The Demon and the Fox

Tim Susman

For Ned

Who has always been there

1

The Calyx

“If you’re going to search the ruins,” Master Odden said, “you’ll have to summon a demon.”

Kip Penfold, the stout master’s apprentice as of one week before, sat up straighter in the chair in Odden’s office, his long bushy tail curling around one of the chair legs. “I can do it,” he said.

Behind him in a copper brazier, a large lizard-like creature moved restlessly. Covered in black scales around which the bright red-gold of its nature showed in cracks, it radiated heat and an acrid smell of phosphorus that battled the autumn chill and smell of leaves that crept in through the shutters. Kip’s position in front of the desk, between the brazier and the shutters, meant that his large triangular ears were warm and his fingertips cold. He preferred that, to be honest; the fox-Calatian’s ears were most often cold this time of year, so it was pleasant to have them warmed. And he enjoyed sitting in Odden’s office for two reasons. The first was that he almost always learned something new about sorcery when he sat before the broad oak desk. The second was that he had decided that one day, when he was a master sorcerer (when), he would have an office very like this, packed with old books and scrolls and knowledge, with a phosphorus elemental and a window that looked out from Prince George’s College of Sorcery down Founder’s Hill to the town of New Cambridge. And his friends Emily, Malcolm, and Coppy would have nearby offices. Perhaps the outer buildings destroyed in the mysterious attack some six months before would be rebuilt by then, but Kip still loved the ancient White Tower, even with its cold stone, even living as he did currently in its damp, mold-infested basement.

Master Odden reached behind him to the large bookshelf and found a large tome by feel without taking his attention from Kip. “Wouldn’t be teaching you if I thought you couldn’t,” he said, bringing it to his desk and flipping pages to the fourth in a dozen thin leather bookmarks. “In the interest of not having three or four demons floating wildly about, you’re going to watch me do the spell first.”

Kip’s large ears flattened down from their upright position. “What could an unbound demon do?” he asked. “I mean, are there limits on their powers?”

“Demons can apply their will to bend reality as they see fit,” Odden recited absently, his finger moving down the page. “First order demons like Burkle have little power to do anything more than what Burkle does: clean floors, move desks. They could be a nuisance if unbound but more likely would return home quickly. Second order are more powerful and can affect people, though rarely permanently. Third order are used in war. It was a third-order demon that froze Napoleon’s commanders at Waterloo.”

He paused at that, and Kip nodded, trying to see the words on the page, but the writing was tiny and the contrast not strong enough for his eyes to make out. “I’ve seen the re-creation, sir.”

“Many of the wars of the last hundred years have been strategic application of third-order demons and fights between them. Third order demons have particular affinities, so not all of them would be able to freeze fifty soldiers, or burn an entire town. Ah, here we are.”

Odden’s finger stopped at a name, which he copied with his other hand onto a scroll and slid across the table. “Pronounce that.”

Kip took the paper and held it to the lamp. “Nikolon?”

“Knee,” Odden said. “Nee-koh-lahn.”

Kip tried again, and this time Odden gave a quick nod of approval. Kip returned the paper to the desk. “Isn’t there a fourth order of demons?”

“Mm, yes.” Odden closed the book. “But it takes an enormous amount of power and discipline to bind one even for a handful of minutes.” He stood. “We suspect it was a fourth order demon that destroyed the college.”

Kip stood hurriedly, clasping his paws together. He wanted to ask what that would look like, the fury of the most powerful order of demons unleashed on four simple brick buildings and a hundred sorcerers and apprentices. He had only heard the noise of it, rolling down the hill on a warm spring night like thunder, and now the crushed and broken buildings were hidden below wood and canvas tents to all eyes save for demons.

As Odden replaced the first book and took down a second, Kip asked, “Are the names of the fourth-order demons also in that book?”

“They are, which is why this book is not in the library but remains under my care.”

“What about when you’re not here?”

“The book is well protected.” The sorcerer opened the second book to the summoning and binding spells, on facing pages, and turned it toward Kip.

“But—”

“It is not your concern.” Odden’s large, pale hand gestured toward the tome, “The summoning of demons is. Now, recite the spells.”

The first spell bore enough similarities to the elemental summoning spell that Kip had found it easy to memorize. Rather than asking any of the other questions clamoring in his mind, he asked, “Sir, why does it take more power to summon demons than elementals?”

“Hm, yes.” Odden leaned back and gazed past Kip to the brazier. “Elementals wish to move around. They are simple spirits—you will have noticed—who grow bored as easily in their home sphere as they do here. Reaching out to them, you provide a conduit for them to go somewhere interesting. Demons are spirits of a different sphere, and understand very well what a summons from a sorcerer means: binding and work.”

The phosphorus elemental in the brazier, who had introduced itself to Kip as Benny, now peered over the lip of the brazier with curious, ember-bright eyes. "Who's got home spheres?" he demanded in a high-pitched crackle. "We got a Flower, that's all."

Kip turned to smile at Benny. “The Flower’s at the center of the sphere,” he said. “You just can’t see the edges because you never go far enough from it.”

“Why would we?” Benny shifted, making a clanking noise in the brazier.

Odden tapped the book. “Penfold, focus on the lesson.”

So Kip recited the spell again, slowly and then faster, and then they moved on to the binding spell. “This is the more difficult and important of the two,” Odden said. “An unbound demon can inflict any kind of pain on a sorcerer, from a minor itching curse to a lifelong affliction. They usually stop short of killing, but they have left sorcerers and other people so crippled that they choose death soon after.”

“Why wouldn’t they kill us?” Kip asked.

“We do not know. Our bound demons, when asked why they will not kill sorcerers, say only that they have not been ordered to, and unbound demons are not inclined to answer questions. Now attend; this is the most important thing: simply because you have summoned a demon does not mean you can bind it. The binding more than the summoning requires a calyx to enhance the sorcerer’s power. Therefore you will use only the names of demons researched by previous sorcerers, whose power is known. Summoning an unknown demon puts you at great risk, and unless you become a demon researcher, you should never resort to that.”

Kip nodded, his eyes drifting up to the tome with all the bookmarks in it. “Where do the names come from?”

“Old manuscripts, from the Greeks and Romans and Carthaginians, and some older than that even. If you care to study the history of demons, Florian will allow you access to the library’s books on the subject. Now, the binding spell.”

After another hour of recitation of both spells, Odden got to his feet. “Very well, you are at least as prepared as I was for my first lesson. Go to the cupboard there and bring out the items you will find on the top shelf.”

The tall, narrow cupboard stood as high as Odden; the taller fox reached the top shelf with ease. “Careful,” the sorcerer said as Kip’s paw found a pewter goblet and then the handle of a narrow silver knife. His fur prickled as he lifted the weight of the knife and drew its blade out into the light. Perhaps, he thought desperately, it was only symbolic.

He turned with them in his paws to see his master stopped, one hand on the handle of his office door. He huffed out a breath. “There are, er, preparations that must be done.”

“All right.” It took a moment for Kip to realize what he meant, and by the time the door was opening onto the outer room of Odden’s office, Kip knew what he was going to see.

