Mira's name was feeding on the Nameless Court.
Dark crimson roots spread from the throne.
One to every coffin.
One to every name tag.
Cassian cut a root.
Two people screamed somewhere in the Court.
One person's hand turned transparent.
The other's face began to resemble Mira.
Cassian stopped his sword.
Lauren retied the severed root.
"Two people hang from each name."
"Why two?"
"Because only half the originals remain."
Ria opened the Master Ledger of Innocence Bonds.
People trapped in the Nameless Court: `2,086`.
Original names available for return: `1,043`.
Exactly half.
Cassian's objective was to detach Mira's right of return from the throne.
First he had to separate more than two thousand people from the roots.
If he failed, they would all die as one person named Mira.
"Who destroyed the originals?" Ria asked.
Lauren looked at the throne.
"They weren't destroyed. They were sold to one person."
The imperial family left no vacancy when it erased a name.
It repossessed that name's right of return under the royal name.
As it seized land, marriage, and debt, it also seized the destination after death.
Two names were merged into one.
The imperial family kept the one surviving original.
Mira's right of return filled the vanished place.
That was why the nameless had not dispersed completely even without names.
They had returned to the Court as parasites on Mira's death.
"Mira saved them," Ria said.
"She didn't save them."
Cassian looked at the transparent hand.
"She kept them from ending."
A voice rose beneath the throne.
It sounded like thousands breathing through one mouth.
`Give it back.`
There was no telling who had spoken.
Mira.
The nameless.
Or the imperial family that had bought the names.
* * *
Cassian summoned everyone to the Court's bedchamber.
There were one thousand forty-three beds.
Twice as many people.
One name tag lay on each bed.
Two people stood on opposite sides of every bed.
Even the front- and rear-wagon factions had to share.
Sena stood across from the feverish woman.
They glared over one name.
The tag read `Arvel Nott`.
Its past unfolded over the bedspread.
One husband.
Five debts.
A small brewery outside the city.
One accusation of witchcraft.
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One claimant would receive all of it.
The other would remain in the Nameless Court forever.
Sena turned over the tag.
The date of return was written on the back.
One hundred three years ago.
The husband and brewery would already belong to another bloodline.
"Even if I take it, it isn't my life."
"But you can leave," the feverish woman said.
"If I take it, I can guard the eastern passage."
"I can deliver children."
"Are there any children to be born here?"
"Is there a passage outside for you to guard?"
Both arguments were about usefulness.
Each put her trade first, afraid that saying she wanted to live would make her look weak.
At the next bed stood an armless man and an old woman.
The tag was `Theo Valen`.
Royal surgeon.
Attached was a record of dissecting condemned patients without anesthetic.
"If I take it, I can operate again," the armless man said.
"Without arms?" the old woman asked.
"The name comes with two."
"And you'll cut people open again with them."
"What can you do?"
"Nothing."
She did not think long.
"That's why I should take it. I have nothing left with which to harm the world."
The man laughed.
"Uselessness as a qualification."
"Your usefulness is what brought us here."
Two similar-looking men stood at the next bed.
Both claimed to be the original owner of the name.
The same scar.
The same first love.
The same mother's last words.
When the imperial family merged their records, it divided the memories in half.
One remembered the mother's face.
The other remembered her voice.
Neither alone was her son.
"How do we choose between them?" Ria asked.
"A coin," Cassian said.
Both men glared at him.
"For a human life?"
"If I choose, it's a blade. If you choose, it's a ballot."
"What's the difference?"
"Whom you blame."
Ria closed the ledger.
"You're returning the responsibility."
"I'm giving them a choice."
"Choice without the power to bear its outcome is abandonment."
"Then you choose."
Ria could not answer.
She could call Cassian's method cruel.
The moment she chose the half who would receive names, she held the same blade.
Cassian waited through her silence.
Respect was not his only reason for handing people the choice.
He wanted more accomplices to the result.
"I arrived first," the feverish woman said.
"I can save people."
Sena raised her broken wrist.
"Have you ever delivered a child?"
"I've killed plenty of people."
"So has everyone here."
Fights began at the other beds.
An old man smothered the young man beside him with a pillow.
The young man drove fingers into the old man's eyes.
