13
Lift liked soft clothing. These supple Azish coat and robes were the wardrobe equivalent of silky pudding. It was good to remember that life wasn’t only about scratchy things. Sometimes it was about soft pillows, fluffy cake. Nice words. Mothers.
The world couldn’t be completely bad when it had soft clothes. This outfit was big for her, but that was okay. She liked it loose. She snuggled into the robes, sitting in the chair, crossing her hands in her lap, wearing a cap on her head. The entire costume was marked by bright colors woven in patterns that meant very important things. She was pretty sure of that, because everyone in Azir wouldn’t shut up about their patterns.
The scribe was fat. She needed, like, three shiquas to cover her. Either that or a shiqua made for a horse. Lift wouldn’t have thought that they’d give scribes so much food. What did they need so much energy for? Pens were really light.
The woman wore spectacles and kept her face covered, despite being in lands that knew Tashi. She tapped her pen against the table. “You’re from the palace in Azir.”
“Yup,” Lift said. “Friend of the emperor. I call him Gawx, but they changed his name to something else. Which is okay, because Gawx is kind of a dumb name, and you don’t want your emperor to sound dumb.” She cocked her head. “Can’t stop that if he starts talking though.”
On the ground beside her, Wyndle groaned softly.
“Did you know,” Lift said, leaning in to the scribe, “that they’ve got someone who picks his nose for him?”
“Young lady, I believe you are wasting my time.”
“That’s pretty insulting,” Lift said, sitting up straight in her seat, “considering how little you people seem to do around here.”
It was true. This whole building was full of scribes rushing this way and that, carrying piles of paper to one windowless alcove or another. They even had this spren that hung out here, one Lift had only seen a couple of times. It looked like little ripples in the air, like a raindrop in a pond—only without the rain, and without the pond. Wyndle called them concentrationspren.
Anyway, they had so much starvin’ paper in the place that they needed parshmen to cart it about for them! One passed in the hallway outside, a woman carrying a large box of papers. Those would be hauled to one of a billion scribes who sat at tables, surrounded by blinking spanreeds. Wyndle said they were answering inquiries from around the world, passing information.
The scribe with Lift was a slightly more important one. Lift had gotten into the room by doing as Wyndle suggested: not talking. The viziers did that kind of thing too. Nodding, not saying anything. She’d presented the card, where she’d sketched the words that Wyndle had formed for her with vines.
The people at the front had been intimidated enough to lead her through the hallways to this room, which was larger than others—but it still didn’t have any windows. The wall had a brownish yellow stain on the white paint though, and you could pretend it was sunlight.
On the other wall was a shelf that held a really long rack of spanreeds. A few Azish tapestries hung at the back. This scribe was some kind of liaison with the government over in Azir.
Once in the room though, Lift had been forced to talk. She couldn’t avoid that anymore. She just needed to be persuasive.
“What unfortunate person,” the large scribe asked, “did you mug to get that clothing?”
“Like I’d take it off someone while they were wearing it,” Lift said, rolling her eyes. “Look. Just pull out one of those glowing pens and write to the palace. Then we can get on to the important stuff. My Voidbringer says you got tons of papers in here we’re gonna have to look through.”
The woman stood up. Lift could practically hear her chair breathe a sigh of relief. The woman pointed toward the door dismissively, but at that moment a lesser scribe—spindly, and wearing a yellow shiqua and a strange brown and yellow cap—entered and whispered in the woman’s ear.
She looked displeased. The newcomer shrugged awkwardly, then hurried back out. The fat woman turned to eye Lift. “Give me the names of the viziers you know in the palace.”
“Well, there’s Dalky—she’s got a funny nose, like a spigot. And Big A, I can’t say his real name. It’s got those choking sounds in it. And Daddy Sag-butt, he’s not really a vizier. They call him a scion, which is a different kind of important. Oh! And Fat Lips! She’s in charge of them. She doesn’t really have fat lips, but she hates it when I call her that.”
