The capital proclaimed Cassian a saint.
Cassian tested the power first.
"Open the eastern gate."
The laughing idol's last two mouths repeated the command.
"Open the eastern gate for the Black Saint."
The capital stood three days away.
Yet the stone wall above the well trembled.
The sound of gate hinges traveled through the earth.
Soldiers guarding the capital's eastern gate pulled its bars without knowing why.
There was no imperial writ.
The gatekeepers had never seen Cassian's face.
The gate still opened.
From the moment the Papal Court recognized the corpse and idol as one saint, commands in Cassian's name began pushing weakly against reality.
Judith spoke.
"I thought you surrendered the power."
"I verified it."
"By using it?"
"Discarding something without knowing whether it works isn't renunciation. It's a mistake."
Ria wrote in the Master Ledger of Innocence Bonds.
`Cassian Crow.`
`Used the Black Saint's command authority.`
`First command: open the capital's eastern gate.`
"Tell them to close it."
"Why?"
"Your army will enter."
"That is why I opened it."
Cassian rejected worship.
He did not reject the road worship made.
The mouths of the laughing idol began to grow again.
One fed on command.
The other on hypocrisy.
* * *
The Black Feather Society knelt before Cassian.
Some of the bereaved host followed.
Not because they forgave him.
The record of driving away the Recovery Saint together and opening the capital gate arrived before their anger did.
The citizens were simpler.
"Black Saint."
The first person called.
"Black Saint."
The second repeated it.
The title spread over the well and into the city.
People heard the sins Cassian confessed.
They were moved because no ruler had admitted crimes before.
They called his refusal to kneel before victims dignity.
His refusal to seek forgiveness became atonement.
His rejection of command authority became a greater command.
Toma had no right arm.
His left hand was crushed.
So he struck the ground with his head.
He bowed until his forehead split.
"Black Saint."
Cassian hauled him up by the hair.
"I told you not to."
"You did not command it."
"I just did."
"You surrendered command authority, so I have no duty to obey."
Toma smiled through blood.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Cassian kicked him.
His body struck the idol's feet.
A new mouth formed in stone.
"The saint blessed his first believer."
"I kicked him."
"A blessing delivered through the body."
Judith raised her hammer.
"Want me to kill that one first?"
"No."
"Why?"
"He'd like it."
Toma answered from the floor.
"Of course."
Even Judith had nothing to say for a moment.
* * *
The laughing idol grew again.
The mouths lost during the public confession returned from citizens' throats.
Each carried a new story.
Cassian admitted his sins.
Cassian saved his enemy.
Cassian abandoned his believer.
Cassian rejected power.
Cassian opened the capital gate.
Contradiction multiplied the mouths.
The idol's head broke through the well roof.
A black crown hung in the sky.
The Papal proclamation began appearing in every city.
Someone before one copy said,
"The Black Saint forgave my debt."
One number blurred in a debt ledger.
A soldier in another city said,
"Cassian permitted me to desert."
The conscription brand on his ankle faded.
A widow before a grave said,
"The saint commanded my husband to return."
Nails scratched inside the coffin.
The effect was still weak.
One command could not reshape a kingdom.
But when thousands repeated the same lie, records moved one letter at a time.
Ria's face hardened.
"If the idol reaches the capital, anyone can rewrite reality in your name."
"They already are."
"It becomes stronger while a central command-body remains."
Judith asked,
"What if we break it?"
"Every fragment grows a mouth."
"And if we don't?"
"One mouth commands the entire empire."
Both choices were disasters.
A centralized disaster was strong.
But it had only one neck to cut.
A scattered disaster was weak.
But anyone could become its mouth.
Cassian looked up at the laughing idol.
Keeping command authority could take the capital without a battle.
It could erase noble debts and create new ones.
It might even command Mira's name to return.
"Do not test it," Ria said.
"Test what?"
"Mira's name."
Cassian was already considering it.
"It might return if I call it."
"In what form?"
"I can verify that when it arrives."
"It may displace a thousand other names."
"Then I could verify that too."
Ria closed the ledger.
"If you leave that idol standing, you will use it eventually."
"I already did."
Cassian knew it too.
The second use would be easier than the first.
By the third, he would not bother making a reason.
Power did not corrupt Cassian.
It only made what he already intended cheaper.
That was more dangerous.
* * *
A bell rang in the north.
