The dead prisoner stood and shared the bread.
Moments earlier, he had hidden two loaves for himself.
Now he handed even his own share to the person beside him.
"Feed those who are hungry first."
The voice of a cathedral cleric came from his mouth.
The man's habits had died.
Cassian's sin had made the body kinder.
"What happens if I kill him again?" Cassian asked.
Nev answered.
"It goes into another body."
"Whose?"
"The emptiest one."
The prisoners drew away from one another.
All their sinmarks were empty.
There was no visible way to tell who was emptier.
A black thread ran from Cassian's empty shoulder to the corpse.
It was the first of the three thousand sins that had entered him in the cathedral.
He caught the thread in his left hand.
Pulled.
The reanimated man coughed.
The cleric's sinmark came out of his chest.
Half of it returned to Cassian.
At that moment, a black speck appeared on the empty wrist of the woman beside him.
A second sin left Cassian's body.
For every place he recovered, a new sin escaped.
"Don't pull it," Nev said.
"Take one out and it takes another."
Cassian did not release the thread.
"What if I take them all out?"
"Then all of them go in."
"We can see which side tears apart first."
"Us. Not you."
Nev caught Cassian's wrist.
He could not stop him by force.
He held on anyway.
Cassian looked down at the sixteen-year-old's hand.
Seven different scripts overlapped across its back.
One was as straight as a prayer.
One hooked the ends of its numbers.
One misspelled the first letter of its own name every time.
All seven wrote the same name.
`Nev Karel.`
"Does that hand belong to you too?" Cassian asked.
Nev let go.
"I don't know."
The wagon lurched violently.
Forty lengths of chain pulled taut.
Outside, the bell rang twice.
They were climbing.
The wheels sank into mud.
All forty wagons slowed at once.
White hourglasses hanging from the prisoners' necks turned over.
The sand flowed toward the wheels instead of downward.
With every grain, someone's hair whitened.
Another wrinkle appeared.
Their remaining lives were becoming the wagons' movement.
"Family fuel," Nev said.
"If one compartment stops, everyone pays."
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
A child cried in a wagon ahead.
Nev did not turn his head.
Only after confirming Cassian was not looking did his fingers clench.
Felix opened the door of the thirty-ninth wagon.
Rain soaked him.
He held a warm bowl of porridge and a packet of medicine.
"Where is Mira?"
The prisoners pointed to a woman in the corner.
The one with the wet cough.
Felix sat before her and gave her the medicine himself.
"I left out the walnuts. Your throat swells when you eat them."
Mira swallowed the porridge.
"Do you know what day it is?"
She shook her head.
"It's your birthday."
Felix took a small candle from his coat.
He did not light it.
Fire was forbidden inside the wagon.
Instead, he made the sound of blowing wind and sang a birthday song.
Several prisoners joined him.
Mira wept.
Felix wiped away her tears.
Then he took the hourglass from her neck.
"Let's have you help with this hill."
The woman's face stiffened.
"How much?"
"Five years."
Not minutes.
The price of pulling one wagon wheel from the mud.
"You took three years last month too."
"I remember."
"You promised only twice."
"That was before the northern road froze."
Felix took her hand.
"If not you, the sick children in compartment seventeen have to pay."
"Why me?"
"Because yours is the longest life in the family."
He did not lie.
He knew Mira's illness.
Remembered her birthday.
Watched her allergies.
And knew exactly how much life she had left.
That was why he took the most from her.
"What if I refuse?"
"I won't take it by force."
Felix tried to return the hourglass.
A child coughed in another wagon.
Mira did not take it.
"Take it."
"Thank you."
"Don't say you love me."
Felix paused.
"All right."
He did not apologize.
He removed five years from the hourglass.
Half the woman's hair turned white.
The wagon wheel came free of the mud.
All forty began moving again.
Felix covered Mira with a blanket.
"Sleep well."
After she closed her eyes, Cassian asked.
"Is that an Innocence Bond?"
Felix held up the little vial containing five years.
"The undiluted article."
"Who buys it?"
"People afraid their sins will pass to their children."
"Buying a lifespan makes them innocent?"
"It creates a record that an innocent person aged in their place."
"And the sin?"
"Remains."
"They still buy it?"
"People trust receipts more than facts."
Felix put the vial in his pocket.
"These five years will buy Mira six months of medicine and move compartment seventeen for two seasons."
"And the rest?"
