The sins of the Seventeen Houses poured into Cassian.
The first was the adjudicator's theft of memory.
Thousands of black coins rolled inside his throat. Cassian forgot the name of a child he had never fathered and remembered the dinner table of a house he had never visited.
The second was Isen Bale's collection of years.
His right hand became twenty-two.
His left became sixty-seven.
The young hand tried to break the old hand's fingers one by one.
The third pipe opened.
The sin of locking a granary during a famine.
Cassian's stomach swelled. Bread and meat he had never eaten rose to his throat, while the skin of his back clung to his ribs like a starving man's.
Fourth.
The torture of prisoners of war.
Other people's teeth grew beneath his fingernails.
Fifth.
The sale of illegitimate children to keep a family tree clean.
Unknown children's names spread like blood beneath Cassian's name.
The portraits on the walls changed.
The dead adjudicator's face became Cassian's. So did Isen Bale's young face. The black cloths fell from the remaining portraits.
Men and women, old and young—all wore the face of Cassian Crow.
The world had already begun reading the sins of the Seventeen Houses as his.
"Stop!"
Adel ran toward the family tree.
An assessor grabbed her. She struck his jaw with Cassian's scabbard, and he fell.
"How do I turn it off?"
She questioned another assessor.
"You cannot."
"You built it."
"We only manage the order."
The assessor laughed against the wall.
"What built it is far older. It was made to return everything when the owner of the sins came back."
The adjudicator laughed inside Cassian's throat.
I will make you forget.
Adel looked at him.
"Are you alive?"
"Still."
"A way out?"
"Found one."
Cassian was watching the golden branches of the family tree.
Sin did not flow at random.
Beneath every portrait were three grooves.
Parent.
Spouse.
Heir.
Whenever a red pipe discharged sin, the groove of the nearest blood relative lit first. If a lawful heir lived, the sin followed that branch. If none did, it passed through a marriage house and descended to the cheapest defendant.
For centuries, the Seventeen Houses had married one another.
One new heir could therefore become the drain for all seventeen.
Cassian placed a hand on the dead adjudicator's portrait.
"I will make you forget."
This time he did not suppress the adjudicator's voice. He swallowed it whole.
The last breath rose from Cassian's lungs into his throat.
He spoke in the adjudicator's voice.
"I recognize Cassian Crow as my heir."
A golden branch grew toward Cassian's name. The flow from the red pipes stopped for a moment.
The first attempt appeared to have worked.
Then a woman's face surfaced in the family tree.
Celia Barn.
The dead adjudicator's lawful daughter.
Residence: the eastern imperial villa.
Alive.
Golden letters erased Cassian's name.
`A lawful direct heir exists.`
`The junior branch is rejected.`
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The red pipes opened again.
The sixth sin entered Cassian's spine.
Prison keys sprouted from every bone in his body. Not one of them fit a door.
Cassian dropped to one knee.
The Church called this an assessment chamber.
Those who had sat in its chair would have called it a torture chamber.
The master of a torture chamber was not the one who endured the torture.
It was the one who chose who sat in the chair next.
Cassian looked at Martin Roe.
Martin was looking back.
The cobbler had been released from the chair, but the locked door kept him from escaping. Shackles still hung from both wrists.
Then the drain beneath the chair inhaled.
"Please save me."
It was Adel's voice.
Adel froze.
The same voice spoke again from below.
"Before Cassian Crow kills me."
Cassian tore away the iron grate.
There was no person beneath it.
Only a throat and a pair of breathing lungs hung from the red pipes.
The throat was not made of flesh.
Burns. Cuts. The pain of broken bones. Fever chills.
The wounds Adel had transferred from other bodies into her own throughout her life had stitched themselves together and were imitating the shape of flesh.
Each time the lungs inhaled, one of Adel's old scars pulled tight.
"That is not me," Adel said.
"It has your voice."
"And my wounds."
"Does that not make it yours?"
"What I received and what I am are not the same."
A death tag hung beneath the red pipes.
`Adel Venati.`
`Perpetrator: Cassian Crow.`
`Scheduled execution: tonight.`
Adel reached toward the pipe.
"We have to open it."
Cassian raised the scabbard between her and the pipe.
"And then?"
"I will take the wounds back."
"All of them will kill you."
"Leave it there and it will keep calling people in my voice."
Cassian did not cut the pipe.
He tore off only the death tag.
"What are you doing?"
"Finding who scheduled a murder I have not committed under my name."
"What about that?"
The proxy body begged to be saved again.
Cassian put the tag inside his coat.
"It will live until tonight."
He was not promising to save it. He was preserving it so the execution time written on the tag would remain accurate.
"Are you going to die too?" Martin asked.
"No."
"After taking all of that?"
"I am not taking it."
Cassian looked at him.
Martin stepped back.
"Why are you looking at me?"
"Inheritance requires blood."
"My blood has nothing to do with those people."
"Not yet."
Martin ran for the door. The chamber would not let him out.
Cassian raised a hand.
Weight settled into Martin's empty sinmark.
Weight of Sin should have been light upon a man without sin. But this room overflowed with the sins of the Seventeen Houses pouring into Cassian. He placed part of that burden upon Martin's shadow.