The woman stared at Lift. Then she turned and walked to the door. “Wait here.” She stepped outside.
Lift leaned over toward the ground. “How’m I doin’?”
“Terribly,” Wyndle said.
“Yeah. I noticed.”
“It’s almost as if,” Wyndle said, “it would have been useful to learn how to talk politely, like the viziers kept telling you.”
“Blah blah,” Lift said, going to the door and listening. Outside, she could faintly hear the scribes talking.
“… matches the description given by the captain of the immigration watch to search for in the city…” one of them said. “She showed up right here! We’ve sent to the captain, who luckily is here for her debriefing…”
“Damnation,” Lift whispered, pulling back. “They’re on to us, Voidbringer.”
“I should never have helped you with this insane idea!”
Lift crossed the room to the racks of spanreeds. They were all labeled. “Get over here and tell me which one we need.”
Wyndle grew up the wall and sent vines across the nameplates. “My, my. These are important reeds. Let’s see … third one over, it will go to the royal palace scribes.”
“Great,” Lift said, grabbing it and scrambling onto the table. She set it into the right spot on the board—she’d seen this done tons of times—and twisted the ruby on the top of the reed. It was answered immediately; palace scribes weren’t often away from their reeds. They’d sooner give up their fingers.
Lift grabbed the spanreed and placed it against the paper. “Uh…”
“Oh, for Cultivation’s sake,” Wyndle said. “You didn’t pay attention at all, did you?”
“Nope.”
“Tell me what you want to say.”
She said it out, and he again made vines grow across the table in the right shapes. Pen gripped in her fist, she copied the words, one stupid letter at a time. It took forever. Writing was ridiculous. Couldn’t people just talk? Why invent a way where you didn’t have to actually see people to tell them what to do?
This is Lift, she wrote. Tell Fat Lips I need her. I’m in trouble. And somebody get Gawx. If he’s not having his nose picked right—
The door opened and Lift yelped, twisting the ruby and scrambling off the table.
Beyond the door was a large gathering of people. Five scribes, including the fat one, and three guards. One was the woman who ran the guard post into the city.
Storms, Lift thought. That was fast.
She ducked toward them.
“Careful!” the guard shouted. “She’s slippery!”
Lift made herself awesome, but the guard shoved the scribes into the room and started pushing the door shut behind her. Lift got between their legs, Slick and sliding easily, but slammed right into the door as it closed.
The guard lunged for her. Lift yelped, coating herself with awesomeness so that when she got grabbed, her wide-sleeved Azish coat came off, leaving her in a robelike skirt with trousers underneath, and then her normal shirts.
She scuttled across the ground, but the room wasn’t large. She tried to scramble around the perimeter, but the guard captain was right on her.
“Mistress!” Wyndle cried. “Oh, mistress. Don’t get stabbed! Are you listening? Avoid getting hit by anything sharp! Or blunt, actually!”
Lift growled as the other guards slipped in, then quickly shut the door. One prowled around on either side of the room.
She dodged one way, then the other, then punched at the shelf wit
h the spanreeds, causing the scribe to scream as several toppled over.
Lift bolted for the door. The guard captain tackled her, and another piled on top of her.
Lift squirmed, making herself awesome, squeezing through their fingers. She just had to—
“Tashi,” a scribe whispered. “God of Gods and Binder of the World!” Awespren, like a ring of blue smoke, burst out around her head.
Lift popped out of the grips of the guards, stepping up to stand on one of their backs, which gave her a good view of the desk. The spanreed was writing.
“Took them long enough,” she said, then hopped off the guards and sat in the chair.
The guard stood up behind her, cursing.
“Stop, Captain!” the fat scribe said. She looked at the spindly scribe in yellow. “Go get another spanreed to the Azish palace. Get two! We need confirmation.”
“For what?” the scribe said, walking to the desk. The guard captain joined them, reading what the pen wrote.
Then, slowly, all three looked up at Lift with wide eyes.
