The War and the Fox

by Tim Susman

  He told Alice through Ash to take Albright into custody, that he was without magic and would not be a danger as long as she didn’t listen to anything he said. Then he returned to the Isle, immobilized Farley with a physical magic spell, and had Peter remove his magic as well.

  Emily sank to her knees when released. “That brute,” she growled, and before Kip could stop her, her hands and arms glowed lavender, and she’d barely touched Farley when he disappeared.

  A splash sounded from the middle of the Thames. “You’d best let him move again,” Emily said, “if you prefer he doesn’t drown. It’s all the same to me.”

  Kip cursed and removed the physical magic spell. “I don’t want to kill anyone, even him. Where is he?” He went to the edge of the dock and perked his ears to the splashing sounds. There wasn’t just Farley, though; there were a few boats going by and other noises, and the sound of one person swimming did not stand out, even over water.

  “If you still care, let’s go find the sorcerers and Calatians he’s undoubtedly murdered and then you can feel better about letting him drown.”

  “He should pay for his crimes,” Kip said, but he couldn’t make out Farley at this distance and didn’t want to spend more time looking for him.

  “He will. But for now, we have a plan to finish.” Emily held out her hand. “Boston? Or New York?”

  “Boston first.” Kip took Emily’s hand. “But let us go to John Adams, not Master Colonel Jackson.”

  “I was about to suggest the same.” She smiled at him and gripped his paw tightly, and a moment later, they were there.

  20

  The Bargain

  John Adams had retired to bed only fifteen minutes before, so he was not yet asleep when they arrived and requested an urgent audience. He grasped the situation quickly from Emily’s story and, impassively enough that Kip could not tell whether he approved or not, told them where to find his son and the rest of the rebellion leaders.

  Kip told his story to John Quincy Adams, Alexander Lawrence, and Samuel Bayard. At the end of it, they all nodded, and then looked at each other. Adams spoke first, carefully. “As I understand it, then, you have deprived the British of their Calatians. But you have also taken the American Calatians? Are we to understand that there will be conditions for their return? And have you also offered their return to the British?”

  Bayard spoke more coldly. “Aye, are you playing both sides off against each other?”

  “No,” Kip said quickly. “I’ve only come to you. I don’t want to go back to the Empire—to Britain.”

  This relaxed them. “All right, then,” Lawrence said. “What do you ask? If it be within reason, I see little impediment. We all wish an end to this war and a beginning to our country, and we’d promised better treatment for your people anyway.”

  “I—” Kip had thought only to ask for a college of sorcery, and remembered that he had several more experienced Calatians to consult. “I will gather our leaders and we can sit down for a proper negotiation. But we also want a quick end to the war.”

  Bayard yawned. “Is this negotiation to be tonight?”

  “We would greatly prefer it,” Kip said.

  “We will be much better rested in the morning,” Lawrence put in.

  Emily, who had remained quiet until then, coughed. “You may wait until morning if you like,” she said, “but we have promised calyxes to the Dutch sorcerers, and once they receive them, they will have calyxes and nobody else in the world will. I presume they will then be willing to sell their services.”

  “And besides,” Kip said, “we are anxious to return the Calatians to their homes as soon as possible. For that to happen we have to agree to terms with you, and then you have to agree to peace with the British.”

  “Yes.” Adams rubbed his eyes. “Go fetch your leaders and return here. We will bring a secretary to draft the agreement and one or two other people if that is agreeable to you.”

  “Of course,” Kip said, and held out his paw for Emily to bring him to Australia.

  They gathered Bryce Morgan, the rat from New York, the vixen from Boston, Wilton Blaeda, an old polecat from the Isle, and then Kip had to go find the Peachtree Calatians. He had not seen his parents since the war started and found them in a small huddle with some others he recognized from Peachtree.

  When they saw him, they leapt up and embraced him. “Kip!” his mother said. “Emily told us you were behind this. It’s so dangerous.”

  “I know,” he said. “But the hard part is over. I hope.”

  His father smiled. “We’ve heard a few stories about you already. I don’t believe that you destroyed the Great Road.”

  “No,” Kip said, “but I was there when it happened.”

  The smile vanished. “The Road is really gone?”

  “Yes. But that’s a story for another time. Who would you say could speak for the Calatians of Peachtree?”

  His father walked him over to a pine marten whom he introduced as Richard Branch, an older fellow with some grey on his muzzle but a bright, alert expression. Richard listened carefully to Kip’s explanation and then gravely agreed to represent Peachtree. He suggested that the Calatian leaders convene before being taken to the meeting so that they could present a unified front on their requests, so they walked together over to where the others sat in a small circle on the sand.

  There were disagreements between them, from what Kip could tell, but they were minor. He and Emily put in that they wanted to continue to study sorcery, and Bryce waved a paw, saying, “That’s just a starting point.”

  Wanting to go back to his parents and to find Alice and Abel, Kip said, “I don’t suppose you need me anymore, then. I’ll just—”

  He stopped because all of them had turned to stare at him. “Don’t need you?” the rat said.

  “Kip.” Bryce put a paw on his arm. “We’ll handle the negotiations, but—you’ve got to be there. You’re the one who started all of this.”

