In moments she was out on the palace roof. It was a blazing bright afternoon. Behind her the countryside stretched for miles, fields sown with rice and jowar. The city of Hampi spread before her, a creature of smoke and stone, temple gopurams baking under the high sun. Beyond them, the gigantic wall of the Pampa dam hid the Tungbhadra river from view.

Have you lost your mind?

A little bit. You said you'd trust me.

What Chetal needed was a space where she wouldn't be disturbed. She crossed the roof and dropped into the abandoned secret room she'd discovered yesterday. Ordinarily, it wouldn't have been any kind of safe, but if Taro had wanted to kill her, she'd already be dead. The problem was no longer mere survival.

Once inside, she pulled out the 'Vanish' card. It showed a richly furnished room, with a chair and table, except the table was missing. Books, quills, and a lampgrinder floated in thin air where a table should have been.

Are you going to try using the sooth card? Don't bother. I was tested for shaping ability. More than once. I don't have any.

Maybe I do.

Do you think you're special? Only five people in all of Vijaynagara have shown the ability in the past decade.

Only one way to find out.

This is ludicrous.

We are dealing with shapers outside royal control. They can do anything to us. They already have. If there's a possibility to play their game as an equal, we have to explore it.

Chetal remembered Jin offering her the sooth card, a smile on his lips.

If Taro has secretly followed us here, what do you think she'll do when she discovers what you're trying?

The answer was clear enough.

She'll kill me.

Us.

It's a chance we have to take. It's this or being her puppet until she no longer needs me. Or gets bored.

It takes years of training to master sooth cards. You can't stumble your way into becoming a shaper.

Then help me. You know more about this than I do. Where do I start?

Ara was quiet for a while.

Sooth cards work through the will of the shaper. Sooth means truth. The cards show the truth of the world, not as it is, but as it could be. It's the shaper's will that creates the truth captured in the card. The one in your hand, for example, shows a table that has vanished. So it could be used to make objects disappear.

Okay. How do I make it work?

Focus on the card, and on an object around you. Maybe the chair over there. It's a little like playing the piano with both hands. You have to divide your focus.

They didn't have a piano at my orphanage.

Good. It's an awful instrument designed to torture little kids.

I'll take your word for it.

Are you focusing on the card and the chair?

I'm trying to.

Now imagine the card shows an invisible chair in this room.

Okay.

Chetal felt like she was juggling balls in her mind.

This next part is a little difficult. You have to believe with absolute certainty that the chair before you is invisible. Believe it the way you believe there's a floor under your feet, or the way you know it's afternoon. The invisible chair has to be your truth.

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Chetal tried. It was an impossible task. She didn't feel anything happen, and predictably, nothing vanished.

But Ara had discovered a zeal for it, and pushed her to try again. And again. She tried for what felt like hours, sweat pouring down her forehead in the stuffy room. In time she could hold both the card and the chair in her mental focus. Imagining that the card showed an invisible chair rather than an invisible table wasn't hard either. But the belief did not arrive.

Both she and Ara eventually grew frustrated.

You don't believe. I can feel it. Even in the one in a million chance that you could be a shaper, nothing will happen until you do.

The chair is right there. I don't know how to believe it's suddenly invisible. Not without closing my eyes.

That would defeat the purpose.

I know.

Answer me a question. When Taro was about to torture and kill us, I felt your will. You knew with absolute certainty you wouldn't die. You decided you would make it so you didn't. How did you do that?

Chetal thought back to the moment. Ara was right, she'd known she'd live. Every time her life had been on the line, even at the orphanage, she had crawled her way out of the situation. She'd survived. Her will to survive was like a blazing torch against the darkness of death. It was a certainty that felt solid like the floor beneath her. Like truth.

That, right there. I felt it again. Use it.

Chetal stared at the chair with singular purpose. She poured her will into the card. The invisible chair was like her instinct to survive. More real than anything her eyes or mind were telling her.

Something tugged at her powerfully, and she felt woozy. Chetal staggered and fell to the floor. She felt like she had to vomit, but she heaved and nothing came out.

With great effort, she looked up at the chair.

It had vanished.

She clambered up and reached out to where it had been. It was right there - smooth, polished wood below a thick layer of dust underneath her palm.

Ara?

There was no reply.

Ara, are you there?

We need to meet the sooth carvers. Ara's voice held deep shock, and perhaps a bit of envy.

A thrill ran through Chetal. She couldn't stop staring at the vanished chair.

We should return to the room. The sun has set.

Chetal climbed out of the room and made her way back to hers.

She couldn't stay still. She paced from one end of the room to the other, feeling like she was exploding on the inside.

Shaper.

That one word seemed way too large to fit inside her.

She kept passing her reflection in the mirror as she paced. Something there was wrong.

Chetal came to a halt before it. Her reflection had no eyebrows.

Her hands flew to her face, to where her brows should be.

They were there, just...invisible.

Shit.

What have you done to my face.

I think...I accidentally made my eyebrows vanish too.

Fix it before someone arrives.

How?

I don't know how. I told you, I'm not a shaper. Pull your will out of the card. Or imagine your eyebrows are visible again.

There was a knock at the door.

"Your Highness, may I come in?" Inharat spoke.

Dammit. Dammit, dammit.

Chetal was panicking. The problem wasn't simply that she had no eyebrows. She could've possibly lied that she'd shaved them or something. It was that there was a possibility of them reappearing at any moment. And eyebrows that unshaved themselves were harder to explain than no eyebrows.

"I'm sorry, not now," she replied to Inharat.

What are you doing? I don't apologize to those who serve me.

Sorry!

Tell him you are otherwise occupied presently. And that you'll receive him in an hour.

"I'm otherwise occupied presently. I'll receive you in an hour."

"Your Highness, my apologies, but this is urgent. We have found the conspirators behind the assassination of the Revered Emperor and Empress."

Ara's voice went deathly flat. Tell him to come in.

I can't. Still don't have eyebrows!

I don't care.

Chetal felt Ara trying to force her own control over her body. There was no way out of this.