Marchesa cut Cassian's throat.
Not deeply enough for his head to fall.
Precisely enough to split the black seam that had joined it back on.
One drop of blood fell onto the snow.
Only then did the bars around the dueling ground close.
Twelve of them.
Iron teeth locked across every path leading north.
Three people remained outside the bars.
Adel supported Ria with one arm. Ria's left arm was wrapped in cloth, still shaped by the press that had crushed it. The blood had frozen until the bandage was harder than the arm.
Toma held the cloth around his throat.
Breath leaked through the hole in his vocal cords.
"Open it."
Adel caught the bars.
White letters burned the back of her hand.
`Those who did not sign the duel may not enter.`
Adel did not let go.
The smell of burning flesh rose.
"Stop," Ria said.
"That is not a gate. It is a sentence."
She opened a record sheet with her right hand.
"You cannot open a sentence with force. You must prove it wrong."
"If that woman kills him, we cannot prove anything."
Cassian did not look back.
"If I die, the sentence becomes false."
Ria raised her pen.
"I will record that exactly."
Toma laughed through a hoarse breath.
He held the cipher sheet taken from the northern contact route.
It was the first thing he would have to sell if Cassian died.
None of them prepared to save him.
All of them calculated his price after death.
They were the kind of people Cassian would bring.
Marchesa Bell shook the blood from her sword.
"The first rescue has failed."
"Who am I saving?"
"Me."
Marchesa set the point over her own heart.
A white nail beat once beneath the armor.
A soldier outside the dueling ground collapsed into the snow.
"It is the same residue that was in Aaron's throat."
"It has grown."
"Use on me the method you did not use on my brother."
Marchesa had one demand.
Remove the nail from her heart.
Leave Marchesa alive.
If he failed, Cassian could leave the dueling ground only by repeating upon her the execution the world remembered for Aaron.
"If I succeed?"
"I open the northern supply route."
"If I fail?"
"Cut off my head."
Marchesa raised her sword again.
"And admit that back then, you knew only the faster way."
Cassian did not answer.
One person to save.
One road to gain.
One Bell throat if he failed.
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That made the duel simple enough.
Cassian pressed a hand to his throat.
His crushed right arm would not rise. The dislocated shoulder swung like empty armor with every step. His left hand was aged, and three fingers were broken.
More of him was broken than whole.
Marchesa saw all of it and gave him no time.
Her second thrust entered his side.
Cassian twisted.
The point scraped between old broken ribs.
He drew his sword with his left hand.
One finger would not close properly.
His grip sat crooked.
It was still enough to cut.
Cassian's blade reached Marchesa's throat.
White sentences appeared over the black armor.
`Do not kill those who lay down their weapons within three days.`
`Do not punish the children of prisoners for their parents' sins.`
`Do not seal the wells of villages that surrender their food.`
Hundreds of surrender terms overlapped like scales.
The blade did not enter even an inch.
Instead, Cassian's palm split.
Marchesa drove his sword away.
"There is no iron in my armor."
"I can see that."
"I made it from the terms of those who surrendered to me."
She raised her sword.
"Only the ones I kept."
Cassian cut again.
Throat.
Armpit.
Behind the knee.
A different sentence appeared with every strike.
She had returned forty-two surrendered scouts.
She had taken the wife of the traitor who opened the gates down from the gallows.
She had erased the defeated officer's name from the enlisted roll.
Every term had truly been kept.
So every term was hard.
Marchesa kicked Cassian's right arm.
The dislocated shoulder twisted behind his back.
His knee struck the snow.
"Did Aaron beg you to save him three times?"
Cassian's sword rose from below.
It cut the strap of Marchesa's helmet.
Black hair spilled over the snow.
Her face did not resemble Aaron's.
Only the eyes were the same.
Eyes that listened to the end of an answer from someone already marked for death.
"Once."
"You heard him."
"I executed his name."
Marchesa's point stopped for the first time.
"Not his throat?"
Cassian did not answer.
Marchesa's foot drove into his chest.
Cassian did not fall onto his back.
He caught her ankle and pulled.
As she lost her balance, he struck the armor over her heart with his pommel.
One white sentence turned black.
`Protect Berdan's winter storehouse.`
The ribs of those who had starved rose from beneath the words.
One scale of Marchesa's armor broke.
Black grain spilled through the gap.
"You protected it," Cassian said.
