The War and the Fox Page 7

  He continued on until the servants were clearing the tables, and then Abigail said gently, “All right, John, nobody here is from the paper.”

  “They’re about to embark on a war, Abigail. It’s only right they know the history behind it.”

  “It’s fascinating, sir,” Kip put in.

  “There, you see, Abigail? The young fellow hasn’t had time to discover how irritating I can be.” He held up three fingers. “Three dinners, young man, that’s the limit. After that you’ll tire of me and tell me what a bore I am.”

  “I doubt it very much, sir.”

  Abigail smiled at him. “He knows his own temperament as he knows the history of this country,” she said. “Do not doubt him in one and not the other.”

  “I have too much respect,” Kip argued.

  John finished a mouthful of chicken and brandished his fork at Kip. “Respect!” he said. “Respect will win you newspaper columns and legal cases. Friends are a different matter entirely. I had the respect of the First Continental Congress, aye, and yet did they act on a single matter as I recommended? They did not. Had we acted more strategically, had we but shown our teeth to the Crown in the proper places, why, you might have been born into a free and independent America.”

  And how would the College have been different then, Kip wondered, but he did not voice that question. John wandered into a half-eulogy, half-excoriation of his cousin Samuel, who had taken to heart the showing of teeth but not so much the strategic part, and there Abigail stopped him. “We’ve a spice cake for dessert, if you can stay,” she told her guests.

  “That sounds lovely,” Malcolm said.

  Kip smiled inwardly, watching Lowell struggle to decide whether to contradict the blind sorcerer and finally keep his objections to himself. So they enjoyed a delicious spice cake and another lecture from John Adams, whom Kip would happily have listened to all night.

  Finally, though, Captain Lowell stood and cleared his throat. “As much as we have appreciated your generous hospitality, we really must return to Boston. We’ve nearly an hour ride ahead of us.”

  “Of course.” Abigail stood, and everyone else followed.

  When they said their good-byes, Emily took Kip and Alice aside. Embracing them both, she said, “The two of you had better keep yourselves safe.”

  “Mr. Adams hasn’t exactly been inspiring me not to fight,” Kip said with a smile.

  “Of course not.” Emily sighed and turned to Alice. “I know you can fight for yourself, but Kip’s got plenty of experience and if there’s a question, you listen to him. He’s kept me alive through some scary times.”

  “I will,” Alice promised.

  “And you,” Emily said to Kip.

  “I know, I know.” He hugged her. “I’ll keep us both out of danger as much as I can. Given that we’re going into a war and all.”

  She glanced back toward Abigail. “With any luck, it won’t last long. A few weeks of negotiation with the Spanish, a show of naval support, and once the British see we have allies, they’ll choose peace over prolonged warfare. The Napoleonic wars only had battles every few months or so and then there was diplomacy just after, so let’s hope you don’t have to fight very much.”

  “If I’m allowed to learn summoning,” Alice said with a pointed look at Kip, “I’ll be much more useful and much safer.”

  “Yes.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “But if you hurry into summoning, it will be much more dangerous. You can watch me summon Nik again.”

  “I’ve seen it,” she said. “I want to try myself.”

  “Luckily I have a few demon names,” he said, and that reminded him of the demon book and the kidnapped sorcerers. “I hope Master Odden is all right, and Argent and Splint and all of them.”

  “Even Patris?” Emily raised an eyebrow.

  “I don’t think he should be head of the school anymore, but I don’t want him killed.” Kip reflected that there had been times when he might not have been able to say that honestly. “That book of demon names, though, that’s an important thing. Not so much that they have it, but that we don’t.”

  “I’m sure the military has their own book of demon names,” Alice said.

  “I doubt it’s as big.” Kip’s mind wandered again. “I still don’t know where Albright got the name of that demon that destroyed the college. It was so powerful, and I only found a mention of it in one old text. Does he have another source?”

  “What if,” Emily lowered her voice, “the kidnapping of the sorcerers wasn’t targeted at them, but at getting the demon names? Nothing else was taken that we could tell.”

  “We didn’t look at every book in the library. Who knows what things other masters might have had in their offices?”

  “Master Argent didn’t have anything worth taking,” Emily said. “Kip, I think there was more to that attack than simply kidnapping sorcerers. Why should they risk so much for a college full of mostly old academics?”

  “Barrett and Jaeger are powerful spiritual sorcerers.”

  “When they can be stirred from their offices. You know how spiritual sorcerers are.”

  “Splint—”

  “I’ll grant you,” she interrupted, because Lowell was walking toward them with a clear eye to pulling Kip away, “that some of them were useful, but look at how much they object to your idea of capturing Albright and perhaps getting them back? Now look at it from the other side.”

  “What other side?” Lowell said. “Penfold, we should get back now.”

  “The British have more resources to spare,” Kip said.

  “Taking an entire school must have required a good number of sorcerers, to do it so quickly and without—leaving anyone behind.”

  “It was a bold stroke, one they could not have made if the College were on guard.” Lowell inclined his head toward the door. “May we perhaps analyze the strategy of the attack on our return trip?”

  “If you’re going to talk rather than stare out the window,” Alice said.

