The Hand We're Dealt - Chapter 12

“Hmm... that should do it,” I muttered, closely examining the flask of oil as I held it up to the glare of a powerful magical light.

Fuck candles, seriously.

Well, no... first, that would be awkward and dangerous, especially if they were burning. But candles were great, and very atmospheric, but the candles of this age weren't the overpriced novelty scented candles I'd grown up with last time around. They were thick, oily things that gave off soot and smelled vaguely like a grease fire in slow motion.

They were also terrible for proper illumination.

Even Master van Beek, traditionalist that he was, agreed with me on that. The difference between us was that he used a magician's spell for 'that sort of thing' and used 'real sorcery' for the actual work he was doing.

I'd just copy-pasta'd my atmospheric mana tap into a chunk of quartz crystal, then duplicated the process a few times, and had instant bright lights that didn't give me a headache trying to read with.

Now if I could only get the faint buzzing sound right... Possibly-Extant-God, I'm such a nineties brat deep down. I shouldn't find the hum of fluorescent lighting comforting.

I blinked, shook my head, and turned back to what I was doing, opening my Sacred Gear to the correct page via an easy bookmark. Thankfully, bookmarks did work as long as I didn't change the subject matter it was focusing on. My eyes scrolled down the page before I tapped the relevant passage.

“Once the mixture is complete, place a few drops in a mixture of a shaman's blood and purified water. If you have properly constructed the oil, it should glow a faint purple. The more rich the tint, the more effective and powerful your specific case will be. To those of particular skill, it has been recorded that tiny sparks of gold will appear, though this is perhaps due to the purity of ingredients rather than...”

I skimmed the next section where the author devolved into a rant that could be summed up as, 'Kids these days, blaming the tools instead of taking responsibility for subpar work.'

I didn't know if it was terrifying or reassuring that some things really did never change.

Humming, I pressed a finger to a large wooden box and felt the enchantment on it discharge as it opened up properly instead of self-destructing and taking out the entire room and a good portion of the house with it. Normally, I wouldn't be so paranoid about things kept in my room, which was a nominally-secure location anyway, but...

Removing one of the small vials of my own preserved blood, I considered it a pretty reasonable precaution.

Beyond what van Beek had told me, often and frequently in excruciating and graphic detail, about what had happened – not could, had – when an enemy got any amount of your blood... Well, I'd also read plenty of horror stories about it, too.

On the one hand, keeping even a small amount of my blood on hand for experiments was incredibly dangerous.

On the other hand, extracting blood mid-ritual to use fresh was also incredibly dangerous. Causing any level of distraction or potential contamination when using magic, such as slicing open a palm and potentially cutting muscle... or leaving a line of blood crossing a circle of salt or silver.

You want dangerous?

That's dangerous.

I held up the glass of purified water with my blood in it, swirling it slowly before I added three drops of oil to it.

A moment later, there was a strong shade of purple, a deep violet, suffusing the mixture.

No flecks of gold like I'd hoped, though.

I sighed, partially reprimanding myself. “I've got four years total of magical training. Even if my reserves recover faster, I'm not so much a genius to get it right on my first try.”

I paused, admiring the tiny vial of purple liquid before setting it down in the sterilizing tank and activating it.

“It worked, though.”

Smiling, I made sure to reactivate the enchantment on my stasis box before turning back to the larger and now-complete magical oil. Magical? Alchemical?

“I guess this would technically fall under witchcraft by modern definitions,” I stated, squinting at the oil in thought. “Ugh... defining the different traditions is such a fucking pain sometimes.”

I wouldn't tell the Professor that, of course.

The man lived and died by the anal-retentive traditions of sorcery.

At this point, though, I was just doing magic. I'd stopped caring what people called it a while back.

-beep!beep!-

I twitched, turning a disgusted look towards the small block of wood on my desk. “Oh, right. I haven't regretted making you this week, my mistake. Let's see...”

I tapped it, sighing as an illusion snapped into place over the thin wooden rectangle. Even though it looked like a single piece of dead tree, it was actually thin-cut strips of wood that had been painted with an elaborate series of runes before I'd glued the entire thing together and put a pair of clamps on it to keep it that way until it dried.

The result?

