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.
Meanwhile, from Boot's perspective, she was permitted to stay in the Claymouth Barony only on Master Gravitas' sufferance. If he ever concluded that she posed a threat, he could muster his cats to run her out of town. That might be enough to make her feel obligated to cooperate with him...but not enough for me to rely on.
In addition, I wasn't sure how much I trusted Master Gravitas himself. Not in a matter as sensitive as this.
But even after I explained all of this to Bobo – at length, repeatedly, using different words and different phrasings to get the point across – she kept insisting that we at least try to talk to Boot before we kidnapped and tortured the information out of her.
At last, Stripey cast the tiebreaking vote. "All right. We'll try Bobo's idea first, and if it doesn't work, we'll try Rosie's."
I didn't like it, but at least Bobo stopped bothering me.
Shadowed by Stripey, with me riding in a pouch strapped to his back and a couple duck demons nearby in case things went catastrophically (haha) wrong, Bobo went to the carpentry workshop on her afternoon off. There, she found Master Gravitas carving curlicues onto the legs of a writing desk. While he worked, she explained that her employers, the Jeks, were very stressed because they felt as if Floridiana and Boot were spying on them, but they couldn't for the lives of them figure out why and for whom.
"They're jussst farmers," she told him, all earnestness and disingenuousness. "They don't want trouble. They jussst want to be left alone."
For his part, Master Gravitas was all politeness and sympathy. "I'm sure it's nothing," he purred, "but if it'll set their minds at ease, I'll poke around. See if I can learn anything."
Not with that attitude, he won't, I fumed to Stripey, who insisted, "Give him a chance. Let's see what he says before we decide on our next step."
Luckily, the duck demons were too smart to let the cat spirits speak unsupervised. After some rapid (and unprofitable) negotiations with the barony's rat spirits, Stripey secured several sets of extra eyes and feet for shadowing Master Gravitas. When the carpenter finally summoned Boot to his workshop, the rats sent a runner to Stripey, who flew to Bobo's bamboo stand to fetch me.
By the time we arrived, Master Gravitas had already ushered Boot into the side room where he entertained important customers. Through the window, we could see a teapot and two cups set out on a polished table. Boot sat on a high, cushioned chair, lapping her tea with a dainty pink tongue. Stripey glided onto the roof, and the two of us crouched there, eavesdropping.
" – been asking questions," Master Gravitas' voice was saying. "They're getting suspicious."
"Are they now?" remarked a light female voice that contained a hint of a "meow." It was the first time I'd heard Boot speak in anything above a whisper.
"Yes, ma'am," he confirmed. "Their hired help, the bamboo viper spirit Bobo, paid me a visit yesterday afternoon. She said that the Jeks think you and Mage Floridiana are spying on them. They wanted me to talk to you, cat-to-cat, to find out who hired you."
More delicate lapping sounds. "Mmm, I see. It is interesting that they think that. Do you know who or what might have put that idea into their heads?"
Next to me, Stripey furrowed his brow and whispered, "He sounds like he's giving a report to a superior."
I told you going to him was a bad idea.
There wasn't much Stripey could say to that, so he didn't. Side by side, we kept listening.
"As I reported when you arrived, I have not detected any signs of demonic possession in my interactions with the Jeks. I assume you haven't noticed anything while staying with them either?"
Another lap of tea. "And yet, their behavior is highly abnormal."
"Yes. From what I can tell, it underwent an abrupt transformation at the beginning of last winter."
Silence as Boot thought it over. "Could they have met a ghost? Have there been any recent ghost sightings in the barony? You do have that river next door. Could it be the soul of someone who drowned back during the Empire and never got reincarnated?"
That popular misconception about the nature of ghosts was ancient. Two of Cassius' scholars had been passionate about correcting "peasant superstition," although they'd never agreed on what it should be corrected to. One had asserted that ghosts were the lingering memories of people who died in highly emotional circumstances. The other had argued that ghosts were the awakened flesh of a corpse, making them kin to stiffs, which were awakened skeletons. Neither scholar had had a convincing explanation for how memories could persist after death, or how flesh could be preserved long enough to awaken.
"No." Master Gravitas' answer was swift and definitive. "There have been no reports of anyone getting attacked by a ghost. Or even losing life force mysteriously."
"A stiff?" persisted Boot. "If I remember correctly, there was a lot of fighting in this area near the end of the Empire. Enough time has passed. The bones of, say, a soldier who died then could have awakened."
"There have been no human disappearances that we cannot account for. The only demon eating people around here is Lord Silurus. Have you tried questioning the Jek children?"
A hiss. "Of course I've questioned the Jek children. They're obviously hiding something, but each time one of the younger ones is on the verge of blurting it out, their parents or older brothers or even that snake stops them. I can't get them alone either. The mother or the snake is always around. None of them have mentioned that 'Mr. Turtle' in your last report."
"I'm afraid I haven't been able to find out anything more about him," Master Gravitas apologized.
"Why didn't you set your agents to surveil the family earlier?"
"My instructions were to proceed with extreme discretion, ma'am."
Yes, yes, I knew he must have received instructions – but from whom? Neither of the cats was saying. It was aggravating.
Their meeting wrapped up shortly thereafter, with Boot instructing Master Gravitas to keep an ear out for any information on the Jeks in general and "Mr. Turtle" in particular. Then the black cat slipped out the back door and melted into the shadows. In the moonlight, I caught a flash of a skinny, hairless tail: one of the rat spirits following her. From below came dull thumps and clinks as Master Gravitas straightened the room.
A wingtip brushed the side of my shell. "Head back," Stripey mouthed, and I nodded and got back into the pouch. Once we were airborne and out of earshot of anyone on the ground, he spoke at his normal volume. "Blackmail. We can blackmail them."
Agreed. Too bad they never talked about who they work for.
Since Stripey was using his wings to fly, he couldn't make his trademark shrug, but I heard it in his voice. "Just threatening to reveal that Boot is a spy will be enough. And Master Gravitas too! The Baron will run all the cats out of town!"
That's it? He won't execute them? I couldn't picture any nobleman tolerating treason.
Stripey went quiet for a long time. At last, in a low voice, he admitted, "He'd have to. To send a message." Even if the duck had no particular love for cat spirits, he sounded like he didn't like the image of his long-time neighbors dangling from the gallows or laying their heads on the chopping block.
I had no such sympathy. If you became a spy, that was the risk you ran. Also, Master Gravitas was the one who had set his, Floridiana's, and Boot's master on the Jeks, thus endangering everything I was trying to accomplish here. His purchase of two measly chairs to help them pay rent did not come close to balancing this betrayal. Even the Heavenly Accountants would have to agree with me on this one.
But for Stripey's sake, I said, There's no way they won't go along with us. They're not going to force us to report them to the baron.
"I hope you're right." And, because he could never let anything go, he had to remind me, "You have to admit that Bobo was right. It was better to talk to the cat spirits first."
Mmph.
And down we glided towards the bamboo stand where she waited. Time for me to confess that she'd been correct to insist that talk came before torture.
Even if she hadn't intended for that talk to involve blackmail.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, TheLunaticCo, and Anonymous!