Mittens's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Mittens waited until Whiskers passed the cottage door, then followed at ten paces. The lantern light caught something on the back of his hand she had missed at dusk. A mark. Black ink pressed into the skin in a shape she did not know. That was his claim on the gray cat inside. Until she broke it, the soul behind the door was not hers to touch. She called his name across the field. He stopped and turned. "Show me the mark," she said. "Or fight me for it." He looked at his own hand, then at her red coat. "You can't read it," he said. "So it holds." He started to walk on. Mittens drew her tail across the grass and cut a line of red fire between him and the door. He stopped again. "Fine," he said. They moved off the field so the cottage would not burn. Whiskers led her to an old ruin at the sector's edge, a stone keep swallowed by moss and vines, gargoyles staring down from every corner. A flying kitten shot past her ear and landed on a broken wall. A big purple-horned cat with slick fur watched from the garden. A catgirl in a brown cloak, antlers rising from her hair, stood inside the arch. "Witnesses," Whiskers said. "So the claim transfers clean, if it transfers." He told her the rule. A claim mark could be broken by combat, or it could be broken by heir. Whoever produced an heir first held every soul the other had marked. Mittens laughed once. Then she saw his face and stopped. "Combat," she said. He nodded. His wings opened. Her tail lit. They fought across the courtyard for what felt like an hour. He was faster than she remembered. She was angrier than he remembered. He cut her shoulder. She burned a stripe across his ribs. Neither could finish the other. The antlered witness finally stepped between them and raised one hand. "Stalemate," she said. "By the old rule, the claim stands until the second condition is met." The slime-furred cat nodded. The winged kitten nodded. Whiskers wiped blood from his mouth and looked at Mittens across the stones. "Heir, then," he said. "Or walk out of my sector." Mittens did not answer. She turned and walked back through the arch, past the gargoyles, into the dark field. The mark on his hand had not broken. Meowza was still his. But the witnesses had spoken, and the second door was open now, and she carried that knowledge out with her like a coal in her coat. She had come to take a soul. She had one favor left. And the only path left to it ran through a child that did not yet exist.