The empty seat swallowed Cassian.
It did not seat him. Its back spread like ribs and pulled him inside. The armrests broke his arms. The crown descended.
"Original owner," the seat said.
Cassian's condemned crown answered. Eleven sentences rang together inside his neck. Teeth formed between sin and chair.
Viola stepped on Cassian's knee and wedged her small body between crown and head.
"Move," Cassian said.
"My chair."
"The crown was yours a moment ago."
"Both are mine."
She held up the crown with both hands. Sixteen inheritance seams reached toward the chair.
The seat changed its choice. It rejected Cassian and swallowed Viola. Her spine drove into its back. The crown touched her head.
She did not smile.
"Open the door."
The final door did not move. Its handle was on the other side.
"Open it from within," said the seat.
"How do I enter?"
"Abandon."
One inheritance seam was sucked through the door. A finger bone grew on the far side—the first joint of a handle.
"One finger for every name," Ria said. "Abandon all sixteen and the hand is complete."
"I don't need all of them. Only enough to pull the door."
"How many?"
"Fifteen."
Sixteen legal mothers screamed beneath the chair.
* * *
Ria opened the maternal deeds. Bern was gone. Sixteen remained.
"Abandon them and these women disappear too."
"I know."
"Aurelia Isen testified after they took her fingers."
"I know."
"Agnes Hess admitted the mine deaths. Judith Wren wrote that you belonged to no house. Will you erase her too?"
Viola's eyes moved for an instant. Ria caught it.
"My name is not that woman's dying wish."
"Her testimony remains testimony."
"Erasing it becomes my sin."
"Knowing that?"
Viola gripped the armrest.
"Would doing it unknowingly make it less mine? I will know. And do it in my name."
Cassian rose from the floor, belly collapsed against his back, broken right foot no longer shaped like a foot.
He did not stop Viola. He watched the eye-shaped fragment wedged between her spine and the chair. He could reach it. He might break her back with it.
"No intention of helping?" Adel asked.
"With what?"
"Stopping her from erasing testimony."
"She says she will erase it herself."
"So you take only the fragment?"
"Yes."
Adel looked at his neck.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
"You think honesty makes that better?"
"No."
Cassian went behind the seat and put his hand into the gap.
* * *
Viola tore away the first name.
Marta Bell.
The neck seam peeled off with flesh. Far north, the surrendered order's flag fell. Marta's testimony of coercion vanished from Ria's ledger. The husband's name that had forced the pen into her hand remained.
Only the victim disappeared.
A second joint formed on the inside handle.
"One," Ria counted.
"Don't count."
"I am recording."
"They disappear."
"Then I record that they disappeared."
The second name: Aurelia Isen.
Viola pulled. The pain of the severed thumb moved into her hand. Her right thumb bent backward until bone pierced skin.
Aurelia's old hand rose beneath the seat.
"Only my name, outside."
The request made before the seventeen mothers.
Viola took the hand. She did not save it. She pushed hand and name through the door.
"Two," Ria wrote.
Aurelia's testimony vanished. The house storehouse that had held her fingers remained. The fingers inside lost their owner.
Third: Agnes Hess.
Three mines collapsed inside Viola's lungs. Stone dust poured from her mouth. The faces of 189 miners rose briefly beneath her skin.
When Agnes's confession disappeared, the mine ledger rewrote the deaths as accidents. The number remained. The person who caused them did not.
"Three."
Ria's pen broke. She dipped her bare finger in ink.
Viola did not stop.
Fourth. Fifth. Sixth.
The bone handle grew with every name. Contracts of the living lost their owners. Routes of house debt broke. Offenders became anonymous. Victims lost the names that could prove their pain.
Only the pain did not leave Viola's body.
Her ribs split into different ages. Her left eye grew old while the right remained a child's. Bruises from stolen wedding nights bloomed inside her thighs.
The inherited names were gone. Her body remembered the debt.
* * *
Cassian touched the eye fragment.
It tried to enter the hole in his palm like a new sin-gift or escape route.
Ines blocked his wrist with her blade.
"Take it out."
"The fragment?"
"Your hand."
