Marchesa withdrew her hand from Cassian's neck first.
She lost the duel.
So she would not abandon the surrendered.
Her army did not pass to Cassian.
The condition of defeat said nothing about winning the duel.
Ria had carved only one thing into the stone.
Abandon the surrendered, and surrender the army.
Marchesa chose defeat and kept the terms.
"We go north."
Cassian did not lower the sword at her throat.
"The duel?"
"You won."
"I didn't cut your neck."
"If that disappoints you, follow me."
Marchesa turned her back.
The white nail beat between the open plates of her armor.
Cassian could cut her.
It would not be a killing outside the terms.
It would be cutting down an enemy who had turned her back in a duel.
He threw the sword.
The blade passed her neck and buried itself in the ground ahead.
"Pick it up."
She turned.
"Why?"
"My right arm looks ready to fall off."
The arm, hanging by a few black threads, dragged through the snow.
Marchesa pulled out the sword.
She did not return it.
She carried it north herself.
"If you run, I'll discard your sword first."
"Take my arm too."
"It looks useless."
"That is how I used it."
They did not form an alliance.
Each carried one of the other's weapons toward the same village.
The border was half a day away on horseback.
There were no horses.
Even the remaining mounts had been emptied out to gather troops at the arena.
Cassian and Marchesa walked.
Simon's cavalry caught up later.
They offered the lead horse, but Marchesa did not mount.
"The surrendered are walking."
Six hundred one sets of footprints continued along the northern road.
Many were bare.
"So does the commander."
Cassian mounted instead.
She looked up at him.
"Then you are no commander."
"That makes life easier."
The horse did not make three steps.
A hook sprang from the scale in Cassian's chest.
The terms joined to Marchesa's armor dragged him under the horse.
He struck the snow face-first.
Marchesa walked past without stopping.
"The armor seems to think you are a commander."
Cassian rose and walked.
The border village came into view before sunset.
It had no walls.
Instead, white cloth encircled the entire village.
Between house and house.
Well and stable.
Tree and corpse.
Thousands of surrender documents had been stitched into one wall.
Six hundred one residents stood before it.
Each wore their own name on their back.
Beneath every name was the same owner.
`Marchesa Bell.`
Behind them stood one hundred eighty soldiers.
Marchesa's uniforms.
Marchesa's weapons.
White Crusade letters in their eyes and mouths.
They raised their swords.
They put them to the residents' throats.
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Marchesa stepped forward.
The white wall spoke.
"Take possession of the surrendered."
"I accept them."
She answered at once.
The soldiers' blades left the residents' throats.
They rose to their own instead.
"Give us an order," the one hundred eighty said.
"If you refuse, we are soldiers without a commander."
"And?"
"Soldiers without a commander become looters."
The blades pressed into their necks.
"Will you abandon us?"
If Marchesa gave an order, the residue consumed it.
If she did not, she abandoned her subordinates.
Cassian approached one soldier.
Eyes filled with white writing looked back.
"Please kill me," the soldier said.
He offered his throat.
"Then your neck belongs to our commander."
Cassian had no sword.
Marchesa held it.
She offered him the hilt.
"Take it."
"You want me to kill your subordinate?"
"Can you cut it out without killing him?"
The Oath Severing line moved in Cassian's left palm.
It was possible.
Cut one contract joining soldier to residue.
Do the same for one hundred eighty men and lose the meaning of one hundred eighty promises.
By the time he saved the last soldier, Cassian would no longer remember what the word promise meant.
"I cut only once," he said.
"What?"
"The original."
Hassan examined the white wall.
He found the oldest surrender document among the thousands.
It was not cloth, but human skin.
The letters were written in a young hand.
Aaron Bell.
Ria bit her lip.
"Aaron again."
"No."
Hassan showed them the back of the skin.
A drawing of a gate.
Beneath it, the handprints of four thousand three hundred soldiers.
Nine granaries.
Twelve wells.
Three winter roads through the north.
Every condition had been joined to Aaron's small body.
"Aaron did not possess the residue," Hassan said.
"Aaron was the gate."
Marchesa gripped the surrender document.
Her hand did not shake.
Only the heart impaled by the nail beat faster.
"When my brother died," she said,
"the surrender of the gate, soldiers, and supply lines would be completed."
"Yes."
Cassian had known from the beginning.
He had seen the white nail in Aaron's throat.
He had seen the gate bound behind it.
He had also found a way to remove only the name without harming the body.
Surrender the gate to the Crusade residue.
Disarm four thousand three hundred soldiers.
Empty nine granaries.
Close three winter roads.
If every surrender was truly carried out, Aaron's body and name would both be released from the contract.
There had been a slow way.
It had merely been costly and slow.
"That day, I chose to surrender the gate," Marchesa said.
"I signed it too."
She took an old sheet of paper from inside her armor.
Its edges had worn through with blood and sweat.
`I authorize the surrender of the north gate and its garrison in exchange for the safe return of Aaron Bell.`
Her signature was beneath it.
"Seven minutes before the messenger reached you," Cassian said.
"You knew?"
"I learned after you executed his name."
"In seven minutes, the residue would have consumed two more wells."
"Four thousand three hundred people would have lived."
"Disarmed and trapped in winter."
"The choice would still have been theirs."
"I cut away the name and sent the boy out."
"Was he alive?"
"For three days."
