Somewhere distant in the multistory orphanage, she heard thumping. Firm, booted feet on the wooden floors of the second story.
Lift drew in her awesomeness, and started to glow. Light rose from her arms like steam from a hot griddle. It wasn’t terribly bright, but in that pure-black room it was enough to show her the children she had heard. They grew quiet, watching her with awe.
“Darkness!” Lift shouted. “The one they call Nin, or Nale! Nakku, the Judge! I’m here.”
The thumping above stopped. Lift crossed the room, stepping into the next one and looking up a stairwell. “It’s me!” she shouted up it. “The one you tried—and failed—to kill in Azir.”
The door to the amphitheater rattled as wind shook it, like someone was outside trying to get in. The footfalls started again, and Darkness appeared at the top of the stairs, holding an amethyst sphere in one hand, a glittering Shardblade in the other. The violet light lit his face from below, outlining his chin and cheeks, but leaving his eyes dark. They seemed hollow, like the sockets of the creature Lift had met outside.
“I am surprised to see you accept judgment,” Darkness said. “I had thought you would remain in presumed safety.”
“Yeah,” Lift called. “You know, the day the Almighty was handin’ out brains to folks? I went out for flatbread that day.”
“You come here during a highstorm,” Darkness said. “You are trapped in here with me, and I know of your crimes in this city.”
“But I got back by the time the Almighty was givin’ out looks,” Lift called. “What kept you?”
The insult appeared to have no effect, though it was one of her favorites. Darkness seemed to flow like smoke as he started down the stairs, footsteps growing softer, uniform rippling in an unseen wind. Storms, but he looked so official in that outfit with the long cuffs, the crisp jacket. Like the very incarnation of law.
Lift scrambled to the right, away from the children, deeper into the orphanage’s ground floor. She smelled spices in this direction, and let her nose guide her into a dark kitchen.
“Up the wall,” she ordered Wyndle, who grew along it beside the doorway. Lift snatched a tuber from the counter, then grabbed on to Wyndle and climbed. She quieted her awesomeness, becoming dark as she reached the place where wall met ceiling, clinging to Wyndle’s thin vines.
Darkness entered below, looking right, then left. He didn’t look up, so when he stepped forward, Lift dropped behind him.
Darkness immediately spun, whipping that Shardblade around with a single-handed grip. It sheared through the wall of the doorway and passed a finger’s width in front of Lift as she threw herself backward.
She hit the floor and burst alight with awesomeness, Slicking her backside so she slid across the floor away from him, eventually colliding with the wall just below the steps. She untangled her limbs and started climbing the steps on all fours.
“You’re an insult to the order you would claim,” Darkness said, striding after her.
“Sure, probably,” Lift called. “Storms, I’m an insult to my own self most days.”
“Of course you are,” Darkness said, reaching the bottom of the steps. “That sentence has no meaning.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. A totally rational and reasonable way to fight a demigod. He didn’t seem to mind, but then, he wouldn’t. He had a lump of crusty earwax for a heart. So tragic.
The second floor of the orphanage was filled with smaller rooms, to her left. To her right, another flight of steps led farther upward. Lift dashed left, choking down the uncooked longroot, looking for the Stump. Had Darkness gotten to her? Several rooms held bunks for the children. So the Stump didn’t make them sleep in that one big room; they’d probably gathered there because of the storm.
“Mistress!” Wyndle said. “Do you have a plan!”
“I can make Stormlight,” Lift said, puffing and drawing a little awesomeness as she checked the room across the hall.
“Yes. Baffling, but true.”
“He can’t. And spheres are rare, ’cuz nobody expected the storm that came in the middle of the Weeping. So…”
“Ah … Maybe we wear him down!”
“Can’t fight him,” Lift said. “Seems the best alternative. Might have to sneak down and get more food though.” Where was the Stump? No sign of her hiding in these rooms, but also no sign of her murdered corpse.