  He stared down at her for a moment and then a slight smile curved his lips. “No promises,” he replied, and held out a hand.

  “Good-bye,” Kip said to Emily as Alice took the captain’s hand in her paw. “Stay safe.”

  “You too.” They embraced, and then he followed Captain Lowell’s dignified walk and Alice’s attempt to match it out the door.

  4

  The Battle of Boston Harbor

  Having left the Armory, the First Sorcerer’s Division of the American Army commandeered a large house that had belonged to the Royal Trade Inspector, which according to Captain Marsh was a sinecure for a relative of the king and involved mostly picking choice goods to send to private families back in England. The house was not quite as big as Peacefield, but it occupied a more strategic location in the middle of the city rather than on acres of farmland and had the additional advantage that it was not visibly a military site. Marsh (who assumed command of the division when Jackson was absent) told them to be ready at all times regardless, because the British knew well the vacancy and strategic location of this house and might strike at it just to see whether the Americans had made use of it.

  Kip and Alice received this information from Captain Marsh before the division left but spent the night at the Armory to wait for Malcolm. In the morning, he arrived with Emily, who embraced them all again. “I’m off to Spain,” she said cheerily, and repeated her injunction for them to stay safe.

  A middle-aged woman greeted Kip, Alice, and Malcolm at the door of the Trade House, slightly flushed, her greying brown hair straggling down her cheeks. “You’ll be Penfold, then,” she said, and ushered them in. “I’m Petunia Warrington.”

  “Warrington?” Kip stared. “Like…”

  “Aye, I’m your Master Warrington’s wife. We wives of the College volunteered here for the war.”

  “But,” Alice said, “isn’t it dangerous?”

  “Quite possibly,” Mrs. Warrington said with a rosy-cheeked
smile. “Do come in.”

  They followed her inside the house, past a great room on the ground floor. “That’ll be where you take your meals,” she said. “I’ve no great talent for cooking but Harmony and Evangeline do wonders with any kind of meat. They’ll feed you right. Come on, up this way.”

  She took them to a room on the third floor, a small room into which three cots had been crammed. It had originally been a study, perhaps a writing room, but clearly had not been used in some time. Dust lay thick on the desk, which only bore two blank pieces of paper and a dry inkwell, and the single chair in the room lay on its side on the floor. “Sorry about the dust,” Mrs. Warrington said. “I’ll come up here straight away I’m done with the second floor.”

  “No bother,” Kip said. “I’ve cleaned up worse.”

  “He has,” Malcolm put in. “You should have seen the basement he lived in.”

  “Well, thank you. I won’t deny it’s been a labor to get this house in shape. The mice I’ve chased!”

  “Kip, your demon could sort out the mice, couldn’t she?”

  Kip gave Malcolm a laugh, and Mrs. Warrington spoke before he could. “Oh, don’t trouble yourself. The mice have retreated and they’ll not come back while we’re around. But if they start to get into the food, I may ask for your help.”

  “Gladly,” Kip said, and shook her hand.

  When she’d left, Kip prepared to burn away the dust with a fire spell that required a good deal of concentration, but Alice stopped him. “Let me do it. I’d like the practice.” She lifted the particles into a cloud, pulled the cloud together, and sent it out through the window Kip had opened.

  “You have a good feel for air,” Kip said. “I had thought to start you with water elementals because they’re the friendliest, but maybe we could try air. I don’t have any experience with them—well, only a little. I spoke to one in a memory once.”

  “I like air,” Alice said. “It makes sense to me.”

  “Who doesn’t like air, I’d like to know?” Malcolm said.

  Over the next day, Malcolm was called to the defense of the Trade House, putting him in rotation with four other defensive specialists. When he came back to the room after a shift, he talked enthusiastically about what he’d learned from the other defensive sorcerers (Luke in particular) and what he’d been able to teach them. That was wonderful for him; Kip had hoped for something similar in the company of a new set of sorcerers, but he and Alice remained neglected or forgotten. They sat together with Malcolm at the meals, and none of the other sorcerers came over to sit with them. Captain Lowell did when Master Colonel Jackson wasn’t present, but otherwise it was just the three of them.

  Between meals, many of the other sorcerers gathered in the house’s two large downstairs rooms, but whenever Kip and Alice walked in, the talk quieted and the gatherings broke up soon after. Kip thought that maybe all the military men were discomfited by a woman in their midst, so he ventured down to the social rooms by himself once or twice, but the outcome was the same.

  Though it rankled Kip to be excluded, he reminded himself that the military was composed of fellows like Joshua Carmichael, who’d bullied Kip at school along with Farley Broadside, and that it wasn’t a company he particularly desired to join. He and Alice spent the days in lessons, and Alice was so visibly happy to have his full attention that it more than made up for whatever he was missing with the military sorcerers (he told himself). Anyway, what could any of them tell him about fire sorcery?

  He had been in the habit of practicing his fire spells in the stone office of the White Tower. Here in a wooden house surrounded by wooden furniture, there was no room for error. Kip’s control was fine enough that he could burn the dust off a wooden desk without so much as leaving carbon black behind, and still it took him two days before he cast a fire spell in his room.