On one of the beds sat a Calatian, a short dormouse in a linen tunic and trousers. Kip knew him, but not well: Jacob Thomas, whose son Matthew was two years younger than Kip and now worked the Thomas family farm. Behind him stood Master Patris, the school’s headmaster, arms folded under his thick white beard. “We’re ready,” Odden said.

Staring at his feet, Jacob rose and shuffled past Odden and then Kip into the room. Patris followed him at a slow pace, closing the door behind them. As Jacob made his way to the chair Kip had been sitting in, the headmaster pushed him to one side and took the chair.

Odden said, “Stay there, Penfold.”

Kip hadn’t moved, still leaning against the desk. He set down the goblet and knife for Odden to pick up and curled his tail around his legs as his master took them to the other side of the desk where Jacob stood. His father, who had been a calyx for all of Kip’s life, had never told him what happened in that private ritual between sorcerer and Calatian. All Kip knew, vaguely, was that more powerful magics required the participation of a Calatian, of any species. He had also never been told that the headmaster had to attend calyx rituals, but as Patris’s eyes didn’t leave Kip, he suspected he knew the explanation for that.

Jacob remained still, staring down at his feet, his tail limp. Odden set the pewter goblet on the desk, keeping the knife in his hand. Kip knew that his father had survived many calyx rituals without being killed, but something primal in him wanted to leap across the desk and knock the knife away. He kept seeing the knife plunge into Jacob’s neck, no matter how strongly he told himself that Odden wasn’t going to do that. To control his anxiety, he turned aside, and there met the eyes of Patris, expectant, even hungry for his reaction.

This, oddly, helped. Turning aside had been a weakness and Patris had seen it, and Kip hated that. His desire to confound Patris flooded him, more immediate than his fear for Jacob; it allowed him to turn back and watch the ritual with the confidence that Odden would not stab Jacob. Indeed, the sorcerer turned the knife so the edge rather than the point faced the dormouse. The silver blade held Kip’s eyes as Odden seized the dormouse’s paw and with a series of quick scrapes exposed the skin on the bend in his left elbow. Jacob took the goblet in his right paw, held it under the bare spot, and then turned his head to his left.

Odden, with his back to Kip, turned the dormouse’s arm and then pushed the point of the silver knife into the skin.

Blood pushed past the knife and dripped down into the cup. Jacob’s eyes squeezed closed but Kip’s remained open. He forced himself to remain outwardly calm even as the sharp tang of blood reached his nose through the haze of phosphorus, aware of Patris’s scrutiny. “You must be careful,” Odden said in a toneless voice. “This is where the vein is closest to the skin, but push too deeply and you may pierce the artery. If blood gushes rather than trickles, press the wound closed and call Master Splint immediately.”

Numb, Kip nodded, though his attention was on the vessel that was gathering the blood. Just because it was a goblet didn’t mean it was for drinking. Maybe they had to hold it, to touch cloth or fingers to it.

After a time, Jacob lifted his head to the sorcerer. Odden shook his head. “A little more this time,” he said.

An eternity later, it seemed to Kip, Odden wiped the knife clean with a stained cloth and then, as Jacob placed the goblet on the corner of the sorcerer’s desk, dropped the cloth onto the dormouse’s wound. Jacob pressed his fingers there and waited.

“That’s enough for now,” Odden said. “Thank you, Thomas.”

The dormouse stood, still holding the cloth to his arm. Kip waited for Patris to get up, to leave, but when the headmaster remained still, the fox strode to the door and opened it. Jacob walked through without a word of acknowledgment, his thin tail dragging on the ground behind him.

At the thunk of the door closing, Odden cleared his throat. “Your father never told you.”

Kip shook his head. Keeping his tail and ears calm was taking all his energy; he felt he couldn’t spare any to speak. Patris had turned, rested an arm over the back of the chair so he could watch the fox, and Kip was determined not to give him anything he was hoping for.

“That’s good. That’s what we instruct. But you never know when families choose to, ah, you know, parents feel they must warn their children.”

Kip swallowed against the lump in his throat. The smell of blood refused to dispel in the still air of the office. “No.”

“The magic that made Calatians,” Odden slipped again into a recitation, “remains in their blood. Though it does not allow them to access magic any more easily…” Here he touched a finger to the goblet and interrupted himself, with a look at Patris. “Hm.”

“I don’t…” Kip cleared his throat. “I don’t know any other Calatians besides Coppy who can cast magic.”

“No. And Lutris is not as proficient as you are.” The master lifted his hand. “The blood of the Calatians does help a sorcerer focus and reach more magical energy when ingested.”

Of course it was ingested. He tried desperately not to picture his father bleeding into a mug.

“The effects last only for a short time. A swallow is sufficient to summon a demon of the first order, and that’s all we will be working with now.”

We? Patris’s presence felt even more sinister now. He was going to watch Kip drink Calatian blood.

Odden’s hand rested on the pewter mug. “We will recite the spell several times until you are confident in it. I will drink and cast the spell first. You will attend, then you will drink and cast the spell with the name I give you. Is that clear?”

“But—“

Odden opened his mouth, but Patris spoke first. “Penfold, if you will not follow your master’s most basic instructions, we can bring an end to this relationship.”

By expelling him from the college, of course; Patris’s meaning was clear. Kip swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

Patris nodded back to Odden as though he’d rendered the other sorcerer a service, and Kip’s master spoke again. “There is much you do not know or understand.” He picked up the goblet of blood and moved to the empty dais in the center of his office. The movement brought a fresh wave of the smell to Kip’s nose, but he managed not to flinch. “I shall speak the spells slowly so you may follow along,” Odden said. “Binding first and then the summoning.”

When he’d summoned the phosphorus elementals, Kip had only spoken the summoning spell because he hadn’t been sure it would work, and had had to hurriedly bind his elemental before it set the whole basement ablaze. He focused on that memory as Odden took his first drink. When he set the goblet down on the desk, red smears remained around his lips.

Kip breathed a little easier when the sorcerer wiped his face with a cloth. He perked his ears, trying to ignore the smell and Patris’s presence as Odden walked around the desk to the work area. The fox came to stand beside his master as the sorcerer recited the binding spell and tied it to the summoning.

When he finished the summoning spell, the air in front of his hands shimmered and a strong tingle like peppermint oil assailed Kip’s nostrils. The fox had learned to associate that sensation with the presence of a demon, but had only told his friends at the school that he possessed this ability. Fortunately Odden didn’t notice the fox’s nose wrinkling, his attention fixed on the summoned demon, who materialized as a stout young man with pale skin and coal-black curly hair, thick enough almost to make him modest despite his lack of clothes. Between his legs, though, a scaly green serpent emerged from the thatch of hair and looked about the room with glossy black eyes.

“Clothe yourself so as to conceal your form from chest to knees, Eichann,” Odden said, bored, and a moment later the serpent and much of the demon’s body vanished beneath a dirty white toga wrapped around his waist and over one shoulder. The demon’s expression didn’t change.

“You must always command demons very precisely, Penfold.” Patris turned his chair to face the demon.

Odden frowned, half-turning toward the headmaster before he stopped himself. “Yes. Had I simply ordered Eichann to clothe himself, he might have donned a single sock, or a cap.”

