One of Nev's memories was Felix's childhood.
There was no guarantee the other six belonged to Nev either.
Cassian hung beneath wagon twenty, the Innocence Bond ledger in one hand and the prison's family chain around his neck.
His task was not escape. He had to find the original owners of the seven memories inside Nev.
Otherwise, even if he tore the ledger apart, the homeless sins would simply be distributed to the emptiest people again.
"The white wooden horse was missing one leg," Felix said through the pipes of all forty wagons.
Nev kept his hand on the ledger.
"Is that your memory?"
"Family can share memories."
"Were you in the same room?"
"Somewhere closer than the same room."
"Where?"
"Inside the same ledger."
The family chain tightened around Cassian's throat.
The black alignment seam opened, and blood fell across the ledger.
Seven scripts spread over the blank paper—the same scripts that appeared whenever Nev wrote his name.
The first was round. The second hooked the ends of its strokes. The third erased the first letter of every name. The fourth wrote prices before names. The fifth left a sword's width between letters. The sixth wrote every sentence twice.
The seventh wrote nothing.
Instead, it drank Cassian's blood.
"Is one of those yours?" Cassian asked.
"I don't know."
"What don't you know?"
"What my handwriting looks like."
Nev was sixteen. For nine of those years, he had lived as a number.
After learning to write, he had forged seven nobles' signatures. He had never written his own name in his own hand.
"There is a fastest method," Cassian said.
Nev looked at him.
"Killing me."
"Yes."
At death, the seven sins would seek separate exits. What stayed in the corpse would be Nev's. What fled would belong to others.
One death would distinguish them all.
Ria's voice came through the pipe.
"I recorded that too."
"Do it."
"Will you carry it out?"
Cassian looked at Nev's throat. Seven sinmarks overlapped there.
Death was fastest. But the sins would scatter, and twenty-four wagons would consume them before he found their owners.
"I won't kill you now."
Nev asked.
"Because I need to live?"
"Because I need the owners inside you."
"As expected."
It was not a reassuring answer.
That was why Nev believed it.
* * *
Cassian tore seven pages from the ledger.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Each bore an object instead of a name.
A white wooden horse. A silver spoon. A headless hound. A child's shoe with nails through the sole. A dry well. A burned marriage register. A mirror that reflected nothing.
"We'll examine them one by one," Cassian said.
"Tell me what the body knows before the memory does."
He placed the white wooden horse before Nev.
It was only a picture cut from the ledger, yet its wheels rolled when the paper touched the floor.
There were only three.
Nev's right hand pushed the horse toward the window and stopped.
"What happens next?" Cassian asked.
"A man comes."
"His face?"
"None."
"His hands?"
Nev's left hand wrote the number seven on its own back. White letters remained without ink.
"This isn't your memory."
"Why?"
"You write numbers with your right hand."
Applause sounded through Felix's pipe.
"A fine diagnosis."
The second object was the silver spoon.
Nev turned it over as soon as he held it. Instead of viewing himself in the concave side, he watched the person opposite in the convex side.
"A habit of checking for poison," Ria said.
"A habit of adding it," Nev corrected.
His wrist remembered. He drank only after tapping the rim three times with the spoon.
At the headless hound, Nev's feet moved with the step used to kick behind a fleeing person's knee.
Before the child's shoe, he counted breaths.
Into the dry well, he spat.
From the burned marriage register, he tore the bride's name first.
Each memory left a different owner in the body.
Only the final mirror caused no response.
Nev stared into its black surface.
Neither his face nor Cassian behind him appeared.
It reflected one empty seat inside the wagon.
"Whose habit is that?" Ria asked.
Nev touched the mirror.
"I don't know."
The empty seat in the mirror copied him.
"But it's watching me."
* * *
A bell rang in wagon thirty-nine.
Once.
The feverish woman's remaining life fell to seven years.
Twice.
Six years.
Ria spoke into the pipe.
"Felix, stop."
"The family meeting is not over."
"Your family is aging to death."
