She could hide really well in there. That was why she’d come, after all. To hide. Nothing else. No other reason.
The city didn’t have walls, but it did have a number of guard towers spaced around it. Her pathway led down from the hills and joined with a larger road, which eventually stopped in a line of people awaiting permission to get into the city.
“How on Roshar did they manage to cut away so much rock!” Wyndle said, forming a pile of vines beside her, a twisting column that took him high enough to be by her waist, face tilted toward the city.
“Shardblades,” Lift said.
“Oh. Ooooh. Those.” He shifted uncomfortably, vines writhing and twisting about one another with a scrunching sound. “Yes. Those.”
She folded her arms. “I should get me one of those, eh?”
Wyndle, strangely, groaned loudly.
“I figure,” she explained, “that Darkness has one, right? He fought with one when he was trying to kill me and Gawx. So I ought to find one.”
“Yes,” Wyndle said, “you should do just that! Let us pop over to the market and pick up a legendary, all-powerful weapon of myth and lore, worth more than many kingdoms! I hear they sell them in bushels, following spring weather in the east.”
“Shut it, Voidbringer.” She eyed his tangle of a face. “You know something about Shardblades, don’t you?”
The vines seemed to wilt.
“You do. Out with it. What do you know?”
He shook his vine head.
“Tell me,” Lift warned.
“It’s forbidden. You must discover it on your own.”
“That’s what I’m doing. I’m discovering it. From you. Tell me, or I’ll bite you.”
“What?”
“I’ll bite you,” she said. “I’ll gnaw on you, Voidbringer. You’re a vine, right? I eat plants. Sometimes.”
“Even assuming my crystals wouldn’t break your teeth,” Wyndle said, “my mass would give you no sustenance. It would break down into dust.”
“It’s not about sustenance. It’s about torture.”
Wyndle, surprisingly, met her expression with his strange eyes grown from crystals. “Honestly, mistress, I don’t think you have it in you.”
She growled at him, and he wilted further, but didn’t tell her the secret. Well, storms. It was good to see him have a backbone … or, well, the plant equivalent, whatever that was. Backbark?
“You’re supposed to obey me,” she said, shoving her hands in her pockets and heading along the path toward the city. “You ain’t following the rules.”
“I am indeed,” he said with a huff. “You just don’t know them. And I’ll have you know that I am a gardener, and not a soldier, so I’ll not have you hitting people with me.”
She stopped. “Why would I hit anyone with you?”
He wilted so far, he was practically shriveled.
Lift sighed, then continued on her way, Wyndle following. They merged with the larger road, turning toward the tower that was a gateway into the city.
“So,” Wyndle said as they passed a chull cart, “this is where we were going all along? This city cut into the ground?”
Lift nodded.
“You could have told me,” Wyndle said. “I’ve been worried we’d be caught outside in a storm!”
“Why? It ain’t raining anymore.” The Weeping, oddly, had stopped. Then started again. Then stopped again. It was acting downright strange, like regular weather, rather than the long, long mild highstorm it was supposed to be.
“I don’t know,” Wyndle said. “Something is wrong, mistress. Something in the world. I can feel it. Did you hear what the Alethi king wrote to the emperor?”
“About a new storm coming?” Lift said. “One that blows the wrong way?”
“Yes.”
“The noodles all called that silly.”
“Noodles?”
“The people who hang around Gawx, talking to him all the time, telling him what to do and trying to get me to wear a robe.”
“The viziers of Azir. Head clerks of the empire and advisors to the Prime!”
“Yeah. Wavy arms and blubbering features. Noodles. Anyway, they thought that angry guy—”
“—Highprince Dalinar Kholin, de facto king of Alethkar and most powerful warlord in the world right now—”
“—was makin’ stuff up.”
“Maybe. But don’t you feel something? Out there? Building?”
“A distant thunder,” Lift whispered, looking westward, past the city, toward the far-off mountains. “Or … or the way you feel after someone drops a pan, and you see it falling, and get ready for the clatter it will make when it hits.”
