The War and the Fox Read online

  8

  Alice Learns Ships

  Albright was coming? Albright, the man who’d plotted the murder of hundreds, and Kip would be here without magic or any other way to fight him. His breath came in short bursts until he felt dizzy and had to lean against the door.

  When Dewaite had left and their guard settled to silence, Kip stumbled across the room to Malcolm and Alice, sitting against the wall as far from the door as possible. “No demons about,” he whispered, and relayed what he’d heard. “Albright is on the way. He could be here any moment.”

  “You think our best chance is to wait for Emily?” Malcolm asked. “If Albright wanted to kill you, you’d be dead, I expect.”

  “What if we’re warded? They must know people will come looking for us. And Albright is a spiritual sorcerer. I’d rather not wait to see what he intends do to our minds.” Kip turned to Alice. “We have to get out of here as soon as possible. You still have magic?”

  She nodded, eyes bright. “Kip. There were air elementals out there. They must be using them for the ships. I listened and I could almost understand them.”

  His heart jumped. “Are there any about now?”

  She listened. “I don’t think so. They were on the upper deck, but I didn’t dare talk to them there.”

  “Could you call them?”

  “I can try.” She looked around the windowless cabin and then went to the door and made soft humming sounds.

  “How does she speak their language?” Malcolm asked.

  “I don’t know that she does.” Kip kept his voice very low so that even Alice’s fox ears wouldn’t catch his words. “When I heard the air elementals in Forrest’s memory, they sounded like words barely out of my hearing, but Forrest understood what they meant. I don’t know how one learns their language, but I think one always feels like one is just about to.”

  Malcolm nodded. “Wonder if I could teach her a defensive spell in a few moments. Could we set our own ward against Albright?”

  “Could she cast it well enough to fool him?”

  Malcolm shook his head slowly. “I suppose we’d best lean on her ability to learn an elemental language, then. Better to bet on the one-legged horse than the one that isn’t in the race, my da used to say.”

  There was a pause, and then Malcolm said, in the same soft whisper, “You reckon I’ll see my da again?”

  “You will,” Kip said. “And I’ll see mine.”

  Alice came back to them after a few more minutes, her ears down. “I don’t think it’s working,” she said, “and I don’t want to call any louder. I can hear the guard moving around.”

  “It’s all right,” Kip said. “We can use your physical magic. Probably the wards won’t be set against that.”

  “If I could summon an air elemental...” Alice’s ears came up. “We could escape over the side. It could surround us under the water and we could breathe there.”

  Kip raised an eyebrow. “You think so?”

  “That was in The Element Air. Master LeCorbin used it to travel around Portsmouth harbor in a storm.”

  He recognized in Alice the same feeling he’d had when he’d rescued her from Farley, the exhilaration that all of this learning had finally conveyed the power to make a real difference in the world. Of course, then he’d been so caught up in worrying for her safety that he hadn’t dwelt much on it, and afterwards he’d been punished, but in that moment, he’d saved her.

  That feeling of power, what had been taken away from him; she had it now. He found it difficult to let go and allow her to take the risk, but it was necessary. She had to experience the good that her sorcery could do and the bad that could result from it.

  “Let’s try the summoning again,” he told her. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll take our chances with just the physical magic. Are you ready now? Albright could be here at any time.”

  “Then I suppose I’d better be ready.” She stood, brushing off her gown, and held her paws before her.

  “Remember the spell. Think about what the wind was like and how you could almost understand it. Imagine a place with nothing but that sound, the feel of wind in your whiskers, the smell of air moving constantly.”

  Alice nodded, her paws glowing. She spoke the words of the spell quietly, and as she finished, the glow around her paws faded.

  Kip glanced at Malcolm. The Irishman had his hands together in front of him for all the world as though he were praying. Well, that was not a bad idea, come to think of it.

  A gust of air cut off his words. He lifted his head as the room filled with a spiraling wind, picking up dust and flinging it about. Malcolm cursed softly; Kip squeezed his eyes shut and folded his ears back. But Alice was…humming? He raised his ears and now perceived a murmur in the air, as though of words uttered just too softly to understand, and Alice’s humming was answering.

