Gaotona sat back. “Mother of lights . . .” he whispered again.
Shai took the seal and put it with those that she had confirmed as workable.
Over the last few weeks, each of the other arbiters had done as Frava had, coming to Shai and offering her fantastic promises in exchange for giving them ultimate control of the emperor. Only Gaotona had never tried to bribe her. A genuine man, and one in the highest levels of imperial government no less. Remarkable. Using him was going to be far more difficult than she would have liked.
“I must say again,” she said, turning to him, “you’ve impressed me. I don’t think many Grands would take the time to study soulstamps. They would eschew what they considered evil without ever trying to understand it. You’ve changed your mind?”
“No,” Gaotona said. “I still think that what you do is, if not evil, then certainly unholy. And yet, who am I to speak? I am depending upon you to preserve us in power by means of this art we so freely call an abomination. Our hunger for power outweighs our conscience.”
“True for the others,” Shai said, “but that is not your personal motive.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“You just want Ashravan back,” Shai said. “You refuse to accept that you’ve lost him. You loved him as a son—the youth that you mentored, the emperor you always believed in, even when he didn’t believe in himself.”
Gaotona looked away, looking decidedly uncomfortable.
“It won’t be him,” Shai said. “Even if I succeed, it won’t truly be him. You realize this, of course.”
He nodded.
“But then . . . sometimes a clever Forgery is as good as the real thing,” Shai said. “You are of the Heritage Faction. You surround yourself with relics that aren’t truly relics, paintings that are imitations of ones long lost. I suppose having a fake relic for an emperor won’t be so different. And you . . . you just want to know that you’ve done everything you could. For him.”
“How do you do it?” Gaotona asked softly. “I’ve seen how you speak with the guards, how you learn even the names of the servants. You seem to know their family lives, their passions, what they do in the evenings . . . and yet you spend each day locked in this room. You haven’t left it for months. How do you know these things?”
“People,” Shai said, rising to fetch another seal, “by nature attempt to exercise power over what is around them. We build walls to shelter us from the wind, roofs to stop the rain. We tame the elements, bend nature to our wills. It makes us feel as if we’re in control.
“Except in doing so, we merely replace one influence with another. Instead of the wind affecting us, it is a wall. A man-made wall. The fingers of man’s influence are all about, touching everything. Man-made rugs, man-made food. Every single thing in the city that we touch, see, feel, experience comes as the result of some person’s influence.
“We may feel in control, but we never truly are unless we understand people. Controlling our environment is no longer about blocking the wind, it’s about knowing why the serving lady was crying last night, or why a particular guard always loses at cards. Or why your employer hired you in the first place.”
Gaotona looked back at her as she sat, then held out a seal to him. He hesitantly proffered an arm. “It occurs to me,” he said, “that even in our extreme care not to do so, we have underestimated you, woman.”
“Good,” she said. “You’re paying attention.” She stamped him. “Now tell me, why exactly do you hate fish?”
Day Seventy-Six
I need to do it, Shai thought as the Bloodsealer cut her arm. Today. I could go today.
Hidden in her other sleeve, she carried a slip of paper made to imitate the ones that the Bloodsealer often brought with him on the mornings that he came early.
She’d caught sight of a bit of wax on one of them two days back. They were letters. Realization had dawned. She’d been wrong about this man all along.
“Good news?” she asked him as he inked his stamp with her blood.
The white-lipped man gave her a sneering glance.
“From home,” Shai said. “The woman you’re writing, back in Dzhamar. She sent you a letter today? Post comes in the mornings here at the palace. They knock at your door, deliver a letter . . .” And that wakes you up, she added in her mind. That’s why you come on time those days. “You must miss her a lot if you can’t bear to leave her letter behind in your room.”
The man lowered his arm and grabbed Shai by the front of her shirt. “Leave her alone, witch,” he hissed. “You . . . you leave her alone! None of your trickery or magics!”
He was younger than she had assumed. That was a common mistake with Dzhamarians. Their white hair and skin made them seem ageless to outsiders. Shai should have known better. He was little more than a youth.
She drew her lips to a line. “You talk about my trickery and magics while holding in your hands a seal inked with my blood? You’re the one threatening to send skeletals to hunt me, friend. All I can do is polish the odd table.”
“Just . . . just . . . Ah!” The young man threw his hands up, then stamped the door.
The guards watched with nonchalant amusement and disapproval. Shai’s words had been a calculated reminder that she was harmless while the Bloodsealer was the truly unnatural one. The guards had spent nearly three months watching her tinker about as a friendly scholar while this man drew her blood and used it for arcane horrors.
I need to drop the paper, she thought to herself, lowering her sleeve, meaning to let her forgery slip out as the guards turned away. That would put her plan into motion, her escape . . .
The real Forgery isn’t finished yet. The emperor’s soul.
She hesitated. Foolishly, she hesitated.
The door closed.
The opportunity passed.
Feeling numb, Shai walked to her bed and sat down on its edge, the forged letter still hidden in her sleeve. Why had she hesitated? Were her instincts for self-preservation so weak?
I can wait a little longer, she told herself. Until Ashravan’s Essence Mark is done.
She’d been saying that for days now. Weeks, really. Each day she got closer to the deadline was another chance for Frava to strike. The woman came back with other excuses to take Shai’s notes and have them inspected. They were quickly approaching the point where the other Forger wouldn’t have to sort through much in order to finish Shai’s work.
At least, so he would think. The further she progressed, the more impossible she realized this project was. And the more she longed to make it work anyway.
She got out her book on the emperor’s life and soon found herself looking back through his youthful years. The thought of him not living again, of all of her work being merely a sham intended to distract while she planned to escape . . . those thoughts were physically painful.
Nights, Shai thought at herself. You’ve grown fond of him. You’re starting to see him like Gaotona does! She shouldn’t feel that way. She’d never met him. Besides, he was a despicable person.
But he hadn’t always been. No, in truth, he hadn’t ever truly become despicable. He had been more complex than that. Every person was. She could understand him, she could see—