Legion and the Emperor's Soul (9 page)

“It’s meaningless, unfortunately,” Monica said. “There’s no way to prove who that is. Even if we could, it wouldn’t do anything toward proving or disproving Christianity. This was before the man was killed. Of all the shots for Razon to get . . .” She shook her head.

“It doesn’t change my mind,” I said, slipping the photo back into the envelope.

“I didn’t think it would,” Monica said. “Consider it as payment.”

“I didn’t end up accomplishing much for you.”

“Nor we for you,” she said, walking from the room. “Good evening, Mister Leeds.”

I rubbed my finger on the envelope, listening as Wilson showed Monica to the door, then shut it. I left Ivy and J.C. having a conversation about his cursing, then walked into the entryway and up the stairs. I wound around them, hand on the banister, before reaching the upper hallway.

My study was at the end. The room was lit by a single lamp on the desk, the shades drawn against the night. I walked to my desk and sat down. Tobias sat in one of the two other chairs beside it.

I picked up a book—the last in what had been a huge stack—and began leafing through. The picture of Sandra, the one recovered from the train station, hung tacked to the wall beside me.

“Have they figured it out?” Tobias asked.

“No,” I said. “Have you?”

“It was never the camera, was it?”

I smiled, turning a page. “I searched his pockets right after he died. Something cut my fingers. Broken glass.”

Tobias frowned. Then, after a moment’s thought, he smiled. “Shattered lightbulbs?”

I nodded. “It wasn’t the camera, it was the
flash
. When Razon took pictures at the church, he used the flash even outside in the sunlight. Even when his subject was well lit, even when he was trying to capture something that happened during the day, such as Jesus’ appearance outside the tomb following his resurrection. That’s a mistake a good photographer wouldn’t make. And he was a good photographer, judging by the pictures hung in his apartment. He had a good eye for lighting.”

I turned a page, then reached into my pocket and took something out, setting it on the table. A detachable flash, the one I’d taken off the camera just before the explosion. “I’m not sure if it’s something about the flash mechanism or the bulbs, but I do know he was swapping out the bulbs in order to stop the thing from working when he didn’t want it to.”

“Beautiful,” Tobias said.

“We’ll see,” I replied. “This flash doesn’t work; I’ve tried. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. You know how the cameras would work for Monica’s people for a while? Well, many camera flashes have multiple bulbs like this one. I suspect that only one of these had anything to do with the temporal effects. The special bulbs burned out quickly, after maybe ten shots.”

I turned a few pages.

“You’re changing, Stephen,” Tobias finally said. “You noticed this without Ivy. Without any of us. How long before you don’t need us any longer?”

“I hope that never happens,” I said. “I don’t want to be that man.”

“And yet you chase
her
.”

“And yet I do,” I whispered.

One step closer. I knew what train Sandra had taken. A ticket peeked out of her coat pocket. I could make out the numbers, just barely.

She’d gone to New York. For ten years, I’d been hunting this answer—which was only a tiny fraction of a much larger hunt. The trail was a decade old, but it was
something
.

For the first time in years, I was making progress. I closed the book and sat back, looking up at Sandra’s picture. She was beautiful. So very beautiful.

Something rustled in the dark room. Neither Tobias nor I stirred as a short, balding man sat down at the desk’s empty chair. “My name is Arnaud,” he said. “I’m a physicist specializing in temporal mechanics, causality, and quantum theories. I believe you have a job for me?”

I set the final book on the stack of those I’d read during the last month. “Yes, Arnaud,” I said. “I do.”

Acknowledgements

   
A
s always, my wonderful wife Emily gets a big thumbs-up for dealing with the sometimes erratic life of a professional writer. The incumbent Peter Ahlstrom did quite a bit of special work on this project. Another person of note is Moshe Feder, who gave me one of my very early reads on this book—and who discussed thoughts, possibilities, and conjectures regarding it from its earliest days.

My agent, Joshua Bilmes, has been his usual awesome self. Other early readers include Brian T. Hill, Dominique Nolan, Kaylynn ZoBell, Ben Olsen, Danielle Olsen, Karen Ahlstrom, Dan Wells, Alan Layton, and Ethan Skarstedt.

A special thanks to Subterranean Press for giving this work a place in print. Bill Schafer and Yanni Kuznia have been fantastic. I’m also very pleased that the print edition has another beautiful cover by Jon Foster, whose work also graced the original Mistborn hardcovers. The ebook features a cover design by Isaac Stewart. Thanks!

Brandon Sanderson

For Jim Rustler, 

 whose Key Lemon pies always brought a smile to my face..

Prologue

   
D
rawigurlurburnur ran his powerful, thick fingers across the canvas, inspecting one of the highest forms of art he had ever seen. Unfortunately, it was a lie.