“Henry! You'd think you'd use these things more often! What, don't like seeing my beautiful face?”

What kind of masochist was I, that I'd gone back two and a quarter centuries and invented the magical equivalent of the smartphone?

“Hector, as I've told you many times before, I am gratified that you like my invention, but I'm often very busy during the day and can't really take calls,” I sighed. “Then I've got work for the Professor at night and-”

“Not tonight!” Hector replied cheerfully, grinning widely as I watched the scenery behind him move.

The familiar scenery.

“Why do I see Dartmouth Hall behind you?” I asked, my voice devoid of suspicion and containing only certainty. “Instead of say... a building in New York? Where you're supposed to be?”

He blinked, looked behind him, and winced. “Right, right! Sorry, it was going to be a surprise!”

I reached up and rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Are you at least making sure no one can see you use the damn thing?”

“Oh, yeah! I'm using that, ah... what'd you call it... SEP Field thing?” Hector asked awkwardly.

Taking a deep breath, I released it slowly, counting to five. “That's supposed to be for emergencies, Hector. Like if your life is in danger or there's a huge problem and you need my help.”

“There is a huge problem!” Hector grinned, still looking like he was a disreputable teenager instead of the upstanding member of society he was supposed to be. “And I do need your help! I just talked to Dr. Simons and he's taking de Jaager and Old Dutch out for drinks tonight! That means you've got the night off!”

“You've clearly thought this through and made an effective plan to overcome the obstacles in your way,” I deadpanned. “Truly, the fact that you – of all people – felt the need to do so concerns me greatly.”

“Oh, you're still a gem, Henry! It's your birthday coming up! We're going out tonight!” Hector enthused.

“My birthday isn't until next month,” I protested tiredly.

“And I'll be in Virginia by then,” Hector replied jovially. “Which means we celebrate now instead of letting you hole up in your room filled with witch's brews and other wickedness.”

“Hector, I am twelve goddamn years old,” I hissed at the man, very nearly done with his shenanigans.

“Almost thirteen! And that's good enough for me! You're out of excuses not to learn how to have a good time like a real man!” He laughed, and I saw he was drawing closer.

“For fuck's...” I groaned. “You are like the toxic, insufferable, irritating older brother I never had. You know that, right?”

“And you're the little know-it-all-brat I'd rather have as family than my real brothers,” Hector cheerfully commented. “Now, you can either lock that house down or open up. And if you don't open up, I'm taking the quarterly earnings I brought with me to the gambling house instead of dropping them off with you.”

We both knew he was bluffing, but...

He'd brought me money. And, more than that, he'd brought it early.

“Some days I wonder if I really should try Catholicism, because my forgiveness is clearly for sale,” I sighed. “Give me five minutes to wrap things up and I'll be out.”

“I'll be waiting with bells on,” Hector laughed.

I had to wonder if the man had already had a little social lubricant before heading this way.

Sighing and shaking my head, I put away the few things I still had out, reaching for the vial of oil to stash it with the rest of my third-tier creations. It wasn't anything particularly impressive, really, just a magical oil that you could dab under your eyes and would let you see magical effects, with the secondary benefit being that it somewhat increased night vision. Mostly I'd created it out of a combination of curiosity and desire to test myself against something new and outside the magic systems I was studying.

“Eh, I guess I'll field-test it,” I shrugged, uncapping the vial again and plugging the top with my finger before turning it upside down and back upright again. That left enough on my digit to coat my bottom eyelid with a thin residue.

The other reason I'd picked this particular potion to create was that it was startlingly simple. Mostly it just needed magic to properly catalyze. Nothing in the ingredients list was volatile, toxic, poisonous, caustic, or anything more exotic. Nearly everything was easy to acquire in this day and age and I could practice making it a dozen times before the Professor noticed any dip in his stocks.

I'd also been able to cross-reference the recipe from three different magic-users who all gave it a good review as a beginner's exercise.

The safe thing to do would be to engage in a round of animal testing using a few rats, turn one into a familiar, test that one too, and then test it on a human tissue sample or three.

But I was pretty damn sure that it would work as-advertised at this point.

I opened the door, aiming for my shoes next to the bench I'd grown to test out a few horticultural biomancy spells and stopped halfway.

“Boy.”

