The War and the Fox Read online

  Malcolm lifted his hand. Alice stepped back to take it, and the three of them followed the other sorcerers out of the room.

  Kip stood, his tail flicking back and forth. Jackson sat on the edge of a table, waiting until the room had cleared and the door closed behind the last of them. “I know you’re not a military man, Penfold, but standing at attention before a senior officer means standing straight. In the Calatian units of the army, tails are included in standing at attention.”

  Kip straightened and tried to get his tail under control. “Sorry, sir. Where are the Calatian units of the army?”

  Jackson shook his head. “No need to apologize. Don’t worry about the Calatian units. There’s one in Boston and one in New York but they work as support troops. Although the one in New York isn’t there any more. The British took them.”

  “Took as in captured?”

  The tall man inclined his head. “Some of them,” he said offhandedly. “They’re not available to us anymore, and that’s what matters. At ease.” When Kip didn’t move, he said, “That means you can wag your tail, or do whatever it is you do with it.”

  It wasn’t wagging, but Kip let his tail swing free. “What did you want to see me about, sir?”

  “Firstly, I’m going to assign you a proper defensive sorcerer. Your relationship with O’Brien notwithstanding, he’s crippled. A defensive sorcerer needs his sight.”

  “Sir, with respect…” As Kip spoke, Jackson fixed him with those piercing eyes. The fox swallowed. “Malcolm is as talented as any of the others, and he knows me better. We work together well.”

  The Master Colonel considered this. “I will have him cast some wards for me. If he performs to my satisfaction, I will consider your request.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Kip relaxed only slightly.

  “Now. I have special orders for you, Penfold.” Jackson set his hands together, got up, and stared down at Kip. “These orders are for your ears only. You are to tell nobody else about them. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” The fox’s heart filled with dread.

  “Lowell has told me that direct combat is not to your taste. You’ve killed one man and he thinks you may need more time to grow accustomed to the realities of war.”

  I don’t want to grow accustomed to it, Kip thought. “Yes, sir,” he said with some hesitation.

  “I’ve decided to place you out of the way of direct combat this time. There is another use you may serve.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Kip said, and relaxed further. “What use?”

  “I told the men that we wanted the British soldiers driven back onto the ships. That is true. But.”

  The malicious smile that crept onto Jackson’s face did nothing to assuage Kip’s dread. “It is my desire,” the Master Colonel said, “that none of the British ships return to safe harbor. You are a master of fire. Once the men have boarded the ships, burn all that will burn on them.”

  Kip’s throat had dried almost completely out. He coughed. “But sir, we are not supposed to kill directly with sorcery.”

  Jackson waved. “I have cannon trained on the harbor that will fire flaming cannonballs. But if there are no survivors, there will be none to speak of it. So make sure to reach every ship.”

  “Sir,” Kip said. “That’s—mass murder.”

  “Penfold. That’s war.” Jackson fixed him with a stare. “We are not a sovereign nation that has existed for hundreds of years with a standing army and sorceric military equal to Britain. We are building a sovereign nation out of scraps, and our only chance—our only chance—to win this war is to show the British that the cost to them will be devastating. Do you believe your friends the Adamses and Miss Carswell will be able to persuade a foreign power to our side? At least, in time to stop the ships that are already there at our shores?” He pointed out toward what Kip presumed was the harbor.

  “But—why not let the cannonballs do the work?” Jackson stared at him until Kip added, “Sir.”

  Jackson kept eye contact. “The cannon do not fire quickly enough to cover the whole fleet. Their presence and noise will mask your spell. Ships with great stores of gunpowder have been known to explode under fire, and close together, whole fleets have been lost that way. It is rare, but known.”

  Kip remained quiet, numb. Jackson nodded and turned away from the fox for the first time. “You question the necessity of taking so many lives. You have been taught that we do not take lives with sorcery, and you took that charge seriously. Tell me.” He lifted himself to sit on the table again. “Do you believe that Napoleon lost a hundred thousand soldiers at Waterloo to bullets and bayonets? That’s the story. But I worked with the sorcerers there. I know how many great spells were cast and how many lives they took.

