by Tim Susman
He stared ahead, tapping the table, as though she hadn’t spoken. Her voice remained polite but took on an edge. “Master Colonel Jackson?”
“I believed Calatians to be plentiful enough that we did not have to worry about them,” he said in a low voice. “When we fought the French, our calyxes helped turn the tide. Now the British want that advantage back. They know we hold the upper hand on our own soil, but if they deprive us of calyxes…even a fire sorcerer won’t be enough. They have Peachtree, Savannah, and some of our military calyxes already. Lowell, get a unit to go to New Cambridge immediately.”
“We can go.” Kip stood.
Emily and Malcolm stood too, Alice a moment later. “I know the town,” Emily said. “I can take Captain Lowell and Malcolm.”
“I’m going too,” Alice said indignantly.
“You’re injured—”
She cut off Captain Lowell. “That doesn’t change my ability to cast spells, and it’s my hometown. My parents are there.”
“We’d have to find another sorcerer. You should remain—yes, Penfold?”
The fox shook his head. “We’re all of us tired. Alice makes her own choices, and if she says she’s capable then I believe her, and what’s more, I would want her with us if I were you.” He hesitated. “We could do the calyx ritual for Emily.”
“I will,” Emily said, “but I’d greatly prefer not to.”
“Sir,” Malcolm said. “I’ll stand aside for Miss Cartwright. I’ve no family there, and besides, if there is an attack, her skills will be more useful than mine.”
“Penfold must remain warded,” Jackson said. “Master Albright knows him.”
“I’ll stay by his side,” Emily promised. “I’ll bring him back here at the first sign of trouble.”
“And I can ward this place to allow Em to come back.” Malcolm smiled at her.
“Fine.” Jackson waved a hand. “Go now, and Miss Carswell, if the situation is beyond the four of you, come back immediately.”
They had not changed their clothes since returning from Savannah—had all of this happened in a single day? The weariness Kip had felt while listening to Emily’s story vanished as they received these instructions from Jackson.
“The church?” Kip asked Emily. “Out in front, I’d say.”
“Inside would let us proceed more cautiously if there is an attack.”
“Inside the doors, then.” Captain Lowell and Alice moved to stand on either side of Emily. “Let’s go.”
Kip closed his eyes, envisioning the smell and feel of the large church doors. He reached out with magic and in a moment he was there. Emily, with Alice and Captain Lowell, stood beside him. He motioned them to silence as he and Alice strained their ears to listen for noise outside the church. While they did, Captain Lowell crept to the nearest window he could find and looked out.
No noises came to Kip, and when his eyes met Alice’s she shook her head slightly. “We don’t hear anything,” he said.
“I don’t see anything.”
“But that’s unusual,” Kip said. “There should be people, activity. Even in the evening after sunset. There’s nobody in the street?” He put his nose to the crack of the door, but all he smelled was the New Cambridge night: no gunpowder or blood, no smells of battle.
Emily gestured Captain Lowell closer and kept hold of both him and Alice. Kip cracked the church door open and peered out onto an empty street. He set his ear to the crack and still no sound came—no, wait. There was a faint sobbing sound.
“I hear something,” he whispered, and pulled the door open to step out into the street.
With the church behind him and the Founder’s Rest Inn off to his left, the empty White Tower (not entirely empty) a dark silhouette on the hill behind the Inn, this could be any night in New Cambridge except for the eerie stillness. He considered the Inn; Old John might be there, but the faint sobbing came from the opposite direction, toward the town.
Alice heard it now too and pointed that way. Kip nodded and confirmed his decision with Captain Lowell before they set off, the soldier and Emily following the foxes.
They walked along Half-Moon Street past empty shops, some with doors open, and as the sobbing grew clearer, so did the murmur of voices. They hurried forward along the road, the others trailing them, until they rounded the corner of the street to the square in front of the town hall.
