One thousand forty-three received names.
One thousand forty-three received Cassian's blade.
Both began at once.
Rosalyn spread burial shrouds through the Court corridor.
White shrouds on the right.
Clothes for those who would receive names and leave.
Black shrouds on the left.
Clothes for those who would borrow Mira's right of return and die completely.
"Aren't the colors reversed?" Cassian asked.
"Those going outside will endure the longer funeral."
A returned name brought family, debt, and sin.
For those dying, one stroke of Cassian's sword ended everything.
Rosalyn made the white shrouds thicker.
On the black ones, she measured only the neck with precision.
"Are they all the same size?"
"Today they die under the same name."
The same name was written inside all one thousand forty-three black collars.
`Mira Crow.`
Rosaline stitched a different knot beneath each one.
A wheat-knot for the baker.
A horseshoe-knot for the woman who stole horses to ride.
An empty loop for the person who never remembered their name.
"You said they die under the same name."
"The sword reads the same name."
Rosaline cut the final thread.
"That does not mean they need the same funeral."
The owner of the first black shroud touched the empty loop.
"Will anyone know this is me after I die?"
"If no one else does, I will."
Rosaline drew all one thousand forty-three knots in a separate ledger.
Beneath Cassian's single execution remained one thousand forty-three different funerals.
Cassian remembered the coffin corpse's warning.
`Do not kill Mira twice.`
He did not kick the shrouds aside.
He dressed the condemned in them one by one.
Ria read the first original name.
"Bella Roin."
The younger old sister received it.
Her bent back straightened.
Her lost years returned to her face.
But the eyes that looked upon her sister became unfamiliar.
"Who are you?"
The elder did not answer.
Her promise to go outside and forget was fulfilled at once.
The right to manage the cemetery and its overdue burial taxes wrapped around Bella's wrist.
An exit opened in the Court wall.
Three creditors waited beyond it.
"Bella Roin. We collect one hundred three years of burial taxes."
The younger sister tried to look back.
She remembered no one to search for.
The creditors dragged her outside.
Her elder sister smiled in a black shroud.
"She left well."
Ria read the first line of the death ledger.
"No name. Elder sister of Bella Roin."
"I have a name," the woman said.
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"What is it?"
"My sister remembered it."
"She no longer does."
"Then it's gone."
She did not kneel before Cassian.
Standing, she offered her neck.
"Quickly. Before she looks back."
Cassian began the first execution.
The sword passed through her neck.
`Mira Crow` inside the black shroud turned red.
The woman's body did not return.
A complete death.
At the same time, a crack appeared in Mira's name upon the throne.
The first death had passed through Mira's right of return.
Each returned name overturned another line of the empire.
The second man returned as the husband of a dead wife.
Her current husband became an adulterous partner.
The third woman became owner of a mill west of the capital.
The family who had worked it for three generations became unlawful occupants.
The eleventh name was the royal surgeon `Theo Valen`.
The armless, jawless man had bought Dona's dead proxy vote and seized the name.
Both arms returned when the name attached itself.
His jaw restored itself to its former face.
His sins returned too.
Forty-two condemned prisoners dissected without anesthetic.
But the court that could arrest him had vanished a century ago.
Theo moved his new fingers one by one.
"I can operate again."
The first thing he touched was the neck of the person beside him.
His hand sought an incision line, not a pulse.
Cassian did not stop him.
The vote had saved an evil man.
Cassian had declared that he would respect its consequences as well.
"Will you let him leave?" Ria asked.
"I said I wouldn't change the vote."
The man who had already changed one said it.
Ria did not yet know the lie.
Theo left through the eastern well exit.
Medicine from a century ago returned to the empire together with torture from a century ago.
After the dead passed one hundred, Cassian's sword grew heavy.
Not with sin.
With names.
Every death was recorded as Mira Crow's.
Each time Cassian cut someone, the name on the throne spoke.
"Brother."
The voice was fifteen years old.
There was no way to verify whether it was Mira's real voice.
It called at the second execution.
At the tenth.
At the hundredth.
"Brother."
Cassian did not answer.
The hundred forty-eighth man tore off his black shroud.
"I changed my mind."
He ran toward the line receiving names.
"I don't want to die."
The woman opposite him, who had been chosen for a name, stepped forward.
"I'll trade."
For the first time since the vote, they agreed.
She removed her name tag.
She reached for the man's black shroud.
Cassian cut the floor between them.
The sword point left a long line in the stone.
