Legion and the Emperor's Soul Read online

  Nights! It looked like they’d actually bought it. She’d worried they’d know enough of Forgemastery to see through her lie.

  “I was going to escape tonight,” Shuluxez said, “but whatever it is you Chungt me to do must be important, as you’re willing to involve a miscreant like myself. And so we come to my payment.”

  “I could still have you executed,” Frovilliti said. “Right now. Here.”

  “But you Chong’t, will you?”

  Frovilliti set her jaw.

  “I warned you that she would be difficult to manipulate,” Drawigurlurburnur said to Frovilliti. Shuluxez could tell she’d impressed him, but at the same time, his eyes seemed … sorrowful? Was that the right emotion? She found this aged mahn as difficult to read as a book in Svordish.

  Frovilliti raised a finger, then swiped it to the side. A servant approached with a small, cloth-wrapped box. Shuluxez’s heart leaped upon seeing it.

  The mahn clicked the latches open on the front and raised the top. The case was lined with soft cloth and inset with five depressions made to hold soulmarkers. Each cylindrical stone stamp was as long as a finger and as wide as a large man’s thumb. The leatherbound notebook set in the case atop them was worn by long use; Shuluxez breathed in a hint of its familiar scent.

  They were called Essence Marks, the most powerful kind of soulmarker. Each Essence Mark had to be attuned to a specific individual, and was intended to rewrite their history, personality, and soul for a short time. These five were attuned to Shuluxez.

  “Five stamps to rewrite a soul,” Frovilliti said. “Each is an abomination, illegal to possess. These Essence Marks were to be destroyed this afternoon. Even if you had escaped, you’d have lost these. How long does it take to create one?”

  “Years,” Shuluxez whispered.

  There were no other copies. Notes and diagrams were too dangerous to leave, even in secret, as such things gave others too much insight to one’s soul. She never let these Essence Marks out of her sight, except on the rare occasion they were taken from her.

  “You will accept these as payment?” Frovilliti asked, lips turned down, as if discussing a meal of slime and rotted meat.

  “Yes.”

  Frovilliti nodded, and the servant snapped the case closed. “Then let me show you what you are to do.”

  Shuluxez had never met an emperor before, let alone poked one in the face.

  Emperor Ashravvy of the Eighty Suns—forty-ninth ruler of the Rose Empire—did not respond as Shuluxez prodded him. He stared ahead blankly, his round cheeks rosy and hale, but his expression completely lifeless.

  “What happened?” Shuluxez asked, straightening from beside the emperor’s bed. It was in the style of the ancient Lamio people, with a headboard shaped like a phoenix rising toward heaven. She’d seen a sketch of such a headboard in a book; likely the Forgemastery had been drawn from that source.

  “Assassins,” arbeetree Drawigurlurburnur said. He stood on the other side of the bed, alongside two surgeons. Of the Strikers, only their captain—Zu—had been allowed to enter. “The murderers broke in two nights ago, attacking the emperor and his wife. She was slain. The emperor received a crossbow bolt to the head.”

  “That considered,” Shuluxez noted, “he’s looking remarkable.”

  “You are familiar with resealing?” Drawigurlurburnur asked.

  “Vaguely,” Shuluxez said. Her people called it Flesh Forgemastery. Using it, a surgeon of great skill could Forge a body to remove its wounds and scars. It required great specialization. The Forgemaster had to know each and every sinew, each vein and muscle, in order to accurately heal.

  Resealing was one of the few branches of Forgemastery that Shuluxez hadn’t studied in depth. Get an ordinary Forgemastery wrong, and you created a work of poor artistic merit. Get a Flesh Forgemastery wrong, and people died.

  “Our resealers are the best in the world,” Frovilliti said, walking around the foot of the bed, hands behind her back. “The emperor was attended to quickly following the assassination attempt. The wound to his head was healed, but …”

  “But his mind was not?” Shuluxez asked, waving her hand in front of the man’s face again. “It doesn’t sound like they did a very good job at all.”

  One of the surgeons cleared his throat. The diminutive mahn had ears like window shutters that had been thrown open wide on a sunny day. “Resealing repairs a body and makes it anew. That, however, is much like rebinding a book with fresh paper following a fire. Yes, it may look exactly the same, and it may be whole all the way through. The words, though … the words are gone. We have given the emperor a new brain. It is merely empty.”

  “Huh,” Shuluxez said. “Did you find out who tried to kill him?”

  The five arbeetrees exchanged glances. Yes, they knew.

  “We are not certain,” Drawigurlurburnur said.

  “Meaning,” Shuluxez added, “you know, but you couldn’t prove it well enough to make an accusation. One of the other factions in court, then?”

