"Did you tell her?"
The fortieth wagon asked again.
Cassian was still in wagon thirty-nine.
Beyond the wall, his sins were being distributed among the prisoners.
The original ledger that could stop it hung beneath wagon twenty.
There was one objective.
Cross back through twenty wagons and seize the ledger.
Otherwise, three thousand cathedral sins would turn twenty-four empty people into new clerics.
"Not yet," Cassian answered.
The sentence written in blood writhed in Ria's ledger.
`Tell my daughter I was alive.`
The fortieth wagon laughed.
It sounded like forty iron wheels grinding their teeth at once.
"Shouldn't the words that you were alive be delivered before death?"
"She asked after she died."
"Therefore, it is a debt that cannot be fulfilled."
"Did she leave an address?"
Ria checked the final page.
"No daughter's name. Western Laundry Road. Blue door. Three skeins of thread on the handle."
"Then I can find her."
"You could have," Ria said.
"Before you were sold."
Cassian looked at the mouth of the fortieth wagon.
"I'll get out and tell her."
"Are you promising to escape?"
"No."
He pointed at the ceiling vent.
"I'm saying I'll steal the ledger."
* * *
The shoemaker tore apart eleven prison uniforms.
They became a single leather strap.
The midwife greased her wrist and pushed her arm into the ceiling gap.
Her shoulder caught.
She exhaled, then drove the joint forward.
Bone slipped from its socket.
Her hand did not stop.
"Two inches left."
One thief spoke.
"There are gears there."
"The places babies get caught are narrower."
The midwife's fingertips reached the roof latch.
She hooked the shoemaker's strap around it.
Six prisoners pulled.
One side of the ceiling lifted.
Cold night air entered.
The smell of bread entered first.
A black track ran across the wagon roofs.
Food crates traveled between all forty compartments. Each appeared to receive the same amount.
The scales beneath the crates told another story.
Twelve loaves for the first wagon.
Nine for the tenth.
Four for the thirty-ninth.
The farther back the wagon, the more prisoners and the less bread.
It was arranged so the starving would fight first.
"Where's the ledger?"
One thief read the numbers beneath the track.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Every line branches at wagon twenty."
Food.
Lifespan.
Sin.
Three thin lines converged beneath the twentieth wagon.
Cassian climbed onto the roof.
The prisoners rose after him.
"Take us too."
"Where?"
"Outside."
"There isn't a route yet."
"You'll make one."
The midwife struck her dislocated shoulder against the opposite wall and forced it back into place.
"Because you counted us."
Cassian did not deny it.
He had already counted.
One shoemaker.
One midwife.
Two thieves.
One carpenter who could repair wagon wheels.
Two people who could read.
Nev.
Ria was not a prisoner.
The other fifteen possessed no skill he needed.
Three could not walk.
Two had fever.
One old man forgot his name five times a day.
"How many are you taking?" Ria asked.
"Those who can move now."
"Fourteen."
"Those I can use."
Ria counted his silence.
"Eight."
The wagon fell quiet.
Cassian looked at her.
"You spoke my calculation for me."
"Was it wrong?"
"No."
A man who could not walk pulled himself upright against the wall.
His legs did not move.
He dragged his body with the strength of his arms.
"I shaped wheel axles," he said.
"For seventeen years."
Cassian's number increased by one.
The feverish woman laughed.
"So I live if I name a skill?"
"If I can use it."
"I know how to kill you."
"Useless at present."
She did not stop laughing.
Six prisoners gathered beside her.
They were not people who would follow Cassian.
They were the ones who first made room for those he would abandon.
Ria opened a new spread.
`Cassian's Escape Ledger.`
Those he would take on the left.
Those he would abandon on the right.
She wrote no names yet.
The two empty pages divided the prisoners.
* * *
The wagon stopped suddenly.
Only the thirty-ninth stopped.
The thirty-eight ahead kept moving.
The family chain pulled taut.
White numbers appeared at the prisoners' throats.
`Remaining lifespan: 18 years.`
`Remaining lifespan: 7 years.`
`Remaining lifespan: 41 years.`
Flame caught at the ends of the numbers.
The wheels burned their lives to follow the wagons ahead.
Felix's voice flowed through the pipe above the roof.
"When a family member loses the road, the remaining family shares its strength."
"Stop!" the midwife shouted.
"One month per person will let us catch up," Felix answered gently.
