She felt that she finally understood why Ashravan had abandoned his youthful optimism. At least, she knew the factors that had combined to lead him down that path. Corruption was part of it, but not the main part. Again, lack of self-confidence contributed, but hadn’t been the decisive factor.
No, Ashravan’s downfall had been life itself. Life in the palace, life as part of an empire that clicked along like a clock. Everything worked. Oh, it didn’t work as well as it might. But it did work.
Challenging that took effort, and effort was sometimes hard to muster. He had lived a life of leisure. Ashravan hadn’t been lazy, but it didn’t require laziness to be swept up in the workings of imperial bureaucracy—to tell yourself that next month you’d go and demand that your changes be made. Over time, it had become easier and easier to float along the course of the great river that was the Rose Empire.
In the end, he’d grown indulgent. He’d focused more on the beauty of his palace than on the lives of his subjects. He had allowed the arbiters to handle more and more government functions.
Shai sighed. Even that description of him was too simplistic. It neglected to mention who the emperor had been, and who he had become. A chronology of events didn’t speak of his temper, his fondness for debate, his eye for beauty, or his habit of writing terrible, terrible poetry and then expecting all who served him to tell him how wonderful it was.
It also didn’t speak of his arrogance, or his secret wish that he could have been something else. That was why he had gone back over his book again and again. Perhaps he had been looking for that branching point in his life where he had stepped down the wrong path.
He hadn’t understood. There was rarely an obvious branching point in a person’s life. People changed slowly, over time. You didn’t take one step, then find yourself in a completely new location. You first took a little step off a path to avoid some rocks. For a while, you walked alongside the path, but then you wandered out a little way to step on softer soil. Then you stopped paying attention as you drifted farther and farther away. Finally, you found yourself in the wrong city, wondering why the signs on the roadway hadn’t led you better.
The door to her room opened.
Shai bolted upright in her bed, nearly dropping her notes. They’d come for her.
But … no, it was morning already. Light trickled through the stained-glass window, and the guards were standing up and stretching. The one who had opened the door was the Bloodsealer. He looked hungover again, and carried a stack of papers in his hand, as he often did.
He’s early this morning, Shai thought, checking her pocket watch. Why early today, when he’s late so often?
The Bloodsealer cut her and stamped the door without a word, causing the pain to burn in Shai’s arm. He hurried out of the room, as if off to some appointment. Shai stared after him, then shook her head.
A moment later, the door opened again and Frava entered.
“Oh, you’re up,” the woman said as the Strikers saluted her. Frava set Shai’s book down on the table with a thump. She seemed annoyed. “The scribes are done. Get back to work.”
Frava left in a bustle. Shai leaned back in her bed, sighing in relief. Her ruse had worked. That should earn her a few more weeks.
DAY SEVENTY
“SO this symbol,” Gaotona said, pointing at one of her sketches of the greater stamps she would soon carve, “is a time notation, indicating a moment specifically … seven years ago?”
“Yes,” Shai said, dusting off the end of a freshly carved soulstamp. “You learn quickly.”
“I am undergoing surgery each day, so to speak,” Gaotona said. “It makes me more comfortable to know the kinds of knives being used.”
“The changes aren’t—”
“Aren’t permanent,” he said. “Yes, so you keep saying.” He stretched out his arm for her to stamp. “However, it makes me wonder. One can cut the body, and it will heal—but do it over and over again in the same spot, and you will scar. The soul cannot be so different.”
“Except, of course, that it’s completely different,” Shai said, stamping his arm.
He had never quite forgiven her for what she had done in burning ShuXen’s masterpiece. She could see it in him, when they interacted. He was no longer just disappointed in her, he was angry at her.
Anger faded with time, and they had a functional working relationship again.
Gaotona cocked his head. “I … Now that is odd.”
“Odd in what way?” Shai asked, watching the seconds pass on her pocket watch.
“I remember encouraging myself to become emperor. And … and I resent myself. For … mother of light, is that really how he regarded me?”
The seal remained in place for fifty-seven seconds. Good enough. “Yes,” she said as the seal faded away. “I believe that is exactly how he regarded you.” She felt a thrill. Finally that seal had worked!
She was getting close now. Close to understanding the emperor, close to having the puzzle come together. Whenever she neared the end of a project—a painting, a large-scale soul Forgery, a sculpture—there came a moment in the process where she could see the entire work, even if it was far from finished. When that moment came, in her mind’s eye, the work was complete; actually finishing it was almost a formality.
She was nearly there with this project. The emperor’s soul spread out before her, with only some few corners still shadowed. She wanted to see it through; she longed to find out if she could make him live again. After reading so much about him, after coming to feel as if she knew him so well, she needed to finish.