The Professor had just come out of the main laboratory.

“Sir.”

He scowled, looking me over. “Your work is done.”

It wasn't a question, but I nodded anyway. “I believe we have both been betrayed by our compatriots, Master. They seek to force us to engage in their respective frivolities.”

If anything, van Beek scowled harder and spit off to the side. Internally, I was readying a cantrip to clean that up. It was a nasty habit, but in my experience old people seldom gave a fuck. “Damn that Simons, wasting my time like this.”

Nevertheless, the old man turned to – no doubt – storm out the door in an angry huff of distemper.

Then he paused, turning to me. “Don't let that horse's ass you insist on maintaining acquaintance with drag you into anything, Apprentice. God knows I had enough idiots trying to do so to me when I was your age.”

Then, before I could recover from my mild surprise, he'd turned and stalked off, barking insults to Hector on the way out that I could easily hear.

After a moment of silence, the man himself slipped through the door and grinned at me, holding up what looked to be a bag of grain. “Henry, my good man, you absolutely must charm this thing better. It's actually quite heavy.”

I just groaned and rolled my eyes.

…

“So the rest of the money went towards Staten Island?”

“Yes, yes... though I have no idea why you want the damn thing, I'm buying up as much of it as I can, like you asked. Honestly, most of the people have been happy to sell, given the hospital on the island and the bad press around it,” Hector waved me off as we walked.

“Excellent,” I nodded, relieved that things were going so well.

“Ready to tell me why you want it?” Hector asked bluntly, raising an eyebrow.

“It's a good investment, especially without people. If I can manage to acquire all of the land that makes up the island, I can essentially turn it into a private resort for... well, projects that are very far off,” I replied.

“Henry,” Hector sighed, looking at me with his dark-eyed gaze. “I've known you for almost five years. That means I know bullshit when I hear it. What's the real reason?”

I released an aggravated sigh. “There's a major dragon vein on the island that's unclaimed and I'd like to acquire everything legally so that I can build on it and not have to worry about anyone getting irritated when I do weird magic stuff, okay?”

“Now was that so hard?” Hector grinned, then shrugged when I gave him a mild glare. “Well, anyway, you'll have the money for it. Like I said, The Quarantine's got everyone on the island irritated and half-ready to sell already. What's your plan about that, anyway? I doubt you'll be able to convince the city to move it.”

“I'll offer to take it over and run it myself as a private institution once I'm of-age or I'll sell them on building a more modern and secure facility on a smaller island with less possibility that a patient could escape and spread disease,” I stated firmly.

The latter of which was what had happened in my time, after all. The Quarantine War was a little-known aspect of New York's history, where a civil insurrection burned down pretty much the entire hospital complex, reduced its outer walls to rubble, and then set fire to the piers as well.

There was, in other words, a tad bit of resentment towards the city's government for placing the single largest quarantine facility in the entire young nation right next to their homes and businesses.

Yellow Fever, in this day and age, was no joke.

It was terrifying.

But that particular crisis likely wouldn't happen given the people closest to the facility were the ones who had sold their land the fastest, for the most part. Still, no one on the island liked the idea of living next to a ticking time bomb of one of the most dangerous diseases of the era.

But that was just the first plan. “Have the articles been helping?”

“They definitely haven't been hurting,” Hector stated. “I didn't have any idea that the place was a hotbed of Loyalist sentiment during the Revolution, but apparently a lot of the old-timers still remember it. Bringing up those memories has really painted the people complaining about The Quarantine in a bad light, too, so it's cut down on sympathy and no one wants to move there.”

“Which means less competition for the land,” I hummed. “We're still setting fair prices, right? I can afford it with all the ice we've been shipping.”

“Fair and honest,” Hector stated, holding up both hands in a surrendering expression. “It's helped turn a few people around on taking the offers, knowing that we aren't trying to twist the knife and take their land from them, so I won't complain. The big headache's been making all of the fake companies... ah, you called them 'shells' or something? Anyway, the paperwork is a real mess.”

“The upside is that the messier it is, the less likely anyone else will be able to see what we're doing,” I stated, satisfied enough to switch topics. “So, given that you dumped that big sack of gold on me, I'm guessing business has been good.”