“Yes, sir.” Kip kept his voice low, hoping that Odden would hear and perhaps Patris might not. He knew this about demons, because when Kip had tried to gain admission to apply to the college, the demon guarding the gates had also been maddeningly precise in his interpretation of his orders.

“I only wish to please,” Eichann said in a thick Celtic brogue.

“Of course you do. You also hope that this pathetic display will cause me to lose concentration and thereby unbind you. Penfold, would you care to dismiss him?”

The demon’s eyes lit up as he took in the fox. “Oh, no calyx this, eh?”

“And don’t speak to demons, except to order them,” Patris said from his chair. “It can provide no benefit.”

“Don’t cast such aspersions on my conversation,” Eichann said.

“Quiet, Eichann,” Odden ordered, and the demon stopped talking.

“But…” Kip stopped himself, remembering his master’s previous objection, but this time Odden did not interrupt him. “Sir, the time I learned to summon elementals, I talked to them to gain an understanding of what their home looked like. I’ve talked to Burkle—a little—and from your text I have an idea of what to reach for, but if I might ask Eichann a question?”

“As Patris has said, asking questions of demons is rarely fruitful. They perceive truth subjectively, so ordering them to tell only the truth restricts them only to telling the truth as they see it, which can be anything. I have heard demons claim that our world is but a dream in the mind of the greatest of demons, I have heard them play on a sorcerer’s sympathy by claiming to be pained by the binding and even that they were once human, I have heard them claim that, ahem, inappropriate physical contact with a demon’s corporeal form can grant you the demon’s powers, and so on.”

At this last one, Odden looked away from Kip. The fox suspected that perhaps Odden had directly experienced the disproof of that one, but did not feel inclined to ask. “No other sorcerer has learned sorcery in the way I have,” he said. “So perhaps none has asked the questions I would like to. Can it hurt to try?”

“It can waste all of our time.” Patris spoke up with a sneer.

Odden, if he heard, ignored the headmaster. “Suit yourself. Eichann, you will answer the questions of Penfold as fully and truthfully as you can.”

The demon’s face took on a slightly mocking cast as he turned to Kip, attentive. Kip faced him and said, “How does your home smell?”

“Home?” Eichann said. “I have no home, and therefore it has the smell of absence, of nonexistence, of void.”

“The place where you are summoned from.” Kip kept his composure. “What does it smell like?”

“Ah, well, everyone smells differently, do they not? You with your fox’s nose may smell the memory of pine where I smell only the dog lying on the wooden bench.”

“What does it smell like to you, then?” Kip asked.

“To me? To me it smells like magic and decay, the thick power in corruption and rot. Magic swirls like a tide around us and each demon has his individual scent of power, the greatest of maelstroms and the least of eddies. Imagine the smell of a boneyard if each corpse contained within seeped magic to the surface rather than putrefaction.”

Patris made a noise of exasperation. Odden raised a hand. “Enough.” To Kip, he said, “You see what I mean about talking to demons. Smell of magic, indeed. Please banish him now.”

“Indeed,” Kip murmured. As he gathered magic and the familiar purple glow rose around his paws to match the power in him, he stopped before speaking the spell. “Do I not need…enhancement?” He kept his muzzle level with Odden’s black hair, ignoring the smell in his nose and the gleam of pewter.

“You shouldn’t, for Eichann. But if you find your power insufficient, we can try again with the calyx.”

No. He would be sufficient. He raised his paws and recited the banishment spell he’d learned, focusing the power of the words on the demon in front of him as he spoke its name.

Magic crackled through his fur, left him in the form of the spell, and then Eichann vanished, taking with him the tingle in Kip’s nostrils.

Odden’s hand stroked his beard. “Well done,” he said, though quietly and with a reservation that raised Kip’s hackles. Hadn’t he cast the spell perfectly the first time? “Now you try a summoning.”

The pewter goblet sat on the desk like a demon itself, one Kip could not banish with a spell. “Sir,” he said, “since I was able to—”

“Drink, Penfold,” Odden ordered. “All of what remains.”

He had to walk past Patris to pick up the goblet, and the white-maned headmaster’s eyes never left him. His paw shook slightly as he grasped it; he hoped the headmaster hadn’t seen that. Kip steeled himself, faced Odden, and raised the blood to his lips.

He held his breath so the smell wouldn’t overwhelm him, but the warmth and taste were nearly as bad. It wasn’t that the taste was objectionable; it was that the blood tasted like raw meat but with a sharp bitterness to it that Kip could only associate with the person it had come from. He gagged, but forced himself to swallow.

“Now,” his master said, handing him a cloth, “you should feel stronger when gathering magic. Prepare the binding spell and then summon Nikolon.”

Kip wiped his muzzle. Ignoring his stomach, which threatened to revolt, he focused on his feet on the stone floor, one step and then another back toward Master Odden and the work area, putting Patris at his back, though not out of his mind. One deep breath, two, and then he stood next to his master and pulled magic into his paws again.

The process did not feel much different than it had before, though perhaps it was easier to gather magic. This time was nothing like the rush of magic he’d gotten the first time he’d touched the walls of the White Tower, when he’d heard a voice in his head say Fox? and had levitated himself in a panic to get rid of the magic. There was a stronger urge to cast a spell now than he was used to, but not much stronger; that was the main difference he felt.

“Your magic looks stronger.” Odden gestured to the purple glow around Kip’s paws, brighter than before. “Cast the spell.”

The words of the binding spell were the same he’d learned before, and the feeling of it was the same as the one he’d used to bind the phosphorus elemental. He created the spell, an empty cage, and then he spoke the words of the summoning. As he spoke, he called to his memory the image of a boneyard and imagined himself standing there with the sharp peppermint sting in his nostrils stronger than he’d ever felt it in real life. Imaginary Kip reached down into the soil and said the name: “Nikolon.”

The air in the office shimmered; the tingle burst into Kip’s nostrils again with the appearance of an olive-skinned slender woman, as naked as Eichann had been, but without any monstrous substitutions in her anatomy. When she saw Kip, her eyes widened, and in a moment her form changed to that of a naked female fox-Calatian, her breasts flattening, russet and white fur sprouting all over her body, a bushy tail growing from just over her buttocks, and her Roman features replaced with the narrow muzzle, black ears, and slit-pupiled yellow eyes of a fox. “What a surprise,” she purred.

Behind them, Patris made a choked noise. “Hold the binding, Penfold,” Odden said. The master’s eyes had widened. “Well done.”

“I’ve got it.” Nikolon—wasn’t that a male name?—struggled at the binding magically even as her fingers explored the furred curves of her body, but Kip’s will and power kept her in place easily.

“They let you cast magic now?” Nikolon took a step toward Kip. “The world is changing.”

“Stop,” he ordered her, and she froze every muscle, those yellow eyes still fixed on his.

“That is a good command to use,” Odden said, just as Nikolon took another step. “However, you did not specify for how long to stop.”

“Do not come closer than two feet from me,” Kip said, and then quickly added, “and do not move farther than five feet from me.”