  She turned to Kip, eyes wide and ears perked despite the dust. “Her name is Poudre,” she whispered, her breath halting. “She says this air tastes interesting, but the room is small and she wants to get out.”

  “So do we all.” Kip smiled at his student. “That was very well done.” The words felt inadequate to convey how proud he was of her for taking this step, a summoning he himself could not have done. And yet this was only part of the solution. She had to maintain control of the air elemental while destroying the door of the cabin, presuming it wasn’t warded against physical magic.

  “If Albright will be here soon, we should leave now.” Alice spoke to Kip but kept looking around the cabin as though she could follow the progress of the elemental.

  “Can Poudre allow us to breathe underwater? Supply us with air for a short time until we reach the other bank?”

  Alice hummed her almost-words and then nodded. “She says yes.”

  Malcolm hissed to get Alice’s attention. “Perhaps if she could supply us with air, she could also suffocate our friend on the other side of the door? Just enough to knock him out, not kill him.”

  After a brief conference, Alice nodded. “She—she knows exactly how to do that. I wouldn’t know how to tell her. She says that she’s killed people, but I asked her not to.”

  Kip put his ear to the door. “Be ready to break the door if he raises the alarm.”

  “He won’t,” Alice said confidently, and then made that humming noise again. The air rushing around their cabin stilled, whistling softly as it ran through the cracks around the door. One tense moment, another, and then the soft thump of a body falling to the ground.

  “She says it’s done,” Alice whispered. “He’s still breathing.”

  Kip stood and grasped Malcolm’s hand. “Pick up the three of us first. As soon as the door is clear, we’ll go down the stairs. If we can get to the bottom of the boat, could you rip the planks apart?”

  She nodded. “I think so. They’re just fastened with bolts and things, right? I can pull them apart. I’m pretty sure.”

  “If you’re looking for the waterline,” Malcolm said, “there’s no need to go all the way to the bottom. It’s right here.”

  He knelt next to the wall and placed his hand about two feet above the floor. “You can feel the waves hitting it if you put a hand there, or a paw, or whatever you’ve got.”

  Kip hurried to the wood and placed his paw there. At first he felt nothing and then, very faintly, he felt the ebb and flow of swells against the wood. “That’s right,” he said. “Can you pull apart these boards?”

  Alice nodded and knelt in front of the wall. “First I’m going to have Poudre surround us with air and keep us breathing. We should probably jump into the water as soon as we can.”

  “Yes.” Kip’s heart pounded. In a moment his head was surrounded by lightly moving air, and next to him Malcolm’s hissed breath told him his friend was feeling the same thing. All he could do now was watch as Alice cast the spell, held her paws out toward the boards, and closed her eyes to concentrate.

  Malcolm squeezed his paw. “You’ll have to tell me w
hat’s happening,” he murmured.

  “Nothing yet.” Kip tried to breathe normally even though the thought came to him that he was maybe breathing in and out an elemental. “Wait. There’s a little creaking.”

  “If only we’d talked to Victor about his father’s business more,” Malcolm said, “we’d know where to tell her to focus her energies.”

  “The boards are pressed together very tightly,” Alice said. “It’s…hard.”

  “I wouldn’t imagine a ship would come apart easily.” Malcolm squeezed Kip’s paw. “Not much use to them if so, eh?”

  “If I had magic, I could burn the hole,” Kip said.

  “Aye, and if Alice knew water we could have a water elemental, and for that matter, if we’d never been captured in the first place we wouldn’t have need of any of it. Give Alice here a moment, she’ll have the job done. There, I heard a larger creak.”

  “There’s a point in the middle of the board.” Alice breathed in. “It’s bowing and it wants to twist.”

  And now Kip could see the cracks around one of the boards widening. Water sprayed in a moment later, and the creaking became a popping. “It’s coming loose,” he told Malcolm.