The cobbler's knees struck the floor.
"Adel."
Cassian held out his hand.
"The sword."
She did not give it to him.
"What are you going to cut?"
"Not a person."
"I have no reason to believe that."
"None."
The seventh pipe opened.
Another person's heart began beating in Cassian's chest. It drove his blood in a rhythm opposed to his own heart.
The alignment seam split wide.
Adel drew the sword. She did not throw it to him. She carried it to his side herself.
"I will cut it."
"Then you become the one who transferred it."
"And if I give it to you?"
"Things stay as they were."
Adel clenched her teeth.
Cassian did not smile.
"Choose."
The eighth pipe opened.
The pain of the five patients in the assessment-room beds entered his nerves: the pain of a hand without fingers, of an organ that had never torn, of a tongue begging forgiveness for no reason.
Adel reversed the sword and offered him the hilt.
Cassian took it.
"Give it back."
"When?"
"After you ruin one more person."
"Accurate."
Cassian walked toward Martin.
Martin crawled across the floor.
"You said I was innocent."
"You still are."
"Then why me?"
"Because you are empty."
Cassian cut Martin's palm. A short line. Blood fell over the shackles.
Martin tried to close his fist, but Weight of Sin held down even his fingers.
Cassian pressed the bloody hand against an empty branch beneath the adjudicator's portrait.
"I need witnesses."
Two assessors stood against the wall. Adel was watching. Martin himself was conscious.
There were enough.
Cassian spoke in the adjudicator's voice.
"I acknowledge my son, Martin Roe."
The family tree trembled.
`Paternal declaration confirmed.`
`Living blood confirmed.`
`Four public witnesses confirmed.`
A golden branch grew along Martin's blood.
The word `lawful` beneath Celia Barn's portrait split apart. Her face was pushed out of the wall.
She was not in this room. She did not even know the moment her inheritance vanished.
The adjudicator's estate and vaults, his debts and murders, and the claims of victims stripped of their memories moved beneath Martin's name.
The cobbler's worn shoes turned gold.
At the same time, black chains wrapped his ankles.
"What have you done to me?"
"Made you a nobleman."
"I did not want it."
"Most nobles do not ask to be born."
All seventeen red pipes changed direction.
The sins pouring into Cassian flowed down Martin's new branch.
The cobbler's back bent. The weight of the Seventeen Houses settled upon a spine already bowed by a lifetime over hammer and awl.
His bones touched the floor.
Martin could not scream. Confessions that were not his seized his mouth and fought to speak first.
"Stop."
Adel seized Cassian.
"Cut it now and Martin dies."
"Continue and he dies."
"Then why—"
"Because the door is lighter now."
Cassian raised the sword.
The first stroke left the branch between the adjudicator and Martin intact.
The second cut away the other sixteen houses joined to that branch.
The third passed through the chamber door.
The golden genealogy and the white stone door split at the same time.
The flow of sin broke.
The red pipes exploded.
Not every sin had reached Martin.
Cassian's right hand remained young and his left old. Starvation ribs remained beneath the skin of his back, and teeth pushed at the flesh beneath his nails.
The first eight sins had already taken root inside him.
Breaking the device did not erase the bill.
Cassian caught the fingers of his breaking left hand with his right. After briefly wondering which hand was his, he wrapped both around the hilt.
Not blood but the laughter and tears, confessions and final desires of those in the portraits swept through the room.
One assessor fell to his knees remembering his mother as the adjudicator. The other's fingers split into seventeen, each writing a different signature.
Guards rushed through the doorway.
Cassian did not cut the first guard's shield. He drove the hand holding it into the doorframe, keeping the broken door from closing.
He stepped on the second guard's spear, pinned it to the floor, slid along the shaft, and kicked him beneath the jaw.
The third raised his sword at Adel.
She did not retreat.
Cassian broke the guard's arm with the flat of his blade.
"You did not kill him," Adel said.
"You told me to return the sword."
"I did not tell you to save anyone."
"Be precise next time."
Cassian walked toward the open door.
Adel ran to Martin.
The cobbler was alive.
The cut in his palm was small.
The wound in his name was the size of the empire.
"Do not leave me here," Martin said.
Cassian looked back.
"You made me."
"Yes."
"Then take responsibility."
"I gave you property."
"I am a cobbler."
"Now you are a marquess's son."
"No."
For the first time, Martin glared at Cassian.
"You only wrote me that way."
Cassian did not deny it.
Adel helped Martin stand.
"I am taking him out."
"As you like."
"One day he may sign something in your name."
"I will read it when he does."
The three left the broken assessment chamber.
* * *
By the time they reached the surface, the church tribunal had stopped.
Every spectator was looking into a mirror.
The moment the sin transfer broke, seventeen bells had rung across the capital.
Elodie stood below the tribunal bench.
A Hospitaller knight handed her a note.
"A report from the estates of the Red Table members."
Elodie read it.
"Say it," Cassian said.
"All seventeen became younger overnight."
"How much younger?"
"Younger than they were before they died."
Outside the courtroom windows came the sound of racing carriages.
The rejuvenated nobles were leaving their estates and gathering in one place.
The Red Table had been scheduled for three days later.
The formal rite had been moved forward.
It was tonight.