Page 6 of A Forgery of Fate

While Nomi sobbed in my arms, Mama disappeared out the door without another word.

Fal touched Nomi’s shoulder. Nomi was her favorite too, and the only time we came together was for her. “Didn’t you hear what Mama said?” she asked. “She’s going to find him.”

The conviction in Fal’s voice made Nomi look up.

“You…you really think he’s…he’s a-alive?” she asked us shakily. She sucked in a breath. “You think…you think Mama can find him?”

Fal looked at me, her bloodshot eyes reflecting the same desperate hope as Nomi’s.

The letter had gone limp on my lap, the coarse paper stained with tears. Red ink smudged my fingertips, the sight forever seared into my memory even after I wiped my hands clean.

No,I should have said.I don’t think she can.

That would have been the truth. But for the first time, I’d seen the cracks in Mama’s stony veneer. I knew she was pretending. Shehadto. For our sake.

And, seeing as our fortunes had turned to ash, I put on a brave face too.

“Yes,” I lied to my sisters. “I think she can.”

Chapter Two

Five Years Later

I was not in the mood to deal with thieves.

Any other day, I might have been flattered that they were after me. Not today.

I’d spent a month forging the painting rolled under my arm—mostly on an empty stomach—and I just wanted to sell the damned thing and stuff my face with something other than boiled cabbage and dumplings.Cabbage-stuffed dumplingsno less. So help me, I was bringing four chickens home tonight. A bucket of fried noodles too.

If I sold the painting, it would be my biggest deal yet. The goal was to net at least three thousand jens. The auction house would get a third, and Gaari and I would split what was left. The agreement rankled me, but that had been our deal since we’d met, and much as I hated to admit it, he deserved the cut. It wasn’t easy to find a dealer who kept his word. Or whom I could trust…mostly.

Hunger panged my gut, and I tucked the scroll tighter under my arm while I swerved left, trying hard not to look back. Twenty paces behind trailed a trio of Gangsun’s most despicable art thieves.

To anyone else, they bore a passable resemblance to scholars. They wore the typical button-down jackets in joyless blue, with matching boat-shaped hats and yolk-yellow fans. But scholars didn’t usually stalk about the marketplace with veins bulging out of their necks and knives poking out of their sleeves. Needed more acting lessons, these thieves.

And Gangsun needs civil prefects who actually enforce the law,I grumbled in my head. I glared at the two ivory-collared prefects I passed, but they were too busy watching a cricket race to notice me, a pretend noblewoman trying not to trip over her menace of a dress.

In fairness, that was probably a good thing. Though the thieves behind me could have used a thrashing from Governor Renhai’s cane, I wasn’t exactly the most law-abiding citizen either. Come to think of it, my crimes would likely earn memoretime in prison.

Trying to hurry, I hiked up my skirt and cursed Gaari’s advice to playact as a noblewoman today.

Your art’ll fetch a higher price if you look rich,he’d said.

He’d better be right.

Summers in Gangsun were usually cool, but not today. Sweat beaded along my hairline, and gods, my wig itched. But I didn’t dare scratch it. My own blue tresses were tucked under a high pile of black knots and braids that Fal had spent all morning wrestling together, pinned in place with peacock feathers and silk chrysanthemums.

“Are you sure this makes me look rich?”I’d asked my sister.“It’s piled like a tower of buns on my head. Weighs as much too.” I tried turning my neck, but I could hardly move without the wig threatening to slip off.

“Stop that!” cried Fal. “I haven’t finished pinning you down.”

As Fal inserted two more pins at my hairline, securing the wig, I got to work too. I sucked in my cheeks, painting generous contours so they’d look fuller and less hungry, thinned my thick brows with flesh-colored cream, and gave my nose a daintier bridge. Within minutes, I did look different. Well-fed and rich, hardly a peasant off the street. But my hair…

“Still think it looks like a pile of buns,” I muttered. “Lumpy buns. Don’t you think, Nomi?”

“For Saino’s sake, you’re a portrait artist,” huffed Fal before Nomi could reply. “Don’t you pay attention toanything? All the ladies of the first rank wear their hair like this.”

“Why would I want to look like a lady of the first rank?” I said, smearing away my mole with my brush. I painted a new one by my eye instead. “I’d be eighth rank at best.”

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