“The slave-holding shits have been paying through the nose for reliable shipments of ice and all of our contracts with the sawmills are holding up in court,” Hector reported with a grin. “Even if they're complaining hither and yon about the deals.”

I rolled my eyes. “We offered to haul away a waste product – sawdust – from their operations and pay them for the privilege. It's not our fault they were too quick to sign the contract to see the angle.”

It wasn't as though sawdust didn't have other uses than as insulation material to keep ice cold on long ship transfers, but those uses weren't all that profitable, either. Which meant the sawmills had jumped at the chance to get rid of the stuff at a twenty-five percent markup for the going rate. It was a great deal before they knew we were going to be making money hand over fist with something they often had to throw away.

Now they weren't happy.

Thankfully, the contracts Hector had offered specified substantial periods of time and high penalty fees if they wanted to prematurely break them.

“I'll take the court cases over my family, though,” Hector grumbled, his eyes sweeping over the cold ground around us with a scowl on his lips. “Seems like everyone wants money for something these days. It's one of the reasons I'll be happy to get out of the city for a while.”

I hummed. “Normally, being an orphan, I'd tell you that you should value what you have-”

Hector gave me a raised eyebrow, silently asking who I was and what I'd done with his friend.

“-but that sounds awful. I'd rather never know my parents than have a deadbeat father or some cousin I've never heard of show up one day with a stack of debts.” I paused, frowning. “Do you want actual advice or to handle it yourself?”

My friend clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, walking in silence beside me for a few moments. “Well, I'd say it's none of your business, but I did just call you someone I'd rather have as a brother, so... shoot.”

“Take a bunch of money and set it up separately. Maybe one for each of your relatives that have asked you for money. Tell them that they have to go to the bank to get money, not to you. The account will refill every month with the standard amount and every time they want money, they'll have to explain what it's for and why they need it to the account's overseer.” I explained carefully, making sure he understood where I was going with it.

“What if they come to me asking for money after they've pulled everything out of the account?” Hector asked.

“Refuse to see them,” I shrugged. “Have your security guards escort them from the building if need be. Walk out on family dinners. Make it extraordinarily clear that you will not discuss money with them.”

“That's gonna win me a lot of friends,” Hector chuckled.

“Do you want to make friends or do you want them to stop bothering you about money?” I asked bluntly.

“Fair,” he conceded with a frown. “So that's it? Just give them money? That's your advice?”

“Give them a certain, specific, sustainable amount of money and absolutely no more than that,” I clarified. “You make just as much as I do, I know you can afford it. The problem right now is that they're trying to make a financial relationship dependent on the family relationship they have with you and it's going to sour both; eventually destroy them, probably. The question you have to ask is whether the money you've got is going to be worth more to you than never talking to your family again.”

Hector seemed to chew on that thought for a long time as we neared one of the buildings that had been converted to an inn. He'd very obviously aimed us towards the backroom, which I'd heard a few times to play host to a game of cards or dice.

“And if they decide that's not enough?” Hector finally asked. “If they say they're in debt and need more?”

“Have the man overseeing the accounts pull the records and demand that they produce their own finances,” I replied. “Then hold a family meeting to go over where all of the money is going.”

“Ouch,” Hector chuckled darkly. “You really know how to make people hurt, little brother.”

My cheeks heated and I tried to ignore how the affectionate term made me feel. “If you don't draw a line, tell them plainly: this far and no further, then they'll keep taking as much as they can.”

“I'll think about it while I'm down in Virginia,” Hector sighed. “At least my mother's not pushing things too hard. All she wants me to do is find a wife and start giving her grandchildren to spoil. She wants to meet you, too.”

I blinked, looking at him askance.

He shook his head, already knowing where I was going. “Not as the genius behind the ice plan or the steel smelters or anything. None of them know about that or they'd probably be demanding I cut you out of things and let them help run the businesses instead.”

He made a disgusted face and I grinned slightly. “So why's she want to meet me, then?”

“We're friends,” He shrugged, and I felt my cheeks heat again, more intensely. “I talk about you, not the calls themselves, but I say they're letters. She knows I like your advice, how smart I know you are and whatnot.”

“I'll, uh... we'll talk about it if I end up in New York sometime,” I muttered awkwardly.

