Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection Page 11

  Destroying the notes had been clever on the girl’s part. Had she guessed, somehow, that Frava wasn’t really making copies? Frava shook her head and stepped up beside Gaotona, who sat in their box of the Theater of Address. She sat down beside him, speaking very softly. “They are accepting it.”

  Gaotona nodded, his eyes on the fake emperor. “There isn’t even a whisper of suspicion. What we did … it was not only audacious, it would be presumed impossible.”

  “The girl could put a knife to our throats,” Frava said. “The proof of what we did is burned into the emperor’s own body. We will need to tread carefully in coming years.”

  Gaotona nodded, looking distracted. Days afire, how Frava wished she could get him removed from his station. He was the only one of the arbiters who ever took a stand against her. Just before his assassination, Ashravan had been ready to do it at her prompting.

  Those meetings had been private. Shai wouldn’t have known of them, so the fake would not either. Frava would have to begin the process again, unless she found a way to control this duplicate Ashravan. Both options frustrated her.

  “A part of me can’t believe that we actually did it,” Gaotona said softly as the fake emperor moved on to the next section of his speech, a call for unity.

  Frava sniffed. “The plan was sound all along.”

  “Shai escaped.”

  “She will be found.”

  “I doubt it,” he said. “We were lucky to catch her that once. Fortunately, I do not believe we have much to worry about from her.”

  “She’ll try to blackmail us,” Frava said. Or she’ll try to find a way to control the throne.

  “No,” Gaotona said. “No, she is satisfied.”

  “Satisfied with escaping alive?”

  “Satisfied with having placed one of her creations on the throne. Once, she dared to try to fool thousands—but now she has a chance to fool millions. An entire empire. Exposing what she has done would ruin the majesty of it, in her eyes.”

  Did the old fool really believe that? His naiveness often presented Frava with opportunities; she’d considered letting him keep his station simply for that reason.

  The fake emperor continued his speech. Ashravan had liked to hear himself speak. The Forger had gotten that right.

  “He’s using the assassination as a means of bolstering our faction,” Gaotona said. “You hear? The implications that we need to unify, pull together, remember our heritage of strength … And the rumors, the ones the Glory Faction spread regarding him being killed … by mentioning them, he weakens their faction. They gambled on him not returning, and now that he has, they seem foolish.”

  “True,” Frava said. “Did you put him up to that?”

  “No,” Gaotona said. “He refused to let me counsel him on his speech. This move, though, it feels like something the old Ashravan would have done, the Ashravan from a decade ago.”

  “The copy isn’t perfect, then,” Frava said. “We’ll have to remember that.”

  “Yes,” Gaotona said. He held something, a small, thick book that Frava didn’t recognize.

  A rustling came from the back of the box, and a servant of Frava’s Symbol entered, passing Arbiters Stivient and Ushnaka. The youthful messenger came to Frava’s side, then leaned down.

  Frava gave the girl a displeased glance. “What can be so important that you interrupt me here?”

  “I’m sorry, Your Grace,” the woman whispered. “But you asked me to arrange your palace offices for your afternoon meetings.”

  “Well?” Frava asked.

  “Did you enter the rooms yesterday, my lady?”

  “No. With the business of that rogue Bloodsealer, and the emperor’s demands, and…” Frava’s frown deepened. “What is it?”

  * * *

  Shai turned and looked back at the Imperial Seat. The city rolled across a group of seven large hills; a major faction house topped each of the outer six, with the palace dominating the central hill.

  The horse at her side looked little like the one she’d taken from the palace. It was missing teeth and walked with its head hanging low, back bowed. Its coat looked as if it hadn’t been brushed in ages, and the creature was so underfed, its ribs poked out like the slats on the back of a chair.

  Shai had spent the previous days lying low, using her beggar Essence Mark to hide in the Imperial Seat’s underground. With that disguise in place, and with one on the horse, she’d escaped the city with ease. She’d removed her Mark once out, however. Thinking like the beggar was … uncomfortable.

  Shai loosened the horse’s saddle, then reached under it and placed a fingernail against the glowing seal there. She snapped the seal’s rim with some effort, breaking the Forgery. The horse transformed immediately, back straightening, head rising, sides swelling. It danced uncertainly, head darting back and forth, tugging against the reins. Zu’s warhorse was a fine animal, worth more than a small house in some parts of the empire.

  Hidden among the supplies on his back was the painting that Shai had stolen, again, from Arbiter Frava’s office. A forgery. Shai had never had cause to steal one of her own works before. It felt … amusing. She’d left the large frame cut open with a single Reo rune carved in the center on the wall behind. It did not have a very pleasant meaning.

  She patted the horse on the neck. All things considered, this wasn’t a bad haul. A fine horse and a painting that, though fake, was so realistic that even its owner had thought it was the original.

  He’s giving his speech right now, Shai thought. I would like to have heard that.

  Her gem, her crowning work, wore the mantle of imperial power. That thrilled her, but the thrill had driven her onward. Even making him live again had not been the cause of her frantic work. No, in the end, she’d pushed herself so hard because she’d wanted to leave a few specific changes embedded within the soul. Perhaps those months of being genuine to Gaotona had changed her.

