Then the assassin passed by. He stopped, then looked in her direction, hand resting on his sword hilt.
Lift’s breath caught. Don’t become awesome. Don’t become awesome! If she used her powers in these shadows, she’d glow and he’d spot her for sure.
All she could do was crouch there as the assassin narrowed his eyes—strangely shaped, like they were too big or something. He reached to a pouch at his belt, then tossed something small and glowing into the hallway. A sphere.
Lift panicked, uncertain if she should scramble away, grow awesome, or just remain still. Fearspren boiled up around her, lit by the sphere as it rolled near her, and she knew—meeting the assassin’s gaze—that he could see her.
He pulled his sword out of the sheath a fraction of an inch. Black smoke poured from the blade, dropping toward the floor and pooling at his feet. Lift felt a sudden, terrible nausea.
The assassin studied her, then snapped the sword into its sheath again. Remarkably, he left, following after the other two, that faint afterimage trailing behind him. He didn’t speak a word, and his footfalls on the carpet were almost silent—a faint breeze compared to the clomping of the other two, which Lift could still hear farther down the corridor.
In moments, all three of them had entered the stairwell and were gone.
“Storms!” Lift said, flopping backward on the carpet. “Storming Mother of the World and Father of Storms above! He about made me die of fright.”
“I know!” Wyndle said. “Did you hear me not-whimpering?”
“No.”
“I was too frightened to even make a sound!”
Lift sat up, then mopped the sweat from her brow. “Wow. Okay, well … that was something. What did they talk about?”
“Oh!” Wyndle said, as if he’d forgotten completely about his mission. “Mistress, they had an entire study done! Research for weeks to identify oddities in the city.”
“Great! What did they determine?”
“I don’t know.”
Lift flopped back down.
“They talked over a whole lot of things I didn’t understand,” Wyndle said. “But mistress, they know who the person is! They’re heading there right now. To perform an execution.” He poked at her with a vine. “So … maybe we should follow?”
“Yeah, okay,” Lift said. “Guess we can do that. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?”
16
Turned out it was way hard.
She couldn’t get too close, as the hallways had grown eerily empty. And there were tons of branching paths, with little side hallways and rooms everywhere. Mix that with the fact that there weren’t many spheres on the walls, and it was a real trick to follow the three.
She did it though. She followed them through the whole starvin’ place until they reached some doors out into the city. Lift managed to slip out a window near the doors, falling among some plants beside the stairs outside. She huddled there as the three people she’d been tailing stepped out onto the landing overlooking the city.
Storms, but it felt good to be breathing the open air again, though clouds had moved in front of the setting sun. The whole city felt chilly now. In shadow.
And it was empty.
Before, people had been swarming up and down the steps and ramps into the Grand Indishipium. Now they held only a few last-minute stragglers, and even those were rapidly vanishing as they ducked through doorways, seeking shelter.
The assassin turned eyes toward the west. “The storm is coming,” he said.
“All the more reason to be quick,” the female apprentice said. She took a sphere from her pocket, then held it up before her and sucked in the light. It streamed into her, and she started to glow with awesomeness.
Then she rose into the air.
She rose into the starvin’ air itself!
They can fly? Lift thought. Why in Damnation can’t I fly?
Her companion rose up beside her.
“Coming, assassin?” The woman looked down toward the landing and the man wearing white.
“I’ve danced that storm once before,” he whispered. “On the day I died. No.”
“You’re never going to make it into the order at this rate.”
He remained silent. The two floating people eyed each other, then the man shrugged. The two of them rose higher, then shot out across the city, avoiding the inconvenience of traveling through the trenches.
They could storming fly.
“You’re the one he’s hunting for, aren’t you?” the assassin said softly.
Lift winced. Then she stood up and peeked over the side of the landing where the assassin stood. He turned and looked at her.
“I ain’t nobody,” Lift said.
“He kills nobodies.”
“And you don’t?”
“I kill kings.”
“Which is totally better.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, then squatted down, sheathed sword held across his shoulders, with hands draped forward. “No. It is not. I hear their screams, their demands, whenever I see shadow. They haunt me, scramble for my mind, wishing to claim my sanity. I fear they’ve already won, that the man to whom you speak can no longer distinguish what is the voice of a mad raving and what is not.”
“Oooookay,” Lift said. “But you didn’t attack me.”
“No. The sword likes you.”
“Great. I like the sword too.” She glanced at the sky. “Um … do you know where they’re going?”
“The report described a man who has been spotted vanishing by several people in the city. He will turn down an alleyway, then it will be empty when someone else follows. People have claimed to see his face twisting to become the face of another. My companions believe he is what is called a Lightweaver, and so must be stopped.”
“Is that legal?”
“Nin has procured an injunction from the prince, forbidding any use of Surgebinding in the country, save that specifically authorized.” He studied Lift. “I believe the Herald’s experiences with you were what taught him to go straight to the top, rather than dancing about with local authorities.”
