That Bloodsealer came each morning to renew his mark on the door. Each time, the act required a little blood from Shai. Her arms were soon laced with shallow cuts.

All the while, Gaotona visited. The ancient arbiter studied her as she read, watching with those eyes that judged… but also did not hate.

As she formulated her plans, she decided one thing: Getting free would probably require manipulating this man in some way.

Day Twelve

SHAI pressed her stamp down on the tabletop.

As always, the stamp sank slightly into the material. A soulstamp left a seal you could feel, regardless of the material. She twisted the stamp a half turn—this did not blur the ink, though she did not know why. One of her mentors had taught that it was because by this point the seal was touching the object’s soul and not its physical presence.

When she pulled the stamp back, it left a bright red seal in the wood as if carved there. Transformation spread from the seal in a wave. The table’s dull grey splintery cedar became beautiful and well maintained, with a warm patina that reflected the light of the candles sitting across from her.

Shai rested her fingers on the new table; it was now smooth to the touch. The sides and legs were finely carved, inlaid here and there with silver.

Gaotona sat upright, lowering the book he’d been reading. Zu shuffled in discomfort at seeing the Forgery.

“What was that?” Gaotona demanded.

“I was tired of getting splinters,” Shai said, settling back in her chair. It creaked. You are next, she thought.

Gaotona stood up and walked to the table. He touched it, as if expecting the transformation to be mere illusion. It was not. The fine table now looked horribly out of place in the dingy room. “This is what you’ve been doing?”

“Carving helps me think.”

“You should be focused on your task!” Gaotona said. “This is frivolity. The empire itself is in danger!”

No, Shai thought. Not the empire itself; just your rule of it. Unfortunately, after eleven days, she still didn’t have an angle on Gaotona, not one she could exploit.

“I am working on your problem, Gaotona,” she said. “What you ask of me is hardly a simple task.”

“And changing that table was?”

“Of course it was,” Shai said. “All I had to do was rewrite its past so that it was maintained, rather than being allowed to sink into disrepair. That took hardly any work at all.”

Gaotona hesitated, then knelt beside the table. “These carvings, this inlay… those were not part of the original.”

“I might have added a little.”

She wasn’t certain if the Forgery would take or not. In a few minutes, that seal might evaporate and the table might revert to its previous state. Still, she was fairly certain she’d guessed the table’s past well enough. Some of the histories she was reading mentioned what gifts had come from where. This table, she suspected, had come from far-off Svorden as a gift to Emperor Ashravan’s predecessor. The strained relationship with Svorden had then led the emperor to lock it away and ignore it.