Shai took a step forward, but when Gaotona opened the box, he revealed that the stamps weren’t inside. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I think giving you these now would be a little… foolish on my part. It seems that any one of them could have you free from your captivity in a moment.”

“Really only two of them could manage that,” Shai said sourly, fingers twitching. Those soulstamps represented over eight years of her life’s work. She’d started the first on the day she ended her apprenticeship.

“Hm, yes,” Gaotona said. Inside the small box lay sheets of metal inscribed with the separate smaller stamps that made up the blueprints of the revisions to her soul. “This one, I believe?” He held up one of the sheets. “Shaizan. Translated… Shai of the Fist? This would make a warrior out of you, if you stamped yourself?”

“Yes,” Shai said. So he’d been studying her Essence Marks; that was how he’d grown so good at reading her stamps.

“I understand only one-tenth of what is inscribed here, if that,” Gaotona said. “What I find is impressive. Truly, these must have taken years to craft.”

“They are… precious to me,” Shai said, forcing herself to sit down at her desk and not fixate on the plates. If she could escape with those, she could craft a new stamp with ease. It would still take weeks, but most of her work would not be lost. But if those plates were to be destroyed…

Gaotona sat down in his customary chair, nonchalantly looking through the plates. From someone else, she would have felt an implied threat. Look what I hold in my hands; look what I could do to you. From Gaotona, however, that was not it. He was genuinely curious.

Or was he? As ever, she could not suppress her instincts. As good as she was, someone else could be better. Just as Uncle Won had warned. Could Gaotona have been playing her for a fool all along? She felt strongly she should trust her assessment of Gaotona. But if she was wrong, it could be a disaster.

It might be anyway, she thought. You should have run days ago.

“Turning yourself into a soldier I understand,” Gaotona said, setting aside the plate. “And this one as well. A woodsman and survivalist. That one looks extremely versatile. Impressive. And here we have a scholar. But why? You are already a scholar.”

“No woman can know everything,” Shai said. “There is only so much time for study. When I stamp myself with that Essence Mark, I can suddenly speak a dozen languages, from Fen to Mulla’dil—even a few from Sycla. I know dozens of different cultures and how to move in them. I know science, mathematics, and the major political factions of the world.”

“Ah,” Gaotona said.

Just give them to me, she thought.

“But what of this?” Gaotona said. “A beggar? Why would you want to be emaciated, and… is this showing that most of your hair would fall out, that your skin would become scarred?”