The Emperor's Soul characters

Appears from the start

A Forger from MaiPon: an artist who carves stamps that rewrite an object's history, so that a cracked window becomes one that was never broken, provided the invented history is plausible enough for the object to accept it. In the Rose Empire the art is considered blasphemy and its practitioners are executed. Shai is caught in the imperial palace after replacing a priceless artefact with a copy of her own making, and is imprisoned to await execution. She is proud of her craft, contemptuous of people who call it fraud, and already working on an escape before anyone offers her a bargain.

Appears from the start

One of the emperor's arbiters, elderly, austere and the least self-serving member of the council. He regards Forgery as theft dressed up as art and Shai as a criminal who should have been executed, but he is the one assigned to review her work day by day, and he is capable of changing his mind when the evidence requires it.

Appears from the start

The head of the arbiters' council and the most powerful of the emperor's advisers, concerned above all with keeping her faction in position. She negotiates with Shai from a position of total power and makes no pretence otherwise.

Appears from the start

Emperor of the Rose Empire. An assassination attempt left his body physically repaired but his mind destroyed: he breathes and can be moved, and nothing of the man is left. His arbiters have concealed the truth of his condition, because an emperor who cannot rule would mean the end of their council.

First appears in chapter 2

The general on the arbiters' council, a blunt soldier with no patience for the politics of the palace and no enthusiasm for the arrangement the council has made with a condemned criminal.

First appears in chapter 2

The captain of the guards assigned to watch Shai. He regards her as a criminal who was already sentenced and should already be dead, and he does not hide that he would prefer to carry the sentence out himself.

First appears in chapter 2

A practitioner of a cruder, blood-based magic, hired to seal Shai's room each day with a mark keyed to her own blood so that she cannot leave it. He is careless, unpleasant and resented by everyone involved, and the seal has to be renewed daily, which is the one constraint on Shai that her own art cannot simply rewrite.