Two hearts beat inside Cassian's chest.
One was Marchesa's.
The other was Simon's.
Whenever either moved away, the black scale scraped the inside of his ribs.
Marchesa walked ten paces north.
Cassian's chest opened.
Not his skin. The sentence.
`The surrendered man was returned alive.`
A hook sprang from between the white letters and pulled at her back.
Marchesa returned and struck it with her sword.
The blade bounced away.
Not even her own sword could cut a condition she had kept.
"Not protection. A leash."
"It is the armor you received."
"Take it back."
"I never gave it to you."
Simon moved in the opposite direction.
A second hook pulled at the white nail in his heart.
Simon fell to his knees.
Blood dripped from his mouth.
The three survived by staying close.
When they moved apart, their promises tore their flesh.
Hassan pressed his relic fragment against the black scale.
Three circles appeared on its surface.
"Two nails, but three chains."
Ria asked,
"Why three?"
"The nails bind defeat. The armor binds promises kept. When that man returned Simon, all three became the same event."
Hassan tapped Cassian's chest.
"Cut one and the others will loosen."
"With what blade?"
"One that betrayed a promise."
Marchesa looked northwest.
An old prisoner-exchange post stood in the blizzard.
Its roof had collapsed, and an empty suit of armor hung upside down from the flagpole in place of a man.
"There it is," she said.
A bell rang inside the armor.
The empty helm turned toward the three of them.
Thirteen broken swords hung in its throat in place of a tongue.
It was the Betrayal Knight.
Before the war, he had been a knight who guarded prisoner exchanges.
The first commander ordered him to kill surrendered prisoners.
The knight refused and stabbed his commander.
The second commander promised him a pardon.
To survive, the knight denied his first betrayal.
The third commander ordered him to surrender the prisoners' families as well.
The knight refused again.
Thirteen orders.
Thirteen oaths.
Thirteen betrayals.
Which side had been right vanished long ago.
The contract preserved only the fact that he had broken his promises.
The upside-down armor fell to the ground.
The swords at its throat struck one another.
"Who has come to execute me?"
Thirteen voices asked at once.
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Cassian stepped forward.
The scale in his chest pulled all three of them together.
Marchesa and Simon followed with unwilling steps.
"Do I get the blade if I kill it?"
"Killing it is not enough," Hassan said.
"Only someone who truly betrays an oath of his own can cut inside that armor."
"Then I'll make it promise me something."
"A promise you do not believe in is no oath."
The Betrayal Knight drew one sword from its throat.
An ancient sentence was engraved on it.
`A prisoner who lays down his weapon shall not be harmed.`
The knight swung.
The blade did not go toward Cassian.
It went toward a wounded soldier lying by the road.
A Morheim soldier who had lost an arm.
A man who had already laid down his weapon.
Marchesa blocked the sword.
The moment the blades touched, one scale of her armor turned black.
A surrendered prisoner from the past screamed inside it.
The Betrayal Knight did not cut enemies.
It tested promises that had been kept.
"Move back," Marchesa told the wounded man.
The soldier had no legs. He could not move back.
Simon dragged him away.
The nail in his chest shifted, and he coughed blood.
Cassian caught the Betrayal Knight's arm.
His right arm was useless.
He gripped a gap in the armor with his aged left hand.
Another finger bone broke.
"Make a deal with me."
The knight's thirteen voices laughed.
"You do not keep promises."
"I have never received one worth keeping."
"What do you want?"
"Release every wounded soldier here."
Chains rattled inside the exchange post.
Thirty wounded soldiers were bound to the wall, snow frozen to their flesh.
The Betrayal Knight swore every day to release them.
Every night, it bound them again.
It survived by repeating release promised and captivity betrayed.
"The price?"
"Release them, and I won't kill you."
Ria looked at Cassian.
"Do you mean it?"
The contract asked the same question.
A white circle formed on the snow.
If it was a lie, no sentence would appear.
Cassian intended to keep the Betrayal Knight alive.
Bound as a tool for cutting promises, it would be useful longer than any power gained by killing it.
"Yes."
The white circle closed.
It became an oath.
The Betrayal Knight lowered all thirteen swords.
The chains inside the post came loose.
The wounded crawled out.
No one lifted them.
Borrowing their own arms and one another's shoulders, they crossed the boundary.
The last soldier's fingers passed over the white circle.
The promise was fulfilled.
The Betrayal Knight was free.
