Shai blinked tired eyes. Was she really going to try to escape? She’d had . . . what? Four hours of sleep in the last three days combined?
Surely escape could wait. Surely she could rest, just for today.
Rest, she thought numbly, and I will not wake.
She remained in place, kneeling. That stamp seemed the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Her ancestors had worshipped rocks that fell from the sky at night. The souls of broken gods, those chunks had been called. Master craftsmen would carve them to bring out the shape. Once, Shai had found that foolish. Why worship something you yourself created?
Kneeling before her masterpiece, she understood. She felt as if she’d bled everything into that stamp. She had pressed two years’ worth of effort into three months, then had topped it off with a night of desperate, frantic carving. During that night, she’d made changes to her notes, to the soul itself. Drastic changes. She still didn’t know if they had been provoked by her final, awesome vision of the project as a whole . . . or if those changes had instead been faulty ideas born of fatigue and delusion.
She wouldn’t know until the stamp was used.
“Is it . . . is it done?” asked one of her guards. The two of them had moved to the far edge of the room, to sit beside the hearth and give her room on the floor. She vaguely remembered shoving aside the furniture. She’d spent part of the time pulling stacks of paper out from their place beneath the bed, then crawling under to fetch others.
Was it done?
Shai nodded.
“What is it?” the guard asked.
Nights, she thought. That’s right. They don’t even know. The common guards left each day during her conversations with Gaotona.
The poor Strikers would probably find themselves assigned to some remote outpost of the empire for the rest of their lives, guarding the passes leading down to the distant Teoish Peninsula or the like. They would be quietly brushed under the rug to keep them from revealing, even accidentally, anything of what had happened here.
“Ask Gaotona if you want to know,” Shai said softly. “I am not allowed to say.”
Shai reverently picked up the seal, then placed both it and its plate inside a box she had prepared. The stamp nestled in red velvet, the plate—shaped like a large, thin medallion—in an indentation underneath the lid. She closed the lid, then pulled over a second, slightly larger box. Inside lay five seals, carved and prepared for her upcoming escape. If she managed it. Two of them she’d already used.
If she could just sleep for a few hours. Just a few . . .
No. I can’t use the bed anyway.
Curling up on the floor sounded wonderful, however.
The door began to open. Shai felt a sudden, striking moment of panic. Was it the Bloodsealer? He was supposed to be stuck in bed, having drunk himself to a stupor after being roughed up by the Strikers!
For a moment, she felt a strange guilty sense of relief. If the Bloodsealer had come, she wouldn’t have a chance to escape today. She could sleep. Had Hurli and Yil not thrashed him? Shai had been sure that she’d read them correctly, and . . .
. . . and, in her fatigue, she realized she’d been jumping to conclusions. The door opened all the way, and someone did enter, but it was not the Bloodsealer.
It was Captain Zu.
“Out,” he barked at the two guards.
They jumped into motion.
“In fact,” Zu said, “you’re relieved for the day. I’ll watch until the shift changes.”
The two saluted and left. Shai felt like a wounded elk being abandoned by the herd. The door clicked closed, and Zu slowly, deliberately, turned to look at her.
“The stamp isn’t ready yet,” Shai lied. “So you can—”
“It doesn’t need to be ready,” Zu said, smiling a wide, thick-lipped smile. “I believe I promised you something three months ago, thief. We have an . . . unsettled debt.”
The room was dim, her lamp having burned low and morning only just breaking. Shai backed away from him, quickly revising her plans. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She couldn’t fight Zu.
Her mouth kept moving, keeping him distracted but also playing a part she devised for herself on the fly. “When Frava finds out you came here,” Shai said, “she will be furious.”
Zu drew his sword.
“Nights!” Shai said, backing up to her bed. “Zu, you don’t need to do this. You can’t do this. I have work that needs to be done!”
“Another will complete your work,” Zu said, leering. “Frava has another Forger. You think you’re so clever. You probably have some wonderful escape planned for tomorrow. This time, we’re striking first. You didn’t anticipate this, did you, liar? I’m going to enjoy killing you. Enjoy it so much.”
He lunged with the sword, its tip catching her blouse and ripping a line through it at her side. Shai jumped away, shouting for help. She was still playing the part, but it did not require acting. Her heart thumped, panic rising, as she rounded the bed in a scramble, putting it between herself and Zu.
He smiled broadly, then jumped for her, leaping onto the bed.
It promptly collapsed. During the night, while crawling under the bed to get her notes, she had Forged the wood of the frame to have deep flaws, attacked by insects, making it fragile. She’d cut the mattress underneath in wide slashes.