"The vote is over."
"We agreed."
"You should have done it then."
"You said you'd respect the result."
"That means the result doesn't change."
The man ran backward.
Cassian stepped on his shadow first.
He cut through the ankle.
The man crawled along the corridor on his hands, his black shroud wiping the stone.
"Spare me."
Cassian planted a foot on his back and cut off his head.
At the two hundred ninetieth death, Mira called again.
"Brother."
At the three hundredth, the voice wept.
At the four hundredth, it cursed him.
"Liar."
At the five hundredth, it sang a childhood song Cassian had lost.
He could not remember the words.
Only his body knew the next note.
The fingers around his sword trembled to the rhythm.
Cassian drove a nail through one finger into the hilt.
The trembling stopped.
Rosalyn bound black thread around the nail.
"If you ruin your hand, who cuts the rest?"
"I've done it with my mouth."
"That was one body. Yours."
Rosalyn did not remove the nail.
"Today a thousand necks depend on your hand."
"That's why I fixed it in place."
At the seven hundredth execution, the alignment seam around Cassian's neck opened.
The return-body left in the funeral room learned the same wound.
Dona was still making commands with its mouth.
"The king of the dead does not stop."
Cassian's voice filled the Court.
The present Cassian said nothing.
Those in black shrouds waited their turns while listening to that voice.
Some cursed Cassian.
Some blamed their own votes.
Some regretted failing to force the person beside them into `Death`.
Cassian comforted no one.
He lowered the blade at the same angle even on those who thanked him.
After the nine hundredth, the name on the throne lost its voice.
Only blood flowed from the letters.
The silence troubled Cassian more.
Not because answering might stop it.
Because answering would mean admitting Mira was his sister.
A name he did not acknowledge could still be used as a tool.
Ria read the returned names.
Rosalyn collected the empty shrouds.
Lauren stood before the throne and did nothing.
When the five hundredth head fell, he said,
"You changed the vote."
Cassian shook black blood from his blade.
"You saw?"
"You erased the sound. Not the trace."
"Tell Ria."
Lauren did not.
"Why stay silent?"
"If Mira's name lives, one more person dies."
"And?"
"I made the same calculation."
Lauren had killed Mira's body and erased her name.
To save one person, he had erased that person's choice.
Cassian erased Mira's vote to save one thousand forty-three.
Only the number separated them.
"Stopping me would mean admitting you were wrong," Cassian said.
Lauren's silence lengthened.
"Yes."
"Then keep watching."
Cassian cut the next person's neck.
Lauren did not leave.
From that day, he was no longer a foster father but a witness to the manipulation.
Because he did not speak, he was also an accomplice.
Cassian performed the final execution himself.
When he cut the throat of the one thousand forty-third nameless person, Mira's right of return split.
Dark crimson roots tore free of the throne.
Coffins opened.
The empty bodies that had received no names exhaled together.
The breath entered Cassian's alignment seam.
A sinmark appeared.
`Murder of Mira Crow.`
Not one line.
The same sentence overlapped one thousand forty-three times.
A wound shaped like a black crown rose around Cassian's neck.
The dead of the Nameless Court knelt.
"King of the dead."
Dona's lie consumed sin and execution and became fact.
Cassian went to the throne.
He tried to seize the split `Mira Crow`.
The name slipped between his fingers.
Half became black feathers.
Half flowed into the passage beneath the eastern well.
Beyond it came the cough of the woman who had borrowed the name in the White Prison.
Mira's right of return was not recovered.
It became weaker and spread farther.
Ria read the last returned name.
The road to the capital fixed itself in the Court wall.
More than three hundred of those who received names sold Cassian passages and imperial secrets.
An intelligence network that had been unable to die scattered through the empire in bodies capable of death again.
Cassian gained roads, information, and an army.
He lost Mira's name.
And one black stroke from his altered vote remained on the ledger's first page.
It had made no sound, but the writing had not vanished.
Just before Ria opened the page, marching boots sounded outside the Court.
Not one person's steps.
Thousands marched in the same rhythm.
Black feathers erupted like a storm from the eastern well.
Armored members of the Black Feather Society filled the passage.
Their banner bore a crowned executioner's sword.
Toma knelt at their head.
The execution host behind him followed.
"The king of the dead has harvested a thousand names."
Cassian raised his sword.
"Who told you to come?"
Toma smiled.
"Your Majesty's last words."
Cassian's corpse in the funeral room was speaking again.