  “Did we violate the conventions of war? Perhaps. Do you believe the French sorcerers restrained themselves where we did not? We create these façades that we may speak to each other as civilized men when the battles are done, but when you are surrounded by death and the weight of your country rests on your shoulders, these barriers mean no more than the words used to shape them. History is more than they write in the books. Those fine words you prize are borne on the backs of brutality.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kip said.

  “You are clear on my orders?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kip repeated.

  “Then you are dismissed.”

  Jackson turned to leave the room, but Kip stayed where he was. “Sir?”

  The sorcerer turned. Kip stood as straight as he could. “My parents live in Peachtree, just up the river. The site of Prince Phillip’s school?”

  “You haven’t time to go visit, Penfold, and I can’t spare a sorcerer to take you.”

  “No, I mean…will they be defended? They’re Calatians, and many of them are calyxes.”

  “We have as many calyxes as we can use, and the British have an entire population across the river from their College. It would be foolish for them to risk an offensive to an otherwise useless place. It’s not a tactical position.”

  And with that, Jackson left the room and Kip stood there alone for a long moment before returning slowly to his friends.

  True to his word, Master Colonel Jackson summoned Malcolm to him immediately. Fifteen minutes later, Malcolm returned to their chambers with a smile and the news that he was to continue to serve in Kip’s unit, provisionally. “It’s a good job Luke taught me that distraction trick with inattention wards. They work much better when you give people something to be distracted by. Master Vendis never taught me that.”

  That piece of good news notwithstanding, Kip’s secret orders weighed on him all that night and the next morning. This was war, he’d been told, and he was being ordered to violate the carefully laid out rules. The British would know, though, wouldn’t they? Jackson knew well what had happened at Waterloo. If Kip massacred their fleet, what might the British do at the next conflict? The so-called rules of war felt like the tenuous threads of a spiderweb straining to contain a wasp. Once one strand snapped, the others could not help but follow. Would his actions here be responsible for a worse atrocity later?

  Unable to confide in his friends, he wracked his brain to think of other ways he could affect the battle. “I wish Emily were here,” he said at one point.

  “Why?” Alice’s ears went back. “You can translocate. If you want to visit your parents, go ahead.”

  Captain Lowell, leaning against the wall near the door, exhaled loudly and opened his mouth to speak, but Kip spoke first. “I wouldn’t go without permission,” he said. “And that’s not the point. The point is thinking through problems.”

  “What problem exactly?” Malcolm stood by the open window facing the light breeze that blew across the room.

  “War.”

  Malcolm laughed. “Ah, mucker, there’s a problem I wager it’d take more than our Emily to solve. Is there a particular part of it concerning you? The ‘how not to get killed’ part?”

  “How not to get
all of you killed,” Kip said.

  “We can worry about that as well.” Alice put her paws on her hips. “And it would be easier if I could practice.”

  “Right.” Helping Alice would at least be something different to do. “Lowell, is there a place we could cast spells that isn’t indoors, where if something goes wrong it won’t be catastrophic?”

  The captain’s eyes narrowed. “Is there any place where a miscast spell would not be catastrophic?”

  “Some less than others,” Malcolm said cheerfully.

  “Out in the open air.” Kip picked up his annotated book. “Alice can work on elemental summoning, and I’d like Malcolm’s help with what I want to do.”

  “And what is that?” Lowell did not unfold his arms nor look any more comfortable.

  “Work on a way to end this battle sooner.”

  Lowell asked no more questions, only insisted that he be allowed to accompany them, and with that concession he secured permission for them to walk out to a city square some hundred yards behind the American army lines.