There the human inhabitants of New Cambridge sat, knelt, or lay, while a few walked around ministering. Father Gregory, the short, stout preacher, was one of those on his feet and the first to spot Kip and Alice. His broad face broke into a relieved smile as he hurried over to them, putting a hand to the bandage across his scalp.
“Kip! Alice! How did you get here so soon? Robert left not twenty minutes ago.”
“Robert?” Kip shook his head. “We came from Boston by magic. We haven’t seen Robert. What happened here?”
“The British.” Father Gregory’s face turned grim. “Four sorcerers and maybe a half-dozen soldiers. They rounded up everyone and—”
“My parents?” Alice broke in.
“Nobody was harmed. The soldiers drove all the Calatians up the hill and left us behind here.”
“Up the hill…” Kip’s eyes turned to the White Tower. “If they were doing what they did on the boats, we could still save them.”
Emily met his eyes. “The roof?”
“The roof. Alice, summon an air elemental and have your physical magic ready.”
Alice closed her eyes, and a moment later, her paws glowed turquoise. Captain Lowell surveyed them. “We’ll appear in a hidden spot?”
“The roof is out of sight if nobody’s looking up,” Kip said evasively, not wanting to reveal Peter’s presence to Lowell. Peter’s journal had had an inattention ward cast on it—he hadn’t understood what it was at the time, but he did now—so he presumed that Peter could protect them in that way.
“All right. Let’s assess the situation before taking action. But Penfold, if there are translocational sorcerers, you should be prepared to kill them this time. If they have any warning then they’ll escape again.”
Left unspoken was the truth that some of these might be the ones Kip had let escape on the boat. He summoned magic and brought fire, which was always waiting, to the forefront of his mind.
A moment later, they appeared on the roof, empty save for a pair of robins that flew away quickly as the four of them appeared. Kip perked his ears, but the movement and sharply barked orders from below were loud enough to be audible to all of them. Peter, he asked quickly, one paw to the stone, can you protect us with an inattention ward here?
A moment, and then: Hello, Kip. Yes, that is easily done. Is something happening outside?
Kip didn’t feel any change, but he trusted Peter. Kidnapping, he said. We hope to stop it. He followed his friends to the edge of the roof and peered over.
The New Cantabrigian Calatians stood huddled in a circle, not all the town by any means, but about half of them: Kip recognized Alice’s family and the Morgans at a quick glance. A moment later, it became clear what was happening: four soldiers kept guns trained on the Calatians, while two pushed a group of eight toward the waiting four sorcerers, who reached out to touch them just as the sorcerers on the boats had done before translocating those Calatians away.
This group of eight included the six Lapellis. Even at this distance, Kip recognized Bess Lapelli, an infant rabbit in her arms and two more young pups clinging to her skirt. Ahead of her, Johnny coaxed his younger sister forward.
“Move it along,” a soldier said behind Bess, and Johnny turned in time to see his mother receive a hard thump from the soldier’s rifle stock.
“Leave her alone!” he cried, and ran for the soldier.
Had he been a little closer, he might have closed the distance. As it was, the surprised soldier still had time to shoulder his rifle and shoot.
The loud retort that made everyone jump, including Kip and Alice. Johnny sta
ggered back a step and then fell to the ground. His sister screamed, and the younger rabbits picked up the noise. Three sorcerers stepped up and translocated them all, leaving a hushed silence behind the screams.
Johnny twitched and clutched at his shoulder. One of the sorcerers stared down at him and then said something to the soldier, too quiet to hear. The soldier raised his rifle.
“Kill them now,” Lowell said quickly.
The crack of the soldier’s rifle sounded even as fire surged in Kip and he let it loose. He knew full well what he was doing, considering the lives he was saving as well as the lives he was too late to save. Letting a sorcerer escape meant they would keep threatening Calatians, again and again, and there was only one way to put that to a stop. With a thought, he reached out and became destruction, and the fire sang to him as it did his bidding.