It did not attack Cassian.
It did not attack Marchesa.
It knelt before Simon.
"Master of the winter crown."
Simon's face hardened.
"Rise."
"I offer the oath I failed to give my thirteenth commander."
The knight's chest opened.
Hundreds of severed hands prayed where its heart should have been.
"I shall bear every defeat in your place."
The hands seized Simon's white nail.
The village's defeat.
The return of the winter crown.
Marchesa's surrender armor.
Cassian's scale.
All three contracts were drawn toward the knight.
Hassan shouted,
"Do not accept it!"
Simon could no longer breathe.
In exchange for taking the defeats, the knight took every future command of its master.
The king would survive.
With a knight who betrayed every order he gave for the rest of his life.
Cassian raised his sword.
The white circle bit his ankle.
`Release them, and I will not kill you.`
The promise was still alive.
The knight had released every wounded soldier.
Cassian had decided not to kill it.
The decision had been real.
Blood vessels burst in Simon's eyes.
The nail in Marchesa's heart was pulled toward the knight's hands.
Her armor scales peeled from within.
Cassian weighed his promise against Simon.
Not because Simon was the better man.
If the Betrayal Knight consumed the king's authority to command, it could rewrite every surrender term in the north.
Marchesa's armor would rot.
The supply roads would close.
The wartime lines of contact Cassian sought would vanish.
So the promise was cheaper.
Cassian stepped on the white circle and broke it.
He betrayed his own oath.
The Betrayal Knight's helm opened for the first time.
There was no face inside.
Thirteen commanders were biting one another's throats.
Cassian seized the innermost tongue.
"I released them," the knight said.
"I know."
"You promised."
"I just broke it."
Cassian dragged the tongue out of the armor.
Thirteen faces followed it in a line.
Marchesa planted a foot on the armor's body.
Simon seized the swords hanging from its neck.
The three pulled the connected chain in opposite directions.
Cassian brought down his sword.
Thirteen necks were cut at once.
The heads did not fall onto the snow.
Still biting one another, they formed a circle.
Cassian put his left hand inside it.
Every betrayal of the knight crawled up his wrist.
The night it promised mercy.
The morning it stabbed its commander.
Thirty years of freeing prisoners and binding them again.
A fine black line appeared across his palm.
A line that could cut one promise without a sword.
`Oath Severing.`
Cassian first cut the bond between his chest and Simon's nail.
When he drew his palm through empty air, the sentence on the black scale split in two.
Simon released his breath.
Marchesa's armor also fell silent.
One connection had been severed.
At the same time, something left Cassian's memory.
The cathedral altar.
Adel slapped his face.
He remembered pinning down his own right arm with his foot so he would not seize her wrist.
He no longer remembered why.
He remembered his promise to save her body.
He remembered killing her name without permission.
But he no longer felt the weight of the debt to return it.
Adel looked at Cassian's face.
"What did you forget?"
"If I knew, it wouldn't be forgotten."
She looked at the line across his palm.
"Can that blade sever my name?"
Cassian considered it.
It could.
He could cut the ownership joining Adel's name to his throat.
But it might also blur Adel's desire to reclaim that name.
"It can."
"But?"
"Not now."
"Why?"
Cassian could not find an answer.
Perhaps the answer was what he had just lost.
Marchesa drew her sword.
"Cut the bond between my armor and your scale too."
"No."
"Because you still need it?"
"Because now I can cut it."
She put her sword point to Cassian's throat.
"You never surrendered to me. You are not a party to the contract. Even with that blade, you have no right to cut the owner of my armor."
Hassan nodded.
"You must offer your own terms first. Only then will you stand upon the same sentence."
Cassian crushed the circle of the knight's heads beneath his boot.
Black blood spread across the snow like a conditional clause.
"Fine."
He caught Marchesa's blade.
The Oath Severing line in his palm touched its edge.
No blood flowed.
Instead, an unwritten sentence opened between them.
"If I kill one of your subordinates outside the terms,"
Cassian pulled the sword toward his own throat.
"my neck is yours."
Every scale of Marchesa's armor opened.
For the first time, there was a gap Cassian's sword could enter.
She accepted the condition.
"If I abandon someone who has surrendered,"
Marchesa pulled the sword from his hand.
With Cassian's name upon the blade, she drew it across her chest.
"my army is yours."
They took possession of each other's conditions of defeat first.
Only then did they raise their swords again.