Page 19 of A Forgery of Fate

A few days after our game, I spied a volume of Nomi’s favorite ghost stories buried under a thin coat of snow on the street, along with a small bag of fresh almond cookies that must have fallen from someone’s purse.

A coincidence, I told myself. But the tingle in my hand came back, and it wouldn’t go away. Every day I ignored it, it grew heavier, until my fingers dragged like iron. So I painted again. I painted faces I had never seen before—a girl with freckled cheeks, an old woman carrying buckets of water over her frail shoulders, a prosperous tailor cutting silk in his shop window. I painted water jugs, copper bracelets, rusted boats in the canal…. It didn’t matter what I conjured from my brush. Every single sketch became real.

Then I painted Gaari.

I had never seen the old man before and had no reason to know of him. But his likeness leaked out of my brush hairs as if they were possessed—his squinting gray eye, his pipe-shaped nose, the high forehead and icicle of a beard.

By the time I spotted him in the flesh, buying grilled chestnuts on Dattu Street, I had enough experience with my visions to know our fates would touch.

So what did I do? I tried to rob him.

“A bit tall for a thief, aren’t you?” Gaari had mused, his first words to me. He’d caught me by the wrist. “And with that blue hair…” He clucked. “A memorable thief is one who gets caught.”

I squirmed, but his grip was tight. He was stronger than he looked.

“You were picking my pocket, so it’s only fair that I pick yours,” he said, lifting the scrap of paper that peeked out ofmy sleeve. He viewed the sketch I’d made of him. “Now, what’s this?”

I jumped, trying to reach for it. “Give that back!”

“Sons of the Wind,” Gaari whistled, admiring my portrait of him. “You’ve a gift for faces, my friend.”

“I’m not your friend.”

“Not yet.” He folded the sketch with one hand. I twisted and jerked, but he still wouldn’t release my arm. “See those three prefects over there?”

I didn’t look. “Let me go.”

“Either I tell them you’re a thief and you start running—with that blue hair of yours, I really don’t think you’ll get far—or you listen to my proposition.”

I hated him already. “What do you want?”

“Look at the prefect in the middle. The one with the pimples and the unshaven beard. Really look at him.” Gaari gave me a second, then he spun me the other direction and handed me a pad of paper. “Sketch him. If your drawing’s good enough, then it’s your lucky day—I’ll not only let you off, but I’ll give you a job.”

I was both weary and wary of this old man. “A job?”

“Painting. I’ve been searching for someone specializing in portraits. It’s not a popular market, but there’s profit to be made.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “And if it’s not my lucky day?”

“Then you’ll be spending the evening in jail. Well, what say you?”

It wasn’t much of a choice, but I was intrigued. I took the paper.

Mama had raised me to read faces. I’d never considered it a talent before—this ability to memorize someone’s features and commit their likeness to paper. After all, I forgot plenty of more important things: festival dates, street names, how many oranges Nomi asked me to buy at the market. But once I saw someone—reallygot a good look at them—I could easily recall their face, from the shape of their nostrils to the creases on their lips.

And so it was easy enough drawing the prefect; I even captured the mole on his nose, down to its three sprouting hairs. I had a soft spot for moles. They made faces look happier.

“Good enough?” I asked the old man.

As Gaari studied the sketch, his mouth slowly slid into a smile. “I told you we’d be friends,” he said. “Now, do you like noodles?”

The next months changed my life. Gaari introduced me to his operation. He invested in me, gave me books to read and assignments to practice; he even sold my early reproductions. They only made a handful of jens, but it was enough to put food on the table.

I worked hard. Over and over, I copied the works of the greats, mimicking the pressure of their strokes, the precision of their lines, until Gaari deemed I was ready for the auction houses. I found that forging paintings stifled that mysterious tingle in my fingers. Only when my attention drifted, or when I painted solely from my imagination, did the magic overcome me again. Over time I came to learn that what came out of my brush was no coincidence.

They were glimpses of the future.Myfuture.

“Let’s pray that my future has eighteen thousand jens in it,” I muttered.

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