“Well, let's talk about it later, then,” Hector shrugged, and finally opened the rear door to the inn.

“Hey, it's the birthday boy!” A group of raucous students called out, mugs already full of liquid that smelled of piss and tasted worse.

I groaned and glared half-heartedly at Hector.

He deserved it.

…

The party was...

It was a thing, I guess.

I'd sung, casually, for the first time in a long while. Even if I volunteered at the choir to keep my voice up, fill time, and throw off any potential suspicion... it was all church hymns.

Not exactly my type of music.

So my heart wasn't in it.

I inhaled deeply, raising my pitch, “Aaaah'm a man – of constant sorrow! I've seen trouble – all my days!”

The crowd around the table cheered.

“Aaah bid farewell to old Kentucky, the place where I was born and raised!”

There were some songs that needed changing and some songs that could be eternally relatable.

“Get the fiddle out and keep up if ya' can,” I grinned at Joseph Marks, who was laughing with everyone else.

“Hey, I always like a challenge,” Joe smirked, picking up the instrument. Being able to make music was the one sure-fired way to get invited to pretty much any party, backroom or otherwise. And, as always, the musician drinks free.

Some things really never changed.

“What's the tune?” He asked, fitting the rest on his cheek.

“Fast,” I smirked, going on to describe exactly what I wanted before taking a large swig of near-beer. It was still awful, but I'd cut it with fruit juice and that let it go down without too much protest. I'd also gotten shit about it from the other ten guys there, but whatever. It was either that or puke.

I'm actually starting to feel it... I'll need to cut back soon.

Nodding my head to the tune that Joe was picking up, I mentally shrugged. It wasn't perfect, but jamming at a party didn't need to be.

I cleared my throat.

“Devil went down to Georgia – He was lookin' for a soul to steal – He wasin a bine 'cause he was way behind – and he was willin' to make a deal!”

I sang a few more tunes before calling it quits with the music, much to the dismay of many of the boys. Amusements were still pretty rare and having someone who could sing like me... eh, even if it was supposed to be my party, I'd had fun.

Oak and Ash and Thorn in particular went over very well, I thought.

Maybe one day I'd end up as the first real rock star the world had ever seen.

No, wait... that was Mozart, wasn't it? Eh, he was European. It was an American tradition to ignore their achievements anyway.

“See, I told you that you'd have fun!” Hector stated, jostling me playfully.

I rolled my eyes and ignored him as I sat down, having nearly sweat through my clothes with the exertion of singing and performing.

“We should get you to sing one of those for the pastor on Sunday,” Will Grimsby snarked with a grin.

“You know they've still got lashings on the books, right?” Nicholas Day spoke up, pulling out a deck of cards. “It's why we're not on campus right now.”

It was a wise precaution, though it probably wouldn't stop any of the truly strict professors or staff from lambasting them verbally. Still, it would likely get them out of real punishment unless they made a public scene or cost someone money by damaging their property. Still, as long as no one complained, most of Dartmouth would simply roll their eyes at a bunch of students showing up for a class or event looking red-eyed and bedraggled.

“Okay, folks! Name of the game is Loo! In the name of appeasing the birthday boy, the pot is pennies only-” Nicholas continued, though groaning cut him off for a moment. “Hands are five cards, spades are trumps, and we're playing with a dummy hand for exchanges. Any questions?

At the few events like this I'd gone to – all of which were Hector's fault one way or another – I'd eventually picked up the game. Originally, I'd raised the possibility of poker, but the only guy who knew that card game even existed was from New Orleans. He'd been surprised I'd even heard of it...

Another little slip.

Thankfully, they were coming up less and less.

“You know, if you'd told me a few years ago that Burr might be president, I'd have laughed my ass off,” Tommy muttered, fanning his cards and squinting at them.

“What brought this on?” Joe asked, frowning at his own hand.

“Just thinking. We were talking about the election in class today,” Tommy replied, waving a hand. “Had to take a stance and defend it and all that muck.”

In my history, Madison had won the 1812 election pretty easily. It wasn't a complete landslide, but the Federalists had been collapsing for a long time. Here, though? Burr was a twice-over war hero who'd managed to survive coming down with Malaria. It all made a great story and the press of the day was eating it up. A wrongfully-accused hero of the revolution with bad boy appeal for fighting a duel with another famous politician whose trial had exposed a real traitor and sparked a war to defend the honor of the United States of America...