  “That I can hear,” his friend responded. “Make sure I don’t hit my head on the boards, aye?”

  Kip squeezed his hand as the first board popped free with a wave of water. “It’s not big enough yet. One more.”

  “My feet are wet enough. Soon we’ll be underwater anyway.”

  “Just a minute,” Alice said. “It’s easier now I’ve got the trick.”

  And it was barely half a minute before the second board came loose, water now flooding into the cabin. The force of the water was such that Kip had to grasp Alice’s arm with his free paw. “I think you’ll have to push us through the hole,” he said. “There’s no way we’ll get through otherwise.”

  “All right.” She closed her eyes, obviously needing to gather strength, and called magic. The three of them lifted from the ground, turned to float parallel to it, and then with a rush met the wall of water entering the ship.

  Instinctively he held his breath and squeezed his eyes shut, but no water touched his ears or muzzle. He opened his eyes cautiously to see water rushing past him, cloudy with mud and silt, and on one side, dimly, the wall of wood that must be the body of the great frigate. A moment later they had left the ship behind, rushing through the water near the bottom of the riverbed. Fish scattered before them and weeds whipped across their bodies; Alice kept them low to the bottom where the silty water would hide them better.

  When they reached the opposite bank, Alice stopped Kip and Malcolm and gestured that she would go to the surface and look. Before Kip could react, she was gone.

  He brought his head near to Malcolm’s so that their air bubbles touched. “Alice went to scout,” he said.

  Malcolm gave a start. “Ah, very good,” he said. “All in all, I prefer traveling above water when there’s a choice, you know. Next I suppose we will have to find our allies. You know, even though we’re underwater, it feels good to be able to converse in normal voices without worrying about being overheard. I suppose if we needed a private conversation, we could ask Alice for the loan of an air elemental.”

  Kip smiled. “There are worse places to have a conversation.”

  “Does it bother you at all that we might be breathing in an elemental?”

  “A little,” the fox admitted, not voicing his other concern, that elementals were not demons and therefore not as bindable to direct orders. The air elemental was not bound to him but to Alice, and only its agreeability to her will kept it here. The murky water hovering just beyond his eyes rippled as if with sinister intent, ready to rush in and suffocate him at the least opportunity. “But it bothers me more that Albright might be arriving at any moment and would be able to find me easily if I’m not warded by then.”

  “Ah. I take your point.”

  They were moved up through the water to the shore, into a small stand of trees, where Alice’s spell let go of them. Here they could see out onto the river but not be easily seen, unless someone had spotted them rising from the water. But the men of the frigate had other things to occupy their attention; the great boat listed away from them, and even as they watched, groaned upright, no doubt under a spell.

  “Pity we didn’t sink her,” Kip muttered, and then had to tell Malcolm what he was seeing.

  Alice, though as wet as the other two, beamed and wagged her sopping tail. “How do we contact Captain Lowell?” she asked.

  “Can Poudre do it?” Malcolm squeezed water from his clothes.

  “Maybe. We’d have to give her a scrap of paper to carry.”

  Kip looked at his wet clothes ruefully. “Even if we had paper and something to write with, all our paper would be useless and our ink lost in the river.” He sighed. “If only I knew what had happened to Nik.” In his head, he tried again to send a message out into the void. Nikolon. If you can hear me, come and become visible. I have no more access to magic.

  He did not expect a response, but within a few seconds, a naked female fox appeared before him. “I knew you could no longer hear me, master,” she said. “I awaited further instructions.”

  Kip breathed evenly, the relief of having Nikolon still at his disposal overwhelming his annoyance at the demon. “In the future, if you detect that I can no longer hear you, come find me.” She bowed her head. “Now please go find Captain Lowell. If he’s warded, find any American soldier close to the American headquarters building and ask them to bring Captain Lowell to you. When you find him, tell him where we are and remain with him until he finds a translocation sorcerer, then show that sorcerer where we are. Let them know that this is urgent. When it is done, I will dismiss you.”

  “Yes, master.” She vanished.

