In that fraction of a moment, she remembered both histories. She remembered two years spent locked away, planning, creating the Essence Mark. She remembered a lifetime of being a Forger.
At the same time, she remembered spending the last fifteen years among the Teullu people. They had adopted her and trained her in their martial arts.
Two places at once, two timelines at once.
Then the former faded, and she became Shaizan, the name the Teullu had given her. Her body became leaner, harder. The body of a warrior. She slipped off her spectacles. Her eyes had been healed long ago, and she didn’t need those any longer.
Gaining access to the Teullu training had been difficult; they did not like outsiders. She’d nearly been killed by them a dozen different times during her year training. But she had succeeded.
She lost all knowledge of how to create stamps, all sense of scholarly inclination. She was still herself, and she remembered her immediate past—being captured, forced to sit in that cell. She retained knowledge—logically—of what she’d just done with the stamp to her arm, and knew that the life she now remembered was fake.
But she didn’t feel that it was. As that seal burned on her arm, she became the version of herself that would have existed if she’d been adopted by a harsh warrior culture and lived among them for well over a decade.
She kicked off her shoes. Her hair shortened; a scar stretched from her nose down around her right cheek. She walked like a warrior, prowling instead of striding.
She reached the servants’ section of the palace just before the stables, the Imperial Gallery to her left.
A door opened in front of her. Zu, tall and wide-lipped, pushed through. He had a gash on his forehead—blood seeped through the bandage there—and his clothing had been torn by his fall.
He had a tempest in his eyes. He sneered as he saw her. “You’ve done it now. The Bloodsealer led us right to you. I’m going to enjoy—”
He cut off as Shaizan stepped forward in a blur and smacked the heel of her hand against his wrist, breaking it, knocking the sword from his fingers. She snapped her hand upward, chopping him in the throat. Then she curled her fingers into a fist and placed a tight, short, full-knuckled punch into his chest. Six ribs shattered.
Zu stumbled backward, gasping, eyes wide with absolute shock. His sword clanged to the ground. Shaizan stepped past him, pulling his knife from his belt and whipping it up to cut the tie on his cloak.
Zu toppled to the floor, leaving the cloak in her fingers.
Shai might have said something to him. Shaizan didn’t have the patience for witticisms or gibes. A warrior kept moving, like a river. She didn’t break stride as she whipped the cloak around and entered the hallway behind Zu.
He gasped for breath. He’d live, but he wouldn’t hold a sword again for months.
Movement came from the end of the hallway: white-limbed creatures, too thin to be alive. Shaizan prepared herself with a wide stance, body turned to the side, facing down the hallway, knees slightly bent. It did not matter how many monstrosities the Bloodsealer had; it did not matter if she won or lost.
The challenge mattered. That was all.
There were five, in the shape of men with swords. They scrambled down the hall, bones clattering, eyeless skulls regarding her without expression beyond that of their ever-grinning, pointed teeth. Some bits of the skeletals had been replaced by wooden carvings to fix bones that had broken in battle. Each creature bore a glowing red seal on its forehead; blood was required to give them life.
Even Shaizan had never fought monsters like this before. Stabbing them would be useless. But those bits that had been replaced . . . some were pieces of rib or other bones the skeletals shouldn’t need to fight. So if bones were broken or removed, would the creature stop working?
It seemed her best chance. She did not consider further. Shaizan was a creature of instinct. As the things reached her, she whipped Zu’s cloak around and tossed it over the head of the first one. It thrashed, striking at the cloak as she engaged the second creature.
She caught its attack on the blade of Zu’s dagger, then stepped up so close she could smell its bones, and reached in just below the thing’s rib cage. She grabbed the spine and yanked, pulling free a handful of vertebrae, the tip of the sternum cutting her forearm. All of the bones of each skeletal seemed to be sharpened.
It collapsed, bones clattering. She was right. With the pivotal bones removed, the thing could no longer animate. Shaizan tossed the handful of vertebrae aside.
That left four of them. From what little she knew, skeletals did not tire and were relentless. She had to be quick, or they would overwhelm her.
The three behind attacked her; Shaizan ducked away, getting around the first one as it pulled off the cloak. She grabbed its skull by the eye sockets, earning a deep cut in the arm from its sword as she did so. Her blood sprayed against the wall as she yanked the skull free; the rest of the creature’s body dropped to the ground in a heap.
Keep moving. Don’t slow.
If she slowed, she died.
She spun on the other three, using the skull to block one sword strike and the dagger to deflect another. She skirted around the third, and it scored her side.
She could not feel pain. She’d trained herself to ignore it in battle. That was good, because that one would have hurt.
She smashed the skull into the head of another skeletal, shattering both. It dropped, and Shaizan spun between the other two. Their backhand strikes clanged against one another. Shaizan’s kick sent one of them stumbling back, and she rammed her body against the other, crushing it up against the wall. The bones pushed together, and she got hold of the spine, then yanked free some of the vertebrae.
