The Emperors Soul

Rose Empire.
    We will be led by someone not truly alive, Gaotona thought. The fruits of our foul labors.
    He took a deep breath, then walked past the guards and pushed open the doors to go and look upon the thing he had wrought.
    Just . . . please, let it not be a monster.

    Shai strode down the palace hallway, holding the box of seals. She ripped off her buttoned blouse—revealing the tight, black cotton shirt she wore underneath—and tucked it into her pocket. She left on her skirt and the leggings beneath. It wasn’t so different from the clothing she’d trained in.
    Servants scattered around her. They knew, just from her posture, to get out of the way. Suddenly, Shai felt more confident than she had in years.
    She had her soul back. All of it.
    She took out one of her Essence Marks as she walked. She inked it with bold strikes and returned the box of seals to her skirt pocket. Then, she slammed the seal against her right bicep and locked it into place, rewriting her history, her memories, her life experience.
    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