The Emperors Soul

door with a click.
    The Bloodsealer’s stamp still hung there on the door, renewed this morning. The Bloodsealer came at the same time most days. Shai had kept specific notes. On days when he was a little late, his seal started to dim right before he arrived. He always got to her in time to renew it, but perhaps someday . . .
    Frava inspected Shai, eyes calculating.
    Shai met that gaze with a steady one of her own. “Zu assumes I’m going to do something horrible to you while we’re alone.”
    “Zu is simpleminded,” Frava said, “though he is very useful when someone needs to be killed. Hopefully you won’t ever have to experience his efficiency firsthand.”
    “You’re not worried?” Shai said. “You are alone in a room with a monster.”
    “I’m alone in a room with an opportunist,” Frava said, strolling to the door and inspecting the seal burning there. “You won’t harm me. You’re too curious about why I sent the guards away.”
    Actually, Shai thought, I know precisely why you sent them away. And why you came to me during a time when all of your associate arbiters were guaranteed to be busy at the festival. She waited for Frava to make the offer.
    “Has it occurred to you,” Frava said, “how . . . useful to the empire it would be to have an emperor who listened to a voice of wisdom when it spoke to him?”
    “Surely Emperor Ashravan already did that.”
    “On occasion,” Frava said. “On other occasions, he could be . . . belligerently foolish. Wouldn’t it be amazing if, upon his rebirth, he were found lacking that tendency?”
    “I thought you wanted him to act exactly like he used to,” Shai said. “As close to the real thing as possible.”
    “True, true. But you are renowned as one of the greatest Forgers ever to live, and I have it on good authority that you are specifically talented with stamping your own soul. Surely you can replicate dear Ashravan’s soul with authenticity, yet also make him inclined to listen to reason . . . when that reason is spoken by specific individuals.”
    Nights afire, Shai thought. You’re willing to just come out and say it, aren’t you? You want me to build a back door into the emperor’s soul, and you don’t even have the decency to feel ashamed about that.
    “I . . . might be able to do such a thing,” Shai said, as if considering it for the first time. “It would be difficult. I’d need a reward worth the effort.”
    “A suitable reward would be appropriate,” Frava said, turning to her. “I realize you were probably planning to leave the Imperial Seat following your release, but why? This city could be a place of great opportunity to you, with a sympathetic ruler on the throne.”
    “Be more blunt, Arbiter,” Shai said. “I have a long night ahead of me studying while others celebrate. I don’t have the mind for word games.”
    “The city has a thriving clandestine smuggling trade,” Frava said. “Keeping track of it has been a hobby of mine. It would serve me to have someone proper running it. I will give it to you, should you do this task for me.”
    That was always their mistake—assuming they knew why Shai did what she did. Assuming she’d jump at a chance like this, assuming that a smuggler and a Forger were basically the same thing because they both disobeyed someone else’s laws.
    “That sounds pleasant,” Shai said, smiling her most genuine smile—the one that had an edge of overt deceptiveness to it.
    Frava smiled deeply in return. “I will leave you to consider,” she said, pulling open the door and clapping for the guards to reenter.
    Shai sank down into her chair, horrified. Not because of the offer—she’d been expecting one like it for days now—but because she had only now understood the implications. The offer of the smuggling trade was, of course, false. Frava might have been able to deliver such a thing, but she wouldn’t. Even assuming that the woman hadn’t already been planning to have Shai killed, this offer sealed that eventuality.
    There was more to it, though. Far more . So far as she knows, she just planted in my head the idea of building control into the emperor. She won’t trust my Forgery. She’ll be expecting me to put in back doors of my own, ones that give me and not her complete control over Ashravan.
    What did that mean?
    It meant that Frava had another Forger standing by. One, likely, without the talent or the bravado to try Forging someone else’s soul—but one who