"If you continue the escape, I will take one year at a time."
The feverish woman's number fell first.
Eleven years.
Ten.
Nine.
She dropped to her knees.
Each cough loosened another old tooth.
"Why her first?" Ria asked.
"Because she said she knew how to kill Cassian."
Felix's voice held no anger.
"Family embraces the dangerous child first."
Cassian raised the relic right arm.
The eye in its palm remained closed.
The borrowed arm did not move outside the cathedral.
He gripped the family chain with his left hand.
The line of Oath Severing glimmered faintly.
He could cut it.
Then wagon thirty-nine would stop.
Wagon twenty would also recede.
He would lose the original ledger.
Cassian did not cut the chain.
Instead, he kicked the food crate on the roof.
It slid along the track toward wagon twenty.
"Thieves."
Two people climbed onto the roof.
"You're coming with me."
The midwife held the feverish woman.
"Stop this woman first."
"If I cut the chain, I lose the ledger."
"Then lose it."
"No."
Cassian wrapped the leather strap around his waist.
He tied the other end to the food crate.
"I'll be back before you die."
The feverish woman spat out a bloody tooth.
"You expect me to believe that?"
"No."
Cassian threw himself onto the track.
"Count the time."
* * *
The food crate cut through the night.
Thirty-eight wagon roofs slid behind them.
One thief fell at the first curve.
His hand caught in the strap.
Cassian did not help him.
The other thief caught his wrist.
Their combined weight slowed the crate.
A single scream sounded behind them.
The sound of the feverish woman's remaining life dropping to eight years.
The thief looked at Cassian.
"You said you'd return before she died."
"She has eight years left."
"At this rate, they'll end before eight breaths."
"Then we open it within five."
Wagon twenty approached.
There was no door on the roof.
A white lock hung only beneath the floor.
As they passed, Cassian cut the leather strap.
The food crate continued forward.
The three men fell along the side of wagon twenty.
The thieves inserted bone splinters into the lock.
"Ten breaths."
"Five," Cassian said.
First breath.
The chain burned lifespan.
Second.
Teeth inside the lock bit the bone.
Third.
One thief lost a finger.
He made no sound.
Fourth.
The white lock opened.
They did not need the fifth breath.
Cassian climbed beneath the wagon.
A book hung between the axles.
Its cover was not human skin.
It was layered white hide peeled from prisoners' cleansed sinmarks.
`Original Family Register of the Immaculate Prison.`
Smaller letters beneath it.
`Master Ledger of Innocence Bonds.`
Cassian seized the book.
All forty wagons screamed at once.
Felix's voice wavered for the first time.
"That is the birth record of our family."
"A price list."
"Return it."
"No."
Cassian tore open the ledger.
The first page held no prisoners' names.
Only skills and remaining lives.
`Midwife. 11 years.`
`Shoemaker. 23 years.`
`Wheelwright. 4 years.`
It was the same way Cassian counted people.
Felix had merely counted them first.
Ria's voice came from far away.
It traveled through the prison pipes into every wagon.
"Listen carefully."
She read from Cassian's Escape Ledger.
"He intended to take only nine people."
The prisoners murmured.
"He counted the man who cannot walk only after he proved a skill."
"He abandoned the fever patient."
"He is not trying to save you."
The scratch of Ria's pen cut through the wagons.
"He is trying to steal the prison."
The murmuring became chants.
"Return the ledger!"
"Don't leave us behind!"
"Throw Cassian off!"
An opposition formed in wagon thirty-nine.
Felix laughed.
"Family should be honest with one another."
Cassian put the ledger inside his coat.
"Is that why you hid the prices?"
"Parents do not explain food costs to their children."
The chain beneath the wagon moved.
It coiled toward Cassian's throat.
At that moment, Nev caught one side of the ledger.
Seven scripts moved across the back of his hand at once.
The ledger read him.
The first memory.
A winter window.
The second.
A white wooden horse on the floor.
The third.
A man writing the number seven on a child's hand.
Nev stopped breathing.
It was not a noble's memory.
It was an old nursery.
Knife marks beneath the window measured a child's height.
Beside the lowest line, one name had been carved.
`Felix.`
Felix's voice came through the pipe.
"The white wooden horse was missing one leg."
Nev released the ledger.
He had not spoken that fact.
Felix knew it anyway.
One of Nev's seven memories was the warden's childhood.