"I may break Viola's spine."
"Do not pretend that is why you hesitate."
Ines aimed not at his neck, but between palm and fragment.
"If that enters you, you gain a sixth escape beyond the five."
"Certain?"
"I cut because I am not."
"A good executioner verifies evidence."
"A good executioner removes dangerous tools first."
She pushed. Cassian's palm split again. The fragment drank his blood and drew the succession seams of his neck inside its eye.
Ines cut deeper. The fragment fell—not to the floor, but onto Viola's last-breath vial.
Black breath and eye looked at each other.
"Do not touch my property," Viola said, tearing out the twelfth name.
"Your spine was between us."
"You could have broken it."
"Next time."
"Promise."
Viola smiled through blood.
Ria took a new sheet and avoided names.
`Woman with a severed thumb.`
The sentence held, then `woman` vanished.
`Thumb severed.`
Only the act remained.
Ria wrote again.
`Person who traded three mines for a fetus's succession right.`
`Person` vanished. Only `three mines` remained.
"It eats even without names," Ria said.
The eye blinked on the vial, learning forms used to preserve testimony.
"Draw the wound," Adel said.
Ria drew a severed thumb. The eye ate the picture.
"Leave an object," Derrick said.
He put Aurelia's deed ash beside his severed license tattoo. The link between ash and evidence vanished.
"Remember," Ines said.
Ria closed her eyes. Aurelia's face remained, but she no longer knew who it was. The pleading voice remained, but not whom it had addressed.
Memory was not testimony. Nameless pain could not stand in court.
"There is no method," Ria said.
"There is," Viola said, gripping the thirteenth seam. "Do not abandon it."
"Then stop."
"No."
She tore it free.
The thirteenth testimony vanished. A hospital bound to that name lost its owner. Every patient's treatment contract became void, and dozens of pains attached to Adel's palm.
"Was this in the price too?" Adel asked.
"I added it now."
"Finished calculating?"
"I discard until I am."
The fourteenth seam.
War widows' pension documents went blank. Empty coin purses spilled at Ines's feet.
She did not cut Viola. She tossed one purse to Ria on her sword point.
"Record this instead of the name."
"We don't know whose it was."
"Write that."
Ria wrote:
`Pension purse that lost its owner.`
This did not vanish. It saved no testimony. It preserved only the fact of loss.
Viola's hand shook before the fifteenth seam.
Ria did not tell her to stop again. She made a new line.
`Viola Wren erased them knowingly.`
The fragment tried to eat it and failed. The sin belonged beneath her chosen name, not an inherited one.
Viola read it.
"Spell it correctly."
"I may not. You are not someone I killed."
"Then I will stay alive and correct you."
Viola tore away the fifteenth seam.
* * *
The fifteenth name vanished.
Ria no longer knew what to record. The name field was empty. Even the sentence saying someone disappeared had lost its subject.
One inheritance seam remained on Viola's neck.
Bern had been sold at the auction where the child bought his own name. Fifteen had been abandoned now. One remained.
Judith Wren's deed trembled on the floor.
`This child belongs to no house.`
Viola caught the last seam. The inside handle lacked one finger. Abandon this and the hand would be whole, the door open fully, and the empty seat finish its task and disappear.
She pulled.
Judith's voice came.
"Abandon my name too."
Viola stopped.
"Now I don't want to, because you said so."
"Then you remain Wren's daughter."
"No."
Viola released the seam.
"I leave your name as debt."
"Why?"
"So the door never closes completely."
She gripped the incomplete four-fingered hand on the inside and pulled.
The door opened an inch. Two. Enough for one person to pass, no farther.
Viola tore herself from the seat, leaving part of her back skin inside.
Fifteen names were gone. `Viola Wren` remained. Judith Wren's inherited seam remained beneath her neck.
The empty seat did not disappear. It stood on one broken leg and tried to follow Viola's final seam.
Then Cassian's condemned crown rang.
Judith's seam changed direction. It stretched from Viola's neck to Cassian's.
A new place opened among the eleven sentences.
The twelfth sentence.
`Inheritance.`
The empty seat bowed to Cassian.
"Final debtor."