"With fire."
Marchesa offered no defense.
The rebels had seized the storehouse.
She burned it to cut off their winter supply.
Civilians remained inside the city.
That winter, more children and old people died than rebels.
"I did it," she said.
"And?"
"It means you have no right to cut it away."
Marchesa's sword pierced Cassian's abdomen.
The same place wounded at the Red Table.
The blade did not come through his back.
Something inside caught it.
The teeth embedded beneath Cassian's nails bit the blade.
Marchesa twisted.
The teeth in his belly broke.
Cassian stepped closer through the opening.
Their chests met with only one layer of armor between them.
Close enough for their breaths to mix.
Marchesa's lips were cold.
Her eyes were not.
Her brother's final moments had never ended inside them.
Cassian pushed his fingers into the broken scale.
He spread the black armor.
A white nail was driven over her heart.
An old crusader prayer wound around it.
The letters matched those he had seen inside Aaron's throat.
Only older.
Larger.
The nail beat with her heart.
Each beat dropped another soldier in the snow beyond the arena.
The next beat.
A distant horse sprayed blood from its throat.
Before the third, Marchesa seized Cassian's wrist.
"My brother had that in his throat."
"You knew?"
"After you killed him."
"Too late."
"Later than you."
Marchesa smashed her forehead into his face.
His nose broke.
They separated.
Cassian spat blood onto the snow.
The crusader nail did not consume sin.
It consumed surrender.
It drove the conditions of a war's defeat into one person. When that person died, the conditions spread across the surrounding land.
Had Cassian escorted Aaron all the way, the residue would have grown.
There had been a slower way.
Find each gate, soldier, and supply route bound to the nail, then sever them from the contract one by one.
Cassian had not chosen it.
"Why did you leave him?" Marchesa asked again.
"Because it was faster."
The same answer as before.
She lowered her sword.
Her rage had not vanished.
She had merely found something she needed to confirm first.
"Then kill me too."
"No."
"You choose the slower way this time?"
"I need your supply route."
Marchesa smiled for the first time.
It was not happiness.
It was relief that her brother's killer remained a killer to the end.
"You plunder even salvation."
"Only what can be taken."
She raised a hand.
The snow at the center of the arena split.
A man rose from beneath it.
About twenty.
Marchesa's black hair. Chains encircled his wrists, but no jailer held the ends.
He carried his own chains as he walked.
He did not kneel before Marchesa.
Only when he reached Cassian did he set one knee into the snow.
"Simon Bell," Marchesa said.
"My nephew."
Simon laid his sword upon the snow.
"I surrender to Cassian Crow."
The white sentences of the arena turned toward both men at once.
Letters dug into the alignment seam on Cassian's throat.
To accept surrender, he needed terms.
Marchesa spoke for him.
"Only one."
She did not look at her nephew.
Only at Cassian.
"Return him to me alive."
"If I do not?"
"My armor will remember your throat."
"And if I refuse?"
Marchesa pressed the white nail over her heart.
Another soldier fell outside the arena.
"As you left Aaron," she said.
"You may kill him quickly."
Simon raised his head.
He was afraid.
He did not withdraw his surrender.
Cassian did not study his face for long.
He picked up his sword.
He cut Simon's chains.
"I accept."
A white sentence circled Cassian's throat.
Outside the bars, Adel raised a hand.
"Where is Simon's consent in that contract?"
Marchesa looked at her nephew.
For the first time.
"Answer in your own words."
Simon stood.
He did not remove the severed length of chain from his wrist.
"I surrendered."
"And the condition that you return?" Adel asked.
Simon did not answer at once.
Morheim officers filled the northern gallery. There were more than one hundred, yet not one coughed.
They did not look at Marchesa.
They looked at Simon.
The nephew returned.
A living male blood heir.
Royal blood older than Marchesa's command.
After taking every one of those gazes, Simon spoke.
"I consent to returning alive."
Ria's pen stopped for a moment.
"And to what happens after you return?"
This time, Simon did not answer.
The silence entered the record as well.
Marchesa had placed her nephew into a trial.
Simon had entered it knowing what it was.
There was not one good person among them.
That made the contract clean.
The white sentence consumed both his answer and his silence.
`The surrendered Simon Bell shall be returned alive.`
For the first time, Cassian's name was carved into Marchesa's armor.
That day, Cassian was captured by the condition that he not kill one man.