Lift traced the direction the other two had gone. That sky was darkening further, an ominous sign.
“He really is wrong, isn’t he?” Lift said. “That one you say is a Herald. He says the Voidbringers aren’t back, but they are.”
“The new storm reveals it,” the assassin said. “But … who am I to say? I am mad. Then again, I think that the Herald is too. It makes me agree that the minds of men cannot be trusted. That we need something greater to follow, to guide. But not my stone … What good is seeking a greater law, when that law can be the whims of a man either stupid or ruthless?”
“Oooookay,” Lift said. “Um, you can be crazy all you want. It’s fine. I like crazy people. It’s real funny when they lick walls and eat rocks and stuff. But before you start dancing, could you tell me where those other two are going?”
“You won’t be able to outrun them.”
“So no harm in telling me, right?”
The assassin smiled, though the emotion didn’t seem to reach his eyes. “The man who can vanish, this presumed Lightweaver, is an old philosopher well known in the immigrant quarter. He sits in a small amphitheater most days, talking to any who will listen. It is near—”
“—the Tashi’s Light Orphanage. Storms. I shoulda guessed. He’s almost as weird as you are.”
“Will you fight them, little Radiant?” the assassin asked. “You, alone, against two journeyman Skybreakers? A Herald waiting in the wings?”
She glanced at Wyndle. “I don’t know. But I have to go anyway, don’t I?”
17
Lift engaged her awesomeness. She dug deeply into the power, summoning strength, speed, and Slickness. Darkness’s people didn’t seem to care if they were witnessed flying about, so Lift decided she didn’t care about being seen either.
She leaped away from the assassin, Slicking her feet, then landed on the flat ramp beside
the steps that wound up the outside of the building. She intended to shoot down toward the city, sliding along the side of the steps.
Of course, she lasted about a second before her feet shot out in two different directions and she slammed onto the stones crotch-first. She cringed at the flash of pain, but didn’t have time for much more, as she fell into a tumble before dropping right off the side of the tall steps.
She crunched down to the bottom a few moments later, landing in a humiliated heap. Her awesomeness prevented her from getting too hurt, so she ignored Wyndle’s cries of worry as he climbed down the wall to her. Instead she twisted about, scrambling up onto her hands and knees. Then she took off running toward the slot that would lead her to the orphanage.
She didn’t have time to be bad at this! Normal running wouldn’t be fast enough. Her enemies were literally flying.
She could see, in her mind’s eye, how it should be. The entire city sloped away from this central rise with the Grand Indigestion. She should be able to hit a skid, feet Slick, zipping along the mostly empty street. She should be able to slap her hands against walls she passed, outcroppings, buildings, gaining speed with each push.
She should be like an arrow in flight, pointed, targeted, unchecked.
She could see it. But couldn’t do it. She threw herself into another skid, but again her feet slipped out from under her. This time they went backward and she fell forward, knocking her face against the stone. She saw a flash of white. When she looked up, the empty street wavered in front of her, but her awesomeness soon healed her.
The shadowed street was a major thoroughfare, but it sat forlorn and empty. People had pulled in awnings and street carts, but had left refuse. Those walls crowded her. Everyone knew to stay out of canyons around a storm, or you’d be swept up in floodwaters. They’d gone and built an entire starvin’ city in direct, flagrant violation of that.
Behind her in the distance, the sky rumbled. Before that storm hit, a poor, crazy old man was going to get a visit from two self-righteous assassins. She needed to stop it. She had to stop it. She couldn’t explain why.
Okay, Lift. Be calm. You can be awesome. You’ve always been awesome, and now you’ve got this extra awesomeness. Go. You can do it.
She growled and threw herself into a run, then twisted sideways and slid. She could and would—
This time, she clipped the corner of a wall at an intersection and ended up sprawled on the ground, with feet toward the sky. She knocked her head back against the ground in frustration.
“Mistress?” Wyndle said, curling up to her. “Oh, I do not like the sound of that storm.…”
She got up—feeling ashamed and anything but awesome—and decided to just run the rest of the way. Her powers did let her run at speed without getting tired, but she could feel that it wasn’t going to be enough.
It seemed like ages before she stumbled to a stop outside the orphanage, exhaustionspren swirling around her. She’d run out of awesomeness a short time before arriving, and her stomach growled in protest. The amphitheater was empty, of course. Orphanage to her left, built into the solid stones, seats of the little amphitheater in front of her. And beyond it the dark alleyway, wooden shanties and buildings cluttering the view.
The sky had grown dark, though she didn’t know whether it was from the advent of dusk or the coming storm.
Deep within the alleyway, Lift heard a low, raw scream of pain. It sent chills up her spine.
Wyndle had been right. The assassin had been right. What was she doing? She couldn’t beat two trained and awesome soldiers. She sank down, worn out, right in the middle of the floor of the amphitheater.
“Do we go in?” Wyndle asked from beside her.
“I don’t have any power left,” Lift whispered. “I used it up running here.”
