Legion and the Emperor's Soul Page 9

  “Without a kiln?” Drawigurlurburnur 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.”

  Shuluxez continued her carving, uncomfortable. The way he said that … Yes, he knew that she could not have done what he described. Most Greats were ignorant about the ways of Forgemastery, and this mahn 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 Forgemastery, magical or not. People whispered of Forgemasters 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,” Shuluxez finally said. “You think like a Forgemaster.”

  Drawigurlurburnur’s expression soured.

  “That,” she noted, “was meant as a compliment.”

  “I value truth, young wohmeen. Not Forgemastery.” He regarded her with the expression of a disappointed Greatfather. “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 Forgemasters, churning out vase after vase!

  She calmed herself with difficulty, then plastered on a smile. Her aunt Sol had once told Shuluxez to smile at the worst insults and snap at the minor ones. That way, no mahn 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,” Drawigurlurburnur said, “whenever possible, I personally will observe your work.”

  She would have preferred Frovilliti—that one seemed as if she’d be easier to manipulate—but this was workable. “If you wish,” Shuluxez said. “Much of it will be boring to one who does not understand Forgemastery.”

  “I am not interested in being entertained,” Drawigurlurburnur 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,” Shuluxez said, truthfully for once. “The more people who know of a Forgemastery, 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. Shuluxez wasn’t in the business of getting people killed for no reason.

  “Excellent,” Drawigurlurburnur said. “The second method of insuring your … attention to your project waits outside. If you would, good Captain?”

  Zu opened the door. A cloaked figure stood with the guards. The figure stepped into the room; his walk was lithe, but somehow unnatural. After Zu closed the door, the figure removed his hood, revealing a face with milky white skin and red eyes.

  Shuluxez hissed softly through her teeth. “And you call what I do an abomination?”

  Drawigurlurburnur ignored her, standing up from his chair to regard the newcomer. “Tell her.”

  The newcomer rested long white fingers on her door, inspecting it. “I will place the rune here,” he said in an accented voice. “If she leaves this room for any reason, or if she alters the rune or the door, I will know. My pets will come for her.”

  Shuluxez shivered. She glared at Drawigurlurburnur. “A Bloodravager. You invited a Bloodravager into your palace?”

  “This one has proven himself an asset recently,” Drawigurlurburnur said. “He is loyal and he is discreet. He is also very effective. There are … times when one must accept the aid of darkness in order to contain a greater darkness.”

  Shuluxez hissed softly as the Bloodravager removed something from within his robes. A crude soulmarker created from a bone. His “pets” would also be bone, Forgemasteries of human life crafted from the skeletons of the dead.

  The Bloodravager looked to her.

  Shuluxez backed away. “Surely you don’t expect—”

  Zu took her by the arms. Nights, but he was strong. She panicked. Her Essence Marks! She needed her Essence Marks! With those, she could fight, escape, run …

  Zu cut her along the back of her arm. She barely felt the shallow wound, but she struggled anyway. The Bloodravager stepped up and inked his horrid tool in Shuluxez’s blood. He then turned and pressed the stamp against the center of her door.

  When he withdrew his hand, he left a glowing red seal in the wood. It was shaped like an eye. The moment he marked the seal, Shuluxez felt a sharp pain in her arm, where she’d been cut.

  Shuluxez gasped, eyes wide. Never had any person dared do such a thing to her. Almost better that she had been executed! Almost better that—

  Control yourself, she told herself forcibly. Become someone who can deal with this.

  She took a deep breath and let herself become someone else. An imitation of herself who was calm, even in a situation like this. It was a crude Forgemastery, just a trick of the mind, but it worked.

  She shook herself free from Zu, then accepted the kerchief Drawigurlurburnur handed her. She glared at the Bloodravager as the pain in her arm faded. He smiled at her with lips that were white and faintly translucent, like the skin of a maggot. He nodded to Drawigurlurburnur before replacing his hood and stepping out of the room, closing the door after.

  Shuluxez forced herself to breathe evenly, calming herself. There was no subtlety to what the Bloodravager did; they didn’t traffic in subtlety. Instead of skill or artistry, they used tricks and blood. However, their craft was effective. The mahn would know if Shuluxez left the room, and he had her fresh blood on his stamp, which was attuned to her. With that, his undead pets would be able to hunt her no matter where she ran.

  Drawigurlurburnur settled back down in his chair. “You know what will happen if you flee?”

  Shuluxez glared at Drawigurlurburnur.

