Gaotona gestured for the guards to leave, all but Zu, who remained by his side. “You present a puzzle, Forger,” Gaotona said once the other two guards were gone, the door closed. He settled down in one of the two rickety wooden chairs. They—along with the splintery bed, the ancient table, and the trunk with her things—made up the room’s entire array of furniture. The single window had a warped frame that let in the breeze, and even the walls had cracks in them.
“A puzzle?” Shai asked, holding up the stamp before her, peering closely at her work. “What kind of puzzle?”
“You are a Forger. Therefore, you cannot be trusted without supervision. You will try to run the moment you think of a practicable escape.”
“So leave guards with me,” Shai said, carving some more.
“Pardon,” Gaotona said, “but I doubt it would take you long to bully, bribe, or blackmail them.”
Nearby, Zu stiffened.
“I meant no offense, Captain,” Gaotona said. “I have great confidence in your people, but what we have before us is a master trickster, liar, and thief. Your best guards would eventually become clay in her hands.”
“Thank you,” Shai said.
“It was not a compliment. What your type touches, it corrupts. I worried about leaving you alone even for one day under the supervision of mortal eyes. From what I know of you, you could nearly charm the gods themselves.”
She continued working.
“I cannot trust in manacles to hold you,” Gaotona said softly, “as we are required to give you soulstone so that you can work on our . . . problem. You would turn your manacles to soap, then escape in the night laughing.”
That statement, of course, betrayed a complete lack of understanding in how Forgery worked. A Forgery had to be likely—believable—otherwise it wouldn’t take. Who would make a chain out of soap? It would be ridiculous.
What she could do, however, was discover the chain’s origins and composition, then rewrite one or the other. She could Forge the chain’s past so that one of the links had been cast incorrectly, which would give her a flaw to exploit. Even if she could not find the chain’s exact history, she might be able to escape—an imperfect stamp would not take for long, but she’d only need a few moments to shatter the link with a mallet.
They could make a chain out of ralkalest, the unForgeable metal, but that would only delay her escape. With enough time, and soulstone, she would find a solution. Forging the wall to have a weak crack in it, so she could pull the chain free. Forging the ceiling to have a loose block, which she could let drop and shatter the weak ralkalest links.
She didn’t want to do something so extreme if she didn’t have to. “I don’t see that you need to worry about me,” Shai said, still working. “I am intrigued by what we are doing, and I’ve been promised wealth. That is enough to keep me here. Don’t forget, I could have escaped my previous cell at any time.”
“Ah yes,” Gaotona said. “The cell in which you would have used Forgery to get through the wall. Tell me, out of curiosity, have you studied anthracite? That rock you said you’d turn the wall into? I seem to recall that it is very difficult to make burn.”
This one is more clever than people give him credit for being.
A candle’s flame would have trouble igniting anthracite—on paper, the rock burned at the correct temperature, but getting an entire sample hot enough was very difficult. “I was fully capable of creating a proper kindling environment with some wood from my bunk and a few rocks turned into coal.”
“Without a kiln?” Gaotona said, sounding faintly amused. “With no bellows? But that is beside the point. Tell me, how were you planning to survive inside a cell where the wall was aflame at over two thousand degrees? Would not that kind of fire suck away all of the breathable air? Ah, but of course. You could have used your bed linens and transformed them into a poor conductor, perhaps glass, and made a shell for yourself to hide in.”
Shai continued her carving, uncomfortable. The way he said that . . . Yes, he knew that she could not have done what he described. Most Grands were ignorant about the ways of Forgery, and this man certainly still was, but he did know enough to realize she couldn’t have escaped as she said. No more than bed linens could become glass.
Beyond that, making the entire wall into another type of rock would have been difficult. She would have had to change too many things—rewritten history so that the quarries for each type of stone were near deposits of anthracite, and that in each case, a block of the burnable rock was quarried by mistake. That was a huge stretch, an almost impossible one, particularly without specific knowledge of the quarries in question.
Plausibility was key to any forgery, magical or not. People whispered of Forgers turning lead into gold, never realizing that the reverse was far, far easier. Inventing a history for a bar of gold where somewhere along the line, someone had adulterated it with lead . . . well, that was a plausible lie. The reverse would be so unlikely that a stamp to make that transformation would not take for long.
“You impress me, your grace,” Shai finally said. “You think like a Forger.”
Gaotona’s expression soured.
“That,” she noted, “was meant as a compliment.”
“I value truth, young woman. Not Forgery.” He regarded her with the expression of a disappointed grandfather. “I have seen the work of your hands. That copied painting you did . . . it was remarkable. Yet it was accomplished in the name of lies. What great works could you create if you focused on industry and beauty instead of wealth and deception?”
“What I do is great art.”
“No. You copy other people’s great art. What you do is technically marvelous, yet completely lacking in spirit.”
She almost slipped in her carving, hands growing tense. How dare he? Threatening to execute her was one thing, but insulting her art? He made her sound like . . . like one of those assembly line Forgers, churning out vase after vase!
She calmed herself with difficulty, then plastered on a smile. Her aunt Sol had once told Shai to smile at the worst insults and snap at the minor ones. That way, no man would know your heart.
“So how am I to be kept in line?” she asked. “We have established that I am among the most vile wretches to slither through the halls of this palace. You cannot bind me and you cannot trust your own soldiers to guard me.”
“Well,” Gaotona said, “whenever possible, I personally will observe your work.”
She would have preferred Frava—that one seemed as if she’d be easier to manipulate—but this was workable. “If you wish,” Shai said. “Much of it will be boring to one who does not understand Forgery.”
“I am not interested in being entertained,” Gaotona said, waving one hand to Captain Zu. “Whenever I am here, Captain Zu will guard me. He is the only one of our Strikers to know the extent of the emperor’s injury, and only he knows of our plan with you. Other guards will watch you during the rest of the day, and you are not to speak to them of your task. There will be no rumors of what we do.”
“You don’t need to worry about me talking,” Shai said, truthfully for once. “The more people who know of a Forgery, the more likely it is to fail.” Besides, she thought, if I told the guards, you’d undoubtedly execute them to preserve your secrets. She didn’t like Strikers, but she liked the empire less, and the guards were really just another kind of slave. Shai wasn’t in the business of getting people killed for no reason.