“‘To whom it may concern,’” Wyndle read, spreading his vines up onto the table over the paper. “‘It is decreed that I—Prime Aqasix Yanagawn the First, emperor of all Makabak—proclaim that the young woman known as Lift is to be shown every courtesy and measure of respect.
“‘You will obey her as you would myself, and bill to the imperial account any charges that might be incurred by her … foray in your city. What follows is a description of the woman, and two questions only she can answer, as proof of authentication. But know this—if she is harmed or impeded in any way, you will know imperial wrath.’”
“Thanks, Gawx,” Lift said, then looked up at the scribes and guards. “That means you gotta do what I say!”
“And … what is it you want?” the fat scribe asked.
“Depends,” Lift said. “What were you going to have for lunch today?”
14
Three hours later, Lift sat in the center of the fat scribe’s desk, eating pancakes with her hands and wearing the spindly scribe’s hat.
A swarm of lesser scribes searched through reports on the ground in front of her, piles of books scattered about like broken crab shells after a fine feast. The fat scribe stood beside the desk, reading to Lift from the spanreed that wrote Gawx’s end of their conversation. The woman had finally pulled down her face wrap, and it turned out she was pretty and a lot younger than Lift had assumed.
“‘I’m worried, Lift,’” the fat scribe read to her. “‘Everyone here is worried. There are reports coming in from the west now. Steen and Alm have seen the new storm. It’s happening like the Alethi warlord said it would. A storm of red lightning, blowing the wrong direction.’”
The woman looked up at Lift. “He’s right about that, um…”
“Say it,” Lift said.
“Your Pancakefulness.”
“Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?”
“His Imperial Excellency is correct about the arrival of a strange new storm. We have independent confirmation of that from contacts in Shinovar and Iri. An enormous storm with red lightning, blowing in from the west.”
“And the monsters?” Lift said. “Things with red eyes in the darkness?”
“Everything is in chaos,” the scribe said—her name was Ghenna. “We’ve had trouble getting straight answers. We had some inkling of this, from reports on the east coast when the storm struck there, before blowing into the ocean. Most people thought those reports exaggerated, and that the storm would blow itself out. Now that it has rounded the planet and struck in the west … Well, the prince is reportedly preparing a diktat of emergency for the entire country.”
Lift looked at Wyndle, who was coiled on the desk beside her. “Voidbringers,” he said, voice small. “It’s happening. Sweet virtue … the Desolations have returned.…”
Ghenna went back to reading the spanreed from Gawx. “‘This is going to be a disaster, Lift. Nobody is ready for a storm that blows the wrong direction. Almost as bad, though, are the Alethi. How do the Alethi know so much about it? Did that warlord of theirs summon it somehow?’” Ghenna lowered the paper.
Lift chewed on her pancake. It was a dense variety, with mashed-up paste in the center that was too sticky and salty. The one beside it was covered in little crunchy seeds. Neither were as good as the other two varieties she’d tried over the last few hours.
“When’s it going to hit?” Lift asked.
“The storm? It’s hard to judge, but it’s slower than a highstorm, by most reports. It might arrive in Azir and Tashikk in three or four hours.”
“Write this to Gawx,” Lift said around bites of pancake. “‘They got good food here. These pancakes, with lots of variety. One has sugar in the center.’”
The scribe hesitated.
“Write it,” Lift said. “Or I’ll make you call me more silly names.”
Ghenna sighed, but complied.
“‘Lift,’” she read as the spanreed wrote the next line from Gawx, who undoubtedly had about fifteen viziers and scions standing around telling him what to say, then writing it when he agreed. “‘This isn’t the time for idle conversation about food.’”
“Sure it is,” Lift replied. “We gotta remember. Storm might be coming, but people will still need to eat. The world ends tomorrow, but the day after that, people are going to ask what’s for breakfast. That’s your job.”