Nikolon stopped outside the two-foot boundary and rested a black paw on her white midriff, teasing the fingers through the fur there. “This form is rather delightful,” she said. “I can see what you like about it.”

“I was born with it,” Kip said.

“But,” Nikolon continued, “it must get dreadfully warm. And dirty.” Small hairs drifted from her fingers to the ground, but vanished before they could touch the stone.

“The usual command,” Odden murmured. “Even though you mean to dismiss her immediately.”

Kip nodded and recited. “Make no move save on my order; speak no word save on my order; exert no power save on my order.”

Nikolon straightened and composed herself, perfectly attentive.

“Excellent,” Odden said, and though Kip appreciated the praise, he felt ill. Here was a demon, yes, but in the form of a Calatian, bound to do his bidding, summoned with the blood he could still taste on his tongue. It’s not a living creature, he told himself, and yet the commanded obedience still rankled with him. The thought crossed his mind that this was what humans felt like, and he shook his head to dismiss it. Even slaves could not be commanded so completely, and Calatians were not slaves.

So he gathered magic again and spoke the dismissal spell, and just as Eichann had done, Nikolon vanished, taking with her the sharp smell of demons.

“Very good, Penfold,” Odden said.

“You’re not to summon any demons save on the order of a master.” Patris had stood, Kip could tell from the elevation of his voice.

“I was getting to that, Patris.” Kip’s master took a breath. “You will of course use this spell only under my supervision or order.”

“Yes, sir,” Kip said.

“Then I think that is enough for today.”

Kip hoped that Patris would remain behind when he left Odden’s office, but the headmaster followed him out. “You seemed remarkably untroubled by the ritual,” the sorcerer said once they were out in the hallway. “Did your father really tell you nothing about it in the nineteen years up to now?”

“Nothing,” Kip said. “I swear it.”

Patris remained uncomfortably close to Kip in the narrow hallway. He smelled of laundry soap and sweat, of suppressed fear. “You understand the necessity of it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You understand that your apprenticeship was made over my objection and continues to exist on my sufferance that you abide strictly and completely by the rules of the College?”

“As I expect all apprentices must, yes, sir,” Kip said.

“Good.” Patris strode ahead and Kip let him gain distance. At the stairs, though, the headmaster turned. “And do not forget that you, too, have now participated in the ritual.”

He stomped up the stairs with a determined tread. Kip leaned against the wall for a moment and then hurried down, the taste of Jacob’s blood still coppery in his mouth and nose.

2

The Fight

Kip’s indecision over whether to tell his friends about the calyx ritual lasted all of four minutes once they were again all together in the basement. “They drink the blood of Calatians!” he said, pacing back and forth through the old papers and dusty stone floor.

Coppy, the otter-Calatian who’d also become an apprentice, didn’t react with the horror Kip had hoped. “I thought it might be something like that,” he said.

“You never said. We talked about it for months!”

“I know.” Coppy rested a paw on Kip’s arm. “Didn’t want to upset you. People do horrible things to Calatians in London and I heard summat about blood when I was a cub there.”

Kip’s tail lashed back and forth. “I wish you’d told me.”

“I couldn’t.” Coppy squeezed his forearm. “It was your dad. If he wouldn’t tell you, ’twasn’t my place.”

“You don’t have to protect me all the time,” Kip said.

The otter lifted his paw and rubbed at his whiskers. “But I really didn’t know for sure. Why start trouble with rumours?”

“Now we know, though.” Emily Carswell, a young woman in her early twenties, sat outside a cleared half-circle against one wall, in which a phosphorus elemental waited. She picked up a sheet of old paper, crumpled it, and tossed it to the lizard. “It’s revolting. I won’t drink blood.”

“If you want to summon a demon, you will,” Kip said. “Or if you want to perform any other strong magic.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Emily said. “Calyxes weren’t even around for three of the Great Feats. So how were they cast?”

“You can’t cast a Great Feat every time you want to summon a demon.” Leaning against the door to the basement, Malcolm O’Brien folded his arms and smiled. The Irishman’s black hair hung into his green eyes, but he made no effort to brush it away. “Might as well bring down a barn to kill a mouse, my da used to say.”

“Tch.” Emily held out her hands to the glowing lizard. “There’s got to be a way.”

“Aye, and all the sorcerers simply prefer to bind themselves to Calatians, drinking blood to do magic. Much easier than this other way.”

“They’d never had a woman or Calatian sorcerer, either,” Emily said. “It’s an age of new things.” She turned to Kip. “You didn’t have to drink any of the blood, did you?”

Kip flattened his ears and stared fixedly at Neddy, the phosphorus elemental. “Oh, Kip,” Emily said.

“Sure, and what would you do?” Malcolm asked. “If your master orders you to?”

“Patris was there.” Kip lowered his voice. “He made it clear—again—that if there’s something I don’t wish to do, I need only tell him and he’ll be all too pleased to end my association with the College.”

Emily tried to recover from her earlier scolding tone. “Isn’t he supposed to be having lessons with Adamson?”

“Oh.” Coppy adopted a snooty voice. “I’m certain Master Adamson can teach himself quite well, thank you.”

They all chuckled, the tension broken, and Kip smiled gratefully at the otter. “How was your lesson with Windsor?”

Coppy’s broad, whiskered muzzle turned up to his. “Well,” he said, “I didn’t have to drink any blood, so I suppose it was better than yours that way. Not in any others though.”

“I thought he’d be easier on you now you’re his apprentice,” Malcolm said.

“Hah.” Emily tossed her head. “You don’t know him at all.”

“Not as well as you,” Malcolm agreed. “Aye, if these masters weren’t teaching us sorcery, it’d hardly be worth doing these lessons at all.”

“So, Kip.” Emily pointedly gave him her full attention. “What are you going to do?”

Coppy, too, shifted on the floor, and Kip felt the weight of the otter’s stare. “I…I have to become a sorcerer, right? That’s the only way I’ll be able to change anything. Get more Calatians admitted, find an alternative to calyxes…”

“Ha.” Malcolm raised an eyebrow. “Next to that, mucker, finding out who destroyed the college will be easy.”

“One thing at a time.” Kip returned Malcolm’s smile with a little difficulty. He’d drunk enough water to kill the taste of blood in his mouth, but the memory was more difficult to dispel.

“Who was it?” Coppy asked.

“Jacob Thomas. The dormouse.”

“Oh, aye.” Coppy rubbed his whiskers thoughtfully.

“One of your friends in town, or less so?” Emily asked.

Kip shook his head. “I don’t know that he cared what I was doing. I didn’t even know he was a calyx until today.”

Malcolm uncrossed his arms and stepped forward into the basement. “Didn’t think you’d many friends left in town.”

“He’s still betrothed,” Emily reminded him.

“Oh, aye, but that’s not quite friendship, is it?” Malcolm grinned at Kip. “Good job she wasn’t the calyx, eh?”

Kip shuddered. “She’s too young, and I don’t know any calyxes who were women.”

“There was Bridget Markham,” Coppy said.

“Oh?”

The otter nodded. “Your father mentioned her once. And there were some back home in London as well. Not common, but not unknown.”