"Bad habits should be corrected in childhood."
Felix stood before the door of wagon twenty.
He was not alone.
A guard in a white mask knelt beside him.
He had no sinmark. No mouth. Smooth skin beneath the mask.
"Will you return the ledger?" Felix asked.
"No."
"Then I will collect the diagnostic fee."
He stepped on the seven pages.
White threads rose from them to the ledger.
The wooden horse memory traveled along the first. The silver spoon along the second. The headless hound along the third.
The habits of all seven memories entered the guard.
Nev clutched his chest.
The memories were not removed.
They were copied.
"That man is an empty body too," Cassian said.
"Every good vessel is stored empty."
Felix removed the guard's mask.
A mouth formed on his left cheek. A second beneath the right eye. A third on his forehead. A fourth opened vertically along his throat. A fifth in his palm. A sixth split across his belly.
Six mouths spoke in different scripts.
"Recover the Family Register."
The seventh voice was silent.
Cassian studied the guard's back. The weight of sin hung in only six places.
"One is missing," Nev said.
Felix did not answer.
The guard took one step.
Seven wagons shook at once.
In wagon three, prisoners stole one another's lifespans.
In seven, the first letter vanished from every nameplate.
In twelve, invisible poison entered the water tank.
In eighteen, prisoners ran on all fours and bit the slowest.
In twenty-four, people without marital status strangled one another.
In thirty-one, nails grew inward through shoe soles.
In thirty-nine, mirrors erased every face.
The seven diagnosed habits became laws in seven wagons.
Screams rose from seven directions.
Nev started memorizing the wagon numbers, then closed his mouth.
Seven explanations were not what they needed now.
"Ria," Cassian called.
She understood what he needed.
"The guard is bait," she shouted into the pipe.
"If we lose the ledger, seven wagons keep dying. If we protect it, we can cut the rules."
One thing to kill.
One thing to protect.
The living had to endure the rest.
The remaining twenty-three prisoners moved.
Paired wrists dragged each other forward. The final three-person knot ran toward the feverish woman's wagon.
"The Oren Vass Rule!" the shoemaker shouted.
"Don't die alone!"
In wagon three, one prisoner kicked a lifespan tag from another's hand.
In twelve, two people overturned the water tank together.
In thirty-one, a shoemaker placed a barefoot prisoner's foot on his own knee.
They did not understand the laws of sin.
They watched what one another did.
Each new witness loosened one white thread.
Felix's family obeyed best when alone.
Cassian did not explain it.
The prisoners had discovered it first.
Felix stopped smiling.
"You have made new family rules."
"Because we're not your family," Nev answered.
Cassian did not look at him.
It was a counterattack he had not ordered.
That made it useful.
And irritating.
People who survived without his orders would one day reject them.
Cassian had always killed such people.
Today, he entrusted his back to them.
Cassian charged the guard.
The first mouth spat out a wheel from the white wooden horse. It climbed the bones of his ankle.
The second bit the silver spoon and tasted blood falling from Cassian's neck.
"No poison."
The third laughed like a hound.
The guard kicked behind Cassian's left knee—the side he would use to flee—not his weak right side.
Cassian dropped to one knee.
The family chain tightened further.
All six mouths opened toward the ledger.
Cassian drew it from his coat and held it forward as if returning it.
The mouth in the guard's palm bit the corner.
Cassian seized that jaw with his left hand.
And tore.
One mouth ripped free of the palm.
Other people's signatures poured out instead of blood.
The guard did not scream.
The remaining five mouths laughed together.
"The same method will not work twice."
The torn palm closed with white hide.
When Cassian reached in again, toothless flesh bit his wrist.
It had remembered the first wound and turned it into a defense.
Nev held up the mirror page.
"There aren't only six."
The guard's back did not appear in the mirror.
Only Cassian's name floated there.
One black letter was being chewed from within.
Cas.
Si.
An.
Teeth marks rose beneath the alignment seam around his neck.
The invisible seventh mouth was not in the guard's body.
It was inside Cassian's name.