  Copy an image over and over on a stack of paper, Shai thought, and eventually the lower sheets will bear the same image, pressed down. Deep within.

  She turned, taking out the Essence Mark that would transform her into a survivalist and hunter. Frava would anticipate Shai using the roads, so she would instead make her way into the deep center of the nearby Sogdian Forest. Those depths would hide her well. In a few months, she would carefully proceed out of the province and continue on to her next task: tracking down the Imperial Fool, who had betrayed her.

  For now, she wanted to be far away from walls, palaces, and courtly lies. Shai hoisted herself into the horse’s saddle and bid farewell to both the Imperial Seat and the man who now ruled it.

  Live well, Ashravan, she thought. And make me proud.

  * * *

  Late that night, following the emperor’s speech, Gaotona sat by the familiar hearth in his personal study looking at the book that Shai had given him.

  And marveling.

  The book was a copy of the emperor’s soulstamp, in detail, with notes. Everything that Shai had done lay bare to him here.

  Frava would not find an exploit to control the emperor, because there wasn’t one. The emperor’s soul was complete, locked tight, and all his own. That wasn’t to say that he was exactly the same as he had been.

  I took some liberties, as you can see, Shai’s notes explained. I wanted to replicate his soul as precisely as possible. That was the task and the challenge. I did so.

  Then I took the soul a few steps farther, strengthening some memories, weakening others. I embedded deep within Ashravan triggers that will cause him to react in a specific way to the assassination and his recovery.

  This isn’t changing his soul. This isn’t making him a different person. It is merely nudging him toward a certain path, much as a con man on the street will strongly nudge his mark to pick a certain card. It is him. The him that could have been.

  Who knows? Perhaps it is the him that would have been.

  Gaotona would never have figured it out o
n his own, of course. His skill was faint in this area. Even if he’d been a master, he suspected he wouldn’t have spotted Shai’s work here. She explained in the book that her intention had been to be so subtle, so careful, that no one would be able to decipher her changes. One would have to know the emperor with extreme depth to even suspect what had happened.

  With the notes, Gaotona could see it. Ashravan’s near death would send him into a period of deep introspection. He would seek his journal, reading again and again the accounts of his youthful self. He would see what he had been, and would finally, truly seek to recover it.

  Shai indicated the transformation would be slow. Over a period of years, Ashravan would become the man that he’d once seemed destined to be. Tiny inclinations buried deep within the interactions of his seals would nudge him toward excellence instead of indulgence. He would start thinking of his legacy, as opposed to the next feast. He would remember his people, not his dinner appointments. He would finally push the factions for the changes that he, and many before him, had noticed needed to be made.

  In short, he would become a fighter. He would take that single—but so hard—step across the line from dreamer to doer. Gaotona could see it, in these pages.

  He found himself weeping.

  Not for the future or for the emperor. These were the tears of a man who saw before himself a masterpiece. True art was more than beauty; it was more than technique. It was not just imitation.

  It was boldness, it was contrast, it was subtlety. In this book, Gaotona found a rare work to rival that of the greatest painters, sculptors, and poets of any era.

  It was the greatest work of art he had ever witnessed.

  Gaotona held that book reverently for most of the night. It was the creation of months of fevered, intense artistic transcendence—forced by external pressure, but released like a breath held until the brink of collapse. Raw, yet polished. Reckless, but calculated.

  Awesome, yet unseen.

  So it had to remain. If anyone discovered what Shai had done, the emperor would fall. Indeed, the very empire might shake. No one could know that Ashravan’s decision to finally become a great leader had been set in motion by words etched into his soul by a blasphemer.

  As morning broke, Gaotona slowly—excruciatingly—stood up beside his hearth. He clutched the book, that matchless work of art, and held it out.

  Then he dropped it into the flames.

  POSTSCRIPT

  In writing classes, I was frequently told, “Write what you know.” It’s an adage writers often hear, and it left me confused. Write what I know? How do I do that? I’m writing fantasy. I can’t know what it’s like to use magic—for that matter, I can’t know what it’s like to be female, but I want to write from a variety of viewpoints.

  As I matured in skill, I began to see what this phrase meant. Though in this genre we write about the fantastic, the stories work best when there is solid grounding in our world. Magic works best for me when it aligns with scientific principles. Worldbuilding works best when it draws from sources in our world. Characters work best when they’re grounded in solid human emotion and experience.

  Being a writer, then, is as much about observation as it is imagination.

  I try to let new experiences inspire me. I’ve been lucky enough in this field that I am able to travel frequently. When I visit a new country, I try to let the culture, people, and experiences there shape themselves into a story.

  Once when I visited Taiwan, I was fortunate enough to visit the National Palace Museum, with my editor Sherry Wang and translator Lucie Tuan along to play tour guides. A person can’t take in thousands of years of Chinese history in a matter of a few hours, but we did our best. Fortunately, I had some grounding in Asian history and lore already. (I lived for two years in Korea as an LDS missionary, and I then minored in Korean during my university days.)