Without names, neither could die.
Even with an eye torn out and a neck broken, they crawled toward the tag.
The first name fell to the floor.
Four hands seized it at once.
Cassian cut off all four wrists.
The hands crawled along the floor, still clutching the tag.
"Stop."
No one stopped.
Cassian split a bed lengthwise.
The name upon it broke in half.
The brewery roof and the husband's face tore apart with it.
The two people on either side clutched their chests.
"Next time I cut you, not the name."
They stopped.
They knew the pain of remaining severed even when death would not come.
Cassian walked between the beds.
Orsen's noiseless step erased his footfalls.
No one knew behind whom he had stopped.
Fear moved through the entire bedchamber.
"There are two choices," Cassian said.
"Half receive names."
One thousand forty-three people would return to families and property.
Their sins and debts would return too.
They would become people capable of dying.
"And the other half?" Sena asked.
Cassian looked toward the throne.
"They pass through Mira's right of return once."
He would attach one name to one thousand forty-three people for only long enough that death could find them.
In that instant, Cassian would execute them all.
A complete death.
Mira's right of return would carry death more than a thousand times.
No one knew what would remain.
The coffin corpse's words returned to Cassian's memory.
`Do not kill Mira twice.`
He did not share the warning.
"You're going to kill a thousand people with your sister's name?" Ria asked.
"We haven't confirmed she's my sister."
"So you may use her?"
"There are more people here than one unconfirmed person."
"You beat family with arithmetic."
"Do you think it would be different if she were family?"
Ria did not answer.
She did not believe Cassian when he claimed it would make no difference.
Nor did she trust the part of herself that hoped it would not.
"Who gets a name and who dies?" the feverish woman asked.
"You choose."
The armless man struck the end of the bed.
"Say it so we understand, not as numbers."
Cassian pointed to a bed.
"Two people."
He lifted the tag on his sword tip.
"One name."
The point turned to the person on the left.
"One receives the name and leaves."
Then the person on the right.
"The other borrows Mira's name and dies here."
"Who decides?"
"The pair agree."
"And if they cannot?"
"The others vote."
The old woman asked,
"What about you?"
"I cut the one chosen to die."
No one in the bedchamber asked about the numbers again.
One of every two would leave.
One would die.
Cassian would not choose. He would execute.
That was all.
The bedchamber went silent.
They had expected Cassian to divide them in half.
Useful bodies and disposable ones.
Soldiers and civilians.
Guilty and innocent.
Instead he placed the blade in their hands.
"Vote."
Sena laughed.
"Who counts the votes of people without names?"
Ria looked at the ledger.
In the Nameless Court, only a signature with a name counted as a vote.
A person without a name could not record even their own choice.
"Borrow a proxy name," Cassian said.
"Whose?"
"Pay a price and find one."
After putting a price on the right to die, he put one on the right to choose.
Fear changed to hatred on their faces.
Cassian preferred that.
Those who hated remembered terms longer.
* * *
The imperial seal on the Master Ledger of Innocence Bonds grew hot.
Seraphina's face rose from the red wax.
"You cannot return those names."
No greeting.
"Because they're imperial property?" Cassian asked.
"Because the empire will collapse."
Each name carried land, marriage, and inheritance.
If a thousand returned, ownership of already sold land would change.
Dead marriages would return to force.
The current nobility's bloodlines would be pushed into illegitimacy.
Half the ownership the imperial family had built over a century would overturn.
"Good news."
"It will overturn your soldiers' families too," Seraphina said.
"A returned husband makes the current wife an adulteress. A returned debt sells a child into debt bondage."
"I'm returning them anyway."
"Why?"
"They decide whether to take them and be ruined, or die without them."
"Don't pretend you respect their choice."
Seraphina smiled.
"You simply haven't calculated which side is more useful yet."
Cassian did not deny it.
The wax face melted.
"Send me the result of the vote."
"To stop it?"
"To buy the empire's new owners first."
The princess's face vanished.
Ria prepared the voting ledger.
She opened the first page.
No proxy name had yet been lent to anyone.
One line was already written.
`Mira Crow.`
The choice had been marked in black blood.
`Receive the name.`
Mira's name had voted first.