Toma was grateful to have been abandoned.
Cassian decided to break that gratitude first.
"Pella refused."
Still kneeling, Toma raised his head.
"I know."
"You chained her to the coffin."
"To complete the order."
"I could have freed her."
"You did not."
"Because that would have left me one less piece of bait."
Toma smiled through his blood-soaked face.
"You recognized her usefulness to the very end."
One mouth on the laughing idol smiled with him.
Ria opened the Master Ledger of Innocence Bonds.
"I will read Pella Brin's exact words."
Toma's smile stiffened by the smallest degree.
"I did not volunteer."
The first sentence.
"Toma bound me."
The second.
"Cassian did not free me."
The third.
One of the idol's mouths tried to smile and tore crookedly.
A Black Feather soldier removed his helmet.
He was one of the women Pella had taken out of the false Cassian's house.
"I said I would go north too," she said.
"On the condition that Pella went."
Toma raised his head.
"She fulfilled her duty to the end—"
"She said she didn't."
The soldier tore the black feather from her chest.
She laid it on the ground.
"Put it back on," Toma ordered.
She did not move.
The order came from neither the dead Cassian nor the living one.
For the first time, Toma's own words failed to move a believer.
One of the laughing idol's mouths closed.
The faith had not broken completely.
But one sentence left by Pella raised one person from her knees.
Cassian did not look at the soldier.
The woman he had abandoned was taking someone out of his army.
Cassian stepped on Toma's remaining left hand.
Finger bones broke against stone.
"One Judith was worth more than all eighty-one of you."
The bereaved host cursed.
Rapture spread through Toma's eyes.
"You measured even an enemy's value fairly."
Cassian pressed harder.
"I did not want you to return alive."
"But I returned."
"Then you failed."
"Next time I will succeed."
Betrayal was not a wound to Toma.
It was another chance to prove his loyalty.
Even when Cassian crushed the hand completely, his gratitude did not stop.
"You remembered my name."
"Toma."
"Yes."
"That is why I discarded you."
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"Yes."
The answer was firm as prayer.
Cassian could cut his throat.
Dead, Toma became a martyr.
Alive, he brought more people.
Either choice fed the laughing idol.
* * *
The idol had grown taller than the well.
One hundred mouths.
No ears.
It consumed people's words without needing to hear their meaning.
It could turn anything into a story about Cassian.
The idol gave its first command.
"Forgive."
Weapons dropped from the bereaved host's hands.
Not because they wanted to forgive.
The command forced their finger joints open.
Judith nailed her hand to the hammer haft.
Even when her hand opened, the hammer would not fall.
"I do not forgive."
The mouths laughed.
"I bear even the pain of your inability to forgive."
The idol turned Judith's refusal into mercy.
She swung the hammer.
Cassian caught the haft.
"Don't strike it."
"Let go."
"Every fragment grows a mouth."
"Then I break them all."
"Break a thousand and you get ten thousand."
"You want me to watch?"
"Make it listen."
"It has no ears."
"Then we close its mouths first."
Cassian drew his sword.
Ria blocked him.
"You cannot cut it."
"I'm closing the mouths."
"The moment you strike, it becomes self-sacrifice."
"Then you strike."
"It feeds on hatred."
"The method?"
Ria compared the ledger's victim records with the idol's mouths.
One mouth appeared whenever an accusation became a salvation tale.
But no mouth had formed when Cassian personally corrected Aaron's spelling and admitted his act.
Specific fact without defense or salvation.
Very little interpretation to consume.
"Confess it yourself."
"I just did."
"Not to Toma. To everyone."
"Confess what?"
"Be specific."
Ria offered the ledger.
"And surrender the right to control the accusation."
Cassian looked up at the laughing idol.
"More troublesome than killing it."
"That is why it is the weakness."
* * *
Cassian stood between the armies.
Three thousand iron nameplates of the bereaved host.
Thousands of Black Feather knees.
The returnees and the prisoner host.
Citizens around the well.
All waited for him to speak.
Cassian hated waiting faces.
They gave him the power to decide.
"I stole Derrick's body."
The first confession fell.
One mouth closed.
"In front of his daughter."
A second closed.
"I escaped sin under Tobin's name."
Three mouths lost their teeth.
"I transferred the sins of seventeen houses to Martin Roe."
The idol's right cheek collapsed.
"I could have saved the fifty-three servants in the western quarters."
Cassian continued.
