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“I’m proud of my work,” Shai said. “Any Forger who sees this can inspect it and see what I’ve done. ”
Frava sniffed. “You should not be proud of something like this, little thief. Besides, isn’t the point of what you do to hide the fact that you’ve done it?”
“Sometimes,” Shai said. “When I imitate a signature or counterfeit a painting, the subterfuge is part of the act. But with Forgery, true Forgery, you cannot hide what you’ve done. The stamp will always be there, describing exactly what has happened. You might as well be proud of it. ”
It was the odd conundrum of her life. To be a Forger was not just about soulstamps—it was about the art of mimicry in its entirety. Writing, art, personal signets . . . an apprentice Forger—mentored half in secret by her people—learned all mundane forgery before being taught to use soulstamps.
The stamps were the highest order of their art, but they were the most difficult to hide. Yes, a seal could be placed in an out-of-the way place on an object, then covered over. Shai had done that very thing on occasion. However, so long as the seal was somewhere to be found, a Forgery could not be perfect.
“Leave us,” Frava said to Zu and the guards.
“But—” Zu said, stepping forward.
“I do not like to repeat myself, Captain,” Frava said.
Zu growled softly, but bowed in obedience. He gave Shai a glare—that was practically a second occupation for him, these days—and retreated with his men. They shut the door with a click.
The Bloodsealer’s stamp still hung there on the door, renewed this morning. The Bloodsealer came at the same time most days. Shai had kept specific notes. On days when he was a little late, his seal started to dim right before he arrived. He always got to her in time to renew it, but perhaps someday . . .
Frava inspected Shai, eyes calculating.
Shai met that gaze with a steady one of her own. “Zu assumes I’m going to do something horrible to you while we’re alone. ”
“Zu is simpleminded,” Frava said, “though he is very useful when someone needs to be killed. Hopefully you won’t ever have to experience his efficiency firsthand. ”
“You’re not worried?” Shai said. “You are alone in a room with a monster. ”
“I’m alone in a room with an opportunist,” Frava said, strolling to the door and inspecting the seal burning there. “You won’t harm me. You’re too curious about why I sent the guards away. ”
Actually, Shai thought, I know precisely why you sent them away. And why you came to me during a time when all of your associate arbiters were guaranteed to be busy at the festival. She waited for Frava to make the offer.
“Has it occurred to you,” Frava said, “how . . . useful to the empire it would be to have an emperor who listened to a voice of wisdom when it spoke to him?”
“Surely Emperor Ashravan already did that. ”
“On occasion,” Frava said. “On other occasions, he could be . . . belligerently foolish. Wouldn’t it be amazing if, upon his rebirth, he were found lacking that tendency?”
“I thought you wanted him to act exactly like he used to,” Shai said. “As close to the real thing as possible. ”
“True, true. But you are renowned as one of the greatest Forgers ever to live, and I have it on good authority that you are specifically talented with stamping your own soul. Surely you can replicate dear Ashravan’s soul with authenticity, yet also make him inclined to listen to reason . . . when that reason is spoken by specific individuals. ”
Nights afire, Shai thought. You’re willing to just come out and say it, aren’t you? You want me to build a back door into the emperor’s soul, and you don’t even have the decency to feel ashamed about that.
“I . . . might be able to do such a thing,” Shai said, as if considering it for the first time. “It would be difficult. I’d need a reward worth the effort. ”
“A suitable reward would be appropriate,” Frava said, turning to her. “I realize you were probably planning to leave the Imperial Seat following your release, but why? This city could be a place of great opportunity to you, with a sympathetic ruler on the throne. ”
“Be more blunt, Arbiter,” Shai said. “I have a long night ahead of me studying while others celebrate. I don’t have the mind for word games. ”
“The city has a thriving clandestine smuggling trade,” Frava said. “Keeping track of it has been a hobby of mine. It would serve me to have someone proper running it. I will give it to you, should you do this task for me. ”
That was always their mistake—assuming they knew why Shai did what she did. Assuming she’d jump at a chance like this, assuming that a smuggler and a Forger were basically the same thing because they both disobeyed someone else’s laws.
“That sounds pleasant,” Shai said, smiling her most genuine smile—the one that had an edge of overt deceptiveness to it.
Frava smiled deeply in return. “I will leave you to consider,” she said, pulling open the door and clapping for the guards to reenter.
Shai sank down into her chair, horrified. Not because of the offer—she’d been expecting one like it for days now—but because she had only now understood the implications. The offer of the smuggling trade was, of course, false. Frava might have been able to deliver such a thing, but she wouldn’t. Even assuming that the woman hadn’t already been planning to have Shai killed, this offer sealed that eventuality.
There was more to it, though. Far more. So far as she knows, she just planted in my head the idea of building control into the emperor. She won’t trust my Forgery. She’ll be expecting me to put in back doors of my own, ones that give me and not her complete control over Ashravan.