  Kip had never been to Savannah, and though it was not as large a city as Boston, he thought the buildings were more beautiful, less austere. Where Boston matched stone to brick in elegant edifices around narrow streets, Savannah’s buildings opened to the warm air, with clay-tiled roofs and medium to dark wood dominating. They walked down wide streets past barracks where American soldiers sat out front playing cards, cleaning their rifles, or just talking.

  The soldiers outside the last barracks they passed weren’t speaking English, and they all had skin as dark as Captain Lowell’s. One of them raised a hand to him and said, “Ho, mon ami,” and Captain Lowell responded with a salute.

  “Friends of yours?” Kip asked.

  “These are the Chasseurs-Volontaires, a regiment from Sainte Domingue.” Captain Lowell raised his hand to another of them. “They came up a few months ago when we thought it likely we would be fighting the British. Master Colonel Jackson asked me to come down to help with their transition.”

  “Do you speak French?” Malcolm asked.

  “No.”

  “Then why would he—”

  Kip, holding Malcolm’s hand to guide him, squeezed it and whispered, “They’re from Sainte Domingue.” When Malcolm’s frown didn’t clear, Kip added, “They’re black.”

  Malcolm’s face cleared, but as they walked on, an angry frown grew. Kip, searching for something else to say, breathed in the strong smell of the houses and asked, “They’ve been living here for months? Away from their families?”

  “We can’t bring their families into war,” Lowell replied.

  “So they just wait around until there’s a fight?” Alice asked. “What if war never happened?”

  “They’d go home. But it takes so long to bring people from one place to another when you have as few resources as we do. The British can use calyxes with their translocational sorcerers and move hundreds of men in a night, but then, they can also spare a hundred men here and there. We have to know where they’re needed and we haven’t enough sorcerers to be able to move a regiment quickly. There’s another of the Chasseurs-Volontaires regiments in Charleston, just in case.”

  “It’s sad that they’re away from their family for so long.” And then Alice looked up at Kip and saw his expression. “It’s not the same for us. We can go back whenever we want.”

  “Not whenever we want,” he said with a glance at Lowell, “but yes, it’s different.”

  If the captain had heard Kip’s remark and understood it, he gave no indication. “They fought for their freedom after the Napoleonic Wars, twice. First from the French, weakened, and then from the British. So when we offered them soldier’s pay to come fight the British again, many enlisted happily.”

  “The British are soft!” called out one soldier, who’d been listening as they passed, and choruses of “soft!” and “mou!” rang out, followed by a song in French that Kip could not translate.

  “Good on them for coming to fight for us,” Malcolm said.

  “They are more dedicated than many American soldiers.” Lowell led them around a corner, down another street that opened into a large plaza, deserted save for two small tents at one end. The captain stopped near a stone bench and stared at them. “Go ahead and start your work,” he said. “I’ll take care of these people.”

  Malcolm took his hand from Kip’s arm and listened to Lowell’s receding footsteps. “What people?” he asked quietly.

  Two scruffy men had emerged from the tents to confront Lowell. Kip focused his ears to hear the conversation. “There’s two people in tents,” he told Malcolm. “They’re wearing torn clothes and they don’t look terribly friendly.”

  “You can’t pitch tents here,” Lowell told them. “It’s not safe.”

  “Don’t speak to us like that,” the one with the longer beard said. “Go get your master.”

  “My commanding officer,” Lowell said evenly, “has put me in charge here. Move your tents or I’ll send men to move them by force.”

  “How dare you,” the other man said. “How dare you!”

  “I’ve given you warning. Now, there are going to be sorcerers working in this plaza, so stay here at your own risk.” With that, the captain turned to leave.

  Kip gathered magic, because he didn’t like the attitude of the two men, and indeed, before Lowell had taken two steps, the man with the longer beard had reached to the ground and picked up a rock the size of his fist. He wound up to throw it and Kip readied himself to catch it before it could strike the captain, but Alice stepped forward, turquoise wreathing her arms, and as the glow vanished, the tents rose up and enveloped the men.