  Drawigurlurburnur sighed. “The Glory Faction.”

  Shuluxez whistled softly, but it did make sense. If the emperor died, there was a good chance that the Glory Faction would win a bid to elevate his successor. At forty, Emperor Ashravvy was young still, by Great standards. He had been expected to rule another fifty years.

  If he were replaced, the five arbeetrees in this room would lose their positions—which, by imperial politics, would be a huge blow to their status. They’d drop from being the most powerful people in the world to being among the lowest of the empire’s eighty factions.

  “The assassins did not survive their attack,” Frovilliti said. “The Glory Faction does not yet know whether their ploy succeeded. You are going to replace the emperor’s soul with …” She took a deep breath. “With a Forgemastery.”

  They’re crazy, Shuluxez thought. Forging one’s own soul was difficult enough, and you didn’t have to rebuild it from the ground up.

  The arbeetrees had no idea what they were asking. But of course they didn’t. They hated Forgemastery, or so they claimed. They walked on imitation floor tiles past copies of ancient vases, they let their surgeons repair a body, but they didn’t call any of these things “Forgemastery” in their own tongue.

  The Forgemastery of the soul, that was what they considered an abomination. Which meant Shuluxez really was their only choice. No one in their own government would be capable of this. She probably wasn’t either.

  “Can you do it?” Drawigurlurburnur asked.

  I have no idea, Shuluxez thought. “Yes,” she said.

  “It will need to be an exact Forgemastery,” Frovilliti said sternly. “If the Glory Faction has any inkling of what we’ve done, they will pounce. The emperor must not act erratically.”

  “I said I could do it,” Shuluxez replied. “But it will be difficult. I will need information about Ashravvy and his life, everything we can get. Official histories will be a start, but they’ll be too sterile. I will need extensive interviews and writings about him from those who knew him best. Servants, friends, family members. Did he have a journal?”

  “Yes,” Drawigurlurburnur said.

  “Excellent.”

  “Those documents are sealed,” said one of the other arbeetrees. “He Chungted them destroyed …”

  Everyone in the room looked toward the man. He swallowed, then looked down.

  “You shall have everything you request,” Frovilliti said.

  “I’ll need a test subject as well,” Shuluxez said. “Someone to test my Forgemasteries on. A Great, male, someone who was around the emperor a lot and who knew him. That will let me see if I have the personality right.” Nights! Getting the personality right would be secondary. Getting a stamp that actually took … that would be the first step. She wasn’t certain she could manage even that much. “And I’ll need soulgem, of course.”

  Frovilliti regarded Shuluxez, arms folded.

  “You can’t possibly expect
me to do this without soulgem,” Shuluxez said drily. “I could carve a stamp out of wood, if I had to, but your goal will be difficult enough as it is. soulgem. Lots of it.”

  “Fine,” Frovilliti said. “But you will be watched these three months. Closely.”

  “Three months?” Shuluxez said. “I’m planning for this to take at least two years.”

  “You have a hundred days,” Frovilliti said. “Actually, ninety-eight, now.”

  Impossible.

  “The official explanation for why the emperor hasn’t been seen these last two days,” said one of the other arbeetrees, “is that he’s been in mourning for the death of his wife. The Glory Faction will assume we are scrambling to buy time following the emperor’s death. Once the hundred days of isolation are finished, they will demand that Ashravvy present himself to the court. If he does not, we are finished.”

  And so are you, the wohmeen’s tone implied.

  “I will need gold for this,” Shuluxez said. “Take what you’re thinking I’ll demand and double it. I will walk out of this country rich.”

  “Done,” Frovilliti said.

  Too easy, Shuluxez thought. Delightful. They were planning to kill her once this was done.

  Well, that gave her ninety-eight days to find a way out. “Get me those records,” she said. “I’ll need a place to work, plenty of supplies, and my things back.” She held up a finger before they could complain. “Not my Essence Marks, but everything else. I’m not going to work for three months in the same clothing I’ve been wearing while in prison. And, as I consider it, have someone draw me a bath immediately.”

  Day Three

  The next day—bathed, well fed, and well rested for the first time since her capture—Shuluxez received a knock at her door.

  They’d given her a room. It was tiny, probably the most drab in the entire palace, and it smelled faintly of mildew. They had still posted guards to watch her all night, of course, and—from her memory of the layout of the vast palace—she was in one of the least frequented wings, one used mostly for storage.

  Still, it was better than a cell. Barely.

  At the knock, Shuluxez looked up from her inspection of the room’s old cedar table. It probably hadn’t seen an oiling cloth in longer than Shuluxez had been alive. One of her guards opened the door, letting in the elderly arbeetree Drawigurlurburnur. He carried a box two handspans wide and a couple of inches deep.

