Whiskers crouched on the mushroom cottage roof and watched the warden's lantern move through the trees. He had three minutes, maybe four. Below him, a crowd of tenants he had spent all week organizing was still arguing at the mossy table in the yard, passing around the list of grievances he'd written for them. If the warden reached the yard before they signed it, every name on that paper would belong to the wrong side of the ledger, and Whiskers would be in a cage before sunrise. He was a cat boy with angel wings, dressed in black, and he hated that strangers on Zadar 1 kept mistaking the wings for a promise. He was not a savior. He wanted the throne of this world, and he wanted it so he could drag the ledger out and burn it. The neighborhood he grew up in had taught him how the sorting worked. He had been sorted wrong his whole life, and he had stopped waiting for anyone to correct it. The warden's lantern cleared the last row of trees. Whiskers dropped from the roof, landed in the doorway of the cottage, and shoved the door open. Inside, a huge cat with purple horns and slime-slick fur lifted its head from the hearth rug. He had been feeding it scraps for a month for exactly this favor. "Yard," Whiskers said. "Loud as you can. Don't bite anyone." The horned cat trotted out and roared. The tenants scattered from the table. The warden shouted and swung the lantern toward the noise, and in the second his light was off the yard, Whiskers snatched the grievance list off the table, folded it into his jacket, and shoved the nearest tenant toward the tree line. "Go. Sign it tomorrow. Different house." The tenants ran. The horned cat crashed through the hedge and vanished. The warden was left in an empty yard with a scared animal's tracks and no witnesses. Whiskers watched from the air, wings working hard, the list safe against his ribs. He saw the warden bend down, pick something up from the dirt, and hold it to the lantern. It was one of Whiskers's own black feathers. The warden turned it in his fingers a long time before he tucked it into his coat. He had gotten the list out. He had kept his people out of the cage. But the authority on Zadar 1 now had a feather, and a feather on this world was as good as a name. Whiskers landed on a branch and pulled the list from his jacket. Twenty-two signatures. Not enough to rule anything yet. Enough to be hunted for. He looked back toward the glowing cottage and started counting who he needed next.

Whiskers landed in the dark yard behind the old castle and pressed the folded list flat against his chest. Twenty-two names. He needed forty before the next warden sweep, and no tenant would sign for a stranger with black wings and a warrant on his feathers. He needed someone the others already trusted. He had been circling the castle for two nights because he had heard something move in its walls. He found the boy by following the sound of chewing. A cat boy with big ears sat under a broken gargoyle, eating a crust of bread. His clothes were gray and patched. He did not stand up when Whiskers approached. He looked at the wings once and went back to the bread. "You live here," Whiskers said. "In the shafts. Not the rooms." The boy swallowed. "I'm Fluffy. I don't want saving." "Good. I'm not saving anyone." Whiskers sat down on the mossy chair across from him. A small weathered table stood between them, lichen crusting its edge. He put the list on the wood. "The warden takes a cut from every tenant in this sector. I wrote down what he takes. Twenty-two people signed. I need forty. The people who haven't signed don't know me. They know the kid who runs the vents and steals nothing." Fluffy read the list slowly. His finger moved across each name. "They feed me sometimes," he said. "The old ones on the third floor. The laundry woman. The man with the bad leg." He looked up. "If I bring you to them, and the warden catches us, I lose my shafts. I lose the quarters my mother left. I lose the registry I'm still trying to reach." "Then we do it in one night," Whiskers said. "You knock. I stay in the hall. They sign or they don't. We move to the next door before the warden's route brings him back around. You get half of what I take from the warden's strongbox when this is done. Enough to bribe a clerk at any registry you want." He pushed the list closer. "I need you to say my name is safe. That's all." Fluffy stared at the paper a long time. Then he tore a strip from his sleeve, dipped it in the candle wax pooling on the table, and pressed his thumb into the soft wax. He handed the mark to Whiskers. "That's my word. I say it twice so you hear it. My word. Tonight only, and forty doors, and then we count." Whiskers folded the wax mark into the list. They left the yard together before the moon cleared the tower. By the time the warden's lantern passed the west wall, Fluffy was already knocking on the first door, and a tenant Whiskers had never spoken to was reaching for the pen.