“Carving soulstone relaxes me,” Shai said. “As does having a workspace that doesn’t remind me of a closet. You will have your emperor’s soul in time, Frava.”

The arbiter stalked through the room, inspecting the desk. “Then you have begun the emperor’s soulstone?”

“I’ve begun many of them,” Shai said. “It will be a complex process. I’ve tested well over a hundred stamps on Gaotona—”

“Arbiter Gaotona.”

“—on the old man. Each is only a tiny slice of the puzzle. Once I have all of the pieces working, I’ll recarve them in smaller, more delicate etchings. That will allow me to combine about a dozen test stamps into one final stamp.”

“But you said you’d tested over a hundred,” Frava said, frowning. “You’ll only use twelve of those in the end?”

Shai laughed. “Twelve? To Forge an entire soul? Hardly. The final stamp, the one you will need to use on the emperor each morning, will be like … a linchpin, or the keystone of an arch. It will be the only one that will need to be placed on his skin, but it will connect a lattice of hundreds of other stamps.”

Shai reached to the side, taking out her book of notes, including initial sketches of the final stamps. “I’ll take these and stamp them onto a metal plate, then link that to the stamp you will place on Ashravan each day. He’ll need to keep the plate close at all times.”

“He’ll need to carry a metal plate with him,” Frava said dryly, “and he will need to be stamped each day? This will make it difficult for the man to live a normal life, don’t you think?”

“Being emperor makes it difficult for any man to live a normal life, I suspect. You will make it work. It’s customary for the plate to be designed as a piece of adornment. A large medallion, perhaps, or an upper-arm bracer with square sides. If you look at my own Essence Marks, you’ll notice they were done in the same way, and that the box contains a plate for each one.” Shai hesitated. “That said, I’ve never done this exact thing before; no one has. There is a chance … and I’d say a fair one … that over time, the emperor’s brain will absorb the information. Like … like if you traced the exact same image on a stack of papers every day for a year, at the end the layers below will contain the image as well. Perhaps after a few years of being stamped, he won’t need the treatment any longer.”

“I still name it egregious.”

“Worse than being dead?” Shai asked.

Frava rested her hand on Shai’s book of notes and half-finished sketches. Then she picked it up. “I will have our scribes copy this.”

Shai stood up. “I need it.”