  “You now realize how desperate we are,” he said softly, lacing his fingers before him. “If you do run, we will give you to the Bloodravager. Your bones will become his next pet. This promise was all he requested in payment. You may begin your work, Forgemaster. Do it well, and you will escape this fate.”

  Day Five

  Work she did.

  Shuluxez began digging through accounts of the emperor’s life. Few people understood how much Forgemastery was about study and research. It was an art any mahn or wohmeen could learn; it required only a stea
dy hand and an eye for detail.

  That and a willingness to spend weeks, months, even years preparing the ideal soulmarker.

  Shuluxez didn’t have years. She felt rushed as she read biography after biography, often staying up well into the night taking notes. She did not believe that she could do what they asked of her. Creating a believable Forgemastery of another man’s soul, particularly in such a short time, just wasn’t possible. Unfortunately, she had to make a good show of it while she planned her escape.

  They didn’t let her leave the room. She used a chamber pot when nature called, and for baths she was allowed a tub of warm water and cloths. She was under supervision at all times, even when bathing.

  That Bloodravager came each morning to renew his mark on the door. Each time, the act required a little blood from Shuluxez. Her arms were soon laced with shallow cuts.

  All the while, Drawigurlurburnur visited. The ancient arbeetree studied her as she read, watching with those eyes that judged … but also did not hate.

  As she formulated her plans, she decided one thing: getting free would probably require manipulating this mahn in some way.

  Day Twelve

  Shuluxez pressed her stamp down on the tabletop.

  As always, the stamp sank slightly into the material. A soulmarker left a seal you could feel, regardless of the material. She twisted the stamp a half turn—this did not blur the ink, though she did not know why. One of her mentors had taught that it was because by this point the seal was touching the object’s soul and not its physical presence.

  When she pulled the stamp back, it left a bright red seal in the wood as if carved there. Transformation spread from the seal in a wave. The table’s dull grey splintery cedar became beautiful and well maintained, with a warm patina that reflected the light of the candles sitting across from her.

  Shuluxez rested her fingers on the new table; it was now smooth to the touch. The sides and legs were finely carved, inlaid here and there with silver.

  Drawigurlurburnur sat upright, lowering the book he’d been reading. Zu shuffled in discomfort at seeing the Forgemastery.

  “What was that?” Drawigurlurburnur demanded.

  “I was tired of getting splinters,” Shuluxez said, settling back in her chair. It creaked. You are next, she thought.

  Drawigurlurburnur stood up and walked to the table. He touched it, as if expecting the transformation to be mere illusion. It was not. The fine table now looked horribly out of place in the dingy room. “This is what you’ve been doing?”

  “Carving helps me think.”

  “You should be focused on your task!” Drawigurlurburnur said. “This is frivolity. The empire itself is in danger!”

  No, Shuluxez thought. Not the empire itself; just your rule of it. Unfortunately, after eleven days, she still didn’t have an angle on Drawigurlurburnur, not one she could exploit.

  “I am working on your problem, Drawigurlurburnur,” she said. “What you ask of me is hardly a simple task.”

  “And changing that table was?”

  “Of course it was,” Shuluxez said. “All I had to do was rewrite its past so that it was maintained, rather than being allowed to sink into disrepair. That took hardly any work at all.”

  Drawigurlurburnur hesitated, then knelt beside the table. “These carvings, this inlay … those were not part of the original.”

  “I might have added a little.”

  She wasn’t certain if the Forgemastery would take or not. In a few minutes, that seal might evaporate and the table might revert to its previous state. Still, she was fairly certain she’d guessed the table’s past well enough. Some of the histories she was reading mentioned what gifts had come from where. This table, she suspected, had come from far-off Sveeyordeeyen as a gift to Emperor Ashravvy’s predecessor. The strained relationship with Sveeyordeeyen had then led the emperor to lock it away and ignore it.

  “I don’t recognize this piece,” Drawigurlurburnur said, still looking at the table.

  “Why should you?”

  “I have studied ancient arts extensively,” he said. “This is from the Vivare dynasty?”

  “No.”

  “An imitation of the work of Chamrav?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “Nothing,” Shuluxez said with exasperation. “It’s not imitating anything; it has become a better version of itself.” That was a maxim of good Forgemastery: improve slightly on an original, and people would often accept the fake because it was superior.

  Drawigurlurburnur stood up, looking troubled. He’s thinking again that my talent is wasted, Shuluxez thought with annoyance, moving aside a stack of accounts of the emperor’s life. Collected at her request, these came from palace servants. She didn’t Chungt only the official histories. She needed authenticity, not sterilized recitations.

