The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 52: When in Doubt, Pick the Cat

In the end, after much agitating from Bobo, we went with the cat.

Normally, I had serious reservations about following her advice, but she made some solid arguments against targeting the mage. Even if Floridiana were a mediocre specimen (by my standards, at least), she had defeated the Black Sand Creek guards and invaded the Water Court to make demands of Dragon King Yulus himself. That feat had made such a strong impression on the local spirits that they considered her to be as powerful as a goddess – and much, much closer. Personally, I thought that the duck demons could beat her even in a fair fight (not that I intended for any fight to be fair), but their morale was too low to try.

On the other hand, the cat was a normal animal spirit, and not a type of animal that was immortal enemies with whistling ducks either. Plus she was called...Boot. A simple, disarming name that did the opposite of strike fear into enemies' hearts.

Hence Bobo believed with all her heart that we could appeal to the cat's goodwill towards her fellow animal spirits and convince her to answer some basic questions.

As for Stripey and me, we just thought that Boot made an easier target.

So what was the most effective way of extracting information from a cat spirit?

Well, it depended on how much of the cat spirit you wanted to be left afterwards, of course. But more practically, given the resources I had at hand, it also depended on how much of an enemy you could afford to make.

We should ambush her, tie her up, and take her somewhere remote to interrogate, I announced. Stripey, I assume you and the bandits can manage that?

Before he could open his bill, Bobo yelped, "Ambusssh her? Why are we ambussshing her?!"

Because we need to ask her some questions. The answer seemed obvious to me.

Not to Bobo, apparently. "But why do we need to tie her up to asssk her sssome quessstions?"

Because she won't answer them otherwise.

"How do you know?" she protested. "Maybe she will. Maybe ssshe's a niccce kitty ssspirit. Like Massster Gravitas. He's very niccce!"

Having seen the control that Master Gravitas wielded over the cat colony, I wasn't sure I'd characterize him as "nice," but he had bought those clumsy chairs from the Jeks. That had showed a certain degree of compassion.

However, it wasn't Master Gravitas we needed to interrogate. It was this strange new cat. Of whose personality we knew next to nothing.

"We can't kidnap people and tie them up jussst becaussse we want to asssk them quessstions!" Bobo was continuing to argue. "That's too mean!"

From Stripey's careful silence, I could tell that he didn't entirely agree with her. But he wasn't siding with me either.

Then what do you propose we do? Despite my valiant effort to stay patient, sarcasm crept into my voice.

Stripey frowned, but Bobo remained oblivious, as usual.

"Ooh! Ooh! Why don't we asssk Massster Gravitas to asssk her? They're both cats, and ssshe's in his territory! Ssshe'll tell him for sssure!"

A reflexive No leaped to the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it to evaluate her proposal. Floridiana and Boot had commandeered a bed from Bobo's longtime employers. It wouldn't be unusual for the Jeks to want to learn more about their unwanted houseguests. Bobo could approach Master Gravitas, who as a cat spirit would share their curiosity about the newcomers, and feel concern over whether Boot planned to steal his territory.