The dead Cassian gave the first order.
"Execute those who stole the names."
The Black Feather execution host drew their swords as one.
Their targets were the one thousand forty-three people who had just recovered names.
The living Cassian spoke.
"Stop."
No one stopped.
Under funerary law, the last words left by Cassian's corpse took precedence over his current orders.
The dead could not change their words.
That was why they were considered more trustworthy than the living.
The problem was that this corpse was still changing its words.
Cassian's objective was to return to the funeral room and cut out his corpse's tongue.
Lauren remained before the throne of the Nameless Court. Watching to ensure Mira's vote was not changed again was now the price of his silence.
If the execution host killed the returnees first, the passages and intelligence network Cassian had just obtained would vanish with them.
Toma set his sword against the first returnee's neck.
Bella Roin, keeper of a cemetery.
Her creditors had been dragging her away when she was shoved back into the Court.
"What is my crime?" Bella asked.
Toma answered in Cassian's voice.
"Stealing the king's name."
"It is my name."
"Not until His Majesty returned it."
"The man who returned it is standing there."
Bella pointed at the living Cassian.
Toma did not look.
"His dead Majesty said otherwise."
The blade moved.
Cassian kicked Toma's wrist aside.
The edge grazed Bella's ear and lodged in the wall.
Still kneeling, Toma smiled.
"His living Majesty tests us."
"This isn't a test."
"Then is it treason?"
"Against myself?"
"We must decide which one is real."
The same voice emerged from inside the Black Feather soldiers' helmets.
The dead Cassian's command was borrowing their tongues.
"The returnees stole the royal command."
"Those who protect them share the crime."
"Execute the false Cassian."
At the final sentence, half the soldiers looked at the living Cassian.
The other half still aimed at Bella.
Behind the formation came the sound of steel cutting flesh.
A returnee dropped to his knees.
Havel Kron.
He had sold Cassian the locations of three underground gates in the western walls.
Less than an hour had passed since he recovered his name.
A Black Feather soldier had cut halfway through his neck.
Cassian severed the soldier's arm.
Too late.
The corpse Cassian's order recognized Havel's death as an execution.
Death found the name.
Havel caught Cassian's coat.
"Three gates."
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
He tried to give the last of his information.
"The first is a well."
Blood filled his throat.
"The second is the queen's—"
His mouth closed.
The remaining words left Havel's body.
They became black feathers and flew toward the funeral room.
The dead Cassian consumed the information first.
The living Cassian gained only one well.
The corpse gained all three gates.
"Don't report to a dead man."
Cassian tried to open Havel's mouth.
Havel was already completely dead.
Cassian picked up the soldier's severed arm.
The hand still held its sword.
The ownerless arm moved toward Cassian's throat.
The corpse's command outlived the body.
Cassian broke its fingers one by one.
"Whose order did you hear?"
The severed arm had no mouth.
Letters rose instead from the palm.
`Last command.`
Cassian shoved the arm into the soldier's mouth.
The soldier choked on his own limb and smiled.
"His Majesty's words do not die."
Cassian cut upward through his jaw.
"The man who said them does."
The soldier fell.
Two small black tongues crawled from his mouth.
One headed for the funeral room.
The other attached itself to the living Cassian's boot.
It was feeding on both Cassians' orders at once.
Cassian drew Toma's sword and drove it into his shoulder.
"Which me do you believe?"
Toma's blood ran down black armor.
His smile remained.
"Both."
"And if one of us kills you?"
"The survivor was right."
Faith had no life to threaten.
Cassian pushed the sword deeper.
Toma received pain like grace.
That expression made Cassian release the weapon first.
* * *
The returnees ran for the eastern well exit.
Cassian ordered the prisoner host to escort them.
Bella stopped.
"How far do you escort us?"
"Beyond the well."
"And then?"
"Scatter."
"To where our creditors are waiting?"
Cassian did not answer.
He needed their passages and intelligence.
Whether they were captured again beyond the well had not been part of the bargain.
Bella looked back at the returnees.
"This man isn't saving us."
Frightened eyes moved between her and Cassian.
"He's moving us so his roads don't die."
"Does that mean you won't leave?" Cassian asked.
"I'm leaving."
Bella picked up Havel's bloody scarf.
"But they follow me, not you."
She divided the returnees into groups of three.
One who remembered names.
One who remembered debts.
