Cassian Crow knelt of his own accord.
On the white stone floor of the church tribunal.
He wore no shackles.
Instead, his sword rested in Adel's hands.
The captain of the guard held out a hand.
"Surrender the defendant's weapon."
Adel did not.
"Cassian entrusted it to me."
"The church is confiscating it."
"I did not consent to confiscation."
"The defendant has no right to consent."
Adel tightened her hand around the scabbard.
Her bandaged right hand. The one whose finger Cassian had dislocated the day before and she had forced back into place herself.
"That is why he did not entrust it to you."
Cassian did not watch them argue.
He was studying the drain beneath the tribunal seat.
Something below had begged for help in Adel's voice the night before, beneath the Red Table. The Saintblood Drain led to the floor of this tribunal.
The fastest way to reach the deepest gate was a guilty judgment.
That was why Cassian had not fled.
Third Princess Elodie sat in judgment.
She wore no white mask. Her face still held no sinmark.
A sinless face began to read sin.
Elodie spoke.
"Defendant Cassian Crow."
"This tribunal will not decide whether you are guilty or innocent."
"Convenient."
"It will determine which body is yours and which sins belong to that body."
Tobin Rell lay on the right side of the courtroom.
White bandages covered his ankle. The servant who had lost the faces of his family stared at the ceiling between two Hospitaller knights.
The name Cassian Crow floated above his wrist.
Cassian Crow also knelt in the center of the courtroom.
One name.
Two bodies.
The clerk asked.
"Which one do I record as the defendant?"
Elodie looked at Cassian.
"Both."
The gallery stirred.
The clerk spoke.
"The law permits only one body to each person."
"Then we must determine which one is false."
Elodie raised the gavel.
"Read the charges."
The first priest opened a sheet of parchment.
"The murder of thirteen-year-old Aaron Bale."
A woman in the gallery caught her breath.
Until yesterday, she had never known Aaron.
But the moment the charge was read, she remembered her son sleeping in a bed beside his at the orphanage.
She even recalled Cassian entering at night, looking from one boy to the other, and choosing Aaron.
It had never happened.
The social record did not distinguish between the blade that cut a legal name and one that cut an actual throat.
The memory had never existed.
A black line appeared beneath the woman's eye.
It ran across the floor and beneath the tribunal seat.
Cassian counted the direction.
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Down and east.
The second charge.
"Burning Saint Ilena alive."
An old priest closed his eyes.
He had not attended the burning. He had been in the northern diocese that day.
Still, he began to remember the smell of Cassian pouring oil over the pyre.
This black line flowed down to the west.
The third.
"Erasing the name of the Kingdom of Agnes and one hundred twenty thousand of its people."
Former soldiers in the gallery straightened together.
The battle standards in their memories changed. Cassian's black feather flew where the imperial banner had led the invasion.
The line descended to the north.
Every charge gave Cassian another past.
Some were sins he had truly chosen.
Others had been committed by someone else.
The court did not distinguish between them.
The moment people believed, the social record placed every sword hilt into the hand of the easiest single culprit.
The fourth charge.
"Beheading an Imperial Adjudicator."
This time, every line converged on Cassian's neck.
The alignment seam opened.
*I can make them forget.*
The adjudicator's voice filled the courtroom.
The gallery rose.
Adel placed a hand on the sword hilt.
Guards surrounded her.
Cassian did not move.
The adjudicator's desire emerged from his throat and crawled beneath the tribunal seat. The black thread passed three drains and gathered at one staircase.
East, west, north.
Memories from all three directions joined beneath the center.
He had found the underground appraisal chamber.
Elodie asked.
"Your neck is testifying."
"Your doctrine says the dead do not lie."
"We still do not know which dead man is speaking through your neck."
"Go down and find out."
Cassian spread the alignment seam with his fingers.
Black thread crawled out like a living worm.
"I submit this neck as evidence."
The courtroom went silent.
The clerk dropped his pen.
Elodie spoke.
"Evidence must be separated from the defendant."
"Will you cut it off?"
"Would you like me to?"
"If Your Highness does it yourself."
Elodie did not smile.
Instead, she signaled the appraisers.
"Transfer him below without separating the evidence."
"Your Highness."
The clerk spoke urgently.
"Taking intact evidence into the appraisal chamber—"
"If we cut off this man's neck here, we will never determine which body is the defendant."
Elodie looked at Tobin.
"One is Cassian in name alone."
Her gaze returned to Cassian.
"The other is Cassian only in sin."
Cassian stood.
A guard brought shackles.