  Nikolon, Kip thought. If by chance we are not here when you return, look for us on that frigate.

  There was no answer, but he hoped the message had gone through. Being without magic felt like losing a limb, or—he looked guiltily at Malcolm—his sight or hearing. That someone could just turn that off felt wrong, and yet it was the third time in his life it had happened. At least his experience with it meant he hadn’t panicked this time, and Malcolm had handled it well too.

  “Now what?” Alice asked. “Should I dismiss Poudre?”

  “No.” Kip stared out across the water. “Not unless her binding is a strain on you.”

  Alice shook her head. “So we wait now?”

  “We also serve who only stand and wait,” Malcolm murmured.

  “We wait,” Kip affirmed. “But be on guard. We don’t know what other sorcerers might be out looking for us. I don’t think there are other demons around, not right now.”

  Malcolm flexed his fingers. “Can’t wait to have magic back again.”

  “I know,” Kip said. “Don’t worry, Master Colonel Jackson can do it.”

  A pop and a presence behind him. He half-turned and then the scent hit him and sent his heart racing. “Penfold,” purred the familiar voice of Master Albright. “How nice to finally see you again.”

  A heavy hand landed on Kip’s shoulder, but he only got a glimpse of the large bearded man before a powerful gust of wind rushed past him—close enough to ruffle his whiskers, but without touching him in any other way—and threw Albright back. A moment later, Alice’s voice came, a little shaky, but clear, and Albright shot up into the air. He struggled rather like a fish pulled out of the water and then vanished.

  Kip sat down hard on the ground. Alice’s tail was puffed out and her eyes were wide. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” she said. “I told Poudre to knock him back and then suffocate him and then I shot him into the air.”

  Malcolm had jumped at Albright’s voice and now backed into a tree. “Who was it?”

  “Albright.” Kip pressed a paw to his chest. “Alice, you did wonderfully.”

  “Do you suppose he’s dead?” Alice asked in a whi
sper.

  “I wouldn’t count on it.” Kip’s breathing slowly returned to normal. “Any sorcerer can dismiss an elemental and he’s quick enough to figure that out. Or he may have gotten away from her when he translocated. Is she still about?”

  Alice lifted her nose to the sky and nodded. “I still feel her. I’ll keep her ready in case he comes back.”

  Before she’d finished the sentence, another person popped into view beside them, but it was not the bearded Albright. Callahan, in his American army uniform, one sleeve bloody, surveyed the three of them and then rubbed at the dark shadows under his eyes. “There you are,” he said. “Master Colonel’s been quite worried.”

  Kip pushed Malcolm at Callahan. “Send the two of them back.”

  “Oi,” Malcolm said. “We need to get you warded again.”

  “Albright knows this place now. He’ll be back any minute. Hurry!”

  Callahan, used to taking orders, grasped Malcolm’s wrist and laid a hand on Alice even as she tried to get away. They vanished, and he staggered. “Been casting spells all day,” he murmured. “Give us a minute.”

  “We may not have a minute.” Kip took the other sorcerer’s hand, ears flicking around, scanning the area.

  “We’ll take a damned minute unless you want to appear in the middle of a wall.” Callahan forced himself to take deep breaths.

  A rustle in the leaves behind him. Kip focused his ears in that direction and caught breathing. “He’s here,” he murmured to Callahan. “Go now. Now.”

  Physical magic gripped Kip, tried to drag him away. Callahan’s eyes widened in alarm. He held tight to Kip, concentrated, and—

  —they appeared two feet above the floor of the large room in the Savannah headquarters. The physical magic holding Kip vanished and he fell to the floor, weak with relief.

  Back in the Trade House in Boston, magic restored, Kip had to keep his ears upright as Master Colonel Jackson spent a good deal of time explaining in front of Malcolm, Alice, and Captain Lowell how the fox’s recklessness might have cost the American Army the war. Exactly what he’d done that was reckless seemed to come down to “getting captured,” though Jackson also accused Kip of not burning the fleet he hadn’t been able to see.