  It wasn’t a matter of nerve or comfort, truth be told; fire burned inside Kip and he hadn’t gone more than a few days without casting a fire spell to let it out. On the third day, he found himself imagining a conflagration consuming the Trade House with him at the center of it, delighting in a fire that had promised not to harm him, and he knew that urge needed to be met. Fortunately, rain had come in that night through their open window, soaking some of Malcolm’s clothes, so Kip conjured a fire for his friend to dry them off.

  Alice, meanwhile, had been practicing her physical magic and pestering Kip to allow her to summon an elemental. “You can summon a phosphorus elemental,” he said, “but we have to wait for a dry day outside to do it.”

  “You just summoned a fire here,” she said.

  “And I’ve been practicing fire sorcery for a year and a half.”

  “Anyway, I thought we were going to start with water elementals. Or air.”

  “I’d intended to take you to the water elementals in the laundry, and they’re gone now. I can try to summon one, but I never have.” He stood. “I suppose we can ask one of the military sorcerers.”

  “Or this wall,” Alice suggested, standing with him. “It might be about as forthcoming.”

  “We could possibly go back to the College.” Kip rubbed his paws together. “I could, anyway. There were a lot of books left in the library and maybe there’s one on water elementals.”

  “Are you sure it’s not dangerous?”

  “No.” He rubbed his whiskers back and let them spring forward again. “But I can bring Nik—my demon with me.”

  “I know her name,” Alice said.

  “Habit.” Kip prepared the summoning. “Don’t ever say the names of your demons in front of another sorcerer if you don’t trust them completely.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Shh.” He grinned at her teasing and summoned Nikolon, bound her in the now-familiar way and then sent her directly to the College to see if there was any activity there of any nature, magical or otherwise. When she reported in the negative, he began the more difficult—for him—spell of translocation.

  Translocation, he’d thought, would be simple, just a matter of reaching to another place and putting yourself or something else in it. It turned out that properly visualizing the real world was much harder for him than visualizing the phosphorus elemental plane, or the demon plane. He had to concentrate so hard on his destination that he couldn’t yet spare the energy to bring someone else along with him.

  Odden’s office was by far the location he’d translocated to the most, so it was easy to send himself there again. When he appeared, he held perfectly still, partly to listen for any movement and partly because he always took a moment after a translocation to make sure he hadn’t left part of his tail behind. After determining that he was both intact and alone save for Nikolon, he padded to Odden’s shelves.

  The office felt wrong, chilly on Kip’s ears and nose in the spring weather where usually a phosphorus elemental sat happily in the brazier. He hurried through an examination of the books, the pile still strewn on the floor, and then of the notes on Odden’s desk. The latter search turned up two pieces of paper with what appeared to be demon names on them (though no indication of their level), and the former revealed a book titled, The Element Air, which appeared promising. He took it and the paper down the hall to the library.

  After a scan of the area where he’d found summoning books in the past, he found another copy of The Element Air, in considerably worse condition, as well as numerous copies of The Summoner’s Handbook. He picked out one of those and then regarded the remaining two dozen shelves of books. There might be more valuable books there, but without Florian to guide him, Kip would have to spend hours looking through each title. He had books back at the Founders Rest that would be helpful, and besides he really should tell Old John he’d been conscripted.

  He and Nikolon remained vigilant as he walked down the hill, but nobody disturbed him other than some chattering squirrels of the non-Calatian variety. When he reached the Founders Rest, Old John greeted him warmly and told him Ernest had been exc
ellently well behaved. Kip fetched his books and other things from his room and then sat with John and the phosphorus elemental for a short time, explaining the war and his conscription. John said he’d keep Kip’s room until someone else needed it. “Business not been too good anyway,” he said, “not after what happened up hill.” He jerked his thumb toward the College.

  “Oh,” Kip said, “you know about the kidnappings?”

  “Aye,” John said. “Army sorcerer came to ask if we’d seen anything. God’s truth? I thought you’d been kidnapped with the rest.”

  Kip shook his head. “Emily, Malcolm, and I were in the feast and only went up after the others were gone. I’m trying to find out where they went.”

  “Ah well,” John said. “Bring them back or bring a new set of sorcerers, likely as not won’t make much difference to New Cambridge. They kept to themselves.”

  “After the attack.”

  “Even before. They’d come down if called but never just to sit. Never like you do. Even when you lived up there, you’d come down for a word now and then.”

  Kip smiled. “Often I was being punished, but I always enjoyed talking to you.”

  “Now this war takes you away, I reckon.”

  “It does.” Kip gestured to Ernest. “I can come back every couple months to send him back and bring a new one.”

  “Ah, don’t bother yourself, lad,” Old John said. “Long as he don’t go rampaging around and destroying my inn.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Kip said.

  Ernest, who had been strolling from one side of the fireplace to the other, stopped and looked up. “I would!”

  “He would,” Kip amended, “but the binding won’t allow him. If something happens to me, the summoning and binding will expire at the same time, and he’ll go back to the Flower.” That was if he died; if his magic was taken, as it had been a year or so ago, the binding would remain in effect somehow. The distinction didn’t seem important to make here.