Mittens's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Mittens left the ruin with the second rule burning in her head. An heir. She needed a father, and she needed one before Whiskers found a mother. She walked back through his sector with her tail low and her coat open, counting the infernal names she could still call. Most owed her nothing. Two owed her too much and would use the debt against her. One was already dead. By the time she reached the crooked house at the sector's edge, she had four names left and no faith in any of them. The house leaned under a green roof, its windows lit yellow from inside. She had used it before, when she still had standing. A study kept by an old court that answered infernal summons for a price. She pushed the door open and did not knock. Inside, the air smelled of wax and old paper. A long wall held a painted mural of a horned dragon-cat seated on a marble floor, its wings half open. She had summoned through that mural twice in better years. She cut her palm on her own claw and pressed the blood to the frame. She named the first sire. She named the second. She named the third. She named the fourth. The mural stayed cold under her hand. She waited. Nothing answered. No heat, no voice, no shift in the paint. She understood then. Word had traveled. Whiskers had put it out that she was hunting a father, and every infernal who might have said yes had chosen to say nothing. The stalemate at the ruin had not made her feared. It had made her a poor bet. She wiped her hand on her coat and turned to leave. A small sound stopped her. A boy sat on the stairs above the study, cat ears folded, bare feet on the wood. He was maybe ten. He watched her the way children watch a fight through a fence. "You're the red one," he said. "Whiskers talks about you. I take signatures for him. He pays me half of what he lifts from the warden." He paused. "He's looking for a mother. He told me last night. He said he'd have one by the week's end." Mittens sat down on the bottom stair. The mural behind her stayed dark. Four names, four refusals, and a child on the steps telling her the other side had already moved. She had come in with one favor and one path. The path was closed. Whiskers would produce an heir before she could, and when he did, every soul she had ever marked would pass to him, and Meowza would be sealed to him for good. She looked up at the boy. "What's your name," she said. He told her. She said it back once, to remember, and started thinking about what a child who worked for Whiskers might be willing to sell.