  Lowell spun at the noise, took in the scene, and then walked quickly back to Kip, Malcolm, and Alice. “Which one of you did that?” he demanded.

  “Whatever it was,” Malcolm said, “I’d wager it was one of the foxes, as I can’t see what’s happening.”

  “I did it,” Alice said. “They were going to throw a rock at you from behind, and that’s not fair.”

  The men had extricated themselves from the tents and now stood looking uncertainly at the group. Alice stared back at them, while Captain Lowell half-turned and then forced himself to continue staring at the two foxes. “Are they going to attack again?” he asked softly. “Do they have guns?”

  “No,” Kip said. “I don’t think so.”

  After a long glare, the two men held a muttered conversation and then wrapped their possessions up and left the plaza in the opposite direction. “All right,” Lowell said. “You have the plaza.”

  “So,” Malcolm said as Kip put a paw on his shoulder, “if I may guess at your thoughts, you’re thinking that to end a battle quickly, we need more power, and that means higher order demons.”

  “Indeed.” Kip took his book out. “I don’t have many names, certainly not the ones in Odden’s book, but…you remember the names I copied from Cott?”

  “Oh.” Malcolm brightened. “Aye. I thought you were perhaps going to try summoning Farley’s demon.”

  “No. I don’t even remember the name,” Kip lied. “These are all fourth order demons with fire tendencies so I’m hoping I can control them. I’ve managed third-order demons, and I’m pretty sure I can do a fourth, but if you’re here with a banishment spell ready, that will help.”

  “Will it help if two of us cast it at once?” Alice asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Kip set his book down on the bench. “But why don’t you try summoning your elemental first?”

  Her ears came up. “Really?”

  “Of course. That’s part of why we came out here. You have the spell?”

  “I’ve memorized it.” But she took her book out anyway. “I thought you might change your mind at the last minute.”

  “I’m sorry it’s been so long.” The excited swishing of her tail and her confidence made him feel even more guilty. “Go ahead, let’s see what you can do. And don’t forget the bindi
ng spell too.”

  “I know.” She breathed in, gathered magic in turquoise glows around her paws. Captain Lowell watched with the fascination of someone unused to magic as Alice spoke the first words of the summoning spell.

  The instructions for summoning an air elemental might as well have been in a different language for all that they made sense to Kip. Spell instructions contained some poetic flourishes often enough (“make of thy mind a ringing bell of which the only note is the destination,” one of the basic translocation spells read), but the summoning for air elementals took that to a new level. It read, in part: “free upon the wings of fate cast yourself and let your body take on the lightness around you.” What did that even mean? But to Alice it made sense, he hoped, and perhaps the smell and feel of the phosphorus elementals’ home plane would be as baffling to her as it was familiar and comforting to Kip.

  She spoke the nonsense-sounding syllables of the summoning correctly, and Kip waited with a banishment ready in case she was too successful, as he had been his first time. More likely she would not come back with anything save a better sense of how to proceed next time. Much sorcery was like that: a spell did not quite work and so you tried it differently next time, zeroing in on the most effective way over a week of practice, sometimes several. The sounds served as a way for you to tie the proper state of mind to a recital of words, the more easily to return to the state of mind when needed.

  Alice looked around in disappointment. “I don’t feel anything,” she said.

  “Nothing at all? Did you at least get close?” Kip asked. “Tell me what the spell felt like.”

  She had reached out, she had found a place with an “airy feeling” like the spell had said, but she hadn’t been able to communicate with any of the air elementals. “The spell says to speak the language of wind,” she complained, “and I don’t know how to do that.”

  “I don’t either,” Kip said. “It would be nice if we had an air elemental you could talk to, but I don’t even know anyone who can summon one. How about this: while Malcolm and I practice with demons, listen to the wind here and try to figure out what it’s saying and how you would talk to it.”