  “Me?” He looked around and saw everyone’s agreement. “But I—all I did was—”

  “All you did,” Wilton Blaeda said gently, “was gather Calatians from all over the world and get them to agree to work together toward a common goal.”

  “I dragged many of them here against their will.”

  “Aye, well.” The polecat smiled and scooped up a paw full of sand. “That is the way of things.” He nodded toward the grains of sand sifting through his fingers. “You can never grasp everyone at once, but to lift as many as you did, Penfold, is remarkable.”

  Richard Branch spoke up. “We have no true leader, but to the humans, you are the most prominent among us.”

  “Not to mention,” said the rat from New York, “we got to have you there in case they try some sorcery on us. That’s what I meant, anyway.”

  “All right,” Kip said, “but if I’m coming, then so is Emily. She did as much as I did to make this happen.”

  “Of course she’s staying.” Bryce seemed surprised that Kip would have expected otherwise. “All that aside, it gives us a stronger position if we don’t appear to just be a group of Calatians.”

  So Kip and Emily stayed and listened as the five leaders discussed what they might ask for in exchange for their services. Wilton Blaeda, the most conservative, worried that anything agreed to by the Americans would not necessarily carry over to Britain. The rat from New York wanted to have an entire territory run by Calatians, which sounded impossibly ambitious to Kip, but the others came around to the idea. “We should at least propose it and then see what they come back with,” Bryce said. “If we don’t ask for it, we’ll never know.”

  All the while, Kip thought about their praises of him. What had he done, really, except take a bold action to help his people? He was hardly the only one to suffer, much less the one who’d suffered most. He had the power and the access to power to take action, otherwise someone else surely would have done something like this years ago, decades ago.

  Those thoughts
led him to recalling the fight with Albright and then Nikolon, and he worried about the demon. What had happened to her?

  So he excused himself for a moment to walk a few feet away—there was really nowhere to have full privacy, not with the air full of Calatian scent and murmuring conversation and a hundred pairs of eyes on him. But he found a spot where he could sit quietly. Nikolon, please come if you can hear me.

  The nude female Calatian appeared before him, provoking gasps, so he ordered Nikolon to clothe herself and then asked her what had happened.

  “I was prevented from communicating with you by a spiritual magic spell.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Then the spell was removed. I made sure you were not in danger and waited for your orders.”

  Emily came up behind Kip. “They’re ready,” she said, and smiled at the demon. “Hello, Nik. Kip and I have to go to Boston.”

  The demon inclined her head. “Shall I accompany you as well, master?”

  “Please, but remain invisible. If there is any hostile action taken against any of us, protect Emily and myself first, but if you cannot save us then go to the Dutch sorcerers and tell them they may come here and rescue as many Calatians as they can. What they do after that is their choice.” He glanced in Emily’s direction, and she nodded. “We hope the leaders will negotiate in good faith, but—”

  “But they probably won’t.” Emily folded her arms.

  The meeting took place in a large room in a house called “Mount Morris,” a house that belonged to an officer of the Royal Navy named Henry Gage Morris, who was considered to have forfeited it when he remained with the British side. On one side sat the five Calatian leaders with Kip and Emily (and the less visible Nikolon and Peter) behind them, and on the other sat the three Revolution leaders along with General Alexander Hamilton and Master Colonel Jackson. Between the two sides sat two secretaries, one human and one rabbit-Calatian, each with an inkwell, several pens, and small stacks of paper.

  The appearance of Master Colonel Jackson had been more of a disappointment than a surprise to Kip. Of course it made sense for the rebellion’s foremost sorcerer to attend, but he’d hoped they would view these negotiations as purely political. So he stationed himself behind Bryce Morgan, who by general acclaim had been appointed the spokesperson of the Calatian side.

  As a precaution against spiritual sorcery, the five Calatians had agreed to allow Peter to blur their memories of Australia enough to make them useless for anyone spying on their mind. Emily kept Peter with her, Kip had Nikolon monitoring him, and they had requested that a prevention ward, negating any spellcasting, be placed on the meeting room. There was always the danger that the defensive sorcerer, under the command of Master Colonel Jackson, had allowed some loopholes in the ward, so even after testing it and finding it secure, they remained vigilant.

  The first hour of the negotiations was spent in introductions, writing down everyone’s names and stations, and each side discussing the precautions they’d taken against sorcery from the other. Kip was especially pleased to see that this discussion calmed down Jackson, who had entered the room looking as though he would personally capture and interrogate all the upstart Calatians.

  When they moved on to business, the first item broached by the Americans was the calyxes and when they would be able to resume their duties. Master Colonel Jackson seemed especially to press on the point of whether calyxes would now want to be paid for their services, asking that several times even when first Bryce and then Wilton Blaeda said that that was not part of their negotiations.