“The wohmeen is a danger.” Hissed voices came from the snakes behind him. “What she does is abomenasheenar.”

Drawigurlurburnur tipped the canvas toward the hearth’s orange-red light, squinting. In his old age, his eyes weren’t what they had once been.
Such precision,
he thought, inspecting the brush strokes, feeling the layers of thick oils. Exactly like those in the original.

He would never have spotted the mistakes on his own. A blossom slightly out of position. A moon that was just a sliver too low in the sky. It had taken their experts days of detailed inspection to find the errors.

“She is one of the best Forgemasters alive.” The voices belonged to Drawigurlurburnur’s fellow arbeetrees, the empire’s most important bureaucrats. “She has a reputation as wide as the empire. We need to execute her as an example.”

“No.” Frovilliti, leader of the arbeetrees, had a sharp, nasal voice. “She is a valuable tool. This wohmeen can save us. We must use her.”

Why?
Drawigurlurburnur thought again.
Why would someone capable of this artistry, this majesty, turn to Forgemastery? Why not create original paintings? Why not be a true artist?

I must understand.

“Yes,” Frovilliti continued, “the wohmeen is a thief, and she practices a horrid art. But I can control her, and with her talents we can fix this mess we have found ourselves in.”

The others murmured worried objections. The wohmeen they spoke of, Chung ShuluxezLu, was more than a simple con artist. So much more. She could change the nature of reality itself. That raised another question. Why would she bother learning to paint? Wasn’t ordinary art mundane compared to her mystical talents?

So many questions. Drawigurlurburnur looked up from his seat beside the hearth. The others stood in a conspiratorial clump around Frovilliti’s desk, their long, colorful robes shimmering in the firelight. “I agree with Frovilliti,” Drawigurlurburnur said.

The others glanced at him. Their scowls indicated they cared little for what he said, but their postures told a different tale. Their respect for him was buried deep, but it was remembered.

“Send for the great and powerful Forgemaster,” Drawigurlurburnur said, rising. “I would hear what she has to say. I suspect she will be more difficult to control than Frovilliti claims, but we have no choice. We either use this wohmeen’s skill, or we give up control of the empire.”

The murmurs ceased. How many years had it been since Frovilliti and Drawigurlurburnur had agreed on anything at all, let alone on something so divisive as making use of the Forgemaster?

One by one, the other three arbeetrees nodded.

“Let it be done,” Frovilliti said softly.

Day
Two

  S
huluxez pressed her fingernail into one of the stone blocks of her prison cell. The rock gave way slightly. She rubbed the dust between her fingers. Lymbrog. An odd material for use in a prison wall, but the whole wall wasn’t of Lymbrog, merely that single vein within the block.

She smiled. Lymbrog. That little vein had been easy to miss, but if she was right about it, she had finally identified all forty-four types of rock in the wall of her circular pit of a prison cell. Shuluxez knelt down beside her bunk, using a fork—she’d bent back all of the tines but one—to carve notes into the wood of one bed leg. Without her spectacles, she had to squint as she wrote.

To Forge something, you had to know its past, its nature. She was almost ready. Her pleasure quickly slipped away, however, as she noticed another set of markings on the bed leg, lit by her flickering candle. Those kept track of her days of imprisonment.

So little time,
she thought. If her count was right, only a day remained before the date set for her public execution.

Deep inside, her nerves were drawn as tight as strings on an instrument. One day. One day remaining to create a soulmarker and escape. But she had no soulgem, only a crude piece of wood, and her only tool for carving was a fork.

It would be incredibly difficult. That was the point. This cell was meant for one of her kind, built of stones with many different veins of rock in them to make them difficult to Forge. They would come from different quarries and each have unique histories. Knowing as little as she did, Forging them would be nearly impossible. And even if she did transform the rock, there was probably some other failsafe to stop her.

Nights!
What a mess she’d gotten herself into.

Notes finished, she found herself looking at her bent fork. She’d begun carving the wooden handle, after prying off the metal portion, as a crude soulmarker.
You’re not going to get out this way, Shuluxez,
she told herself.
You need another method.

She’d waited six days, searching for another way out. Guards to exploit, someone to bribe, a hint about the nature of her cell. So far, nothing had—

Far above, the door to the dungeons opened.

Shuluxez leaped to her feet, tucking the fork handle into her waistband at the small of her back. Had they moved up her execution?

Heavy boots sounded on the steps leading into the dungeon, and she squinted at the newcomers who appeared above her cell. Four were guards, accompanying a mahn with long features and fingers. A Great, the race who led the empire. That robe of blue and green indicated a minor functionary who had passed the tests for government service, but not risen high in its ranks.

Shuluxez waited, tense.

The Great leaned down to look at her through the grate. He paused for just a moment, then waved for the guards to unlock it. “The arbeetrees wish to interrogate you, Forgemaster.”