Surely her escape could wait until then.
“That was it, wasn’t it?” Gaotona asked. “That was the stamp that you’ve tried a dozen times without success, the seal representing why he stood up to become emperor.”
“Yes,” Shai said.
“His relationship with me,” Gaotona said. “You made his decision depend upon his relationship with me, and … and the sense of shame he felt when speaking with me.”
“Yes.”
“And it took.”
“Yes.”
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 … y
ou 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—
“Nights!” she said, standing up and putting the book aside. She needed to clear her mind.
When Gaotona came to the room six hours later, Shai was just pressing a seal against the far wall. The elderly man opened the door and stepped in, then froze as the wall flooded with color.
Vine patterns spiraled out from Shai’s stamp like sprays of paint. Green, scarlet, amber. The painting grew like something alive, leaves springing from branches, bunches of fruit exploding in succulent bursts. Thicker and thicker the pattern grew, golden trim breaking out of nothing and running like streams, rimming leaves, reflecting light.
The mural deepened, every inch imbued with an illusion of movement. Curling vines, unexpected thorns peeking from behind branches. Gaotona breathed out in awe and stepped up beside Shai. Behind, Zu stepped in, and the other two guards left and closed the door.
Gaotona reached out and felt the wall, but of course the paint was dry. So far as the wall knew, it had been painted like this years ago. Gaotona knelt down, looking at the two seals Shai had placed at the base of the painting. Only the third one, stamped above, had set off the transformation; the early seals were notes on how the image was to be created. Guidelines, a revision of history, instructions.
“How?” Gaotona asked.
“One of the Strikers guarded Atsuko of JinDo during his visit to the Rose Palace,” Shai said. “Atsuko caught a sickness, and was stuck in his bedroom for three weeks. That was just one floor up.”
“Your Forgery puts him in this room instead?”
“Yes. That was before the water damage that seeped through the ceiling last year, so it’s plausible he’d have been placed here. The wall remembers Atsuko spending days too weak to leave, but having the strength for painting. A little each day, a growing pattern of vines, leaves, and berries. To pass the time.”
“This shouldn’t be taking,” Gaotona said. “This Forgery is tenuous. You’ve changed too much.”
“No,” Shai said. “It’s on the line … that line where the greatest beauty is found.” She put the seal away. She barely remembered the last six hours. She had been caught up in the frenzy of creation.
“Still…” Gaotona said.
“It will take,” Shai said. “If you were the wall, what would you rather be? Dreary and dull, or alive with paint?”
“Walls can’t think!”
“That doesn’t stop them from caring.”
Gaotona shook his head, muttering about superstition. “How long?”
“To create this soulstamp? I’ve been etching it here and there for the last month or so. It was the last thing I wanted to do for the room.”
“The artist was
JinDo,” he said. “Perhaps, because you are from the same people, it … But no! That’s thinking like your superstition.” Gaotona shook his head, trying to figure out why that painting would have taken, though it had always been obvious to Shai that this one would work.
“The JinDo and my people are not the same, by the way,” Shai said testily. “We may have been related long ago, but we are completely different from them now.” Grands. Just because people had similar features, Grands assumed they were practically identical.
Gaotona looked across her chamber and its fine furniture that had been carved and polished. Its marble floor with silver inlay, the crackling hearth and small chandelier. A fine rug—it had once been a bed quilt with holes in it—covered the floor. The stained-glass window sparkled on the right wall, lighting the beautiful mural.
The only thing that retained its original form was the door, thick but unremarkable. She couldn’t Forge that, not with that Bloodseal set into it.
“You realize that you now have the finest chamber in the palace,” Gaotona said.
“I doubt that,” Shai said with a sniff. “Surely the emperor’s are the nicest.”
“The largest, yes. Not the nicest.” He knelt beside the painting, looking at her seals at the bottom. “You included detailed explanations of how this was painted.”
“To create a realistic Forgery,” Shai said, “you must have the technical skill you are imitating, at least to an extent.”
“So you could have painted this wall yourself.”
“I don’t have the paints.”
“But you could have. You could have demanded paints. I’d have given them to you. Instead, you created a Forgery.”
“It’s what I am,” Shai said, growing annoyed at him again.
“It’s what you choose to be. If a wall can desire to be a mural, Wan ShaiLu, then you could desire to become a great painter.”
She slapped her stamp down on the table, then took a few deep breaths.
“You have a temper,” Gaotona said. “Like him. Actually, I know exactly how that feels now, because you have given it to me on several occasions. I wonder if this … thing you do could be a tool for helping to bring awareness to people. Inscribe your emotions onto a stamp, then let others feel what it is to be you…”