It let that sit for a while.

Then it tucked its paws under itself, more comfortably, and settled into the position of something that had decided to talk for a while.

"Right," it said. "Let me try to do this without making your head hurt more than necessary. There are things I am allowed to tell you and things I am not. I'll do my best to flag the difference as we go."

It looked at Dante's right hand.

"That mark," it said. "On the back of your hand. The broken sun."

Dante looked down at it. Looked back up.

"That's mine."

"Yours?"

"Mine. The mark of my domain. Or it was, when I had a domain." The cat blinked once, slowly. "You were not supposed to receive it. You were not supposed to be Awakened at all. You and I both know what happened in that hall. The crystal looked at you and it looked at me — looked at where I am, looked at what I am — and it didn't know what to call back. So it didn't call. So Solis —" the name was said neutrally, the way you might say *the bus driver*, "— told you what he tells everyone the crystal can't read for. *Tainted Soul.* As if the failure were yours."

"Am I one?"

"Oh, you are absolutely a Tainted Soul. That part he got right. He was simply wrong about what the word means and about whose fault it was."

The cat's tail flicked.

"It is, however, my fault you are *that particular kind* of Tainted Soul. We should be honest about this. When the Heptarchy summons souls across the dark between worlds, the call passes through certain old places. I happen to live in one of those places. I am — these days — a kind of resident in the cracks between the things that are *officially* there. When the call took you, it brought you very close to where I am."

A pause.

"So I touched you."

Dante stared at it.

"I touched you. Lightly. Once. As you were falling between worlds. You did not feel it. There was a great deal else going on. What I left in you was a *seed*. Very small. Very dormant. A Blessing cannot simply be planted; it has to be activated, fed, named. But a seed can wait."

"You — you put something in me."

"I did."

"Without asking."

"Without asking. Yes."

"While I was unconscious."

"To be fair, you were not unconscious. You were *between bodies*. There is a difference. Mostly to me."

Dante stared at the cat.

The cat stared back, completely composed.

"Let me see if I have this right," Dante said slowly. "I was falling through the dark between worlds. And you — you, who I had never met. Who I did not know existed. Who looks like a *cat* —"

"At the moment."

"— *touched me* without asking. And put a thing inside me. That has been *growing* in me ever since."

"That is an accurate summary, yes."

"And then I went into a room full of *other* gods, who did not notice."

"Correct."

"And one of them put his giant finger on my chest."

"He did."

"And he didn't notice either."

"He did not."

A long pause.

"That's —" Dante said.

"Yes."

"That's *deeply* messed up."

"I have no defense. It is exactly as bad as it sounds. Do you know what was funniest about it, in retrospect?"

"What."

"He stood there. Solis. Looking *directly* at the place where I had planted the seed. With his enormous finger pointed *directly at it*. Looking for a Blessing. And he saw nothing, because the seed had not yet bloomed, because I had not yet *told* it to bloom. It was right under his finger. He could not see it. So he turned around and gave a small speech to the assembled gods about what a sad little broken creature you were, and walked away. And while he walked away —" the cat's tail flicked once, with what Dante was beginning to recognize as deep professional satisfaction, "— while he walked back to the throne and they all started arguing about who he had and hadn't consulted, *I activated it*."

"From a distance."

"From a great distance, in fact. I was very pleased with myself. I am still very pleased with myself."

Dante put his face in his hands.

"I am a *crime scene.*"

"You are a crime scene with a Blessing. There are worse things to be."

Dante laughed. It came out rough. The cat's eyes brightened by some small amount.

"Why," Dante said.

"Why which part."

"Who. Who am I to you. Why did you pick me."

The cat was quiet for a moment.

When it answered, the voice was less dry than it had been. Not warm. Not soft. But — *attended to*. The way you spoke when you wanted to be sure the words landed cleanly.

"Because the others looked at you and saw a defect. I looked at you and saw something different." A beat. "I am not going to tell you what. Not today. You haven't earned that part. You have earned the part where someone told you the question itself was wrong."

"The question?"

"*Why me* is the wrong question. The right question is *who*. *Who* picked you, *who* you picked back, *who* you become from here. The *what* is mine. The *who* is yours. We are about to talk about the *who*."

It uncurled itself slightly. Stretched. Settled back.

"But first," it said, "I owe you a name. Mine. Such as it is."

