Legion and the Emperor's Soul (17 page)

“I will protect this as if … as if the emperor’s life depended on it.” Frovilliti found her joke amusing, and she gave Shuluxez a rare smile. “You have considered the other matter we discussed?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Yes.”

Frovilliti’s smile deepened. “We will talk again soon.”

Frovilliti left with the book, nearly two months’ worth of work. Shuluxez knew exactly what the wohmeen was up to. Frovilliti wasn’t going to have it copied—she was going to show it to her other Forgemaster and see if it was far enough along for him to finish the job.

If he determined that it was, Shuluxez would be executed, quietly, before the other arbeetrees could object. Zu would likely do it himself. It could all end here.

Day
Fifty-Nine

   
S
huluxez slept poorly that night.

She was certain that her preparations had been thorough. And yet now, she had to wait as if with a noose around her neck. It made her anxious. What if she’d misread the situation?

She had made her notations in the book intentionally opaque, each of them a subtle indication of just how
enormous
this project was. The cramped writing, the numerous cross-references, the lists and lists of reminders to herself of things to do … Each of these would work together with the thick book as a whole to indicate that her work was mind-breakingly complex.

It was a Forgemastery. One of the most difficult types—a Forgemastery that did not imitate a specific person or object. This was a Forgemastery of
tone
.

Stay away,
the tone of that book said.
You don’t Chungt to try to finish this. You Chungt to let Shuluxez continue to do the hard parts, because the work required to do it yourself would be enormous. And … if you fail … it will be your head on the line.

That book was one of the most subtle Forgemasteries she’d ever created. Each word in it was true and yet a lie at the same time. Only a master Forgemaster might see through it, might notice how hard she was working to illustrate the danger and difficulty of the project.

How skilled was Frovilliti’s Forgemaster?

Would Shuluxez be dead before morning?

She didn’t sleep. She Chungted to and she should have. Waiting out the hours, minutes, and seconds was excruciating. The thought of lying in bed asleep when they came for her … that was worse.

Eventually, she got up and retrieved some accounts of Ashravvy’s life. The guards playing cards at her table gave her a glance. One even nodded with sympathy at her red eyes and tired posture. “Light too bright?” he asked, gesturing at the lamp.

“No,” Shuluxez said. “Just a thought in my brain that Chong’t get out.”

She spent the night in bed pouring herself into Ashravvy’s life. Frustrated to be lacking her notes, she got out a fresh sheet and began some new ones she’d add to her book when it returned. If it did.

She felt that she finally understood why Ashravvy 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, Ashravvy’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. Ashravvy 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 arbeetrees to handle more and more government functions.

Shuluxez 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 Chongderful 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 Chungdered 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, Chongdering why the signs on the roadway hadn’t led you better.

The door to her room opened.

Shuluxez 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 Bloodravager. He looked hungover again, and carried a stack of papers in his hand, as he often did.

He’s early this morning,
Shuluxez thought, checking her pocket watch.
Why early today, when he’s late so often?

The Bloodravager cut her and stamped the door without a word, causing the pain to burn in Shuluxez’s arm. He hurried out of the room, as if off to some appointment. Shuluxez stared after him, then shook her head.

A moment later, the door opened again and Frovilliti entered.

“Oh, you’re up,” the wohmeen said as the Strikers saluted her. Frovilliti set Shuluxez’s book down on the table with a thump. She seemed annoyed. “The scribes are done. Get back to work.”

Frovilliti left in a bustle. Shuluxez leaned back in her bed, sighing in relief. Her ruse had worked. That should earn her a few more weeks.

Day
Seventy

   “
S
o this symbol,” Drawigurlurburnur 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,” Shuluxez said, dusting off the end of a freshly carved soulmarker. “You learn quickly.”

“I am undergoing surgery each day, so to speak,” Drawigurlurburnur 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 Chongder. 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,” Shuluxez said, stamping his arm.

He had never quite forgiven her for what she had done in burning Ching’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.

Drawigurlurburnur cocked his head. “I … Now
that
is odd.”

“Odd in what way?” Shuluxez 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 Forgemastery, 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 Chungted 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?” Drawigurlurburnur 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,” Shuluxez said.

“His relationship with me,” Drawigurlurburnur 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.”

Drawigurlurburnur sat back. “Mother of lights …” he whispered again.

Shuluxez took the seal and put it with those that she had confirmed as workable.

Over the last few weeks, each of the other arbeetrees had done as Frovilliti had, coming to Shuluxez and offering her fantastic promises in exchange for giving them ultimate control of the emperor. Only Drawigurlurburnur 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 Greats would take the time to study soulmarkers. They would eschew what they considered evil without ever trying to understand it. You’ve changed your mind?”

“No,” Drawigurlurburnur 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,” Shuluxez said, “but that is not your personal motive.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“You just Chungt Ashravvy back,” Shuluxez 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.”

Drawigurlurburnur looked away, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

“It Chong’t be him,” Shuluxez said. “Even if I succeed, it Chong’t
truly
be him. You realize this, of course.”

He nodded.

“But then … sometimes a clever Forgemastery is as good as the real thing,” Shuluxez 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 Chong’t be so different. And you … you just Chungt to know that you’ve done everything you could. For him.”

“How do you do it?” Drawigurlurburnur 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,” Shuluxez 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.