“‘And what about the stories of something worse?’” he wrote back. “‘The Alethi are warning about parshmen, and I’m doing what I can on such short notice. But what of the Voidbringers they say are in the storms?’”
Lift looked at the room packed with scribes. “I’m workin’ on that part,” she said. As Ghenna wrote it, Lift stood up, wiping her hands on her fancy robes. “Hey, all you smart people. Whatcha found?”
The scribes looked up at her. “Mistress,” one said, “we don’t have any idea what we’re even looking for.”
“Strange stuff!”
“What kind of ‘strange stuff’?” asked the scribe in yellow, the spindly fellow who looked silly and balding without a hat. “Unusual things happen every day in the city! Do you want the report of the man who claims his pig was born with two heads? What about the man who says he saw the shape of Yaezir in the lichen on his wall? The woman who had a premonition her sister would fall, and then she fell?”
“Nah,” Lift said. “That’s normal strange.”
“What’s abnormal strange, then?” he asked, exasperated.
Lift started glowing. She called upon her awesomeness, so much that it started radiating out of her skin, like she was a starvin’ sphere.
Beside her, the seeds on top of her uneaten pancake sprouted, growing long, twisting vines that curled around one another and spat out leaves.
“Somethin’ like this,” Lift said, then glanced to the side. Great. She’d ruined the pancake.
The scribes stared at her in awe, so she clapped loudly, sending them back to their work. Wyndle sighed, and she knew what he must be thinking. Three hours, and nothing relevant so far. He’d been right—yeah, they wrote stuff down in this city. That was the problem. They wrote it all down.
“There’s another message from the emperor for you,” Ghenna said. “Um, Your Pancake … Storms that sounds stupid.”
Lift grinned, then looked over at the paper. The words were written in a flowing, elegant hand. Probably Fat Lips.
“‘Lift,’” Ghenna read. “‘Are you going to come back? We miss you here.’”
“Even Fat Lips?” Lift asked.
“‘Vizier Noura misses you too. Lift, this is your home now. You don’t need to live on the streets anymore.’”
“What am I supposed to do there, if I do come back?”
“‘Anything you want,’” Gawx wrote. “‘I promise.’”
That was the problem.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do yet,” she said, feeling strangely … isolated, despite
the roomful of people. “We’ll see.”
Ghenna eyed her at that. She apparently thought that what the emperor of Azir wanted, he should get—and little Reshi girls shouldn’t make a habit of denying him.
The door cracked open, and the guard captain from the city watch peeked in. Lift leaped off the desk, running over to her, then hopping up to see what she was holding. A report. Great. More words.
“What did you find?” Lift said eagerly.
“You are right,” the captain said. “One of my colleagues in the quarter’s watch has been watching the Tashi’s Light Orphanage. The woman who runs it—”
“The Stump,” Lift said. “Meanest thing. Eats the bones of children for afternoon snack. Once had a staring contest with a painting and won.”
“—is being investigated. She’s running some kind of money-laundering scheme, though the details are confusing. She’s been seen trading spheres for ones of lesser value, a practice that would end with her bankrupt, if she didn’t have another income scheme. The report says she takes money from criminal enterprises as donations, then secretly transfers them to other groups, after taking a cut, to help confuse the trail of spheres. There’s more too. In any case, the children are a front to keep attention away from her practices.”
“I told you,” Lift said, snatching the paper. “You should arrest her and spend all her money on soup. Give me half, for tellin’ you where to look, and I won’t tell nobody.”
The guard raised her eyebrows.
“We can write down that we did it, if you want,” Lift said. “That’ll make it official.”
“I’ll ignore the suggestions of bribery, coercion, extortion, and state embezzlement,” the captain said. “As for the orphanage, I don’t have jurisdiction over it, but I assure you my colleagues will be moving against this … Stump soon.”
“Good enough,” Lift said, climbing back up on the desk before her legion of scribes. “So what have you found? Anybody glowing, like they’re some stormin’ benevolent force for good or some such crem?”