  Drawigurlurburnur stepped back to his chair. “I do not see how transforming this table could have taken hardly any work, although it clearly must be much simpler than what you have been asked to do. Both seem incredible to me.”

  “Changing a human soul is far more difficult.”

  “I can accept that conceptually, but I do not know the specifics. Why is it so?”

  She glanced at him. He Chungts to know more of what I’m doing, she thought, so that he can tell how I’m preparing to escape. He knew she would be trying, of course. They both would pretend that neither knew that fact.

  “All right,” she said, standing and walking to the wall of her room. “Let’s talk about Forgemastery. Your cage for me had a wall of forty-four types of stone, mostly as a trap to keep me distracted. I had to figure out the makeup and origin of each block if I Chungted to try to escape. Why?”

  “So you could create a Forgemastery of the wall, obviously.”

  “But why all of them?” she asked. “Why not just change one block or a few? Why not just make a hole big enough to slip into, creating a tunnel for myself?”

  “I …” He frowned. “I have no idea.”

  Shuluxez rested her hand against the outer wall of her room. It had been painted, though the paint was coming off in several sections. She could feel the separate stones. “All things exist in three Realms, Drawigurlurburnur. Physical, Cognitive, Spiritual. The Physical is what we feel, what is before us. The Cognitive is how an object is viewed and how it views itself. The Spiritual Realm contains an object’s soul—its essence—as well as the ways it is connected to the things and people around it.”

  “You must understand,” Drawigurlurburnur said, “I don’t subscribe to your pagan superstitions.”

  “Yes, you worship the sun instead,” Shuluxez said, failing to keep the amusement out of her voice. “Or, rather, eighty suns—believing that even though each looks the same, a different sun actually rises each day. Well, you Chungted to know how Forgemastery works, and why the emperor’s soul will be so difficult to reproduce. The Realms are important to this.”

  “Very well.”

  “Here is the point. The longer an object exists as a whole, and the longer it is seen in that state, the stronger its sense of complete identity becomes. That table is made up of various pieces of wood fitted together, but do we think of it that way? No. We see the whole.

  “To Forge the table, I must understand it as a whole. The same goes for a wall. That wall has existed long enough to view itself as a single entity. I could, perhaps, have attacked each block separately—they might still be distinct enough—but doing so would be difficult, as the wall Chungts to act as a whole.”

  “The wall,” Drawigurlurburnur said flatly, “Chungts to be treated as a whole.”

  “Yes.”

  “You imply that the wall has a soul.”

  “All things do,” she said. “Each object sees itself as something. Connection and intent are vital. This is why, master arbeetree, I can’t simply write down a personality for your emperor, stamp him, and be done. Seven reports I’ve read say his favorite color was green. Do you kn
ow why?”

  “No,” Drawigurlurburnur said. “Do you?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Shuluxez said. “I think it was because his brother, who died when Ashravvy was six, had always been fond of it. The emperor latched on to it, as it reminds him of his dead sibling. There might be a touch of nationalism to it as well, as he was born in Ukurgi, where the provincial flag is predominantly green.”

  Drawigurlurburnur seemed troubled. “You must know something that specific?”

  “Nights, yes! And a thousand things just as detailed. I can get some wrong. I will get some wrong. Most of them, hopefully, Chong’t matter—they will make his personality a little off, but each person changes day to day in any case. If I get too many wrong, though, the personality Chong’t matter because the stamp Chong’t take. At least, it Chong’t last long enough to do any good. I assume that if your emperor has to be restamped every fifteen minutes, the charade will be impossible to maintain.”

  “You assume correctly.”

  Shuluxez sat down with a sigh, looking over her notes.

  “You said you could do this,” Drawigurlurburnur said.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve done it before, with your own soul.”

  “I know my own soul,” she said. “I know my own history. I know what I can change to get the effect I need—and even getting my own Essence Marks right was difficult. Now I not only have to do this for another person, but the transformation must be far more extensive. And I have ninety days left to do it.”

  Drawigurlurburnur nodded slowly.

  “Now,” she said, “you should tell me what you’re doing to keep up the pretense that the emperor is still awake and well.”

  “We’re doing all that needs to be done.”

  “I’m far from confident that you are. I think you’ll find me a fair bit better at deception than most.”

  “I think that you will be surprised,” Drawigurlurburnur said. “We are, after all, politicians.”

  “All right, fine. But you are sending food, aren’t you?”