The Recovery Saint was returning.
Its new body was a giant stitched from eighty Black Feather soldiers.
Cassian's return-body was embedded in its chest.
The corpse reached toward the idol.
The Papal Court had judged them bodies of the same saint.
If they touched, they would become one.
A Cassian stronger than the living one would be completed.
The corpse commanded,
"Return my body."
The laughing idol turned north.
The citizens' necks twisted in the same direction.
Cassian made his choice.
The Recovery Saint smashed through the well wall.
Eighty arms reached from one body.
Every hand bore a Black Feather oath.
Pella's hand was among them.
It dragged the chain once wrapped around her waist.
That hand pointed at Cassian.
"Recovery."
Eighty mouths spoke together.
Toma crawled before the saint.
He had no usable hand left.
He bit Pella's chain with his teeth.
"I will hold it."
"You?"
"This time I will succeed."
The Recovery Saint stepped on Toma's back.
Ribs broke.
Toma did not release the chain.
The idol's mouth spoke.
"A faithful believer protects his saint."
Toma laughed blood.
Cassian did not save him.
Saving him would feed the idol again.
Knowing abandonment fed it too, Cassian abandoned him faster this time.
Judith slipped between the saint's knees.
She swung the bellfounder's hammer upward.
Eighty pelvises split together.
The corpse Cassian embedded in its chest opened his eyes.
"Execute Judith Arn."
Three bereaved soldiers turned their crossbows on their commander.
The false command pushed reality.
Ria blocked the first bolt with the ledger.
Paper tore.
The bolt emerged between Derrick's and Tobin's records.
Judith took the second in her shoulder.
She knocked away the third with her hammer.
"Cut it now!" she shouted at Cassian.
"Don't order me."
"It wasn't a request either."
Judith wedged the haft between the Recovery Saint's ribs.
Her wound opened again.
The bereaved host formed behind its commander.
People who had come to kill Cassian bought time for Cassian's execution.
Not his.
The idol's.
Only Ria and Judith knew the difference.
The citizens were already shouting that the saint's enemies had protected him.
Cassian chose not to preserve the idol and fight over its command authority with the corpse.
No one would possess that power whole.
Including himself.
"Move back."
Judith asked,
"What are you doing?"
Cassian raised the executioner's sword.
"Cutting off my neck."
Ria blocked him.
"If you behead it yourself, the record will call it self-sacrifice."
"I know."
"The idol will not die."
"The central mouth will."
"Its fragments will spread false commands across the empire."
"Better than one true command."
"For whom?"
Cassian did not answer.
It was better for this battlefield and his army.
Not for those in distant cities who would receive the false commands.
He could not see them.
So he did not count them as a cost.
Judith lowered her hammer.
She pushed Ria out of the path.
"Let him."
"Why?"
"A world where everyone lies a little is easier to kill than a monster with his voice."
"How do we kill thousands?"
"One at a time."
Judith and Cassian chose the same answer.
They hated each other more for it.
* * *
The citizens shouted,
"Black Saint."
The Black Feather Society answered.
"Black Saint."
Some of the bereaved host lowered their weapons.
They had no other name for someone who had stopped a common enemy.
The laughing idol spread its arms.
It wore Cassian's face.
The demon's face victims wanted.
The saint's face believers wanted.
Both were more beautiful than Cassian.
Cassian set his blade against his idol's neck.
It asked,
"If you kill me, who will tell them what you are?"
"No one."
"Then the people decide."
"They always did."
Cassian drew the sword.
The Black Saint's neck came off.
At the same moment, Cassian's own alignment seam split open.
Blood poured inside his armor.
Holding his neck with one hand, he pushed the blade through to the end.
The idol's head fell.
The crowd screamed.
The scream became a hymn.
"The saint sacrificed his own body."
The idol's body shattered.
A small mouth formed on every fragment.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
The black mouths became feathers and flew across the empire.
One to the capital's eastern gate.
One to the northern sealed ward.
One to the woman bearing Mira's name in the White Prison.
One to a kingdom still without a name.
False commands issued in Cassian's name gained a weak reality.
Only the idol's severed head remained before the well.
Ria held Cassian's opened neck together.
"Is this victory?"
Cassian answered through the blood.
"No."
The severed idol's mouth smiled.
It spoke in Cassian's voice.
"Too late."