The seventh mouth was eating Cassian's name.
Cas. Si. An.
Half the final stroke remained. If it ate everything, Cassian would not die—but no one would remember him as Cassian Crow. The Innocence Bond ledger would become ownerless, and three thousand cathedral sins would be distributed among the empty prisoners.
There was one way to stop it: close the six visible mouths with six different judgments, then drag out the last mouth hidden inside his name.
"How long?" Ria asked.
Nev studied the mirror page.
"Before it chews twelve times."
The first chew erased Cassian's surname.
Crow.
The crow crests vanished from all forty wagons.
"Return to the family now, Cassian," Felix said.
"You ate my surname."
"Does that upset you?"
Cassian smiled.
"Hungry things are easy to find."
He charged the jailer.
* * *
The palm-mouth had already been torn once. Its white flesh hardened before Cassian could repeat the wound.
He released it and opened the ledger. Seven white threads ran from the mouths to wagons three, seven, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty-one, and—through the mirror in thirty-nine—into Cassian's name.
The owners were prisoners scattered across seven wagons. Felix had stripped away their sins and attached them to one body as mouths.
Cassian did not need to kill the mouths.
He could return them.
He pulled the first thread.
An old man in wagon three screamed. In youth he had stolen his family's lifespans and lived alone for ninety years. After his sinmark was stripped, he remembered himself as a good father.
"How many years did you steal?"
The old man stayed silent.
Ria read the ledger.
"Sixty-three."
"Return them."
Cassian pulled. The mouth on the jailer's left cheek aged with the old man. Lips wrinkled, teeth wore down, and the tongue dried into the throat.
"I'm already old!"
"On stolen time."
Sixty-three years returned at once. The old man did not die; he had stolen even the time required for dying.
The first mouth closed over bare gums.
The second chew erased the final consonant of Cassian's given name.
* * *
The second mouth lay beneath the right eye and ate the first letter of every name.
It looked at Ria. `Ri` vanished, leaving only `a`.
Ria raised her ledger and read from the first page.
"Mara Henn."
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The mouth tried to swallow the first letter. Cassian rested his sword tip on its tongue without stabbing.
"Keep reading."
"Aaron Bell."
"Tobin Rell."
"Martin Law."
Names dead, names living but ruined, names Cassian had used.
The mouth swallowed each first letter. It could erase them, but not digest them. Its tongue swelled with letters until the right eye bulged out.
It vomited `Ri.`
Ria's name returned. She kept reading until the mouth choked shut.
"You used my ledger as a weapon."
"You did the reading."
"You put a sword to its tongue."
"Which made you read well."
Ria recorded that answer too.
The third chew sounded. Cassian needed an extra moment to recall his name.
He laughed.
"Why are you laughing?" Nev asked.
"Because I'm getting closer."
"To disappearing?"
"To the mouth."
Usually Cassian counted what remained. Now he felt the direction of teeth scraping inside his name.
It hurt.
Therefore it was exact.
* * *
The third mouth, on the forehead, held a silver spoon and judged poison.
Its owner was a well keeper who had poured spoiled holy water into a poor district during the plague to save medicine costs. Once cleansed, he remembered healing hundreds.
Cassian wrapped the water tank's thread around the spoon and forced it into the mouth.
"Poison present."
It tried to spit. Cassian held the spoon vertical and made the judging tongue drink its own verdict.
The well keeper vomited the same amount of poison his victims had drunk. Neither died. A well formed in their throats with every breath.
The third mouth drowned shut.
The fourth mouth ran vertically down the throat. It carried a hound's habit of biting behind the slowest knee.
Cassian limped deliberately. The jailer bit his left tendon.
Nev slapped the headless-hound page onto its back. Unable to smell, the drawn hound chose the nearest hunter's heartbeat.
The throat-mouth turned inward and bit its own heart closed.
Cassian's tendon was severed. He remained on one knee and drove it into the jailer's belly.
The fifth mouth opened in the palm—the toothless flesh that had learned not to tear.
Cassian shoved the burned marriage register inside.
In wagon twenty-four, a man and woman shouted. Each had murdered the other's spouse, altered the marriage record, and inherited the same estate twice.
"Who signed first?"
Both pointed at the other.
"Then both of you are last."
Ria overlapped their signatures on one line. The palm-mouth could not choose which name to eat first. Instead of splitting sideways, its lips joined at the center.
The fifth mouth sealed.
The last visible mouth occupied the belly. Its owner was a relief-house overseer who drove nails inward through children's shoes so they could not flee the ration line. After cleansing, he remembered giving shoes to barefoot children.
Cassian threw the ledger before him.
"Drive your own judgment."
"No."
"Then that shoemaker will do it for you."
The overseer saw seven nails in the victim's hand. He chose one and drove it inward through his own sole.
With each of seven steps, another nail grew from the jailer's belly-mouth until nails replaced every tooth.
The sixth mouth closed.
The jailer fell with no mouths left on its body.
The chewing continued.
Seventh. Eighth. Ninth.
Cassian's name was almost gone.
* * *
"Where is the last mouth?" Ria asked.
"Here."
Cassian touched his neck. Teeth moved beneath the black seam. Cutting the skin drove them deeper; the mouth remembered the wound and would not open twice to a blade.
Nev held up the mirror page. It showed neither face nor body, only one line: `Cassian.`
The mouth would vanish after finishing the name. They had to feed it a name it could not eat.
"Feed it another name," Nev said.
"Whose?"
Ria clutched her ledger.
Cassian ignored it and opened the Innocence Bond ledger. It had twenty-four blank name fields.
With his blood, he wrote `Cassian` in the first.
Then the second.
All twenty-four.
"What are you doing?" Ria asked.
"Distributing my name among the empty."
Felix shouted for the first time.
"Stop!"
The mouth could eat one name, not twenty-four identical ones. It had to determine the original.
Cassian's throat swelled. A white tooth pushed through the seam.
He smiled. The mouth was close.
He seized the tooth and pushed it deeper, down to the root of his name, making the mouth believe it had bitten the original.
Then he pulled all twenty-four false names at once.
The seventh mouth turned inside out through his throat.
There was no face within it, only a small white door set into the root of its tongue.
Cassian drove in his sword tip.
This was not the same wound. He pierced a name, not a body.
The mouth bit the blade and swallowed a piece of his name. In exchange, the door at its tongue root broke.
A white tooth shaped like a key fell to the floor.
The seventh mouth closed.
The jailer's body remained alive, breathing as an empty vessel.
Cassian picked up the tooth key.
He had consumed no dead person's ability.
No one had died this time.
So the trophy still had an owner.
"What does it open?" Nev asked.
Felix answered.
"Locked memories."
"The price?"
"Each door opened locks one memory belonging to the user."
Cassian inserted the key into the Innocence Bond ledger.
Ria caught his wrist.
"You don't know what memory you'll lose."
"Which is why I need to open it."
The key turned.
One of Cassian's memories locked. He could not tell what he had lost.
The ledger's deepest page opened.
Its first line recorded Cassian's public execution.
Date: today.
Location: before the imperial palace.
A white stamp filled the result field.
`Completed.`
Ria looked between the record and Cassian.
"You're still alive."
Cassian recalled his own name immediately.
Another name would not come.
He could not even remember whose name he had lost.
The ledger had judged before the living Cassian could.
The execution of Cassian Crow was already over.