“Then I’m glad it wasn’t her as well.” Kip sighed. “That might have ended the engagement permanently.”

“What are you meant to do with a demon, then?” Malcolm sat on the other side of Kip from Coppy and Emily, and Kip lowered himself to the ground as well, curling his tail over his leg so it wouldn’t rest on the dusty paper.

“Investigate the ruins. The Masters have already looked for any elemental traces left behind, but Master Odden wants me to send a demon down there and search more thoroughly for any clue. He thinks it was demons and not elementals anyway.”

“Demons wouldn’t leave traces, would they?”

Kip shrugged, and Emily replied, “That’s what he’s going to find out.”

“Sounds like grim work,” Malcolm said as Coppy rested a paw on Kip’s.

“It’s all right.” Kip sighed.

In the ensuing silence, Emily cleared her throat. “Kip, Coppy, I’ve got news as well. I don’t think it’ll make up for your day, but…my old teacher from Boston sent me a letter today.”

“There was mail?”

She nodded quickly and held up a piece of folded paper. “Nothing for you. Sorry. But Master Hobstone said that he and some other sorcerers have been meeting with the independence movement.”

“The rebels, you mean.”

Her expression soured. “It sounds dirty when you say it that way.”

Kip shared a look with Malcolm. “They’re hoping to rebel against the Empire, aren’t they?”

“They’d like to achieve independence by peaceful means.”

“Which is why they’re recruiting sorcerers?”

Emily read from the paper. “‘We sincerely hope that we may enact a peaceful separation from our Mother Country, to lay claim to the rights that should be ours as native-born citizens of the American colonies, but should London resist, we must needs be prepared for a battle.’”

“They’ll get a battle.” Kip rested a paw on Coppy’s arm as the otter opened his spell book and silently recited spells.

“I don’t see how you can admire John Adams and not have at least a small amount of interest in independence.” Emily set the paper down. “They want to begin a new country here.”

“What do they want with me?” Kip asked, to forestall an argument.

“Master Hobstone asks if I would talk to any of the new apprentices, ‘but most especially either of the two excellent Calatians.’”

“Why us?” Coppy didn’t look up.

“He doesn’t say.”

Kip exhaled. “Patris has already warned me about talking to the rebels.”

“Independence movement.”

“He doesn’t care what I call them.” The fox shoved a pile of paper across the half-circle boundary on the floor, and Neddy leapt on it, incinerating the entire thing in a blast of heat. “If he thinks I’m going to rebel against the Empire, he’ll expel me faster than Neddy took care of that paper.”

Emily tossed her head so that her shoulder-length brown hair flared out before settling down again. “It won’t hurt you to simply talk to them. Either of you.”

“Aye,” Malcolm said. “I’m certain Master Windsor will be much more forgiving than Patris.”

Coppy flinched at the name. “I’d rather not,” he said, and returned to his spell studies.

“Why are you so interested in them?” Kip asked Emily, squeezing Coppy’s arm.

She fluttered the paper in her hand, then set it down next to her spell book. “Because Master Hobstone took me seriously. He taught me enough to get admitted here and I owe him at least the courtesy of passing along his request.”

“And now you’ve asked me and Coppy,” Kip said.

Emily opened her spell book and stared down at it as though she were reading, but after a few minutes she said, “If you really want to find a new way, you’ve got to step off the path eventually.” Nobody answered, but Kip folded his paws in his lap, thinking about Jacob Thomas.

“It might not be so bad,” Coppy whispered to him that night, as they lay side by side on their bedrolls. “Talking to the independence people, I mean. Maybe we could learn sorcery somewhere else.”

“Here and London are where the best sorcerers are,” Kip replied, paws laced behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling. There was enough light from Neddy’s glow in the dim basement for his eyes to pick out patterns in the stone, and after months of sleeping here, he knew them well. “The ones in Boston are the ones rejected by the colleges. What are they going to teach us?”

Coppy hesitated. “Magic without calyxes? Like Emily said?”

The word brought back the coppery taste to Kip’s mouth and the desire to go find his father and ask why he hadn’t shared that knowledge with Kip. He forced both down. “If they don’t have calyxes, they can’t summon demons, and if they can’t summon demons, they’ll lose any war they start with the Empire.” Odden’s book, page after page of powerful demon names, danced before his eyes. “And if sorcerers didn’t need calyxes, what would happen to New Cambridge?”

“People wouldn’t…” Coppy paused. “It’s not just the sorcerers they fear.”

“No,” Kip said.

“The Church says we’re people.”

“And Farley Broadside, good churchgoer, has taken note of that?”

Coppy’s large chest rose and fell. “The world’s not made of Farleys.”

“No, but they live in it.”

“I suppose.” Coppy turned onto his side, away from Kip. “I’d like to believe there’s more good people than bad.”

“Me too,” Kip said.

“As long as the good people stay together, we’ll do okay.”

“I have to stay in this college.” Kip clenched his fists and stared up at the ceiling, lit with flickers of Neddy’s light. “Whatever it takes. When I’m a full sorcerer, then I can worry about the rest of it.”

“I understand why you can’t talk to them,” the otter said softly. “But if Patris were not here, if there were no risk, would you want to? For the chance to create something that’s never before been seen?”

It was difficult to imagine the College without Patris. Kip spoke after several seconds of considering his words. “Perhaps.”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to perform a Great Feat? Maybe it doesn’t have to be a magical one.”

The otter’s positive assurance eased the pressure in Kip’s chest. It was a good thought, and he stored it away for a future time when he might make use of it. “Thanks,” Kip said, and reached out to clasp Coppy’s paw.

For a moment they lay in silence, until the otter spoke again. “Did you summon a demon?”

Kip lay and stared up for the length of time it took him to trace one line from the relative brightness over the phosphorus elemental to where it met the wall on the other side. “Yes.”

“Good,” Coppy said.

Searching the ruins would take time, so over the next few days Kip had to practice not only summoning and binding, but holding demons for long periods of time. Master Odden had him keep a demon bound while studying history books, and then while casting easy physical magic spells, and then while casting spells that required more concentration.

Through all of this, he maintained the binding on Neddy, but that drew very little of his energy and none of his focus. Unlike the phosphorus elemental, Nikolon fought whenever Kip cast a spell, at the times his magic reserve was weakest, and once managed to break the fox’s binding. Kip was ready, though, and even as Master Odden was casting his spell, Kip cast it as well and re-bound the demon.

“It’s important you know what it feels like when a demon escapes the binding,” Odden said as Kip picked the prickly burrs out of his fur that the demon had cast there, “and you will not be summoning dangerous demons for quite a while yet.”

It was fortunate that Patris had given up supervising Kip’s lessons after that first one, or Kip was sure the headmaster would have had much more to say about Kip making the exact mistake every apprentice (so Odden told him) made in the course of this learning. Additionally, each of the lessons began with the uncomfortable calyx ritual, but without Patris in the room Kip found it easier to endure. For his own peace of mind, he tried to drink less and less of the calyx’s blood every time, to see whether there was a point at which he would no longer be able to summon a demon. If there was, he did not find it in those two weeks that concluded the first month of his apprenticeship.

