"Viola Wren."
The vial called again. This time the room answered.
A registry desk rose from the floor, built to the height of a small child. The Red Table had known the age of its heir.
Viola set down the vial. Two fields opened.
`Name.`
`Claim to be owned.`
The first was already filled.
`Viola Wren.`
The second was blank.
Cassian's black feather untied itself from Viola's neck and settled over the field. Ink spread.
`The winter claim created by Cassian Crow.`
Cassian studied the desk.
"You intend to buy my debt?"
"From the beginning."
"Not the Red Table's debt?"
"I can inherit that."
"And mine?"
"You refuse to sell it."
Viola pressed down the feather.
"So I will seize it."
* * *
Ria opened the winter ledger beneath the desk.
Three hundred twelve dead. Their living dependents beneath them. An empty bowl hung from every line.
The desk calculated the price.
`One person pledged as collateral.`
`One meal next winter.`
Ria turned to the end. Thousands of names. One meal each, supposedly taken only once, with no date specified.
It might be the day they were sick, the day they shared their portion with a child, or the last meal left that winter.
"Cheap," Viola said.
Ria looked up.
"That is food for thousands."
"Cheap for one name."
"Your one name."
"The name I bought."
Viola pointed to her neck. Only the place where the Bern seam had vanished lay empty. Sixteen others still whispered house names.
"Those bought me. I buy Wren."
"With other people's food?"
"How many names in this world were bought only with their owner's money?"
Ria had no answer.
Nobles bought surnames with ancestral blood. Clergy bought titles with believers' faith. Cassian bought his name with the sins of those he killed.
Viola meant to buy hers with the refugees' winter.
"Is that why you picked up the feather?" Ria asked.
Viola removed it from her neck. It had once lain in a square, used as a mark by people imitating Cassian's name.
"At first, I thought it was fake."
"It was," Cassian said. "The feather was fake."
"But the names of those you killed were real. The world said all of it was your sin."
"Much of it was wrong."
"You did not correct it."
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"Only the spellings that mattered."
"That is why I found you."
The child's eyes held no admiration and no wish to resemble him. They were the eyes of a creditor discovering a rare transaction in a ledger.
"A man who lives under the name the world attached to him, yet owns debt in his own name."
"So you did not follow because you liked him," Adel said.
"Does liking mean you must own something?"
"Usually not."
"For me, it does. That is why I do not like him."
She drove the feather into the registry desk.
Cassian laughed softly.
"What is funny?"
"That is worse than liking me."
"I'll take it as praise."
"That was the intent."
* * *
Registration began.
The first empty bowl fell from the ledger and moved toward Marette Houn's name.
Ria read first.
"Marette Houn."
The bowl stopped. The word `collateral` shuddered and changed to `person`.
The desk refused it.
`Cannot collect directly from a person.`
`Wait until reclassified as collateral.`
"Reading the name delays it," Ria said.
The second bowl fell.
"Ollen Houn."
The third.
"Nadia."
The camp cook left as unclaimed property when Bern vanished.
Bowls stopped one by one. Ria spoke faster.
"Sev Roin. Marta Fen. Yuri Oss."
More bowls poured from beneath the desk. There were more names than one mouth could speak, and debt moved faster than one voice.
"Give me the register," Derrick said.
Ria tore it in half and passed him a section. His right hand could not hold it; three fingers bent toward the bowls. He lifted the paper with his left.
He read names in the voice once used to confirm condemned prisoners at the block. Not to save them, but to prevent debt from eating the exact people it had selected.
Ines took another line and pinned a bowl with her scabbard.
"Name?"
A woman's face surfaced.
"Speak."
"Lena."
"Surname?"
"I have none."
"Then Lena."
Ines recorded it herself. The bowl stopped.
Registration slowed. It did not cease.
Adel lifted the bowl containing Marette's face.
"Marette."
It stayed still. Adel placed her palm on its rim.
"May I touch you?"
Far away at a northern ration station, Marette heard her name. She did not know who was asking, but answered.