The creature’s bones fell with a racket. Shaizan wavered as she righted herself. Too much blood lost. She was slowing. When had she dropped the dagger? It must have slipped from her fingers as she slammed the creature against the wall.
Focus. One left.
It charged her, a sword in each hand. She heaved herself forward—getting inside its reach before it could swing—and grabbed its forearm bones. She couldn’t pull them free, not from that angle. She grunted, keeping the swords at bay. Barely. She was weakening.
It pressed closer. Shaizan growled, blood flowing freely from her arm and side.
She head-butted the thing.
That worked worse in real life than it did in stories. Shaizan’s vision dimmed and she slipped to her knees, gasping. The skeletal fell before her, cracked skull rolling free from the force of the blow. Blood dripped down the side of her face. She’d split her forehead, perhaps cracked her own skull.
She fell to her side and fought for consciousness.
Slowly, the darkness retreated.
Shaizan found herself amid scattered bones in an otherwise empty hallway of stone. The only color was that of her blood.
She had won. Another challenge met. She howled a chant of her adopted family, then retrieved her dagger and cut off pieces of her blouse. She used them to bind her wounds. The blood loss was bad. Even a woman with her training would not be meeting any further challenges today. Not if they required strength.
She managed to rise and retrieve Zu’s cloak—still immobilized by pain, he watched her with amazed eyes. She gathered all five skulls of the Bloodsealer’s pets and tied them in the cloak.
That done, she continued down the hallway, trying to project strength—not the fatigue, dizziness, and pain she actually felt.
He will be here somewhere . . .
She yanked open a storage closet at the end of the hall and found the Bloodsealer on the floor inside, eyes glazed by the shock of having his pets destroyed in rapid succession.
Shaizan grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. The move almost made her pass out again. Careful.
The Bloodsealer whimpered.
“Go back to your swamp,” Shaizan growled softly. “The one waiting for you doesn’t care that you’re in the capital, that you’re making so much money, that you’re doing it all for her. She wants you home. That’s why her letters are worded as they are.”
Shaizan said that part for Shai, who would feel guilty if she did not.
The man looked at her, confused. “How do you . . . Ahhrgh!”
He said the last part as Shaizan rammed her dagger into his leg. He collapsed as she released his shirt.
“That,” Shaizan said to him softly, leaning down, “is so that I have some of your blood. Do not hunt me. You saw what I did to your pets. I will do worse to you. I’m taking the skulls, so you cannot send them for me again. Go. Back. Home.”
He nodded weakly. She left him in a heap, cowering and holding his bleeding leg. The arrival of the skeletals had driven everyone else away, including guards. Shaizan stalked toward the stables, then stopped, thinking of something. It wasn’t too far off . . .
You’re nearly dead from these wounds, she told herself. Don’t be a fool.
She decided to be a fool anyway.
A short time later, Shaizan entered the stables and found only a couple of frightened stable hands there. She chose the most distinctive mount in the stables. So it was that—wearing Zu’s cloak and hunkered down on his horse—Shaizan was able to gallop out of the palace gates, and not a man or woman tried to stop her.
“Was she telling the truth, Gaotona?” Ashravan asked, regarding himself in the mirror.
Gaotona looked up from where he sat. Was she? he thought to himself. He could never tell with Shai.
Ashravan had insisted upon dressing himself, though he was obviously weak from his long stay in bed. Gaotona sat on a stool nearby, trying to sort through a deluge of emotions.
“Gaotona?” Ashravan asked, turning to him. “I was wounded, as that woman said? You went to a Forger to heal me, rather than our trained resealers?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The expressions, Gaotona thought. How did she get those right? The way he frowns just before asking a question? The way he cocks his head when not answered immediately. The way he stands, the way he waves his fingers when he’s saying something he thinks is particularly important . . .
“A MaiPon Forger,” the emperor said, pulling on his golden coat. “I hardly think that was necessary.”
“Your wounds were beyond the skill of our resealers.”
“I thought nothing was beyond them.”
“We did as well.”
The emperor regarded the red seal on his arm. His expression tightened. “This will be a manacle, Gaotona. A weight.”
“You will suffer it.”
Ashravan turned toward him. “I see that the near death of your liege has not made you any more respectful, old man.”
“I have been tired lately, Your Majesty.”
“You’re judging me,” Ashravan said, looking back at the mirror. “You always do. Days alight! One day I will rid myself of you. You realize that, don’t you? It’s only because of past service that I even consider keeping you around.”
It was uncanny. This was Ashravan; a Forgery so keen, so perfect, that Gaotona would never have guessed the truth if he hadn’t already known. He wanted to believe that the emperor’s soul had still been there, in his body, and that the seal had simply . . . uncovered it.