Or was he? As ever, she could not suppress her instincts. As good as she was, someone else could be better. Just as Uncle Won had warned. Could Gaotona have been playing her for a fool all along? She felt strongly she should trust her assessment of Gaotona. But if she was wrong, it could be a disaster.
It might be anyway, she thought. You should have run days ago.
“Turning yourself into a soldier I understand,” Gaotona said, setting aside the plate. “And this one as well. A woodsman and survivalist. That one looks extremely versatile. Impressive. And here we have a scholar. But why? You are already a scholar.”
“No woman can know everything,” Shai said. “There is only so much time for study. When I stamp myself with that Essence Mark, I can suddenly speak a dozen languages, from Fen to Mulla’dil—even a few from Sycla. I know dozens of different cultures and how to move in them. I know science, mathematics, and the major political factions of the world.”
“Ah,” Gaotona said.
Just give them to me, she thought.
“But what of this?” Gaotona said. “A beggar? Why would you want to be emaciated, and . . . is this showing that most of your hair would fall out, that your skin would become scarred?”
“It changes my appearance,” Shai said. “Drastically. That’s useful.” She didn’t mention that in that aspect, she knew the ways of the streets and survival in a city underworld. Her lock-picking skills weren’t too shabby when not bearing that seal, but with it, she was incomparable.
With that stamp on her, she could probably manage to climb out the tiny window—that Mark rewrote her past to give her years of experience as a contortionist—and climb the five stories down to freedom.
“I should have realized,” Gaotona said. He lifted the final plate. “That just leaves this one, most baffling of all.”
Shai said nothing.
“Cooking,” he said. “Farm work, sewing. Another alias, I assume. For imitating a simpler person?”
“Yes.”
Gaotona nodded, putting the sheet down.
Honesty. He must see my honesty. It cannot be faked.
“No,” Shai said, sighing.
He looked to her.
“It’s . . . my way out,” she said. “I’ll never use it. It’s just there, if I want to.”
“Way out?”
“If I ever use that,” Shai said, “it will write over my years as a Forger. Everything. I will forget how to make the simplest of stamps; I will forget that I was even apprenticed as a Forger. I will become something normal.”
“And you want that?”
“No.”
A pause.
“Yes. Maybe. A part of me does.”
Honesty. It was so difficult. Sometimes it was the only way.
She dreamed about that simple life, on occasion. In that morbid way that someone standing at the edge of a cliff wonders what it would be like to just jump off. The temptation is there, even if it’s ridiculous.
A normal life. No hiding, no lying. She loved what she did. She loved the thrill, the accomplishment, the wonder. But sometimes . . . trapped in a prison cell or running for her life . . . sometimes she dreamed of something else.
“Your aunt and uncle?” he asked. “Uncle Won, Aunt Sol, they are parts of this revision. I’ve read it in here.”
“They’re fake,” Shai whispered.
“But you quote them all the time.”
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“I suspect,” Gaotona said, “that a life full of lying makes reality and falsehood intermix. But if you were to use this stamp, surely you would not forget everything. How would you keep the sham from yourself?”
“It would be the greatest Forgery of all,” Shai said. “One intended to fool even me. Written into that is the belief that without that stamp, applied every morning, I’ll die. It includes a history of illness, of visiting a . . . resealer, as you call them. A healer that works in soulstamps. From them, my false self received a remedy, one I must apply each morning. Aunt Sol and Uncle Won would send me letters; that is part of the charade to fool myself. I’ve written them already. Hundreds, which—before I use the Essence Mark on myself—I will pay a delivery service good money to send periodically.”
“But what if you try to visit them?” Gaotona said. “To investigate your childhood . . .”
“It’s all in the plate. I will be afraid of travel. There’s truth to that, as I was indeed scared of leaving my village as a youth. Once that Mark is in place, I’ll stay away from cities. I’ll think the trip to visit my relatives is too dangerous. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll never use it.”
That stamp would end her. She would forget the last twenty years, back to when she was eight and had first begun inquiring about becoming a Forger.
She’d become someone else entirely. None of the other Essence Marks did that; they rewrote some of her past, but left her with a knowledge of who she truly was. Not so with the last one. That one was to be final. It terrified her.
“This is a great deal of work for something you’ll never use,” Gaotona said.
“Sometimes, that is the way of life.”
Gaotona shook his head.
“I was hired to destroy the painting,” Shai blurted out.
She wasn’t quite certain what drove her to say it. She needed to be honest with Gaotona—that was the only way her plan would work—but he didn’t need this piece. Did he?
Gaotona looked up.
“ShuXen hired me to destroy Frava’s painting,” Shai said. “That’s why I burned the masterpiece, rather than sneaking it out of the gallery.”
“ShuXen? But . . . he’s the original artist! Why would he hire you to destroy one of his works?”
“Because he hates the empire,” Shai said. “He painted that piece for a woman he loved. Her children gave it to the empire as a gift. ShuXen is old now, blind, barely able to move. He did not want to go to his grave knowing that one of his works was serving to glorify the Rose Empire. He begged me to burn it.”
Gaotona seemed dumbfounded. He looked at her, as if trying to pierce through to her soul. Shai didn’t know why he needed to bother; this conversation had already stripped her thoroughly bare.
“A master of his caliber is hard to imitate,” Shai said, “particularly without the original to work from. If you think about it, you’ll realize I needed his help to create those fakes. He gave me access to his studies and concepts; he told me how he’d gone about painting it. He coached me through the brush strokes.”
“Why not just have you return the original to him?” Gaotona asked.
“He’s dying,” Shai said. “Owning a thing is meaningless to him. That painting was done for a lover. She is gone now, so he felt the painting should be as well.”
“A priceless treasure,” Gaotona said. “Gone because of foolish pride.”
“It was his work!”
“Not any longer,” Gaotona said. “It belonged to everyone who saw it. You should not have agreed to this. Destroying a work of art like that is never right.” He hesitated. “But still, I think I can understand. What you did had a nobility to it. Your goal was the Moon Scepter. Exposing yourself to destroy that painting was dangerous.”