Mittens walked down the middle of the market road in a red coat that no one in this sector was foolish enough to wear. Her devil tail flicked behind her. Vendors pulled their children inside. She had come to Whiskers's sector to finish what he started when he cut her out of their court without a word, and she planned to do it by taking something he loved. She had traded three infernal favors for the right to corrupt one pure celestial soul into her service. She had only enough favors left for one attempt. The problem was picking the right soul. Whiskers's sector was full of winged strays and hedge-saints and small bright creatures that looked pure at a glance. Corrupt the wrong one and the favors burned off like paper. She had been watching for three days and had narrowed it down to two. The first was a flying kitten that lived above the fruit stalls. It swooped down for scraps and let children pet its wings. Sweet, yes. But Mittens crouched in an alley and watched it steal a coin from a blind woman's cup, then hide the coin under a loose tile. Not pure. Already halfway to her side on its own. A waste. The second lived in a mushroom-shaped cottage at the edge of the sector, a small round building with lanterns strung along the vines. Mittens had heard the name Meowza spoken with the careful softness people used for saints. She crossed the field at dusk and looked through the round window. Inside, a gray cat with pale horns sat before a wall painting of a horned dragon cat, praying. The cat had emptied her own bowl into a smaller bowl for a stray at the door. She had bandaged the stray's paw. She was humming. Mittens watched for an hour and saw no lie in any of it. This was the one. She could feel the favors in her chest lean toward the cottage like iron toward a magnet. She turned to go and mark the choice, and a shadow crossed the lantern light. Whiskers stood at the end of the path in his black hoodie, white wings folded tight, yellow eyes on her. He had not been there a moment before. "Wrong door," he said. "That one's mine already." He did not raise his voice. He did not explain. He walked past her toward the cottage and did not look back. Mittens stayed where she was, one attempt left, and now she knew two things she had not known an hour ago. Meowza was the right target. And Whiskers had gotten there first.

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.

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.

Mittens stayed on the bottom stair after the boy went quiet. Fluffy watched her from three steps up, bare feet tucked under him. She asked him what Whiskers paid for signatures. He told her. She asked what Whiskers paid for names. He said Whiskers had never asked for names. She said she would. She offered him a cut of any favor she pulled loose in the sector, and safe passage through any door she opened. Fluffy said he was working toward a shaft in the castle where the birth records were kept. He said if the records weren't there, he was leaving the station. He said it twice, in different words, so she would know he meant it. Mittens said she could get him to that shaft faster than crawling. He thought about it and nodded once. He told her what he knew. Whiskers had four names on his short list for a mother, and three had already turned him down for the same reason her sires had turned her down. The fourth was thinking. Fluffy also said the infernals were not the only court that answered summons in this sector. He said an arbiter with antlers had taken rooms above the study after the fight at the ruin, and had not left. Mittens knew the one. The same arbiter who had called her stalemate. Neutral by office. Present by choice. She stood up and told Fluffy to wait. She climbed the stairs past him. The arbiter opened the door before Mittens knocked. A catgirl in a brown wool cloak, antlers clean, one hand bare and unmarked. She let Mittens in without a word and poured two cups of something warm. Mittens set her problem on the table plainly. She needed a father. No infernal would answer. She was not asking the arbiter to rule. She was asking the arbiter to stand. The arbiter listened, then held up her bare hand. No celestial mark. No infernal mark. She said an arbiter's child would count as an heir under both courts, because an arbiter belonged to neither. She said the price was her weight in the outcome. Whatever Mittens did with Meowza's soul afterward, the arbiter would witness and record, and Mittens would not contest the record. Mittens said yes before the cup cooled. The arbiter cut her own palm and pressed it to Mittens's cut palm from the mural downstairs. The blood took. Something warm moved under Mittens's ribs and settled. She had a father. She had a witness. She had, for the first time since the ruin, a clock that ran with her instead of against her. Downstairs, Fluffy was still on the step, waiting to be paid.

Mittens came down the stairs with the pact still warm under her ribs. Fluffy was where she had left him. She paid him the first half of what she owed and told him the rest came after the shaft. Then she said the part he would not like. She had a father and a witness, but no mother. No womb. Whiskers had one woman still thinking, and Fluffy had said days, not weeks. Fluffy chewed his lip and said there was someone who moved biotech through the sector's back rooms. A woman with horns she did not need. He said she owed no one and answered to no court. Mittens told him to send word. They met in the garden behind the old castle, at a mossy table under the wisteria. The woman came alone. Black coat, tall horns strapped to her head, a black cat riding her shoulder. She sat without shaking hands. Mittens said what she needed. A viable womb-vessel, cleared for implantation, ready inside two days. Noir listened. She did not blink at devil or claim or heir. When Mittens finished, Noir said, "I don't grow people." Mittens said she was not asking her to. She was asking her to find one already grown and already loose in the market. Noir tapped the table once. "Cost." Mittens laid out her last infernal favor. A single pull, transferable, good in any court that took infernal paper. Noir's mouth moved a little at one corner. She said she was working a job. A neural implant, missing three rotations, owner failing without it. She said if Mittens spent the favor to surface the implant before it got wiped, she would spend her contacts to surface a vessel. Even trade, both by tomorrow night, or neither. Mittens agreed. She burned the favor at the table. Noir felt it land somewhere in her network and stood up. The cat on her shoulder yawned. By the next night Noir sent a name and an address. A woman in the lower rings, already carrying, willing to sell the child forward under infernal terms for a price Mittens could cover with what Fluffy had not yet claimed. The implant surfaced the same hour, three streets from where Noir had been looking. Mittens met the seller, signed with the arbiter present, and the vessel was hers before the sector clock turned. She walked out of the lower rings with a mother contracted, a father bound, and a witness on record. Whiskers still had one woman thinking. Mittens now had one already carrying. The clock she had bought yesterday now ran two lengths ahead of his. She sent Fluffy word to be ready at the shaft. Meowza's soul was no longer a question of if. Only of when, and of what she would do to it once the heir drew breath.