One hour after the warrant erupted, Derrick Morn cleaned his own scaffold.The notice nailed to its post read, `Execute every executioner.`The portrait beneath resembled Cassian. Derrick scraped away his own eyes, nose, and mouth, leaving only Cassian's seam."Using my face again."The guild was sealed; his colleagues had fled. Derrick stayed, planing the block and laying fresh straw."Planning to die cleanly?"Cassian dropped from the roof, landing on his left foot."I am used to the other side.""Today will be different.""If you do it, it will be the second time."Derrick's damaged knee, shoulder, and little finger remained from the body Cassian had borrowed. So did the sensation of killing the adjudicator."Using me as bait?""You are already lying down."Cassian tied the white warrant line above Derrick's name to all four scaffold corners.If Derrick nearly died, the shadow that issued the command would come reclaim the corpse."Must I live?""Until the final bell.""After?""Irrelevant."Derrick nodded."Do not touch my daughter.""Is she coming?""You came."The great bell rang once.
* * *
The first assassin entered through the chimney: a baker with floury hands and an axe."The saint commanded it. Execute the executioner."Cassian took the axe on his shoulder, broke the man's jaw with his hilt, and hung him upside down."Who said it?""You.""Where?""From my shadow."The shadow laughed in Cassian's voice.Before he could stab it, a laundress and retired coachman entered with rope and block nails.Their hands had never killed; the command knew how.The rope caught Derrick's neck. The coachman kicked his bad knee.Cassian watched instead of saving him. The warrant line darkened.The second bell rang.Derrick fell over the block in the same posture as the first day.The suspended execution sword moved alone.A black-gloved hand caught it.A young woman carried four leather bags.Cassian recognized the girl once hiding behind the western pillar, asking for her father's face.Now she did not cover her mouth."Executioner Ines Morn. Daughter of Derrick Morn."She looked at Cassian."I did not come to ask you to save him."She threw the sword aside, cutting the laundress's rope."Do not touch him until I execute him.""You'll kill your father?""You first.""A long queue.""It took years."
* * *
Cassian aimed his sword. Ines emptied the first bag.Two blocks appeared, one fitted to Derrick's old neck, the other to Cassian's seam. They did not align."Neck. Your head returned to your body, but the cut remembered my father's. Next time I bind head and body in different frames."This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon."Prepared for my next death?""Since the first day."The second bag held black breath Derrick had coughed up in sleep—Cassian's final breath."Breath. You rode the blade into my father's burn scar."She covered the scar with a black glove. One warrant line snapped.The third bag held black cloth. She blindfolded Derrick and herself."Sight. You saw me through his eyes. That helped his body remember its owner.""You saved him.""No. He endured. I watched."The fourth bag was empty."Bell."She cut the bell rope. The bell crashed without a third toll.All four warrant lines shook. The lost command bit the nearest body.The three civilians rose together."Target changed. Executioner Ines Morn."By naming herself, she had entered the warrant.They attacked from three directions.Blindfolded, Ines tapped the floor once. Derrick threw his plane.She shaved through the axe handle, routed the rope through a pulley, and dropped an empty sheath over the coachman's nail-filled hand.No one died, yet the command mistook the tools' mutual destruction for execution.Cassian's face peeled from their shadows."Did I kill anyone?" the baker asked."Not yet. Stay still.""Why save them?" Cassian asked."They were not targets.""They obeyed.""Their bodies were taken. How can an executioner who cannot tell the difference kill you?"The answer was meant for Derrick.Cassian lowered his sword."Neck, breath, sight, bell. I died once and stole four things.""One is wrong," Cassian said. "I can die without a bell."He thrust at her throat.Ines did not evade. Derrick shoved the execution sword sideways, dislocating his shoulder but deflecting Cassian."Once in my body is enough."Cassian's blade passed Ines's ear.Her own point already rested beneath his seam without using sight."Had you moved first, you'd be dead.""Not yet.""I know. That is why I didn't."Neither won. Derrick rose.
* * *
"Father. Can you walk?""The right side is slow.""I know."Ines dressed him in a shroud bearing thirteen retired executioners' names."It will read as one body," Cassian said."Yes. The command follows all fourteen while thirteen flee the other way.""Derrick?""I take him.""You lose the shadow.""Your plan, not mine."She put Derrick's arm over her shoulder.Cassian could kill her and return Derrick to the block, but a woman who understood four escape routes might know more.There were reasons to spare her. No mercy."Go."Ines stopped."Don't permit me.""What?""I took him."She disappeared with Derrick beneath the fallen bell.Ria arrived and saw the empty scaffold."You failed.""I know.""How do you feel?""Next time I cut the bell first.""Copying her?""I learned how to kill her.""She taught you how to kill you.""That makes it useful."The scaffold creaked.Though empty, the block lowered.A figure with Cassian's face rose beneath it, laughing idol fragments joined into flesh.The false Cassian knelt and spread its black seam.There was no throat inside, only hundreds of open mouths.They whispered together."Lend me your body."