Personally, I just thought Burr had managed to steal Jackson's plot armor.

It was all very silly to me, but most popular narratives about elections and politicians were anyway.

“Who'd you pick?” Hector asked curiously, taking the trick for the turn with a clever play.

“Burr,” Tommy replied bluntly. “Even if I think he's dirtier than his trial found, he didn't let the damn slavers take Cuba for themselves, so he's earned my vote.”

“But he let them take Florida, the bastard,” James Kelly called out from where he and a man who's name I didn't know were sitting the game out and – formerly – speaking on their own. “That and the mess he made of the Jay Treaty make it obvious where his loyalty lies!”

I mentally rolled my eyes as the discussion spiraled into an argument.

Then – of course – Hector opened his mouth. “What do you think, Henry? You were right about Cuba going free all those years ago when the war started. You seem to know Burr pretty well.”

This time I rolled my physical eyes and sighed. “Burr doesn't have loyalties. He doesn't have friends, not really. His relationships – public ones, at least – are rooted in expedience. He obviously wanted to make a run for the presidency after coming off Wilkies' War-”

God, that name still made me cringe. 'Wilkinson's War.'

Really?

...well, I guess it was better than the War of 1812.

“-so he knew he'd need southern votes. In politics especially, the perfect is the enemy of the good enough. Trying to keep Florida a free territory – state, now – was never going to happen without a significant natural boundary. That's the only reason why Cuba got away with it.”

Well, that and the large population of heavily armed former slaves that Burr 'accidentally' allowed to walk off with a few artillery pieces and a whole store of ammunition.

“And what about the Jay Treaty?” Tommy asked, speaking up. “That one stumped me in class. Why'd he get compensation for the slaves the British freed during the American Revolution?”

“Well, first off, even if everyone's calling it the Burr Treaty, the bulk of the work was done by Jefferson and his Secretary of State,” which was another rather jarring change from my time.

Thomas Small Government Jefferson had run for a third term to 'finish the war Spain had started.'

And he'd won.

Part of me wondered if he'd been trying to make sure Burr died during the war given how personally he'd taken everything. That was probably hyperbole, though. Still, the historians of tomorrow were going to have so much fun with this little contradiction in Jefferson's character.

As a result, though, we were entering an election year with no incumbent candidate where there should have been one.

So Madison versus Burr could go either way.

“But Burr greased the wheels,” Tommy pointed out. “He opened up a backchannel with that general he met, Packing-whatever, and got that and the impressment issue settled.”

“According to Burr himself, yes,” I nodded, not bothering to hide my skepticism. The only man who could really refute him was Jefferson himself and that wasn't going to happen. His third term had been kind of a mess and I don't think he was leaving his plantation anytime soon to dip his toe in. In a different time in history, I'd just say he was done with this shit. “But even if you believe that, it's one thing to have a handshake agreement and another to be the one to write out everything, present it to diplomats and heads of state, and actually get it signed.”

Tommy made a little bit of a face at that, but I continued.

“But Burr's taking responsibility for it because he knows he needs southern votes, like I said. If he's going to win the election over Madison, he'll need to be able to have concrete proof that his personal feelings won't interfere in his ability to steer the nation. Even if he was willing to give Cuba a push towards freedom with a large population of free – armed – blacks, he's still made a lot of friends by settling the issue of compensation for American slaveholders in their favor.”

The game went on, politics making the rounds as tricks were picked up and, eventually, I lost pretty firmly.

“Alright, ladies and gentlemen, and you know who each one of those is,” Hector called out, to much laughter. “The hour draws near where we must depart, but before we leave... a toast!”

William perked up and reached down to pull up a full bottle of wine. “Our contribution to the party. End things on a high note, why not?”

“And a gift!” Hector continued, looking at Kelly with a hand out.

The other brown-haired young man rolled his eyes. “You're lucky you're paying for all this or I'd give you a gift all right.”

So said, a thick document case was handed over to Hector, who handed it over to me as I eyed it with a bit of trepidation. Hector smirked, “See, I've still got a few contacts at the school as a wealthy alumni and a little bird told me that James' grandfather just passed-”

“God rest his soul,” Hector interrupted himself, turning with a respectful nod to James.