Lift ducked back into the hallway. Darkness dominated the other end, near the steps. He walked slowly toward her, Shardblade held in a strange reverse grip, with the dangerous end pointing out behind him.
Lift quieted her awesomeness and stopped glowing. She needed to run him out, and maybe make him think she was running low, so he wouldn’t conserve.
“I am sorry I must do this,” Darkness said. “Once I would have welcomed you as a sister.”
“No,” Lift said. “You’re not really sorry, are you? Can you even feel something like sorrow?”
He stopped in the hallway, sphere still gripped before him for light. He actually seemed to be considering her question.
Well, time to move then. She couldn’t afford to get cornered, and sometimes that meant charging at the guy with a starvin’ Shardblade. He set himself in a swordsman’s stance as she dashed toward him, then stepped forward to swing.
Lift shoved herself to the side and Slicked herself, dodging his sword and sliding along the ground to his left. She got past him, but something about it felt too easy. Darkness watched her with careful, discerning eyes. He’d expected to miss her, she was sure of it.
He spun and advanced on her again, stepping quickly to prevent her from getting down the steps to the ground floor. This positioned her near the steps going upward. Darkness seemed to want her to go that direction, so she resisted, backing up along the hallway. Unfortunately, there was only one room on this end, the one above the kitchen. She kicked open the door, looking in. The Stump’s bedroom, with a dresser and bedding on the floor. No sign of the Stump herself.
Darkness continued to advance. “You are right. It seems I have finally released myself from the last vestiges of guilt I once felt at doing my duty. Honor has suffused me, changed me. It has been a long time coming.”
“Great. So you’re like … some kind of emotionless spren now.”
“Hey,” Wyndle said. “That’s insulting.”
“No,” Darkness said, unable to hear Wyndle. “I’m merely a man, perfected.” He waved toward her with his sphere. “Men need light, child. Alone we are in darkness, our movements random, based on subjective, changeable minds. But light is pure, and does not change based on our daily whims. To feel guilt at following a code with precision is wasted emotion.”
“And other emotion isn’t, in your opinion?”
“There are many useful emotions.”
“Which you totally feel, all the time.”
“Of course I do.…” He trailed off, and again seemed to be considering what she’d said. He cocked his head.
Lift jumped forward, Slicking herself again. He was guarding the way down, but she needed to slip past him anyway and head back below. Grab some food, keep him moving up and down until he ran out of power. She anticipated him swinging the sword, and as he did, she shoved herself to the side, her entire body Slick except the palm of her hand, for steering.
Darkness dropped his sphere and moved with sudden, unexpected speed, bursting afire with Stormlight. He dropped his Shardblade, which puffed away, and seized a knife from his belt. As Lift passed, he slammed it down and caught her clothing.
Storms! A normal wound, her awesomeness would have healed. If he’d tried to grab her, she’d have been too Slick, and would have wriggled away. But his knife bit into the wood and caught her by the tail of her overshirt, jerking her to a stop. Slicked as she was, she just kind of bounced and slid back toward him.
He put his hand to the side, summoning his Blade again as Lift frantically scrambled to free herself. The knife had sunk in deeply, and he kept one hand
on it. Storms, he was strong! Lift bit his arm, to no effect. She struggled to pull off the overshirt, Slicking herself but not it.
His Shardblade appeared, and he raised it. Lift floundered, half blinded by her shirt, which she had halfway up over her head, obscuring most of her view. But she could feel that Blade descending on her—
Something went smack, and Darkness grunted.
Lift peeked out and saw the Stump standing on the steps upward, holding a large length of wood. Darkness shook his head, trying to clear it, and the Stump hit him again.
“Leave my kids alone, you monster,” she growled at him. Water dripped from her. She’d taken her spheres up to the top of the building, to charge them. Of course that was where she’d been. She’d mentioned it earlier.
She raised the length of wood above her head. Darkness sighed, then swiped with his Blade, cutting her weapon in half. He pulled his dagger from the ground, freeing Lift. Yes!
Then he kicked her, sending her sliding down the hallway on her own Slickness, completely out of control.