---

The cat looked at him for a long second.

Then it said, with the resigned air of someone about to do something that had not worked the last several thousand times either:

"My name is —"

What came out wasn't a word.

It was the *shape* of a word — Dante could feel his ears trying to receive it, his brain trying to catch it — but somewhere between the cat's mouth and Dante's understanding, the word *broke*. It distorted. It folded in on itself. It came out as a sound that wasn't a sound, a syllable that wasn't a syllable, something that sat in the middle of his head for half a second and then *unhappened*, leaving only the memory that something had been said.

The cat's face — or what passed for a face on a cat — did something that, on a human, would have been *an exhale of long-suffering tiredness*.

"Of course."

It tried again.

"My name is —"

The same thing. Worse this time. The air around the cat shimmered briefly, the way air shimmered above hot asphalt in summer. One of the small white flowers near Dante's foot blackened at the tip and drifted into nothing.

"*Oh, for —*"

The cat's tail lashed once, hard, against the moss.

"They are *still* doing this. Hundreds of years, and they are *still* — I will not get into it. I will not. Right." It composed itself, visibly. "Listen. There is a curse on my name. A binding. It was placed on me a very long time ago by — let us say *parties who did not wish my name remembered*. It does not allow the name to be spoken cleanly. I can try, the way you have just heard me try, and the world will eat the word before it reaches you. It will reach you eventually, by other paths. Not today. Not from my mouth."

It looked at him.

"I am sorry. It is — *embarrassing*, as an introduction. I have not had to make this introduction in a long time and it is not improving with rest. You may, for the time being, call me whatever you find convenient. *Crow* is fine. So is *Cat*. Or *Sir*, if you are in a generous mood, which I suspect you are not."

Dante laughed. It surprised him. It was a small bad laugh that came out of his nose more than his mouth, but it was a laugh.

The cat's eyes brightened by some small amount.

"There," it said. "Good. That's the first one."

"The first what."

"The first laugh. It's been a long day. You needed one. I am not, despite appearances, *entirely* indifferent to how long this is taking you."

It settled itself again.

"Now. To the practical."

---

"The world you are sitting in," the cat said, "is — for our purposes — generous. It does not love outsiders, but it tolerates them. There are villages. There are roads. There are people, for the most part, who will sell you bread and not stab you for it, provided you don't give them obvious reasons to."

"Where am I."

"Approximately? On a continent the inhabitants call *the Old Continent*. In a forest that, last I checked, did not have a particular name, because the forest is large and the inhabitants are not in the habit of naming things they cannot fence."

"Last you checked."

The cat paused. Just barely.

"I am going to be honest with you about a thing. My information is — *not current*. I have been where I am for a long time. I see what filters down to me, which is not much, and what I see is often years out of date. There may be a village to the east. There almost certainly is, the geography has not historically moved. Whether the *people* in it are still the people who were in it the last time I was paying attention — I cannot promise."

"You don't *know.*"

"I do not know."

A beat. The forest noises went on.

"That is —" Dante started. He did not know how to finish.

"It is not ideal. I am aware. I am sending you toward a village I cannot guarantee still exists, in a world whose current weather and current wars and current *fashions in violence* I cannot accurately predict. I would do better if I could. I cannot. It is the situation."

The cat looked away briefly. When it looked back, its expression — to the extent a cat had expressions — had gone slightly more guarded.

"There are things you should know," it said, "that I cannot tell you. There are things you *will* learn — about me, about why I am where I am, about what was done and what was undone and what is still ongoing — and you will learn them on a schedule that is not mine to set. There is — supposedly — a book. I have heard about it only recently. I do not know who wrote it. I do not know where it is. I do not know whether it still exists, or whether it ever existed at all and is not simply a rumor that grew teeth. Written, by some accounts, in a particular ink. By a particular hand. If you find it, you will know more than you know now. I cannot point you at it. I can only tell you that the rumor reached even me, which means it has reached others, which means someone, somewhere, is looking for it. Possibly several someones. You may eventually be one of them."

"How do I —"

"I don't know. That's the answer to the next three questions. I don't know."

A pause.

"Which brings us, I suppose, to the question you have been carrying around in your chest since the hall."

"Which one."

"You know which one."

He did.

He took a breath. The breath came out shakier than he'd wanted it to.

"What," he said, "is a *Tainted Soul*."