At dinner in the outdoors dining tent, Kip and his friends talked about the work they’d been doing in the afternoons with their masters. Emily’s master, Argent, had been focusing strongly on her translocational magic, and by the end of the first month felt that perhaps in as little as another week she would be ready to transport herself. “It’s all in the memory of the place,” she said. “I’m very excited to go home to Boston and show off to Mother.”

“I don’t see why you couldn’t summon elementals.” Kip cut a piece of the cheese they’d been provided and paired it with a hunk of bread. “It’s mostly a matter of knowing the place they come from.”

“But it’s not a real place,” she pointed out. “How am I supposed to know how I feel there?”

“You imagine it.” He ate the bread and cheese and then tapped his nose. “Smell works for me.”

“Far better than for the rest of us.” Malcolm sat beside Kip and across from Coppy. “Master Vendis says I’m not to try summoning anything until Easter at the earliest.”

“You’re too good at locking doors and keeping things out,” Kip said. “What about you, Coppy? You haven’t said a word about your work with Windsor.”

The otter chewed his apple thoughtfully. “It’s all physical work, you know. Same thing we did all last year. I’ll be doing it until I get it right, I suppose.” He put the apple down. “So sometime next year perhaps.”

“You’ll get it before then.” Kip smiled. “You’re smart enough. But you should ask him about summoning water elementals, or doing water alchemy.”

“I miss the water.” Coppy said. “But if I can’t keep five rocks in the air at once, how am I supposed to focus on water elementals or water alchemy?”

“I can summon fire elementals and demons, but I can’t translocate,” Kip said. “Malcolm can’t do either but he’s getting really good at blocking magic. Look, now that we can practice without supervision, let’s just all look at our books and see if anything appeals to you.”

“We tried that before.” But the otter’s objection was quiet and Emily spoke over it quickly.

“That sounds like a marvelous idea,” she said. “And if nothing calls to you, then we’ll pick a spell you want to know and you’ll start learning it.”

Coppy nodded and then turned toward the back of the tent, where Farley Broadside and Victor Adamson sat around their table. Since the Selection where over half the students had been sent to the road crews, the military, or simply dropped from the school for lack of talent, the dining tent had become even more set in its seating pattern. In the other back corner, away from Farley and Adamson, sat Jacob Quarrel and Matthew Chesterton, the only other two apprentices. Though the tent seemed quiet, Kip and his friends knew that a fight was always one or two provocations away, and often the fox’s acute hearing let him eavesdrop on Farley’s plans to start one, giving him and his friends an edge.

This evening, the stout bully and the slender blond boy sat with heads down, paying little attention to Kip and his friends. Still, Coppy gave Kip a questioning look, so the fox focused his ears in that direction.

“They’re not talking about us.” He kept his voice low. “They’re talking about Adamson’s research.”

“That’s good.” Malcolm shot the back table a scornful look. “Maybe he can gather his research if he can’t gather any magic.”

“What’s he researching?” Emily asked.

“Can’t tell.” Kip flicked his ears. “He’s talking about a book he read that had a spell in it he wants to try.”

“If he does find a way to cast magic,” Malcolm said in a lower, more serious voice, “look out.”

“He already has a way to cast magic.” Kip squared his shoulders and lowered his brow, chewing with his muzzle open in an imitation of Farley.

The motion caught the stout boy’s attention. He looked up and squinted at them. “Hey,” he called. “If the lady wants a kiss, she can ask me herself.”

Malcolm barked a laugh and Coppy’s paws tightened into fists, but Emily sliced a piece of bread calmly. “If he’s waiting for that, he’ll be an old man before he’s done waiting.”

“Kip’s summoning demons,” Coppy called over to the table. “Did you know that?”

Kip reached across the table to grab Coppy’s paw as Farley’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?” he hissed.

The otter wrested his paw away. “I want him to know what we can do so he’ll leave us alone.”

“That won’t work!” Kip cried, but Farley was already standing.

“Demons, huh? Something worse than what he already looks like?”

“Something powerful enough to take care of you.”

Overhead, three ravens looked down at them, but Kip knew not to expect any help from them. The masters had made it clear that fighting each other was one of the ways students learned magic; even Patris rarely punished Kip for his role in the fights, unless Farley or Adamson came off noticeably worst. Even now, his nose tingled at the presence of some invisible demon in the dining tent, but it was only there to control the fight, not prevent it.

And Farley was surely heading for another fight now. His expression darkened and flushed, and his voice lowered. “I’m learning some things too,” he said.

Kip couldn’t see Victor Adamson’s expression, but the boy’s head was bowed and he ran fingers through his short blond hair. If Farley was learning something, it was more likely from Victor than from any master. “Coppy,” he growled, “leave him alone.”

Coppy looked back stubbornly, but then Malcolm joined the conversation, calling across to Farley, “Like how to wash? Would make class a great deal more pleasant for all of us.”

“Har har,” Farley said. “When I do learn, I’ll teach the animals there. There’s a stink in here alright, but it ain’t me.” Adamson must have murmured something to him, because Farley added, “They started it! I won’t let ‘em talk to me like that.”

“Maybe Kip’s demon can give you a proper bath,” Malcolm said pleasantly. “And do something about that language of yours at the same time. It’s a fright, it is. No wonder you’ve no friends left.”

“I’ve got friends.”

“Oh, aye, Adamson there? I’m guessing you’re as good a friend to him as that knife he’s holding.”

“Charming,” Emily muttered under her breath.

“Probably true, though,” Kip whispered to her.

“Don’t care what power he has,” Farley called. “Or what you all do together in that basement at night. I can take care of him any time I like.”

At that, he stood, and Kip and his friends tensed. Coppy slid off his bench and got to his feet. “And I can take care of you anytime. Done it before.”

Victor put a hand on Farley’s wrist; Farley shook it off. Quarrel and Chesterton sat frozen, staring at the rest of the students, and Kip knew Farley was trying to figure out if he was gathering magic. Intending to show that he wasn’t, he raised his paws.

That simple gesture ended the tense silence, but not in the way Kip had hoped. Farley ducked, his hands glowing lime green. Coppy’s paws glowed turquoise and Malcolm’s orange, but the otter struck first, pushing Farley’s table hard and knocking him back a few steps.

“Not so easy without Carmichael around, is it?” Malcolm taunted, but even before he’d finished the sentence, Kip’s muzzle was forced shut and his arms pinned to his sides. He recognized it as the physical immobilization Farley had used on Coppy the previous month, but knowing what was paralyzing him didn’t help him counter it.

By this time, Emily too was gathering magic, though keeping her arms under the table so that the glow wasn’t visible. Malcolm and Coppy’s attention was fully trained on Farley, and even Emily had turned, so none of them noticed Kip’s plight. Coppy hadn’t bothered to gather magic again; he crossed the dining tent with four steps, shoving the table aside as he yelled, “Don’t cast it. Don’t cast it!” at Farley.

Only then did Emily turn to see that Kip had remained immobile. “Wait,” she cried, but Coppy had already landed on Farley, grappling with him. The otter’s thick musculature made him more than a match for even Farley, and with the boy focused on his spell, Coppy was able to knock him down and land at least two punches before Farley threw him aside.