One who remembered the geography outside.
If one was captured, the other two could still reach home.
"What if the escort abandons us?" someone asked.
"Remember the escort's names."
Bella answered while looking at Cassian.
"Make the testimony of the living outlast the order of a dead king."
Cassian did not change her formation.
It was better than his command.
He did not like that fact.
This time, more than three hundred moved.
They had followed him since the White Prison.
They owed the living Cassian debt and fear.
The dead Cassian had never beaten them.
The Black Feather execution host pursued.
The two armies collided on the narrow well stairs.
Some on both sides wore the same black feathers.
One side fought by looking at Cassian's face.
The other by listening to Cassian's voice.
No one knew who the traitors were.
The first head fell.
The dead soldier's mouth spoke from the floor.
"For His Majesty."
The living body said the same.
Cassian stepped on the head, then the body.
"Do not use my name."
The soldier's blood spread in the shape of black feathers.
Even that statement passed to the next man as a new order.
"His Majesty has cast away his name."
"He gave it to us."
"Take it."
The army began chanting Cassian's name.
The more he forbade it, the louder they grew.
Cassian cut through a soldier's mouth.
The severed mouth split in two and shouted the same name.
No smiling idol had been born yet.
But the mouths were already multiplying.
* * *
Ria did not join the fight.
She studied the first page of the Master Ledger of Innocence Bonds.
The black stroke across Mira's vote.
Its sound had been erased, but the pressure of the writing remained.
It shared the grain of the noiseless-step sinmark taken from Orsen.
Ria called to Cassian.
"Did you change this vote?"
Cassian was cutting off a man's arm on the well stairs.
"If you saw it, write it down."
"Answer me."
"You already did."
He did not deny it.
The proxy signature lines around Ria's wrists broke one by one.
It was not the nameless people's trust withdrawing.
Ria's own name was escaping a fraudulent execution.
Another of her three remaining fingernails fell out.
In her right eye, not only color but Cassian's outline blurred.
"You said you would not change a single vote."
"Which is why I changed only one."
"Do not play with words."
"A recorder should not miscount them."
Ria closed the ledger.
"I will no longer record from your side."
"Were you ever on my side?"
"I thought I wasn't."
She paused.
"Until just now."
Ria walked to the other side of Cassian.
At that moment, metal struck above the eastern well.
The exit closed.
* * *
Another army waited outside the well.
They wore neither black armor nor white prison uniforms.
Gray mourning clothes lay over their armor.
Iron nameplates covered their chests.
Three thousand names.
The names of those Cassian had executed at the cathedral.
At their head stood a woman with a bellfounder's hammer.
Judith Arn.
Thirty-nine.
A bellfounder who had lost her husband and two adult siblings at the cathedral.
She confirmed Cassian's face and raised the hammer.
"You're alive."
"Disappointed?"
"Glad I can kill you myself."
The bereaved host aimed crossbows at the well mouth.
The Black Feather execution host was climbing from behind.
Cassian's prisoner host and the returnees were trapped between them.
Toma pulled the sword from his shoulder.
"Your Majesty. Give the order."
"Lower your swords."
"They are the bereaved."
"I know."
"They came to kill you."
"That too."
Cassian looked at Judith.
"If she dies, there will be one fewer person to read my sins."
"You have Ria."
Ria walked toward the bereaved host.
She passed between crossbow bolts and stopped before Judith.
She offered the ledger.
"I will read them."
Judith accepted it.
"Whose side are you on?"
"The side where the spelling of the dead is correct."
Ria did not look back at Cassian.
The bereaved host's shields opened.
She stepped inside.
Cassian did not stop her.
Doing so would admit she had been his.
Then a funeral bell rang inside the Nameless Court.
The armies divided to either side.
The Funeral Guild carried out a coffin.
Cassian's corpse sat inside.
The alignment seam around its neck.
The black-crown wound.
A body that had learned even the wound the living Cassian had just gained.
Dona Har raised her left hand behind the coffin.
"Hear the dead king's final judgment."
The corpse opened its eyes.
The Black Feather execution host knelt.
The bereaved host froze without lowering its crossbows.
The dead Cassian pointed at the living one.
"That man stole my body and name."
The living Cassian looked at his corpse.
It smiled.
"Execute the false Cassian Crow."
Every blade of the Black Feather execution host turned toward the living Cassian.