“So you do feel it.”
“Maybe,” Lift said. The chull cart rolled past. Nobody paid any attention to her—they never did. And nobody could see Wyndle but her, because she was special. “Don’t your Voidbringer friends know about this?”
“We’re not … Lift, we’re spren, but my kind—cultivationspren—are not very important. We don’t have a kingdom, or even cities, of our own. We only moved to bond with you because the Cryptics and the honorspren and everyone were starting to move. Oh, we’ve jumped right into the sea of glass feet-first, but we barely know what we’re doing! Everyone who had any idea of how to accomplish all this died centuries ago!”
He grew along the road beside her as they followed the chull cart, which rattled and shook as it bounced down the roadway.
“Everything is wrong, and nothing makes sense,” Wyndle continued. “Bonding to you was supposed to be more difficult than it was, I gather. Memories come to me fuzzily sometimes, but I do remember more and more. I didn’t go through the trauma we all thought I’d endure. That might be because of your … unique circumstances. But mistress, listen to me when I say something big is coming. This was the wrong time to leave Azir. We were secure there. We’ll need security.”
“There isn’t time to get back.”
“No. There probably isn’t. At least we have shelter ahead.”
“Yeah. Assuming Darkness doesn’t kill us.”
“Darkness? The Skybreaker who attacked you in the palace and came very close to murdering you?”
“Yeah,” Lift said. “He’s in the city. Didn’t you hear me complaining that I needed a Shardblade?”
“In the city … in Yeddaw, where we’re going right now?”
“Yup. The noodles have people watching for reports of him. A note came in right before we left, saying he’d been spotted in Yeddaw.”
“Wait.” Wyndle zipped forward, leaving a trail of vines and crystal behind. He grew up the back of the chull cart, curling onto its wood right in front of her. He made a face there, looking at her. “Is that why we left all of a sudden? Is that why we’re here? Did you come chasing that monster?”
“Course not,” Lift said, hands in her pockets. “That would be stupid.”
“Which you are not.”
“Nope.”
“Then why are we here?”
“They got these pancakes here,” she said, “with things cooked into them. Supposed to be super tasty, and they eat them during the Weeping. Ten varieties. I’m gonna steal one of each.”
“You came all this way, leaving behind luxury, to eat some pancakes.”
“Really awesome pancakes.”
“Despite the fact that a deific Shardbearer is here—a man who went to great lengths to try to execute you.”
“He wanted to stop me from using my powers,” Lift said. “He’s been seen other places. The noodles looked into it; they’re fascinated by him. Everyone pays attention to that bald guy who collects the heads of kings, but this guy has been murdering his way across Roshar too. Little people. Quiet people.”
“And we came here why?”
She shrugged. “Seemed like as good a place as any.”
He let himself slide off the back of the cart. “As a point of fact, it most expressly is not as good a place as any. It is demonstrably w
orse for—”
“You sure I can’t eat you?” she asked. “That would be super convenient. You got lots of extra vines. Maybe I could nibble on a few of those.”
“I assure you, mistress, that you would find the experience thoroughly unappealing.”
She grunted, stomach growling. Hungerspren appeared, like little brown specks with wings, floating around her. That wasn’t odd. Many of the folks in line had attracted them.
“I got two powers,” Lift said. “I can slide around, awesome, and I can make stuff grow. So I could grow me some plants to eat?”
“It would almost certainly take more energy in Stormlight to grow the plants than the sustenance would provide, as determined by the laws of the universe. And before you say anything, these are laws that even you cannot ignore.” He paused. “I think. Who knows, when you’re involved?”
“I’m special,” Lift said, stopping as they finally reached the line of people waiting to get into the city. “Also, hungry. More hungry than special, right now.”
She poked her head out of the line. Several guards stood at the ramp down into the city, along with some scribes wearing the odd Tashikki clothing. It was this loooong piece of cloth that they wrapped around themselves, feet to forehead. For being a single sheet, it was really complex: it wound around both legs and arms individually, but also wrapped back around the waist sometimes to create a kind of skirt. Both the men and the women wore the cloths, though not the guards.