"The bondholder takes it."
"You sell family to feed family."
"No one outside the family feeds us."
There was no excuse in Felix's words.
Only faith.
That faith weighed more than the wagons.
Dragged by the white cord, Ria reached the wagon door.
She recorded Mira's name and the five years removed.
"Consent of the party," Felix said.
"Consent after making her hear a child's cough," Ria added.
"You should record the family's circumstances as well."
"And the conditions of coercion."
Felix did not become angry.
"Write it precisely."
"It will count against you."
"Better than a false family record."
Ria watched him for a long time.
His evil was of a different kind from Cassian's.
Cassian used people and did not call them family.
Felix used them because he loved them.
The ledger did not say which was worse.
Nev sat across from Cassian.
The reanimated prisoner prayed after distributing all the bread.
The black speck on the woman's wrist slowly grew.
"Why did you leave the orphanage?" Nev asked.
"The exit collapsed."
"You could have found another way."
"It would have been slower."
"Was it the same with Aaron?"
Cassian did not answer.
Nev wrote his name in seven scripts.
The first hand drew Cassian having his neck cut.
The second practiced a noble's signature.
The third was crying.
The ink ran.
"I got out of the burning building."
"I can see that."
Burn scars marked the back of Nev's neck.
He did not describe the scene itself.
"A soldier showed me the way."
"The one whose knees I broke?"
"Yes."
"So he lived."
"He sent me out first. He didn't make it out himself."
Cassian did not know the soldier's name.
He counted the people he killed.
He did not count those who remained behind his choices and saved someone else.
Ria opened a new page.
"His name?"
Nev told her.
Ria wrote it down.
Cassian memorized it.
Not to honor the man's good deed.
To remember a calculation he had missed.
"There are seven people inside me."
Nev pulled up his sleeve.
Seven lines of writing moved beneath skin without sinmarks.
"All nobles?"
"That's what they say."
"Who does?"
"I do."
Nev's voice overlapped seven times.
An old woman.
A young man.
A sick elder.
There was no child's voice.
All were adult memories.
"Every morning, I stir tea in a different direction," Nev said.
"Sometimes I hold a sword in my left hand. Sometimes I write with my right. I never learned to write, but I use seven scripts."
"And?"
"Take out the one that's me."
"You might die if I take them out."
"I know."
"Killing you would be fastest."
Nev did not look away.
"I know that line too."
Cassian looked at Nev's chest.
There were seven sins.
The prison had scraped the surface white so they would not show as sinmarks.
Killing him would yield seven abilities.
At the same time, an empty body would consume more of Cassian's sin.
"I won't kill you yet."
"Why?"
"I need to know who the seven inside you are."
"You're not saving me?"
"That would be the result."
Nev was not reassured.
He believed the answer.
"Then let's make a trade."
Nev folded the paper written in seven scripts.
"I know the routes through these wagons."
"Every prisoner must."
"They know only their own compartment. My seven remember different ones."
The first memory knew the keyhole beneath the twentieth wagon.
The second knew when the medicine cabinet in the seventeenth opened.
The third knew before which coffin Felix could not lie.
He did not reveal the rest.
"I give you the route," Nev said.
"You separate me from the seven memories."
"If I fail?"
"Then decide whether to kill me."
"What if I kill you now?"
"The route dies with me."
Cassian did not take the paper.
The routes in Nev's head were worth more than his neck.
"Accepted."
"One more condition."
"The price keeps rising."
"Don't eat the memories you remove."
Cassian did not answer.
Nev did not press him.
An unanswered condition was not an agreement.
Both knew it.
They were not allies.
They were trading partners for whom killing each other was still the costlier choice.
The heartbeat beneath the wagon floor grew louder.
It came from the fortieth wagon.
It had accelerated from the moment Cassian pulled to recover the first sin.
Felix turned toward the door.
"It isn't distribution time yet."
The white wall of the fortieth wagon split.
It was not a door.
It was a mouth.
The entire wagon bared its teeth.
There was no room inside.
Three thousand black sins floated without ceiling or floor.
A thread ran from each one to Cassian's empty shoulder.
The fortieth wagon spoke in Felix's voice.
"We will distribute the new family's burden."
Blank nameplates appeared around the necks of the twenty-four prisoners in wagon thirty-nine.
One cathedral sin was written on the first.
Then the second.
The third.
Cassian's sins began to be rationed among the family.