The soldier and all four sorcerers erupted in flames, without time even to voice a cry before their bodies were consumed and charred to ash. The Calatians cried out and ran, and even the unburnt soldiers stepped back, but as they did they were lifted from the ground. The closest one to them clutched his throat and dropped his rifle.
“Stop fighting me,” Alice said aloud.
“Sorry,” Emily replied. “I didn’t know if you could handle all of them.”
One of the other soldiers, floating in the air, nonetheless attempted to sight along his gun, but a moment later he too clutched at his throat and his rifle fell, where Bryce Morgan picked it up.
Captain Lowell stepped to the edge of the roof and called in a loud, clear voice, “British soldiers! Drop your weapons immediately.”
The four soldiers still holding onto their rifles dropped them and raised their hands. The other, recovering his breath, raised his hands as well.
Captain Lowell turned to the sorcerers with some satisfaction. “Can one of you convey us to the ground?”
Emily did the honors, though Alice said she could also manage it. Kip could easily have done it as well, but his attention remained on the crowd of Calatians, as much to search for familiar faces as to avoid looking at the five charred bodies that reminded him of the joy and power in the fire, how easily it had burned his enemies, how gleefully it had sung to him as it had. No wonder such power was forbidden by the rules of war (was he now a war criminal, or were they all war criminals for being party to his action?). The Calatians made a wide berth around the charred bodies, staying upwind of them, but Kip stood close and forced himself to witness what he’d done. This is part of the complicated balance of power, he told himself. The joy in being able to wield it, the ability to change the course of events for the better, and then the consequences.
He stopped at the body of Johnny Lapelli, staring sightlessly at the sky. The soldier’s second shot had pierced his heart; he had likely died instantly. Looking from him back to the blackened, smoking bodies, Kip reminded himself: You did this because you made the choice to do it. It was the correct choice, and you would do it again.
At the same time, he understood more viscerally than ever Cott’s dogmatic insistence on control. Letting fire loose on people could become far too easy if he allowed it. Cott, too, must have been called on to burn people during the war, and had seen in himself that same precipice Kip faced now. Cott had chosen to turn his back on the danger, but Kip still fought in a war and did not have that option yet. He would have to watch himself carefully. This time, he repeated to himself, he had done the right thing.
Captain Lowell took command of the British soldiers when they landed, distributing the rifles to three Calatians who came forward to help: Thomas Cartwright, Tom Cooper the squirrel, and Carrow Roseward the polecat, and allowing Bryce Morgan to keep his. Thomas, ears back, could not keep his eyes off his daughter as she spoke to the air with a smile and then ran forward to hug him.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” she said.
“Thanks to your friends here.” Thomas met Kip’s eyes and gave a short nod.
“Thanks to Alice, too.” Kip pointed to the soldiers. “That was her.”
“What about the fire?” one of the soldiers demanded. “You burned ’em up, you ain’t allowed to do that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Captain Lowell said. “We arrived here having been warned of your sneak attack on this peaceful town just in time to see the sorcerers consumed by some kind of natural flame. Miss Cartwright, Miss Carswell, and Mister Penfold incapacitated you and brought us down here to take charge of your prisoners and return them to their homes.”
“It were magical fire,” the soldier insisted.
Captain Lowell stepped close to him and spoke in a low voice. “It was a natural phenomenon,” he said pleasantly, “and should you continue to insist otherwise, you might attract the attention of the same natural phenomenon. Or we might, perhaps, as your sorcerers have done, erase your mind and use your body to send a message. Are your sorcerers ‘allowed’ to do that?”
The soldier glared at him but kept his mouth shut. Kip wanted to thank Lowell for remembering the unfortunate fox from Savannah, but the captain had enemy soldiers to contend with. Besides, Kip still shook with magical energy and the aftermath of the surge of fire, so he distracted himself by speaking to Thomas instead. “Do you know where they were meaning to send you?”
The fox shook his head. “They told us only to come up here and then they started disappearing us. Kip…” He put a paw on Kip’s shoulder. “Johnny Lapelli…Matthew Porter…”
“Matthew Porter?” Josiah’s father, one of the older residents of the town.