What did that mean?
It meant that Frava had another Forger standing by. One, likely, without the talent or the bravado to try Forging someone else’s soul—but one who could look over Shai’s work and find any back doors she put in. This Forger would be better trusted, and could rewrite Shai’s work to put Frava in control.
They might even be able to finish Shai’s work, if she got it far enough along first. Shai had intended to use the full hundred days to plan her escape, but now she realized that her sudden extermination could come at any time.
The closer she got to finishing the project, the more likely that grew.
Day Thirty
“This is new,” Gaotona said, inspecting the stained glass window.
That had been a particularly pleasing bit of inspiration on Shai’s part. Attempts to Forge the window to a better version of itself had repeatedly failed; each time, after five minutes or so, the window had reverted to its cracked, gap-sided self.
Then Shai had found a bit of colored glass rammed into one side of the frame. The window, she realized, had once been a stained glass piece, like many in the palace. It had been broken, and whatever had shattered the window had also bent the frame, producing those gaps that let in the frigid breeze.
Rather than repairing it as it had been meant to be, someone had put ordinary glass into the window and left it to crack. A stamp from Shai in the bottom right corner had restored the window, rewriting its history so that a caring master craftsman had discovered the fallen window and remade it. That seal had taken immediately. Even after all this time, the window had seen itself as something beautiful.
Or maybe she was just getting romantic again.
“You said you would bring me a test subject today,” Shai said, blowing the dust off the end of a freshly carved soulstamp. She engraved a series of quick marks on the back—the side opposite the elaborately carved front. The setting mark finished every soulstamp, indicating no more carving was to come. Shai had always fancied it to look like the shape of MaiPon, her homeland.
Those marks finished, she held the stamp over a flame. This was a property of soulstone; fire hardened it, so it could not be chipped. She didn’t need to take this step. The anchoring marks on the top were all it really needed, and
she could carve a stamp out of anything, really, so long as the carving was precise. Soulstone was prized, however, because of this hardening process.
Once the entire thing was blackened from the candle’s flame—first one end, then the other—she held it up and blew on it strongly. Flakes of char blew free with her breath, revealing the beautiful red and grey marbled stone beneath.
“Yes,” Gaotona said. “A test subject. I brought one, as promised. ” Gaotona crossed the small room toward the door, where Zu stood guard.
Shai leaned back in her chair, which she’d Forged into something far more comfortable a couple of days back, and waited. She had made a bet with herself. Would the subject be one of the emperor’s guards? Or would it be some lowly palace functionary, perhaps the man who took notes for Ashravan? Which person would the arbiters force to endure Shai’s blasphemy in the name of a supposedly greater good?
Gaotona sat down in the chair by the door.
“Well?” Shai asked.
He raised his hands to the sides. “You may begin. ”
Shai dropped her feet to the ground, sitting up straight. “You?”
“Yes. ”
“You’re one of the arbiters! One of the most powerful people in the empire!”
“Ah,” he said. “I had not noticed. I fit your specifications. I am male, was born in Ashravan’s own birthplace, and I knew him very well. ”
“But . . . ” Shai trailed off.
Gaotona leaned forward, clasping his hands. “We debated this for weeks. Other options were offered, but it was determined that we could not in good conscience order one of our people to undergo this blasphemy. The only conclusion was to offer up one of ourselves. ”
Shai shook herself free of shock. Frava would have had no trouble ordering someone else to this, she thought. Nor would the others. You must have insisted upon this, Gaotona.
They considered him a rival; they were probably happy to let him fall to Shai’s supposedly horrible, twisted acts. What she planned was perfectly harmless, but there was no way she’d convince a Grand of that. Still, she found herself wishing she could put Gaotona at ease as she pulled her chair up beside him and opened the small box of stamps she had crafted over the past three weeks.
“These stamps will not take,” she said, holding up one of them. “That is a Forger’s term for a stamp that makes a change that is too unnatural to be stable. I doubt any of these will affect you for longer than a minute—and that’s assuming I did them correctly. ”
Gaotona hesitated, then nodded.
“The human soul is different from that of an object,” Shai continued. “A person is constantly growing, changing, shifting. That makes a soulstamp used on a person wear out in a way that doesn’t happen with objects. Even in the best of cases, a soulstamp used on a person lasts only a day. My Essence Marks are an example. After about twenty-six hours, they fade away. ”
“So . . . the emperor?”
“If I do my job well,” Shai said, “he will need to be stamped each morning, much as the Bloodsealer stamps my door. I will fashion into the seal, however, the capacity for him to remember, grow, and learn—he won’t revert back to the same state each morning, and will be able to build upon the foundation I give him. However, much as a human body wears down and needs sleep, a soulstamp on one of us must be reset. Fortunately, anyone can do the stamping—Ashravan himself should be able to—once the stamp itself is prepared correctly. ”
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