of the Empire? What if his sacrifice would mean the difference between victory and defeat? Sure, aren’t we learning about history and the great battles, the way a single action can turn the tide of a war?”
“That—it wouldn’t come to that.” Emily turned to Kip. “Would it?”
He thought about what Master Windsor had said in the admission meeting, about history being greater than one person. “Not for any of ours, here.” He, in turn, looked at Coppy.
The otter stared down at the stone. “In the month before Napoleon’s defeat, there were some on the Isle who went up to the King’s and never returned. We put up a plaque at the entrance to the Isle recognizing them for their service.”
The four of them let these words die away into the crackle of the fire. One of the elementals still listening to them spoke up. “An’ who’s going to recognize us for our service, that’s what I’d like to know.”
Whether Farley was occupied with studying spells or discouraged by Kip and Coppy going about in pairs, there were no more attacks that week. At lunch and dinner, the bowls and plates of Kip and his friends sometimes wobbled and lifted from the table, but they soon discovered that hiding them from sight prevented these attacks, and so Emily and Coppy sat in such a way as to block Farley’s view of the table, and they ate in peace. On Thursday, their bench rose with them on it, but Coppy gathered magic himself and slammed it back down, for which Emily was grateful once she had, as she put it, gotten her teeth back in their proper places.
They argued about whether to retaliate. Between Kip and Emily and Coppy, they could certainly upend Farley’s table and all the benches; Malcolm was in favor of this, but Kip and Coppy did not want to be quite so aggressive.
“If we fight back, they come at us harder,” Kip said.
Coppy nodded. “Best to deflect their attacks, show we don’t care. Unless they come at us face to face.”
“You boys don’t have much history with fights, do you?” They were in the Great Hall again, crowded around the fireplace, keeping their voices low, but Malcolm raised his at this point.
“There’s no need to snap,” Emily said. She sat on the far side, next to Coppy. Kip sat on Coppy’s other side, and Malcolm leaned in from the other end of the half-circle, gesturing urgently at Emily.
“I’m not snapping! I’m telling them, if they don’t fight back—if we don’t fight back, we’ll be targets for as long as we’re here. Fight back, and we stop this once and for all. And best to do it now, before they get any better at sorcery.”
Kip kept his voice soft. “If we fight back, they’ll throw us out. Calatians attacking humans? We’d go to jail, or owe them money the rest of our lives.”
Malcolm scowled at the fox. “Leave the exaggerations to an Irishman.”
“Those things happened to friends of my father. Anyway, if we escalate things, one of us might get hurt.” His father’s words, but he’d repeated them often enough to make them his own.
“Or one of them might.”
“Oh, stop it, both of you.” Emily slapped the stone in front of them, her voice low and urgent. “We needn’t fight back and we needn’t accept it. What we should be doing is changing their attitudes.”
“That’s what Adamson is trying to do,” Kip said.
“So he says.” Malcolm lowered his brow.
Coppy leaned back, his thick tail providing support. “To chip down a brick wall like Broadside, it takes longer than three weeks.”
“On behalf of brick walls everywhere, I demand you retract those words,” Malcolm said.
“The point is,” Emily cut across their discussion, “that if we really want to change things, we should be talking to the other students. You,” she pointed at Malcolm, “should be telling them that we’re regular students just as they are. I’m certain it doesn’t help that we’re shut in the basement like trolls.”
“Which is why Patris did it, I’m sure,” Kip said.
Emily nodded. “Regardless of why, it’s not a bad place; it only looks bad from the outside. It’s private and large.”
“Perhaps we should throw a basement-warming party,” Malcolm said. “Without ale or wine.”
“I am leaving the basement warming to Kip,” Emily said, “and you needn’t adopt that tone.”
“And you needn’t adopt that one,” the Irishman replied, straightening his back.
Worried that Malcolm was about to leave, Kip put his paws out in a calming gesture. “It isn’t a bad idea,” he said. “Not the party, I mean, but talking to the other students. Some of them are hostile, but not all of them, and we all go off to our rooms and study on our own. Why not offer to help some of them with their studying?”
“The Masters do that,” Malcolm said. “Aye, we’re the best in the class—and aye, I’m allowing myself in that group though I’m the least of us—but what have we to offer?”
What had any of them to offer? That was a question they would have to answer, not only for the other students, but also for the masters, if they were to continue studying at the college.
A flutter of wings interrupted the reverie that question plunged them into, and a raven alit on one of the perches above the fireplace. “Kip,” it said. “Your father is outside.”
The fox rose and stretched. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he said.
Coppy got to his feet as well. “I’m going with you. I’ve not spoken to your father since church and I’d like to.”
“Another fox?” Chez, the elemental currently paying closest attention to their conversations, spoke up in a scratchy, low voice. “Bring him in. Love
to say hi.”
The other elementals joined in. “Aye, bring him.” “We love foxes, we do.” “Maybe he’d bring more paper?”
Kip laughed and drew the last piece of paper from his pocket. He tossed it to the fireplace and said, “Someday, perhaps. I’m not sure how he gets into and out of the Tower; we’ve never seen him come through the Hall here.”
“A back door to the Tower?” Malcolm rubbed his chin. “I’ll investigate.”
“And I will study.” Emily took the translocational magic book from her side and opened it. “I like these spells. They make sense to me.”
“That’s a good sign.” Kip raised a paw, and then turned and walked out, Coppy at his side.
Evening had gripped the world. The autumn night was clear and cold, with stars shining down and a crescent moon overhead that illuminated the stone path and dying grass more than enough for Kip and Coppy to see by. Kip lifted his nose to the air, but the only scent that came to him was the calming fragrance of the trees. He swept the dim line of the forest that surrounded the lawn of the college for any hiding figures, but nothing moved. Toward the orchard, there was a dim white shape that drew his eye, but it didn’t move nor appear alive at all.
He pointed it out to Coppy. The otter squinted. “Don’t look like aught to worry about.”
“Not Farley under a sheet?”
“Never seen Farley stay still so long.”
“Aye,” Kip said. He stared, but still the thing didn’t move.
“Probably a cover they put down over some plants.” Coppy began to walk. “I’ll keep an eye in that direction.”
“I suppose.” Kip’s breath gathered in front of him as he exhaled, and then dissipated slowly. He walked behind the otter, glancing at the shape until they turned the corner.
His father waited outside the dining tent, as before, and greeted Kip with an embrace, rubbing his muzzle alongside his son’s. “You’re doing well?” he asked, and turned to embrace Coppy as well.
Kip nodded. “We got new spell books and new spells to learn.”
“Which ones?”
Coppy grinned. “Kip likes the fire spell, but hasn’t dared cast it yet.”