Cassian did not offer his hands.
Elodie spoke.
"He appeared voluntarily."
"Do not bind him until he attempts to flee."
Cassian asked.
"And if I do?"
"We begin by cutting off Tobin's ankle."
Tobin turned his head for the first time.
He looked at Cassian.
A question came before fear in his eyes.
Do you know my wife's face?
Cassian did not answer.
Adel stood before the stairs with the sword in hand.
"I am going down as well."
Elodie spoke.
"I did not authorize a witness."
"I am his healer."
"The Hospitaller Order can provide one."
"They treat bodies."
Adel pointed at Cassian's neck.
"That wound does not belong to the body alone."
Elodie and Adel met each other's eyes.
The princess loved by the church and the saint it had cast away.
Both had reasons to keep Cassian alive.
They were not the same reason.
Elodie spoke.
"Leave the sword."
Adel looked at Cassian.
He shook his head.
"Keep it."
"I may not give it back."
"Then I will take it."
Adel descended with the sword.
Elodie did not stop her.
* * *
Cassian was not the only defendant transferred below.
Martin Roe.
Forty-one. A cobbler who mended shoes at the capital's south gate. He was accused of stealing noble footprints and climbing through windows at night.
Martin had never even seen a noble's face.
His sinmark was empty.
He was innocent.
That was why the appraisal chamber needed him.
An empty vessel was worth more than a guilty one.
Chains bound Martin's wrists and ankles.
Cassian walked freely.
Martin asked.
"Are you Cassian Crow?"
"Yes."
"Can you see sin, like people say?"
"I can."
"Then you know I am innocent?"
"I do."
Martin stopped.
The guard behind him pulled the chain.
"Then tell them."
"Tell whom?"
"The princess. The saint. Anyone."
"No."
"Why?"
"Your innocence is not my concern."
Martin asked nothing more.
He walked with his eyes on the chain at his feet.
A round gate stood at the bottom of the stairs.
A palm print was carved into its center.
Adel placed her bandaged hand against it.
The gate opened.
Seventeen screams stopped at once inside.
The appraisal chamber did not look like a torture room.
A golden family tree covered the walls. Noble portraits hung from the ends of its branches. Two white marble chairs faced each other in the center.
One for the person expelling sin.
The other for the defendant receiving it.
Seventeen red pipes crossed the ceiling. Each bore the rat emblem from the masquerade.
They marked the order in which members of the Red Table expelled their sins.
First, the dead adjudicator.
Second, Isen Bale.
Black cloth covered the portraits from the third through the seventeenth.
This was the evidence Cassian wanted.
It was also the trap waiting for him.
The appraisers dragged Martin toward the white chair.
Martin resisted.
"Wait. You said you would only appraise me."
An appraiser answered.
"Correct."
"We are appraising how much you can receive."
Martin looked at Cassian.
Two guards caught his arms.
"Help me."
The key to Martin's shackles lay within Cassian's reach.
One twist would free him.
The guards would seize Cassian first.
He would lose the time needed to reach the center of the chamber.
Cassian walked past the key.
Martin was bound to the chair.
"You know I am innocent!"
"Yes."
"And still?"
"That is why I had you taken first."
While Martin struggled, every appraiser and guard watched him.
Cassian walked behind the opposite chair.
He studied the family tree from close range.
Beneath its golden branches were written the kinds of sin and their order of expulsion.
The adjudicator's theft of memories.
Isen's collection of years.
Murder. Torture. Famine. The sale of illegitimate children. Disposal of plague medicine.
Seventeen houses joined by one another's bloodlines.
Sin transfer.
It was no miracle that erased sin.
It was a drain that followed genealogy and court procedure to the cheapest body.
Cassian reached out.
An unnamed vacancy stood at the center of the family tree.
When his finger touched it, the adjudicator spoke.
*I can make them forget.*
All seventeen red pipes opened at once.
The appraisers turned.
"Step away!"
Cassian kept his hand in place.
The family tree read his blood.
The adjudicator's last breath.
The right of execution that had brought him after Isen.
The hundreds of sins the world had laid over Cassian.
The mechanism did not recognize him as an empty vessel.
One by one, the portraits on the wall turned toward him.
The chains binding Martin's chair came loose.
The chamber door closed instead.
Golden letters appeared above the family tree.
`The owner of the sins has been identified.`
Cassian read them.
Another sentence appeared.
`All assets discharged by the Seventeen Houses shall be returned to their original owner.`
The red pipes in the ceiling aimed at Cassian.
The first sin poured into his neck.