They sure were taking their time letting people in. And there sure were a lot of people waiting. Everyone here was Makabaki, with dark eyes and skin—darker than Lift’s brownish tan. And a lot of those waiting were families, wearing normal Azish-style clothing. Trousers, dirty skirts, some with patterns. They buzzed with exhaustionspren and hungerspren, enough to be distracting.
She’d have expected mostly merchants, not families, to be waiting here. Who were all these people?
Her stomach growled.
“Mistress?” Wyndle asked.
“Hush,” she said. “Too hungry to talk.”
“Are you—”
“Hungry? Yes. So shut up.”
“But—”
“I bet those guards have food. People always feed guards. They can’t properly hit folks on the head if they’re starvin’. That’s a fact.”
“Or, to offer a counterproposal, you could simply buy some food with the spheres the emperor allotted you.”
“Didn’t bring them.”
“You didn’t … you didn’t bring the money?”
“Ditched it when you weren’t looking. Can’t get robbed if you don’t have money. Carrying spheres is just asking for trouble. Besides.” She narrowed her eyes, watching the guards. “Only fancy people have money like that. We normal folk, we have to get by some other way.”
“So now you’re normal.”
“Course I am,” she said. “It’s everyone else that’s weird.”
Before he could reply, she ducked underneath the chull wagon and started sneaking toward the front of the line.
3
“TALLEW, you say?” Hauka asked, holding up the tarp covering the suspicious pile of grain. “From Azir?”
“Yes, of course, officer.” The man sitting on the front of the wagon squirmed. “Just a humble farmer.”
With no calluses, Hauka thought. A humble farmer who can afford fine Liaforan boots and a silk belt. Hauka took her spear and started shoving it into the grain, blunt end first. She didn’t run across any contraband, or any refugees, hidden in the grain. So that was a first.
“I need to get your papers notarized,” she said. “Pull your cart over to the side here.”
The man grumbled but obeyed, turning his cart and starting to back the chull into the spot beside the guard post. It was one of the only buildings erected here above the city, along with a few towers spaced where they could lob arrows at anyone trying to use the ramps or set up position to siege.
The farmer with the wagon backed his cart in very, very carefully—as they were near the ledge overlooking the city. Immigrant quarter. Rich people didn’t enter here, only the ones without papers. Or the ones who hoped to avoid scrutiny.
Hauka rolled up the man’s credentials and walked past the guard post. Scents wafted out of that; lunch was being set up, which meant the people in line had an even longer wait ahead of them. An old scribe sat in a seat near the front of the guard post. Nissiqqan liked to be out in the sun.
Hauka bowed to him; Nissiqqan was the deputy scribe of immigration on duty for today. The older man was wrapped head-to-toe in a yellow shiqua, though he’d pulled the face portion down to expose a furrowed face with a cleft chin. They were in home lands, and the need to cover up before Nun Raylisi—the enemy of their god—was minimal. Tashi supposedly protected them here.
Hauka herself wore a breastplate, cap, trousers, and a cloak with her family and studies pattern on them. The locals accepted an Azish like her with ease—Tashikk didn’t have much in the way of its own soldiers, and her credentials of achievement were certified by an Azimir vizier. She could have gotten a similar officer’s job with the local guard anywhere in the greater Makabaki region, though her credentials did make clear she wasn’t certified for battlefield command.
“Captain?” Nissiqqan said, adjusting his spectacles and looking at the farmer’s credentials as she proffered them. “Is he refusing to pay the tariff?”
“Tariff is fine and in the strongbox,” Hauka said. “I’m suspicious though. That man’s no farmer.”
“Smuggling refugees?”
“Checked in the grain and under the cart,” Hauka said, looking over her shoulder. The man was all smiles. “It’s new grain. A little overripe, but edible.”
“Then the city will be glad to have it.”
