The Emperors Soul

Hopefully, that subterfuge would earn her a few extra days before Frava struck.
    As Shai searched for a specific note, she ran across one of her lists for escape plans. She hesitated. First, deal with the seal on the door, the note read in cypher. Second, silence the guards. Third, recover your Essence Marks, if possible. Fourth, escape the palace. Fifth, escape the city.
    She’d written further notes for the execution of each step. She wasn’t ignoring the escape, not completely. She had good plans.
    Her frantic attempt to finish the soul, however, drew most of her attention. One more week, she told herself. If I take one more week, I will finish five days before the deadline. Then I can run.

Day Ninety-Seven
    “Hey,” Hurli said, bending down. “What’s this?”
    Hurli was a brawny Striker who acted dumber than he was. It let him win at cards. He had two children—girls, both under the age of five—but was seeing one of the women guards on the side. Hurli secretly wished he could have been a carpenter like his father. He also would have been horrified if he’d realized how much Shai knew about him.
    He held up the sheet of paper he’d found on the ground. The Bloodsealer had just left. It was the morning of the ninety-sixth day of Shai’s captivity in the room, and she’d decided to put the plan into motion. She had to get out.
    The emperor’s seal was not yet finished. Almost. One more night’s work, and she’d have it. Her plan required one more night of waiting anyway.
    “Weedfingers must have dropped it,” Yil said, walking over. She was the other guard in the room this morning.
    “What is it?” Shai asked from the desk.
    “Letter,” Hurli said with a grunt.
    Both guards fell silent as they read. Palace Strikers were all literate. It was required of any imperial civil servant of at least the second reed.
    Shai sat quietly, tense, sipping a cup of lemon tea and forcing herself to breathe calmly. She made herself relax even though relaxing was the last thing she wanted to do. Shai knew the letter’s contents by heart. She’d written it, after all, then had dropped it covertly behind the Bloodsealer as he’d rushed out moments ago.
    Brother, the letter read. I have almost completed my task here, and the wealth I have earned will rival even that of Azalec after his work in the Southern Provinces. The captive I secure is hardly worth the effort, but who am I to question the reasoning of people paying me far too much money?
    I will return to you shortly. I am proud to say that my other mission here has been a success. I have identified several capable warriors, and have gathered sufficient samples from them. Hair, fingernails, and a few personal effects that will not be missed. I feel confident that we will have our personal guards very soon.
    It went on, the writing covering both the front and the back, so that it didn’t look suspicious. Shai had padded it with a lot of talk about the palace, including things that others would assume that Shai didn’t know but that the Bloodsealer would.
    Shai worried that the letter was too overt. Would the guards find it to be an obvious forgery?
    “That KuNuKam,” Yil whispered, using a native word of theirs. It roughly translated as a man who had an anus for a mouth. “That imperial KuNuKam!”
    Apparently, they believed it really was from him. Subtlety could be lost on soldiers.
    “Can I see it?” Shai asked.
    Hurli held it out to her. “Is he saying what I think?” the guard asked. “He’s been . . . gathering things from us?”
    “It might not mean the Strikers,” Shai said after reading the letter. “He doesn’t say.”
    “Why would he want hair?” Yil asked. “And fingernails?”
    “They can do things with pieces of you,” Hurli said, then cursed again. “You see what he does each day on the door with Shai’s blood.”
    “I don’t know if he could do much with hair or fingernails,” Shai said skeptically. “This is just bravado. Blood needs to be fresh, not more than a day old, for it to work in his stamps. He’s bragging to his brother.”
    “He shouldn’t be doing things like that,” Hurli said.
    “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Shai said.
    The other two shared looks. In a few minutes, the guard change occurred. Hurli and Yil left, muttering to one another, the letter shoved in Hurli’s pocket. They weren’t likely to hurt the Bloodsealer badly. Threaten him, yes.
    The Bloodsealer was known to frequent teahouses