"I did not."
Black tongues fell to the ground.
"I burned the winter grain."
Marette watched him.
"I did not know her husband would die."
A mouth began opening again.
There was room for ignorance to become a defense.
Cassian continued.
"I would have burned it even if I had known."
The mouth remained closed.
Marette did not thank him.
The confession could not save her husband.
"I abandoned the possibility that three thousand people in the cathedral might recover."
The iron nameplates rang.
"Not because there was no way to save them."
Blood ran from Judith's hand.
"Because I refused to pay the cost of waiting."
The laughing idol's chest split.
The shadows of three thousand nameplates escaped.
They returned to the bereaved.
"I changed Mira's vote."
Ria's last signature line broke.
"To save one more person?" someone asked.
"To make my calculation balance."
The idol shrank by half.
Its laughter diminished.
Only ten mouths remained.
Cassian pointed at Toma.
"I sent eighty-one people, including that man, as bait."
Toma bowed his head.
"Pella Brin refused."
Movement stopped among the Black Feather soldiers.
Pella had brought some of them into the Society.
She had guarded an escape route so women victimized by the false Cassian would not be captured again.
"Toma chained her to the coffin," Cassian said.
"I watched."
One mouth fell from the idol.
It cursed in Pella's voice from the ground.
"I could have freed her."
A second mouth fell.
"I did not."
A third crawled beneath Toma's feet.
Toma lifted it with his crushed hand.
The mouth spoke Pella's last words.
"Cassian Crow."
The curse after the name had been cut away.
Toma held the mouth to his chest.
"She called for His Majesty at the end."
Cassian stabbed it.
The sword point entered Toma's chest.
"Calling my name didn't mean she followed me."
Toma bled but did not release the mouth.
"She hated you and still could not forget."
"Which is why she died."
"Which is why she remains."
The mouths fallen from the idol crawled into Black Feather throats.
The idol weakened.
The worshippers' laughter grew.
Reducing one monster created as many small monsters as there were people.
"You cannot stop confessing!" Ria shouted.
Cassian pointed at Judith.
"I saved that woman."
The bereaved host jeered.
"Not because I forgave her."
Judith glared at him.
"I hated the idea of the Papal Court taking her first."
"You wanted to preserve your right to kill me."
"And your right to kill me."
The crack in the idol's chest reached its waist.
The mouth that called it salvation lost its teeth.
"Saving her was no good deed," Cassian said.
"It was greed. I would not let someone else take my enemy."
Judith swallowed.
The debt of being saved vanished.
She no longer had to be grateful.
She could hate Cassian whole again.
"I like that confession."
"I didn't make it for you."
"Which makes it better."
The laughing idol's knees buckled.
Ria spoke.
"Now surrender the right."
"What right?"
"The right to command the Black Feather Society."
Toma raised his head for the first time.
"Your Majesty."
"Do not order murder in my name," Cassian said.
The Black Feather soldiers trembled.
"Do not say I saved you."
Five mouths fell.
"Do not say you bore my sins in my place."
Three more closed.
Two remained.
Ria pointed to Judith's hammer.
"Return the right to execute you to the victims as well."
Cassian looked at Judith.
Her hand remained nailed to the hammer.
"You want her to decide when I die?"
"Yes."
"No."
The idol's last two mouths smiled.
"My neck is mine."
Judith spoke.
"Did you say that when we died?"
"No."
"Then why only you?"
"Because I'm alive."
The idol did not weaken completely.
Cassian had surrendered the power of worship, but not control over his own death.
He confessed.
He did not submit.
The citizens murmured.
"He admitted every sin."
"He became evil in our place."
"He even surrendered command."
"A saint."
Cassian's confession began turning into sacrifice again.
The last two mouths spread laughter through the citizens' throats.
Judith shouted.
"He did not ask forgiveness!"
"He desires not even forgiveness," the Black Feather Society answered.
Toma struck his chest with his crushed left hand.
"He set us free."
Cassian had given them no freedom.
He had only told them not to use his command.
They knelt in the same direction without an order.
Then the capital's bell rang.
It was the Papal bell linked to the northern sealed ward.
White letters spread across the sky.
`Recovery-target judgment complete.`
`Cassian Crow's corpse and the black idol are two bodies of the same saint.`
`The Papal Court recognizes the existence of the Black Saint.`
The last two mouths of the laughing idol opened together.
The entire capital laughed with them.