And then Kip was lifted and flung toward the opening of the tent, outside into the bitter cold air. As horrible as immobilization had been, being moved around against his will was a hundred times worse. And Coppy had endured this for half an hour or more, being floated about in the air helplessly before Kip had finally appeared so that Farley could slam the otter into the stone walls of the Tower.

He wasn’t slowing down. The tent receded before him, and the memory of Coppy only fixed in his mind what Farley intended to do to him. Did the school’s demons know that a fox-Calatian’s bones were light, far more fragile than an otter’s or even a human’s? Would they stop him before—

His back and shoulders slammed into hard stone, and distantly he heard a series of cracks. There was a moment of shock, and then as he toppled forward, pain exploded through his upper body. He fell, the air cold through his fur as the ground rose to meet him, and he squeezed his eyes shut through tears of agony.

3

Dependence

He woke to a dull ache in an unfamiliar bed, softer than his bedroll and higher off the ground, with a rough cotton sheet over him and his head propped up on some rounded surface. He ached from his neck to his lower back and also along one side of his jaw, but a few cautious movements reassured him that his shoulders and back were whole, if bruised. He was able to lift his head enough to see a small stone room with a narrow shuttered window, but not enough to see if there were chairs or other furniture around him.

The first smell he caught was a light smell of blood, but he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t his own. With his next breath he caught a trace of the scent of the healer, Master Splint, and then he understood what had happened. No other beds in the room were occupied, so his friends must have not sustained serious harm. But Coppy…Coppy had physically attacked Farley, something he’d only done twice before, both times down in New Cambridge, both times when Farley had thought to attack the two of them in some place without witnesses. Here he’d done it in full view of the other students and the ravens, and although Kip could sympathize with Coppy’s feelings and the need for revenge after his humiliation, he wished his friend had had a little more restraint. It said something about Farley’s nature, though, that he was the only one who’d driven Coppy to violence.

If Coppy were expelled, what would Kip do? He lay and thought about that. Before their Selection, he would have said that he’d follow Coppy away from the school. Coppy hadn’t wanted that then and wouldn’t want it now. His chest did tighten at the thought of life without his closest friend, the emptiness of the basement at night. Malcolm and Emily were good friends, but he and Coppy had shared happy times like the Feast of Calatus and difficult times like, well, anything involving Farley. Coppy knew his parents, had lived with them, understood Kip’s feeling of betrayal at their departure. He knew what it meant to be a Calatian in this world.

Secondarily, anyone who thought Calatians had no business learning sorcery would only have him left to worry about, and there were enough people on that list—Farley, Patris, other masters, perhaps even Victor, though his motivations were difficult to fathom—that Kip felt exhausted at the mere thought of having to watch out for all of them.

(Here he wondered briefly whether Patris hoped Farley might actually kill him. The black mark to the college would be the major deterrent to that, he felt, and yet he couldn’t be entirely sure of it.)

The book he’d discovered in the basement, Peter Cadno’s journal, might help, if only he could figure out why nobody seemed to notice him while he was holding it. He could keep it on his person all the time, setting it aside only for their classes and for his lessons with Odden. Malcolm and Emily might wonder why he didn’t take meals with them anymore, but their meals would be quieter, safer affairs.

But he would hate to live like a fugitive in his school, hiding like an animal, running under cover from one place to another. There were enemies, yes, but there were also people willing to fight for him even if Coppy were gone: Emily and Malcolm; Masters Odden, Argent, and Windsor at least. And his father.

Lessons and his friends had kept him from thinking much about his father since the calyx ritual, but now Kip’s thoughts turned to him. He’d received only one letter from his parents since they’d moved to Georgia to live near the rebuilding of Prince Philip’s College of Sorcery, and that had been a warm if short note letting him know that they missed him, they hoped his studies were going well, and they’d found a house to live in. He had hoped that there would be correspondence between the surviving school and the rebuilding one into which his father could sneak some letters, but either that was not the case or his father had nothing more to tell him.

Nothing about what it meant to be a calyx, to come and bleed for the power of sorcerers whenever they needed a demon or a more powerful spell. Nothing about the life Kip would have to lead as a sorcerer, drinking the blood of his people. He tossed in the bed, wanting as he had so many times in the last two weeks to call out to his father to ask why he hadn’t at least warned Kip.

But he knew what the answer would be: the sorcerers had instructed him not to. And furthermore, would that knowledge have made Kip hesitate in his studies? Knowing what he would have to go through, would he have limited the magic he sought? Even now he recalled the small increase in power—but barely noticeable compared to the surge he’d felt the first time he’d touched the Tower walls, which he suspected had been the work of the spirit of Peter Cadno entombed in its stone.

The power from whatever resided in the walls hadn’t come to him again, and might never, so how useful really was it? If Peter was protecting the White Tower from within its stones, he had remained silent since that first surprised outburst at Kip’s touch.

If Kip could access that power, though…he could summon demons, and what things might he be able to do with fire? Fire would gain him power and status for sure; only two or three other sorcerers in the Empire specialized in fire. If he became accomplished with it, even Patris might one day grudgingly acknowledge his value.

And yet…Odden had challenged him to hold fire in his paw for ten seconds, and Kip had not yet figured out that simple trick. He could keep a fire going for maybe four seconds before his skin began to burn.

Rubbing the pads on his fingers against the pad on the heel of his palm, he felt only smooth skin, not the roughness of the burn he’d grown accustomed to. Master Splint had healed his paws as well, it seemed.

So he lay his paw flat on the bed, palm up, and reached out for magic, to reassure himself that he could still summon fire. If he’d been quicker, if he’d pulled fire into the dining tent, maybe Farley would have stopped. Maybe Coppy wouldn’t be in danger of expulsion. Maybe Kip wouldn’t be lying in a room behind the healer’s quarters.

His paws remained dark. The magic he was used to finding so easily was gone.

He fought down panic. He was tired; that was all. He closed his eyes, focused, and reached out again.

The world remained cold and dark.

Kip breathed faster, but tried to keep his focus as he fell back to the earliest incantation he remembered, a chant to help the sorcerer focus while gathering magic. He’d been preoccupied with Coppy’s fate and the calyxes; he hadn’t been focusing. He recited the chant, emptied his mind, reached out.

Still nothing.

Then this was his punishment, rendered at last by Patris: magic had been taken from him. He would have to leave the school because he could no longer work even a simple spell, and he hadn’t Victor’s money to make up for that. He would return to New Cambridge, perhaps work on a farm, and maybe one day he would come up to the college again, not to learn magic, not to feel the thrill of magic in him and the joy of altering the world around him, but to sit in a chair and bleed into a cup so that others might cast spells.

No. No, no. He half-fell out of his bed and found himself with his nose to the floor. The movement shot pain through his aching muscles, but he barely felt it. He pressed his paws flat to the stone, turned his face to the side so his muzzle could lay against it, and reached into the stone as he would reach into the earth for magic, but this time with words: Peter, you helped me before, please, please, help me now, don’t let them do this to me, don’t let them take this away from me, please, please.

The stone remained cold and dark as the earth. Kip gathered his will and was about to make another plea when a barrier somewhere broke and magic flooded into him.

