"Oh no you don't, you're not getting this one," the goose walked down the rest of the stairs and said.

"What's going on?" Robert asked the goose.

"That's not a woman, it's the cat, it came here to seduce you."

Robert looked back from the goose to the woman at the door, and sure enough there was a calico cat sitting where the woman had been standing.

"You actually managed to catch me this time, you're normally not so quick," the cat said, slinking into the house.

"How did you know where to find us?" The goose asked.

"Your movements were very conspicuous, I've been keeping track of you ever since you started trying to find out who was responsible for the crop infection. One of the Missucci's told me that they lost track of you after they'd tracked you down to this location, and ever since then I've been quietly watching this place."

"So if you knew that we were all here then you didn't come here to seduce Robert."

"No, I didn't, I came here to propose a trade."

"What are you offering?"

"The raven had me seduce Jim Balmer so that it could blackmail him, so there's a lot that I could offer."

"And what is it that you want in return?"

"I want you to promise me that if the raven fails you'll protect me."

"It's not often that you look to hedge your bets, which means that there's something about what the raven's up to that worries you."

"The Raven's being very ambitious, overly ambitious, I think, there are a lot of moving parts to its plan and if just one of them fails then everything that the raven's trying to do is going to end in failure, and there are already some cracks that are starting to appear."

"What kind of cracks?"

"Well for starters Jim Balmer isn't happy with John Lafferty being brought on board because he believes The Church of the Golden Goose to be anti-Christian blasphemy, and there are many other conflicts."

"This is what I expected, which means that if we strike at the perfect moment and target the points of weakness between them with our strike it could be enough to give us a decisive victory. I'm prepared to accept your offer, on the grounds that you turn over something of value to us."

"Check your postbox after I've left, I placed the most valuable thing I have to offer in there. Use it wisely."

With that the cat left the house and disappeared into the night. Robert went to check the postbox and found a brown envelope with a CD inside. On the CD was the video of Jim Balmer having sex with what he believed to be his housekeeper Consuela but what was actually the cat in the same disguise she had visited Robert's house in. The video was big, big enough potentially to sink Jim Balmer's campaign. The cat had been extremely generous by sharing this with them, so generous in fact that Robert wondered if there wasn't more going on here.

"I'm not sure we should be so quick to trust the cat, it might have been sent here by the raven," he said to the goose after they had watched the video.

"I doubt that, I've known the cat long enough to know how she operates. Her primary concern isn't helping the raven, she's got her own ambitions that she pursues regardless of whether those ambitions run counter to the raven's. For example, when she took the form of Cleopatra and made Mark Antony fall in love with her it was because she genuinely wanted them to rule as a couple, it just so happened that things fell apart to the benefit of Augustus and the raven."

"So what's she after now?"

"I don't know, but if she's open to working against the raven like this it means she thinks that there's more than a good chance of the raven failing, which is good news for us."

Robert wasn't prepared to put aside his concerns about the cat quite so easily but the goose was vouching for her and she had provided them with valuable information, all he could do for now was trust that the goose was right about this one while they waiting for developments to materialize elsewhere.