  Seeds of a story started to grow in my mind from this visit. What stood out most to me were the stamps. We sometimes call them “chops” in English, but I’ve always called them by their Korean name of tojang. In Mandarin, they’re called yìnjiàn. These intricately carved stone stamps are used as signatures in many different Asian cultures.

  During my visit to the museum, I noticed many of the familiar red stamps. Some were, of course, the stamps of the artists—but there were others. One piece of calligraphy was covered in them. Lucie and Sherry explained: Ancient Chinese scholars and nobility, if they liked a work of art, would sometimes stamp it with their stamp too. One emperor in particular loved to do this, and would take beautiful sculptures or pieces of jade—centuries old—and have his stamp and perhaps some lines of his poetry carved into them.

  What a fascinating mind-set. Imagine being a king, deciding that you particularly liked Michelangelo’s David, and so having your signature carved across the chest. That’s essentially what this was.

  The concept was so striking, I began playing with a stamp magic in my head. Soulstamps, capable of rewriting the nature of an object’s existence. I didn’t want to stray too close to Soulcasting from the Stormlight world, and so instead I used the inspiration of the museum—of history—to devise a magic that allowed rewriting an object’s past.

  The story grew from that starting place. As the magic aligned a great deal with a system I’d been developing for Sel, the world where Elantris takes place, I set the story there. (I also had based several cultures there on our-world Asian cultures, so it fit wonderfully.)

  You can’t always write what you know—not exactly what you know. You can, however, write what you see.

  THE

  HOPE

  OF

  ELANTRIS

  This story takes place after and contains major spoilers for Elantris.

  “MY lord,” Ashe said, hovering in through the window. “Lady Sarene begs your forgiveness. She’s going to be a tad late for dinner.”

  “A tad?” Raoden asked, amused as he sat at the table. “Dinner was supposed to start an hour ago.”

  Ashe pulsed slightly. “I’m sorry, my lord. But … she made me promise to relay a message if you complained. ‘Tell him,’ she said, ‘that I’m pregnant and it’s his fault, so that means he has to do what I want.’”

  Raoden laughed.

  Ashe pulsed again, looking as embarrassed as a seon could, considering he was simply a ball of light.

  Raoden sighed, resting his arms on the table of his palace inside Elantris. The walls around him glowed with a very faint light, and no torches or lanterns were necessary. He’d always wondered about the lack of lantern brackets in Elantris. Galladon had once explained that there were plates made to glow when pressed—but they’d both forgotten just how much light had come from the stones themselves.

  He looked down at his empty plate. We once struggled so hard for just a little bit of food, he thought. Now it’s so commonplace that we can spend an hour dallying before we eat.

  Yet food was plentiful. Raoden himself could turn garbage into fine corn. Nobody in Arelon would ever go hungry again. Still, thinking about such things took his mind back to New Elantris, and the simple peace he’d forged inside the city.

  “Ashe,” Raoden said, a thought suddenly occurring to him. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  “Where were you during those last hours before Elantris was restored? I don’t remember anything of you for most of the night. In fact, the only time I remember seeing you is when you came to tell me that Sarene had been kidnapped and taken to Teod.”

  “That’s true, Your Majesty,” Ashe said.

  “So, where were you?”

  “It is a long story, Your Majesty,” the seon said, floating down beside Raoden’s chair. “It began when Lady Sarene sent me ahead to New Elantris, to warn Galladon and Karata that she was sending them a shipment of weapons. That was just before the monks attacked Kae, and I went to New Elantris, completely unaware of what was about to occur.…”

&nb
sp; * * *

  Matisse took care of the children.

  That was her job, in New Elantris. Everyone had to have a job; that was Spirit’s rule. She didn’t mind her job—actually, she rather enjoyed it. She’d been doing it for longer than Spirit had been around. Ever since Dashe had found her and taken her back to Karata’s palace, Matisse had been watching after the little ones. Spirit’s rules just made it official.

  Yes, she enjoyed the duty. Most of the time.

  “Do we really have to go to bed, Matisse?” Teor asked, giving her his best wide-eyed look. “Can’t we stay up, just this once?”

  Matisse folded her arms, raising a hairless eyebrow at the little boy. “You had to go to bed yesterday at this time,” she noted. “And the day before. And, actually, the day before that. I don’t see why you think today should be any different.”

  “Something’s going on,” said Tiil, stepping up beside his friend. “The adults are all drawing Aons.”

  Matisse glanced out the window. The children—the fifty or so of them beneath her care—stayed in an open-windowed building dubbed the Roost because of the intricate carvings of birds on most of its walls. The Roost was located near the center of the city-within-a-city—close to Spirit’s own home, the Korathi chapel where he held most of his important meetings. The adults wanted to keep a close watch on the children.

  Unfortunately, that meant that the children could also keep a close watch on the adults. Outside the window, flashes of light sparked from hundreds of fingers drawing Aons in the air. It was late—far later than the children should have been up—but it had been particularly difficult to get them to bed this night.

  Tiil is right, she thought. Something is going on. However, that was no reason to let him stay up—especially because the longer he stayed awake, the longer it would be before she’d be able to go out and investigate the commotion herself.