Had that alleyway always felt so … deep? With the shadows of the shanties, the draping cloths and jutting planks of wood, the place looked like an extended barricade—with only the narrowest of pathways through. It seemed like an entirely different world from the rest of the city. It was a dark and hidden realm that could exist only in shadows.
She stood up on unsteady feet, then stepped toward the alleyway.
“What are you doing?” a voice shouted.
Lift spun to find the Stump standing in the doorway of the orphanage.
“You’re supposed to go to one of the bunkers!” the woman shouted. “Idiot child.” She stalked forward and seized Lift by the arm, towing her into the orphanage. “Don’t think that just because you’re here, I’ll take care of you. There’s not room for ones like you, and don’t give me any pretense about being sick or tired. Everyone’s always pretending in order to get at what we have.”
Though she said that, she deposited Lift right inside the orphanage, then slammed the large wooden door and threw the bar down. “Be glad I looked out to see who was screaming.” She studied Lift, then sighed loudly. “Suppose you’ll want some food.”
“I have one meal left,” Lift said.
“I’ve half a mind to give it to the other children,” the Stump said. “Honestly, after a prank like that. Standing outside screaming? You should have gone to one of the bunkers. If you think that acting forlorn will earn my pity, you are sadly misguided.”
She walked off, muttering. The room here, right inside the doors, was large and open, and children sat on mats all round. A single ruby sphere lit them. The children seemed frightened, several holding to one another. One covered his ears and whimpered as thunder sounded outside.
Lift sank down onto an open mat, feeling surreal, out of place. She’d run all the way here, glowing with power, ready to face monsters that flew in the sky. But here … here she was just another orphaned urchin.
She closed her eyes, and listened to them.
“I’m frightened. Is the storm going to be long?”
“Why did everyone have to go inside?”
“I miss my mommy.”
“What about the gummers in the alley? Will they be all right?”
Their uncertainty thrummed through Lift. She’d been here. After her mother died, she’d been here. She’d been here dozens of times since, in cities all across the land. Places for forgotten children.
She’d sworn an oath to remember people like them. She hadn’t meant to. It had just kind of happened. Like everything in her life just kind of happened.
“I want control,” she whispered.
“Mistress?” Wyndle said.
“Earlier today,” she said. “You told me you didn’t believe I’d come here for any of the reasons I’d said. You asked me what I wanted.”
“I remember.”
“I want control,” she said, opening her eyes. “Not like a king or anything. I just want to be able to control it, a little. My life. I don’t want to get shoved around, by people or by fate or whatever. I just … I want it to be me who chooses.”
“I know little of the way your world works, mistress,” he said, coiling up onto the wall, then making a face that hung out beside her. “But that seems like a reasonable desire.”
“Listen to these kids talk. Do you hear them?”
“They’re scared of the storm.”
“And of the sudden call to hide. And of being alone. So uncertain…”
In the other room she could hear the Stump, talking softly to one of her older helpers. “I don’t know. It’s not the day for a highstorm. I’ll put the spheres out up top, just in case. I wish someone would tell us what was happening.”
“I don’t understand, mistress,” Wyndle said. “What is it I’m supposed to get from this observation?”
“Hush, Voidbringer,” she said, still listening. Hearing. Then, she paused and opened her eyes. She frowned and stood, crossing the room.
A boy with a scar on his face was talking to one of the other boys. He looked up at Lift. “Hey,” he said. “I know you. You saw my mom, right? Did she say when she was coming back?”
What was his nam
e again? “Mik?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Look, I don’t belong here, right? I don’t remember the last few weeks very well, but … I mean, I’m not an orphan. I’ve still got a mom.”
It was him, the boy who had been dropped off the night before. You were drooling then, Lift thought. And even at lunch, you were talking like an idiot. Storms. What did I do to you? She couldn’t heal people that were different in the head, or so she’d thought. What was the difference with him? Was it because he had a head wound, and wasn’t born this way?
She didn’t remember healing him. Storms … she said she wanted control, but she didn’t even know how to use what she had. Her race to this place proved it.
The Stump strode back in with a large plate and began handing out pancakes to the children. She got to Lift, then handed her two. “This is the last,” she said, wagging her finger.
“Thanks,” Lift mumbled as the Stump moved on. The pancakes were cold, and unfortunately of a variety she’d already tried—the ones with sweet stuff in the middle. Her favorite. Maybe the Stump wasn’t all bad.
She’s a thief and a thug, Lift reminded herself as she ate, restoring her awesomeness. She’s laundering spheres and using an orphanage as cover. But maybe even a thief and a thug could do some good along the way.
“I’m so confused,” Wyndle said. “Mistress, what are you thinking?”
She looked toward the thick door to the outside. The old man was surely dead by now. Nobody would care; likely nobody would notice. One old man, found dead in an alley after the storm.
But Lift … Lift would remember him.
“Come on,” she said. She stepped over to the door. When the Stump’s back was turned to scold a child, Lift pushed up the bar and slipped outside.
18
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