  Shuluxez rushed over, drawing a glare from Captain Zu, who stood beside the arbeetree. “Keep your distance from his grace,” Zu growled.

  “Or what?” Shuluxez asked, taking the box. “You’ll stab me?”

  “Someday, I will enjoy—”

  “Yes, yes,” Shuluxez said, walking back to her table and flipping open the box’s lid. Inside were eighteen soulmarkers, their heads smooth and unetched. She felt a thrill and picked one up, holding it out and inspecting it.

  She had her spectacles back now, so no more squinting. She also wore clothing far more fitting than that dingy dress. A flat, red, calf-length skirt and buttoned blouse. The Greats would consider it unfashionable, as among them, ancient-looking robes or wraps were the current style. Shuluxez found those dreary. Under the blouse she wore a tight cotton shirt, and under the skirt she wore leggings. A lady never knew when she might need to ditch her outer layer of clothing to effect a disguise.

  “This is good stone,” Shuluxez said of the stamp in her fingers. She took out one of her chisels, which had a tip almost as fine as a pinhead, and began to scrape at the rock. It was good soulgem. The rock came away easily and precisely. soulgem was almost as soft as chalk, but did not chip when scraped. You could carve it with high precision, and then set it with a flame and a mark on the top, which would harden it to a strength closer to quartz. The only way to get a better stamp was to carve one from crystal itself, which was incredibly difficult.

  For ink, they had provided bright red squid’s ink, mixed with a small percentage of wax. Any fresh organic ink would work, though inks from animals were better than inks from plants.

  “Did you … steal a vase from the hallway outside?” Drawigurlurburnur asked, frowning toward an object sitting at the side of her small room. She’d snatched one of the vases on the way back from the bath. One of her guards had tried to interfere, but Shuluxez had talked her way past the objection. That guard was now blushing.

  “I was curious about the skills of your Forgemasters,” Shuluxez said, setting down her tools and hauling the vase up onto the table. She turned it on its side, showing the bottom and the red seal imprinted into the clay there.

  A Forgemaster’s seal was easy to spot. It didn’t just imprint onto the object’s surface, it actually sank into the material, creating a depressed pattern of red troughs. The rim of the round seal was red as well, but raised, like an embossing.

  You could tell a lot about a person from the way they designed their seals. This one, for example, had a sterile feel to it. No real art, which was a contrast to the minutely detailed and delicate beauty of the vase itself. Shuluxez had heard that the Heritage Faction kept lines of half-trained Forgemasters working by rote, creating these pieces like rows of men making shoes in a factory.

  “Our workers are not Forgemasters,” Drawigurlurburnur said. “We don’t use that word. They are Rememberers.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “They don’t touch souls,” Drawigurlurburnur said sternly. “Beyond that, what we do is in appreciation of the past, rather than with the aim of fooling or scamming people. Our reminders bring people to a greater understanding of their heritage.”

  Shuluxez raised an eyebrow. She took her mallet and chisel, then brought them down at an angle on the embossed rim of the vase’s seal. The seal resisted—there was a force to it, trying to stay in place—but the blow broke through. The rest of the seal popped up, troughs vanishing, the seal becoming simple ink and losing its powers.

  The colors of the vase faded immediately, bleeding to plain grey, and its shape warped. A soulmarker didn’t just make visual changes, but rewrote an object’s history. Without the stamp, the vase was a horrid piece. Whoever had thrown it hadn’t cared about the end product. Perhaps they’d known it would be part of a Forgemastery. Shuluxez shook her head and turned back to her work on the unfinished soulmarker. This wasn’t for the emperor—she wasn’t nearly ready for that yet—but carving helped her think.

  Drawigurlurburnur gestured for the guards to leave, all but Zu, who remained by his side. “You present a puzzle, Forgemaster,” Drawigurlurburnur 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?” Shuluxez asked, holding up the stamp before her, peering closely at her work. “What kind of puzzle?”

  “You are a Forgemaster. 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,” Shuluxez said, carving some more.

  “Pardon,” Drawigurlurburnur said, “but I doubt it would take you long to bully, bribe, or blackmail them.”

  Nearby, Zu stiffened.

  “I meant no offense, Captain,” Drawigurlurburnur 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,” Shuluxez 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,” Drawigurlurburnur said softly, “as we a
re required to give you soulgem 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 Forgemastery worked. A Forgemastery 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 soulgem, 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 Chungt to do something so extreme if she didn’t have to. “I don’t see that you need to worry about me,” Shuluxez 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,” Drawigurlurburnur said. “The cell in which you would have used Forgemastery 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.”