"Yes."
Permission traveled through the bowl. Marette's hunger attached to Adel's palm—not her hunger now, but hunger on a day next winter when she would divide her last bread.
Half for herself. Half for a child whose face she did not yet know. The Debt Vault meant to take her half.
"We did not save her," Adel said. "Reading her name only moved her collection order back."
"How long?" Ria asked.
"Until the next time she forgets her own name."
"Why would anyone forget that?"
The starving forgot dates first, then the number of meals, then whom they had given their share. Names followed.
"Winter makes forgetting easy," Adel said.
Marette's mouth opened in the bowl.
"My husband's name is Havel Houn."
She said the dead man's name before her own. The word `person` flickered toward `collateral` again. Remembering another before herself thinned her own name.
Ria wrote `Marette Houn` in heavy strokes. Once. Twice. Three times, until ink pierced the page.
"How much does that buy?"
"One meal," Adel said.
Ria could not laugh. Reading thousands of names bought thousands of single-meal delays.
It was not enough. She did not set down the pen.
Adel asked the next bowl for permission. Derrick read the next name. Ines recorded those without surnames.
While they bought time, Viola's name continued to form.
She set her burned palm on the desk. Blood seeped from it.
`Viola Wren.`
The name began carving itself into the first page. With every stroke, one refugee lost a meal from next winter.
Ration bells rang outside. People above the vault put empty spoons into their mouths. Their stomachs collapsed from a meal they had never eaten.
* * *
Cassian cut the registry desk. His sword rebounded. Sixteen inherited names had become its shield.
Viola looked at him.
"Saving them?"
"No."
Cassian stepped on the winter ledger.
"I dislike you owning my sin."
"People outside will remember it differently."
"Correct them when you get out."
"Why?"
"A creditor should write facts accurately."
He slid the sword between the ledger's binding.
The names Ria was reading trembled.
"Tearing it hurts the names," she said.
"I know."
"Find another way."
"Her name completes while I do."
"So?"
"My debt gains another owner."
Cassian twisted. The binding thread snapped.
Ria caught the back of the blade.
"Let go."
"No."
"It will cut you."
"My hand."
Derrick's words returned.
Cassian did not cut Ria. He released the hilt and seized both sides of the ledger barehanded.
Viola laughed.
"You have no strength left."
He had lost eleven meals. His right foot was broken again. His right hand held a hole.
Cassian pinned the ledger with his knee, hooked the condemned crown into its binding, and threw his body backward.
His neck opened first. The ledger tore next.
The final stroke of `Viola Wren` split in two. Registration stopped.
The refugee names remained on Ria's half. The mouths of the interest beasts remained on Cassian's.
They lunged for each other.
Paper and flesh joined in the middle. Ration tickets became a spine. Empty bowls became ribs. The mouths of the interest beasts wore human names as tongues.
It did not happen to one creature. The same beast rose from every ration station in the north.
The entire ration network became one body—a giant winter beast whispering thousands of names.
"Congratulations," Viola said, removing her hand from the desk. "You tore my name."
The sixteen inherited seams in her neck separated from the desk's `Viola Wren`.
Her chosen name fell outside the house names and became an independent target. It was neither fully registered nor fully erased.
Now someone could kill `Viola Wren` alone.
Cassian pressed his bleeding neck.
"The result you wanted?"
"Half."
"The rest?"
Viola looked at the winter beast.
"Owning that."
* * *
A golden spear fell from the ceiling and pierced the winter beast's back. It did not kill it.
An imperial document was tied to the point, bearing Seraphina's seal.
Ria opened it, read the first line, and looked at Viola.
"What?" Viola asked.
Ria read aloud.
"Lawful joint heir of the Seventeen Houses of the Red Table."
The next line bore a crown.
`Viola Wren is ordered to ascend the throne.`
The signature below was not Seraphina's. Seventeen dead house seals surrounded the princess's seal.
For the first time, the winter beast knelt.
"Your Highness."
It addressed Viola in thousands of names.