“No!” Lift said, withdrawing her Slickness and rolling to a stop. Her vision shook as she saw Darkness turn on the Stump and grab her by the throat, then pull her off the steps and throw her to the ground. The old lady cracked as she hit, and fell limp, motionless.
He stabbed her then—not with his Blade, but with his knife. Why? Why not finish her?
He turned toward Lift, shadowed by the sphere he’d dropped, more a monster in that moment than the Sleepless thing Lift had seen in the alleyway.
“Still alive,” he said to Lift. “But bleeding and unconscious.” He kicked his sphere away. “She is too new to know how to feed on Stormlight in this state. You I’ll have to impale and wait until you are truly dead. This one though, she can just bleed out. It’s happening already.”
I can heal her, Lift thought, desperate.
He knew that. He was baiting her.
She no longer had time to run him out of Stormlight. Pointing the Shardblade toward Lift, he was now truly just a silhouette. Darkness. True Darkness.
“I don’t know what to do,” Lift said.
“Say the Words,” Wyndle said from beside her.
“I’ve said them, in my heart.” But what good would they do?
Too few people listened to anything other than their own thoughts. But what good would listening do her here? All she could hear was the sound of the storm outside, lightning making the stones vibrate.
Thunder.
A new storm.
I can’t defeat him. I’ve got to change him.
Listen.
Lift scrambled toward Darkness, summoning all of her remaining awesomeness. Darkness stepped forward, knife in one hand, Shardblade in the other. She got near to him, and again he guarded the steps downward. He obviously expected her either to go that way, or to stop at the Stump’s unconscious body and try to heal her.
Lift did neither. She slid past them both, then turned and scrambled up the steps the Stump had come down a short time earlier.
Darkness cursed, swinging for her, but missing. She reached the third floor, and he charged after her. “You’re leaving her to die,” he warned, giving chase as Lift found a smaller set of steps that led upward. Onto the roof, hopefully. Had to get him to follow …
A trapdoor in the ceiling barred her way, but she flung it open. She emerged into Damnation itself.
Terrible winds, broken by that awful red lightning. A horrific tempest of stinging rain. The “rooftop” was just the flat plain above the city, and Lift didn’t spot the Stump’s sphere cage. The rain was too blinding, the winds too terrible. She stepped from the trapdoor, but had to immediately huddle down, clinging to the rocks. Wyndle formed handholds for her, whimpering, holding her tightly.
Darkness emerged into the storm, rising from the hole in the clifftop. He saw her, then stepped forward, hefting his Shardblade like an axe.
He swung.
Lift screamed. She let go of Wyndle’s vines and raised both hands above herself.
Wyndle sighed a long, soft sigh, melting away, transforming into a silvery length of metal.
She met Darkness’s descending Blade with her own weapon. Not a sword. Lift didn’t know crem about swords. Her weapon was just a silvery rod. It glowed in the darkness, and it blocked Darkness’s blow, though his attack left her arms quivering.
Ow, Wyndle’s voice said in her head.
Rain beat around them, and crimson lightning blasted down behind Darkness, leaving stark afterimages in Lift’s eyes.
“You think you can fight me, child?” he growled, holding his Blade against her rod. “I who have lived immortal lives? I who have slain demigods and survived Desolations? I am the Herald of Justice.”
“I will listen,” Lift shouted, “to those who have been ignored!”
“What?” Darkness demanded.
“I heard what you said, Darkness! You were trying to prevent the Desolation. Look behind you! Deny what you’re seeing!”
Lightning broke the air and howls rose in the city. Across the farmlands, the ruby glare revealed a huddled clump of people. A sorry, sad group. The poor parshmen who had been evicted.
The red lightning seemed to linger with them.
Their eyes were glowing.
“No,” Nale said. The storm appeared to withdraw, briefly, around his words. “An … isolated event. Parshmen who had … who had survived with their forms…”
“You’ve failed,” Lift shouted. “It’s come.”