Zu barely had time to shout as the bed broke completely away, crashing into the pit she’d opened in the floor below. The water damage to her room—the mildew she’d smelled when first entering—had been key. By reports, the wooden beams above would have rotted and the ceiling would have fallen in if they hadn’t located the leak as quickly as they had. A simple Forgery, very plausible, made it so that the floor had fallen in.
Zu crashed into the empty storage room one story down. Shai stood puffing, then peered into the hole. The man lay among the broken remnants of the bed. Some of that had been stuffing and cushioning. He would probably live—she’d been intending this trap for one of the regular guards, of whom she was fond.
Not exactly how I planned it, she thought, but workable.
Shai rushed to the table and gathered her things. The box of stamps, the emperor’s soul, some extra soulstone and ink. And the two books explaining the stamps she had created in deep complexity—the official one, and the true one.
She tossed the official one into the hearth as she passed. Then she stopped in front of the door, counting heartbeats.
She agonized, watching the Bloodsealer’s mark as it pulsed. Finally, after a few tormenting minutes, the seal on the door flashed one last time . . . then faded. The Bloodsealer had not returned in time to renew it.
Freedom.
Shai burst out into the hallway, abandoning her home of the last three months, a room now trimmed in gold and silver. The hallway outside had been so near, yet it felt like another country entirely. She pressed the third of her prepared stamps against her buttoned blouse, changing it to match that of the palace servants, with official insignia embroidered on the left breast.
She had little time to make her next move. Soon, either the Bloodsealer would make his way to her room, Zu would wake from his fall, or the guards would arrive for the shift change. Shai wanted to run down the hallway, breaking for the palace stables.
She did not. Running implied one of two things—guilt or an important task. Either would be memorable. Instead, she kept her gait to a swift walk and adopted the expression of one who knew what she was doing, and so should not be interrupted.
She soon entered the better-used sections of the enormous palace. No one stopped her. At a certain carpeted intersection, she stopped herself.
To the right, down a long hallway, lay the entrance to the emperor’s chambers. The seal she carried in her right hand, boxed and cushioned, seemed to leap in her fingers. Why hadn’t she left it in the room for Gaotona to discover? The arbiters would hunt her less assiduously if they had the seal.
She could just leave it here, in this hallway lined with portraits of ancient rulers and cluttered with Forged urns from ancient eras.
No. She had brought it with her for a reason. She’d prepared tools to get into the emperor’s chambers. She’d known all along this was what she would do.
If she left now, she’d never truly know if the seal worked. That would be like building a house, then never stepping inside. Like forging a sword, and never giving it a swing. Like crafting a masterpiece of art, then locking it away to never be seen again.
Shai started down the long hallway.
As soon as no one was directly in sight, she turned over one of those horrid urns and broke the seal on the bottom. It transformed back into a blank clay version of itself.
She’d had plenty of time to find out exactly where these urns were crafted and by whom. The fourth of her prepared stamps transformed the urn into a replica of an ornate golden chamber pot. Shai strode down the hallway to the emperor’s quarters, then nodded to the guards, chamber pot under her arm.
“I don’t recognize you,” one guard said. She didn’t recognize him either, with that scarred face and squinty look. As she’d expected. The guards set to watching her had been kept separate from the others so they couldn’t talk about their duties.
“Oh,” Shai said, fumbling, looking abashed. “I am sorry, greater one. I was only assigned this task this morning.” She blushed, fishing out of her pocket a small square of thick paper, marked with Gaotona’s seal and signature. She had forged both the old-fashioned way. Very convenient, how he’d let her tell him how to maintain security on the emperor’s rooms.
She got through without any further difficulty. The next three rooms of the emperor’s expansive chambers were empty. Beyond them was a locked door. She had to Forge the wood of that door into some that had been damaged by insects—using the same stamp she’d used on her bed—to get through. It didn’t take for long, but a few seconds was enough for her to kick the door open.
Inside, she found the emperor’s bedroom. It was the same place she’d been led on that first day when she’d been offered this chance. The room was empty save for him, lying in that bed. He was awake, but stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
The room was still. Quiet. It smelled . . . too clean. Too white. Like a blank canvas.
Shai walked up to the side of the bed. Ashravan didn’t look at her. His eyes didn’t move. She rested fingers on his shoulder. He had a handsome face, though he was some fifteen years her senior. That was not much for a Grand; they lived longer than most.
His was a strong face, despite his long time abed. Golden hair, a firm chin, a nose that was prominent. So different in features from Shai’s people.
“I know your soul,” Shai said softly. “I know it better than you ever did.”
No alarm yet. Shai continued to expect one any moment, but she knelt down beside the bed anyway. “I wish that I could know you. Not your soul, but you. I’ve read about you; I’ve seen into your heart. I’ve rebuilt your soul, as best I could. But that isn’t the same. It isn’t knowing someone, is it? That’s knowing about someone.”