Marchesa's sword point entered Cassian's alignment seam.
"Who killed him?"
"A Papal recovery squad."
"Where were you?"
"Holding the residue at two wells and the north gate."
"You left him."
"Yes."
"Then it remains your sin."
"Yes."
Marchesa approached Cassian.
She still held his sword.
"That is why you must die."
The blade entered the seam around his neck.
Half an inch.
Push farther and his head would fall.
Cassian did not evade it.
"Cut me now and the village remains."
"I know."
"Your subordinates too."
"I know."
"Then why not?"
"I want those seven minutes back."
Marchesa did not push the blade farther.
She did not withdraw it either.
Within beheading distance, they looked together at the surrender document written in Aaron's blood.
Cassian raised his nearly severed right arm.
The black threads snapped.
The arm fell into the snow.
He picked it up and placed it in the heart-shaped groove at the center of the white wall.
"I register my defeat first."
The wall asked,
"What do you offer?"
"The hand that carried out the judgment."
The fingers of his right hand moved one last time.
They gripped Aaron's surrender document.
Hundreds of white nails pierced the arm.
Cassian's flesh fused with the wall.
It became collateral that could never be reclaimed.
Marchesa removed her armor.
Not all of it.
She tore away half of the surrender terms she had kept.
More than one hundred white scales fell to the ground.
For the first time, her body was open enough for an ordinary sword to cut.
"I pledge the surrenders I kept as collateral."
She laid the scales over Cassian's arm.
The wall asked again,
"Who bears this village's defeat?"
"I do."
They spoke at the same time.
The white wall wrote both names.
`First debtor: Cassian Crow.`
`First debtor: Marchesa Bell.`
Both were first.
The commands contradicted each other.
The owner's name vanished from the backs of six hundred one residents.
White letters spilled from the eyes and mouths of one hundred eighty soldiers.
The residue fell from human bodies to the ground.
Tongueless mouths.
Kneeling legs.
Hands that had written surrender documents.
Thousands tangled together into the shape of a giant commander.
Its head was a gate.
Every time its mouth opened, four thousand three hundred handprints showed within.
"Which commander's orders do I obey?" the residue asked.
Cassian raised his left hand.
Marchesa released his sword.
The hilt drove into the Oath Severing line.
"Both," Marchesa said.
"Therefore, obey neither."
The gate-shaped head split.
Unable to endure the contradiction, the hands strangled one another.
Cassian ran.
Without his right arm, his balance failed.
Marchesa caught his waist and set his direction.
Cassian entered the mouth of the gate.
He did not cut people with the sword.
He found the oldest sentence joining the handprints to Aaron's blood.
`Complete the surrender of all through the death of one.`
The Oath Severing line touched the sentence.
"Cut it," Marchesa's voice came from outside the gate.
"The final meaning of your brother will blur too."
"You already decided that."
Cassian drew the line through the sentence.
Once.
Four thousand three hundred handprints came loose.
Twice.
The name fell from Aaron's surrender document.
He did not cut a third time.
He cut only the original contract.
The residue's gate-head closed.
It chewed Cassian's body.
Marchesa entered its mouth without her armor.
She seized its upper and lower jaws with both hands.
Iron teeth tore ordinary flesh.
She did not let go.
"Come out."
From inside the gate, Cassian pushed the sword upward.
Its point pierced the crown of the residue.
Marchesa caught the point.
Her palm split.
She pulled.
Cassian came out through the residue's divided mouth.
The gate-shape split vertically.
Hands, mouths, and legs spilled onto the snow.
The residents recovered their own mouths.
The soldiers looked at their commander with their own eyes.
No one cheered.
Twenty-three dead soldiers lay on the ground.
Their hearts had stopped while the residue left them.
All six hundred one residents were alive.
But white letters remained on the village's houses, wells, and fields.
`Surrendered property.`
The people could leave.
The land could not follow.
That day, they lost their entire home.
Cassian and Marchesa had saved the village's people.
They had not saved the village.
Ria spread an alliance document over a bloodstained stone.
"Set the terms."
Simon asked,
"Is the first clause joint command?"
"No," Marchesa said.
She put Cassian's sword to his throat again.
Cassian caught the opening in her armor with his left hand.
His fingertip pressed the nail in her heart.
They stood close enough to kill each other.
Ria wrote the first sentence.
`If one party changes the surrender terms or transfers the shared debt to another, the other shall execute that party first.`
The second.
`Neither party is obliged to forgive the other.`
The third.
`Aaron Bell's death shall not be used to justify this alliance.`
Marchesa signed.
Cassian had no right hand.
He bit his left thumb until it bled.
He wrote his name.
When the signatures touched, one of Marchesa's remaining armor scales wrapped around Cassian's neck.
One Oath Severing line appeared across Marchesa's palm.
Each took one share of the other's defense and betrayal.
The alliance was complete.
Behind the surrender document written in Aaron's blood, Hassan found another signature.
An authorization written before Marchesa's.
The seal of the person who had created the contract for the Empire.
Ria wiped away the blood.
A lily without a sinmark.
The same as the seal of Third Princess Elodie.
But the date was wrong.
It had been stamped twenty-seven years before Elodie was born.
Cassian had seen that seal before.
On the Red Table invitation.
In the underground appraisal chamber of the church tribunal.
And inside Aaron's throat.
The sinless princess had been forcing people to surrender since before she was born.