He collapsed to the floor and sobbed, holding the bright violet glow of his paws by his eyes and drinking in the flickering, familiar light as though it were the water of a cold spring on a summer day. Weak with relief, he called into being a fire on the floor in front of him and poured his magic into it, keeping it close enough to warm him but far enough not to burn. Its light and heat fed back into him, and his muscles loosened, his tail uncurling to lie flat on the floor.

Thank you, he whispered in his mind.

It is my pleasure.

Was it the same voice that had cried a startled, Fox? into his head months ago? It was hard to tell because the word had been so short and so long ago, but what else could it be? And now there was a presence like a demon or elemental hovering on the edge of his awareness, but none of the tingling in his nose that accompanied a demon.

Peter?

A long pause. Yes.

Afraid of breaking his connection with the stone, Kip lay flat with his paws still pressed down. Questions burst in his head, but the foremost one came out first. Are you a fox?

I was.

Now <ansmæk>?

Yes. My spirit remains in the stone. Lord Primus’s greatest feat.

I thought you said you created the spell. In your journal.

I may have. It has been hundreds of years. He called it his spell. The voice grew somewhat more distant. Nobody had done anything like it before. And yet we have spirits. Why might that spirit not be sundered from the body and bound to another? He feared the Spanish might set demons against the Tower now that the power of my blood was becoming known. Another pause. Our blood.

Kip shuddered. That doesn’t mean he can take credit for a spell you made.

But he was right. The Tower was in danger.

From the Spanish? Kip held his breath. Here could be the solution to the mystery. If Peter knew what force had come against him, Kip could report it; the college could mount a fight against it.

The Spanish at one time, the French at another, even the Iroquois sorcerers, but none of those succeeded in destroying it. None did until this year.

Kip couldn’t hold the questions in. Who did? What destroyed the college?

A demon. But I believe…I believe it was summoned by someone in the Tower.

In the Tower? This Tower? Where Kip had previously been unable to hold back the questions, now he found himself unable to articulate any. Do you… Did you… Who was it?

I do not know. It was not summoned here. But the demon knew how to break defenses, knew the names of all the guarding demons, knew too much to have been sent by an outsider.

You know spiritual magic?

Yes. But I have not seen the knowledge in any mind here, and I dare not probe deeply for fear of revealing my presence.

Is that how the book works? Your journal? Nobody else notices me while I’m reading it.

I can affect minds within the Tower. I still have access to magic.

I remember.

Ah. I am sorry for that. I did not know you were untrained. I felt a kindred spirit and the call to magic…

I’m glad you did, Kip said quickly. I want to ask you so many things.

I dare not speak long. I am in danger. The attack failed and the attacker will try again. They know that something prevented the previous attack and they must be seeking me out.

I’m trying to solve it. Where should I look? When Peter didn’t answer, Kip pleaded, Help me keep you safe!

The remains of the demon’s attack lie in the ruins, Peter said. The sorcerers have not found a clue to the demon’s identity but I feel there must be something there. And the attacker will be making preparations for another attack, but I have not noticed any sorcerers leaving the Tower regularly. Perhaps you can—

His words dropped off and his presence vanished from Kip’s mind a moment before the fox’s nose tingled with a demon’s presence. Kip extinguished his fire quickly, keeping his paws to the floor.

Peter?

No answer came. He rose slowly to his feet as the door opened and Master Splint walked in, rubbing his eyes. “Penfold?”

“Yes, sir.”

Splint smoothed down his short red hair with a hand. “What are you doing out of bed? And did you start a fire?”

“Yes, sir.” Kip climbed back into the bed. “I’m sorry. For a moment, I couldn’t reach any magic, and I thought…I thought maybe I’d hit my head.”

“Aye, you did.” Splint took two steps toward Kip’s bed. “Lost a few teeth and broke your neck, not to mention fracturing your upper back and shoulders. It’s a good job I’ve worked on your father for years or I might not have been able to fix you quite so quickly. But tell me again how you came to summon magic?”

“I…” Kip turned his head. “I panicked. I was so scared. And then I prayed for help and I felt something break and I could feel magic again.”

“Hm.” Splint paused and then said, “Quetz?”

“Yes, sir.”

At the foot of Kip’s bed, a feathered serpent appeared hovering in the air, its attention fixed on the healer. “Did Penfold break your binding?” Splint asked it.

Kip held his breath. If he’d given away Peter’s presence here so soon after promising to help him, he could have put the Tower in serious jeopardy.

“I cannot say for certain. He struggled against the binding and then it was broken.”

“Thank you, Quetz.”

The serpent bowed its head and again vanished, though Kip could still sense it nearby. Splint took another step to stand over Kip. “The binding is on this room for patients who might not be in full possession of their faculties. An uncontrolled sorcerer can be quite dangerous. But Quetz’s binding is not easily broken; it would take someone practiced in spiritual magic to do so. You say that all you did was pray?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well,” Splint said. “I suppose our Lord is as well versed in spiritual magic as any of us. Please do refrain from calling on His assistance for the remainder of your stay here, Penfold.” He gave a short laugh, but his expression remained troubled as he left.

The next morning when he returned to the basement, Kip got a fuller account of what had happened. Coppy hugged Kip tightly enough to make all his bruises hurt again, but he didn’t mind. “I didn’t even notice,” the otter said. “I’m so sorry!”

“None of us saw,” Malcolm said.

“But I made Farley lose control of the spell.” Coppy stepped back. “And then you fell and just lay there.”

Emily gave Kip a gentler hug. “It looked rather bad,” she said. “But Master Splint appeared very quickly and a demon did pull Coppy off Farley.”

“Reckon the ravens called him,” Malcolm said. “Splint, not the demon.”

“The demon was there all along.” Kip flexed his shoulders and winced at the sore muscles. “It lets us fight until something bad happens.”

“What if Farley’d killed you?” Coppy went from mournful to furious in a heartbeat. “How would it have reversed that?”

“I’m tough to kill.” Kip managed a smile. “But I haven’t been hit that badly in years.”

“I tried to catch you before you hit the ground.” Coppy gestured with his arms out. “But I only got outside in time to see you hit the Tower and then…”

“We all froze,” Malcolm said. “Except Em.”

“What did you do?”

Emily scowled. “Translocated Farley to the ceiling of the Great Hall. He caught himself before he hit the floor.” She kicked at a pile of paper, raising a cloud of dust. “I thought Malcolm would’ve caught you.”

“Oi,” Malcolm said. “Any of us could and none of us did, and what’s more, the fox stands before us almost as good as new, so there’s no need to point fingers about.”

“I don’t blame any of you. It was Farley who threw me around.” He reached out to Coppy’s shoulder. “It was horrible. I don’t know how you bore it for as long as you did.”

“Had no choice.” Coppy sniffed. “But you rescued me.”

“Look.” Malcolm stepped forward. “Haven’t I just been saying there’s no need to harp on about who rescued whom? We’re all safe and sound and the next thing is to decide what’s to be done about Farley.”

“He’s not being expelled, I expect,” Kip said. “But Coppy, you’re not either?”