“He fell, couldn’t walk…so they shot him.”
Captain Lowell, listening, turned to the British soldiers. “There. Do you lot really want to talk about what you are and aren’t allowed to do in war?” He gave Kip a long look of approval.
Kip returned the look with a grateful smile. “You’re safe now,” he assured Thomas. “And you have your daughter to thank.”
“All of you,” Thomas said, and turned his ears back toward the crowd, milling about and murmuring now. “Can we go back to the town?”
“I don’t think that’s advisable,” Captain Lowell said.
“Why not stay in the Tower for now?” Kip suggested. “There should be plenty of room, and it will be easy for us to ward the Tower against future attacks.” Now that they knew they were at war, Peter could keep his inattention ward active to protect those inside until an army sorcerer could be spared.
Bryce Morgan stepped forward. “I will talk to the town. For a short time, we can stay in the Tower, if someone will bring us food.”
Captain Lowell said, “For as long as we need to keep you safe—”
“Excuse me,” Kip said, “but I believe Old John can find someone to bring you food. I will go talk to him.” He didn’t want the Calatians to hear that the war would likely drag on for months, if not longer, and that they might need to live in the Tower indefinitely.
Lowell took his meaning, though his expression showed he didn’t like it. “Very well. Let’s move everyone into the Tower.”
Emily and Alice helped, and Emily went to fetch a warding specialist to keep the Tower protected. Kip meant to set off down the hill, but Thomas pulled him aside.
“Thank you for saving us,” he said in a low voice. “I have to tell you something.”
“Oh…” Kip flicked his tail and looked toward Alice. “We can talk about it later.”
“No, it’s important.” The fox lowered his voice still further. “There was a Calatian with the soldiers, one I’d never seen before. He knew everyone in the town and helped round us up.”
“Who?” The crowd of townspeople walked toward the Tower. If there was a traitor among them…
“He left when we got to the hill. Another sorcerer came and got him. But he knew some sorcery, Kip. He pulled people out of their houses with spells.”
Another Calatian who knew sorcery? Kip’s heart pounded and then he realized who it must have been. “Was he
a marmot?”
“Yes.” Thomas’s ears stood up. “You know him?”
“Yes, and so do you. It’s Farley Broadside.”
When the Calatians were safely in the Tower and Old John had agreed to send food up their way, Kip walked around to a deserted side of the Tower and laid his paw on the stone. Peter, he called. I know we are under attack, but nobody who is attacking knows your name. They cannot reach you. We are strengthening your protection with wards.
There was no answer. Kip exhaled. I’m entrusting our people to you. You don’t have to answer me, but watch over them. Keep them safe as you did me.
He waited, and just when he was about to give up and walk away, a distant voice echoed in his head. I will do my best.
That’s all I ask.
Emily had translocated the prisoners at Captain Lowell’s request, and him along with them, so it was only her and Alice left to watch Kip walk across the lawn of the College in what little light filtered down from the moon and stars through the cloud cover. “You’re thinking about something,” Emily said.
Kip nodded. “They attack us here, kidnapping our people. What if we tried to help our people in their country escape? Can you take me to the Isle of Dogs?”
“Kip.” Alice put a paw on his arm.
“Sorry, yes. Both of us. If you’ll come.”
“That’s not what I mean. You haven’t permission to go.”
“I had permission to come here. This is part of that same mission, ensuring the safety of the Calatians for the American Army.”
Alice set her paws on her hips. “You’ve been captured, fought in four different battles if you include our escape, and you were up before the sun this morning. Don’t you think you’d best ask Master Colonel Jackson first? Put this off until tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” Kip quoted. “I have seen enough death. One more day gives them time to do more harm. How long did it take to convince Jackson to send me here? How long will it take to convince him to send me to London, to the heart of enemy territory? How many Calatians will die in that time?”