He was right. The war between Emul and Tukar was heating up. Granted, everyone was always saying that. But things had changed over the last few years. That god-king of the Tukari … there were all sorts of wild rumors about him.
“That’s it!” Hauka said. “Your Grace, I’ll bet that man has been in Emul. He’s been raiding their fields while all the able-bodied men are fighting the invasion.”
Nissiqqan nodded in agreement, rubbing his chin. Then he dug through his folder. “Tax him as a smuggler and as a fence. I believe … yes, that will work. Triple tariff. I’ll earmark the extra tariffs to be diverted to feeding refugees, per referendum three-seventy-one-sha.”
“Thanks,” Hauka said, relaxing and taking the forms. Say what you would of the strange clothing and religion of the Tashikki, they certainly did know how to draft solid civil ordinances.
“I have spheres for you,” Nissiqqan noted. “I know you’ve been asking for infused ones.”
“Really!” Hauka said.
“My cousin had some out in his sphere cage—pure luck that he’d forgotten them—when that unpredicted highstorm blew through.”
“Excellent,” Hauka said. “I’ll trade you for them later.” She had some information that Nissiqqan would be very interested in. They used that as currency here in Tashikk, as much as they did spheres.
And storms, some lit spheres would be nice. After the Weeping, most people didn’t have any, which could be storming inconvenient—as open flame was forbidden in the city. So she couldn’t do any reading at night unless she found some infused spheres.
She walked back to the smuggler, flipping through forms. “We’ll need you to pay this tariff,” she said, handing him a form. “And then this one too.”
“A fencing permit!” the man exclaimed. “And smuggling! This is thievery!”
“Yes, I believe it is. Or was.”
“You can’t prove such allegations,” he said, slapping the forms with his hand.
“Sure,” she said. “If I could prove that you crossed the border into Emul illegally, robbed the fields of good hardworking people while they were distracted by the fighting, then carted it here without proper permits, I’d simply seize the w
hole thing.” She leaned in. “You’re getting off easily. We both know it.”
He met her eyes, then looked nervously away and started filling out the forms. Good. No trouble today. She liked it when there was no trouble. It—
Hauka stopped. The tarp on the man’s wagon was rustling. Frowning, Hauka whipped it backward, and found a young girl neck-deep in the grain. She had light brown skin—like she was Reshi, or maybe Herdazian—and was probably eleven or twelve years old. She grinned at Hauka.
She hadn’t been there before.
“This stuff,” the girl said in Azish, mouth full of what appeared to be uncooked grain, “tastes terrible. I guess that’s why we make stuff out of it first.” She swallowed. “Got anything to drink?”
The smuggler stood up on his cart, sputtering and pointing. “She’s ruining my goods! She’s swimming in it! Guard, do something! There’s a dirty refugee in my grain!”
Great. The paperwork on this was going to be a nightmare. “Out of there, child. Do you have parents?”
“Course I do,” the girl said, rolling her eyes. “Everyone’s got parents. Mine’r’dead though.” She cocked her head. “What’s that I smell? That wouldn’t be … pancakes, would it?”
“Sure,” Hauka said, sensing an opportunity. “Sun Day pancakes. You can have one, if you—”
“Thanks!” The girl leaped from the grain, spraying it in all directions, causing the smuggler to cry out. Hauka tried to snatch the child, but somehow the girl wiggled out of her grip. She leaped over Hauka’s hands, then bounded forward.
And landed right on Hauka’s shoulders.
Hauka grunted at the sudden weight of the girl, who jumped off her shoulders and landed behind her.
Hauka spun about, off-balance.
“Tashi!” the smuggler said. “She stepped on your storming shoulders, officer.”
“Thank you. Stay here. Don’t move.” Hauka straightened her cap, then dashed after the child, who brushed past Nissiqqan—causing him to drop his folders—and entered into the guard chamber. Good. There weren’t any other ways out of that post. Hauka stumbled up to the doorway, setting aside her spear and taking the club from her belt. She didn’t want to hurt the little refugee, but some intimidation wouldn’t be out of order.
Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection Page 48