“Thanks,” James nodded back, his scowl lessening.

“-but, there were a few things that James' father was looking to get rid of in the wake of his father's passing,” Hector explained, tapping the case in my hands. “Specifically, a certain copy of a certain document I know you hold in high esteem.”

I blinked and stared at the man in incomprehension for a long moment before it clicked.

I tore the lid off the case and carefully pulled the parchment paper out, unfurling it just slightly.

My eyes widened and my breath caught in my throat.

It wasn't all that legible, really, the ink having faded slightly over the course of forty years and the messy scrawl being a far cry from the neat text of a type-set print.

But I'd had a lot of practice interpreting worse penmanship.

“In Congress, July 4, 1776. The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” I paused, skipping to the first full paragraph. “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

My eyes slowly widened even further, almost bulging as I saw the bits and pieces of scribbling on the document. I knew the start of the text almost by heart, but... there were parts missing. Small ink stains crossing out some areas and drawing blocks of text in.

“My grandfather worked for John Dunlap when he printed off the broadside copies,” James stated, startling me out of my fugue. “That isn't one of those, sorry about that. It's just one of the copies they had to transcribe the broadside from, so it's kind of a mess. Honestly, it has so many marks on it that we might have just thrown it away if Hector hadn't contacted us.”

I kept my grip on the parchment slack and gentle, even though I wanted nothing more than to toss it aside so that I could leap over the table and start strangling the teen.

You were going to throw this away?!

I took a calming breath and nodded, smiling at Hector and James. “Thanks, both of you. It's amazing.”

Hector breathed out a sigh of relief. “Great. I was worried. James was the only one willing to sell that I could find on short notice. Maybe next year I'll get you a proper Dunlap Broadside instead of that mess. Consider it an IOU.”

I twitched, noting the singular signature at the bottom, and carefully rolled it back up into the document case.

The toast to my health, and a second one to the departed Andrew Jackson, defender of the Spanish attempt on New Orleans, passed in a haze as the party ran down. Eventually, Hector and I were walking back, only a bit unsteadily, towards the Professor's house.

“So, yeah... sorry. I was in talks with this guy with a Broadside, but he took ill and we weren't able to make the sale. Hearing about James' grandfather was just a lucky stroke,” Hector laughed.

“This is worth at least a hundred times whatever you paid for it,” I stated bluntly, holding the case tightly to my chest.

Hector blinked, raising an eyebrow as he swayed slightly. “Oh? How'd you figure? I looked it over, you can barely read it.”

“That's because it was hand-written, you nincompoop!” I nearly growled, turning to look at him with a glint in my eye. “Tell me, Hector, who would be hand-writing an incomplete copy of the Declaration of Independence? Who?”

Hector blinked, stared at me, his eyes slowly drifting down to the document case in my hands.

“Aah,” he muttered, looking a bit stunned.

“The author of the Declaration itself!” I whispered venomously, my eyes still a bit wild. “Thomas fucking Jefferson! This isn't messy slop! This is one of the original goddamn drafts, you nitwit!”

“Aah,” Hector repeated, opening and closing his mouth a few times.

I took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Thank you for the excellent gift, Hector. You are my best friend and someone I would be honored to call a brother, but please for the love of the almighty himself, learn to use your common sense.”

“I'll... see about that,” Hector nodded slowly, distantly.

We stared at each other, then slowly, painstakingly, began to laugh with just a tinge of drunken awkwardness. Hector grinned and opened his mouth to say something...

Which was when the sound of rapid footsteps caught our attention.

Both of us blinked, slow to react, and turned to where the evening sun was already setting.

A young girl with dark skin and green hair was running down a woodland path towards us, three men chasing her.

~~~

...and just under the deadline! This took another day than expected, but it's also over 6k because a scene ran long, so there's that.

Here we go with another chapter of Henry Bell's adventures, starting with that most difficult of opponents! A social engagement!

Also, Hector being Hector. That's a thing, too.

Get ready for a little inside scoop on how Henry's been changing things and a few notes on how the war turned out in the background.

Thank you for your support and patience, votes for July will be up and running in a few hours!