  As a part of this, Kip brought up the question of Captain Lowell. Jackson’s scowl when Lowell’s name was mentioned told the fox that Jackson had found out Lowell’s part in their plan. He insisted that as part of the settlement that Captain Lowell would not be charged with any crimes. Nobody but Jackson cared particularly about this, but they had to listen to him rant about loyalty for a good five minutes, punctuated with several blows of his fist to the table. He still commanded attention, but Kip found that the pounding of his fist had lost much of the force it had. The Calatians stayed politely attentive during the rant, while most of the American politicians made no attempt to hide their boredom. When Jackson ran out of energy, John Quincy Adams asked if he was finished, and Jackson sat without another word. Adams turned back to the Calatians and said, “Done.”

  Once that had been settled, they moved on to the meat of the Calatians’ demands. Bryce presented them in a list: strictly enforced laws preventing violence against Calatians, acceptance for Calatian and women sorcerers, and a territory governed by Calatians. Kip’s only intervention in the forming of this list had been to argue that the point should say “acceptance for any candidate for sorcerer,” but Bryce felt that Calatians should argue for Calatians, and in fact only Kip reminding him about Emily and Alice got him to grudgingly include women.

  The first two passed without much argument, though Jackson grumbled about female candidates in a way that reminded Kip of the arguments the masters at Prince George’s had made against Emily’s acceptance. It was when it came to territory that the discussion grew more spirited. Jackson stood firmly against it, but fortunately, he seemed to have the least influence on that side. “A territory for Calatians?” he said. “Are we humans to be excluded from this? Will we also have a territory where the animals of the forest are allowed to govern themselves in accordance with their laws? If the Calatians have any civilization, it is entirely due to their upbringing among good God-fearing men.”

  “Clearly that is false,” Adams said.

  “Is it?” Jackson rounded on him. “I suppose that in your law offices you only encounter the best exemplars.”

  “Not so.” Adams remained mild in the face of Jackson’s scorn. “In fact, I encounter many scoundrels, usually of the human variety. I have often seen them go on to great success in a military career.” Jackson sputtered, and Adams went on. “But if the Calatians have indeed learned civilization from men, one has only to look at their town of New Cambridge or the Dorchester community to see that they have learned well. They have at least earned the chance to prove themselves apart from us.”

  “I have seen them in the battlefield, and I know how helpless they are without direction or instruction.”

  “Maybe,” the Boston vixen said, “because they’ve been beaten down over a lifetime and taught not to make a move without a human approving.”

  “Besides,” the New York rat said, “I believe we’re here because a Calatian outsmarted you all.”

  Jackson turned very red and shouted, “Only with tools I gave him!”

  “That’s enough.” Adams turned. “This is no longer productive.”

  “I’m trying to help,” Jackson snarled, but sat down in his chair, glaring at Kip, who tried to ignore him.

  A short time later, Wilton Blaeda began to argue against the territory as well. “After all,” he said, “we in England would not benefit from that. And how would we govern without humans?”

  This alarmed Bryce, who said softly, “We discussed this.”

  Now Kip paid attention to Jackson, whose face had resumed his normal color. He no longer glared at Kip or at anyone, but stared at the table with concentration—as if casting a spell.

  Kip glanced at Emily, holding Peter, but she had also noticed Blaeda’s change in attitude and discreetly brought the stone to the polecat’s shoulder. So Kip tapped Bryce and told him that Jackson had tried to influence the negotiations. Wilton blinked, looking as though he’d dozed off for a moment, and turned to Bryce to apologize.

  The hedgehog listened to both Thomas and Kip, and then addressed Adams. “We would like to request the removal of Master Colonel Jackson. He’s trying to affect the negotiations via sorcery.”

  This caused a great commotion on the other side, as Bayard protested, Lawrence rounded on Jackson, and Jackson stood to defend himself. “They toss about accusations, even though there are wards here,” he cried. “That one resents me!”r />
  He pointed at Kip, and the fox half-stood himself before Bryce reached back to push him into his chair. “You may replace him with another spiritual sorcerer if you like, but we will not continue with him present.”

  “That will cause a delay of an hour.” Adams rubbed his eyes.

  “How,” General Hamilton said, “if we promise that Master Colonel Jackson will limit his activities to monitoring for sorcery from your side? You have shown that you can detect his spells; if he tries one again we will eject him and continue without a spiritual sorcerer.”

  “What if they accuse me without cause?” Jackson snapped, taking his seat slowly.

  “Did they?” Hamilton asked sharply, and Jackson made no answer.

  The negotiations resumed, and whether it was because of Jackson’s actions or not, Kip was surprised to find that the idea of a Calatian territory was not rejected out of hand. Lawrence spoke in favor of it, while Adams and Bayard worried about how that territory would be treated by the others in the new country.

  “I don’t suppose it would be too much trouble to carve off a piece of land for the Calatians,” Adams said finally.

  “With our own representation in the new government?” Bryce asked, to confirm. “We’re fighting a war to stop being colonies and we’d prefer not to be immediately re-settled in one.”

  “Yes, with representation. Where did you have in mind?”

  “We would like an area where Calatians have already settled,” Bryce said. “Something like New Cambridge.”

  “Out of the question,” Jackson blustered. “We’re not giving you the college. You see? They won’t ask for payment; they want to run the whole enterprise.”

  “New Cambridge would present a number of difficulties,” Adams said smoothly. “Where else have you considered?”

  “You’re not getting any part of Boston or New York,” Bayard put in.