Nale looked up at the thunderheads, rumbling with power, red light ceaselessly roiling within.
In that moment it seemed, strangely, that something within him emerged. It was stupid of her to think that with everything happening—the rain, the winds, the red lightning—she could see a difference in his eyes. But she swore that she could.
He seemed to focus, like a person waking up from a daze. His sword dropped from his fingers and puffed away into mist.
Then he slumped to his knees. “Storms. Jezrien … Ishar … It is true. I’ve failed.” He bowed his head.
And he started weeping.
Puffing, feeling clammy and pained by the rain, Lift lowered her rod.
“I failed weeks ago,” Nale said. “I knew it then. Oh, God. God the Almighty. It has returned!”
“I’m sorry,” Lift said.
He looked to her, face lit red by the continuous lightning, tears mixing with the rain.
“You actually are,” he said, then felt at his face. “I wasn’t always like this. I am getting worse, aren’t I? It’s true.”
“I don’t know,” Lift said. And then, by instinct, she did something she would never have thought possible.
She hugged Darkness.
He clung to her, this monster, this callous thing that had once been a Herald. He clung to her and wept in the storm. Then, with a crash of thunder, he pushed away from her. He stumbled on the slick rock, blown by the winds, then started to glow.
He shot into the dark sky and vanished. Lift heaved herself to her feet, and rushed down to heal the Stump.
20
“So you don’t hafta be a sword,” Lift said. She sat on the Stump’s dresser, ’cuz the woman didn’t have a proper desk for her to claim.
“A sword is traditional,” Wyndle said.
“But you don’t hafta be one.”
“Obviously not,” he said, sounding offended. “I must be metal. There is … a connection between our power, when condensed, and metal. That said, I’ve heard stories of spren becoming bows. I don’t know how they’d make the string. Perhaps the Radiant carried their own string?”
Lift nodded, but she was barely listening. Who cared about bows and swords and stuff? This opened all kinds of more interesting possibilities.
“I do wonder what I’d look like as a sword,” Wyndle said.
“You went around all day yesterday complainin’ about me hitting someone with you!”
“I don’t want to be a sword t
hat one swings, obviously. But there is something stately about a Shardblade, something to be displayed. I would make a fine one, I should think. Very regal.”
A knock came at the door downstairs, and Lift perked up. Unfortunately, it didn’t sound like the scribe. She heard the Stump talking to someone who had a soft voice. The door closed shortly thereafter, and the Stump climbed the steps and entered Lift’s room, carrying a large plate of pancakes.
Lift’s stomach growled, and she stood up on the dresser. “Now, those are your pancakes, right?”
The Stump, looking as wizened as ever, stopped in place. “What does it matter?”
“It matters a ton,” Lift said. “Those aren’t for the kids. You was gonna eat those yourself, right?”
“A dozen pancakes.”
“Yes.”
“Sure,” the Stump said, rolling her eyes. “We’ll pretend I was going to eat them all myself.” She dropped them onto the dresser beside Lift, who started stuffing her face.
The Stump folded her bony arms, glancing over her shoulder.
“Who was at the door?” Lift asked.
“A mother. Come to insist, ashamed, that she wanted her child back.”
“No kidding?” Lift said around bites of pancake. “Mik’s mom actually came back for him?”
“Obviously she knew her son had been faking his illness. It was part of a scam to…” The Stump trailed off.
Huh, Lift thought. The mom couldn’t have known that Mik had been healed—it had only happened yesterday, and the city was a mess following the storm. Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad here as it could have been. Storms blowing one way or the other, in Yeddaw it didn’t matter.
She was starvin’ for information about the rest of the empire though. Seemed everything had gone wrong again, just in a new way this time.
Still, it was nice to hear a little good news. Mik’s mom actually came back. Guess it does happen once in a while.
“I’ve been healing the children,” the Stump said. She fingered her shiqua, which had been stabbed clean through by Darkness. Though she’d washed it, her blood had stained the cloth. “You’re sure about this?”