“When she isn’t, then children congregate here begging for handouts.”
“So? Isn’t that kind of the point of an orphanage?” Lift chewed on the roll. “Sleep on the rock benches? I should go steal her pillow.”
“I think you’d find her ready to deal with feisty urchin thieves.”
“She ain’t never faced me before. I’m awesome.” She looked down at the rest of her food. Of course, if she used her awesomeness, she’d just end up hungry again.
The man laughed. “They call her the Stump, because she won’t be blown by any storm. I don’t think you’ll get the best of her, little one.” He leaned in. “But I have information, if you are interested in a trade.”
Tashikki and their secrets. Lift rolled her eyes. “Ain’t got nothing left to trade.”
“Trade me your time, then. I will tell you how to get on the Stump’s good side. Maybe earn yourself a bed. In turn, you answer a question for me. Is this a deal?”
Lift cocked an eyebrow at him. “Sure. Whatever.”
“Here is my secret. The Stump has a little … hobby. She is in the business of trading spheres. An exchanging business, so to speak. Find someone who wants to trade with her, and she will handsomely reward you.”
“Trade spheres?” Lift said. “Money for money? What is the point of that?”
He shrugged. “She works hard to cover it up. So it must be important.”
“What a lame secret,” Lift said. She popped the last of the roll into her mouth, the clemabread breaking apart easily—it was almost more of a mush.
“Will you still answer my question?”
“Depends on how lame it is.”
“What body part do you feel that you are most like?” he asked. “Are you the hand, always busy doing work? Are you the mind, giving direction? Do you feel that you are more of a … leg, perhaps? Bearing up everyone else, and rarely noticed?”
“Yeah. Lame question.”
“No, no. It is of most importance. Each person, they are but a piece of something larger—some grand organism that makes up this city. This is the philosophy I am building, you see.”
Lift eyed him. Great. Angry twig running an orphanage; weird old man outside it. She dusted off her hands. “If I’m anything, I’m a nose. ’Cuz I’m filled with all kinds of weird crud, and you never know what’s gonna fall out.”
“Ah … interesting.”
“That wasn’t meant to be helpful.”
“Yes, but it was honest, which is the cornerstone of a good philosophy.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Lift hopped off the stone benches. “As fun as it was talkin’ crazy stuff with you, I got somewhere important to be.”
“You do?” Wyndle asked, rising from where he’d been coiled up on the bench beside her.
“Yup,” Lift said. “I’ve got an appointment.”
7
Lift was worried she’d be late. She’d never been good with time.
Now, she could keep the important parts straight. Sun up, sun down. Blah blah. But the divisions beyond that … well, she’d never found those to be important. Other people did though, so she hurried through the slot.
“Are you going to find spheres for that woman at the orphanage?” Wyndle said, zipping along the ground beside her, weaving between the legs of people. “Get on her good side?”
“Of course not,” Lift said, sniffing. “It’s a scam.”
“It is?”
“Course it is. She’s probably launderin’ spheres for criminals, takin’ them as ‘donations,’ then givin’ others back. Men’ll pay well to clean up their spheres, particularly in places like this, where you got scribes looking over your shoulder all the starvin’ time. Course, it might not be that scam. She might be guiltin’ people into giving her donations of infused spheres, traded for her dun ones. They’ll feel sympathetic, because she talks about her poor children. Then she can trade infused spheres to the moneychangers and make a small profit.”
“That’s shockingly unscrupulous, mistress!”
Lift shrugged. “What else are you going to do with orphans? Gotta be good for something, right?”
“But profiting off people’s emotions?”
“Pity can be a powerful tool. Anytime you can make someone else feel something, you’ve got power over them.”
“I … guess?”
“Gotta make sure that never happens to me,” Lift said. “It’s how you stay strong, see.”
She found her way back to the place where she’d entered the slots, then from there poked around until she found the ramp up to the entrance of the city. It was long and shallow, for driving wagons down, if you needed to.
She crawled up it a ways, just enough to get a glimpse at the guard post. There was still a line up there, grown longer than when she’d been in it. Many people were actually making camp on the stones. Some enterprising merchants were selling them food, clean water, and even tents.
Good luck, Lift thought. Most of the people in that line looked like they didn’t own much besides their own skins, maybe an exotic disease or two. Lift retreated. She wasn’t awesome enough to risk another encounter with the guards. Instead she settled down in a small cleft in the rock at the bottom of the ramp, where she watched a blanket merchant pass. He was using a strange little horse—it was shaggy and white, and had horns on its head. Looked like those animals that were terrible to eat out west.
“Mistress,” Wyndle said from the stone wall beside her head, “I don’t know much about humans, but I do know a bit about plants. You’re remarkably similar. You need light, water, and nourishment. And plants have roots. To anchor them, you see, during storms. Otherwise they blow away.”
“It’s nice to blow away sometimes.”
“And when the great storm comes?”
Lift’s eyes drifted toward the west. Toward … whatever was building there. A storm that blows the wrong way, the viziers had said. It can’t be possible. What game are the Alethi playing?
A few minutes later, the guard captain walked down the ramp. The woman practically dragged her feet, and as soon as she was out of sight of the guard post, she let her shoulders slump. Looked like it had been a rough day. What could have caused that?
Lift huddled down, but the woman didn’t so much as look at her. Once the captain passed, Lift climbed to her feet and scuttled after.
Tailing someone through this town proved easy. There weren’t nearly as many hidden nooks or branching paths. As Lift had guessed, now that it was getting dark, the streets were clearing. Maybe there would be an upswing in activity once the first moon got high enough, but for now there wasn’t enough light.
“Mistress,” Wyndle said. “What are we doing?”
“Just thought I’d see where that woman lives.”
“But why?”
Unsurprisingly, the captain didn’t live too far from her guard post. A few streets inward, likely far enough to be outside the immigrant quarter but close enough for the place to be cheaper by association. It was a large set of rooms carved into the rock wall, marked by a window for each one. Apartments, rather than one single “building.” It did look pretty strange—a sheer rock face, broken by a bunch of shutters.
The captain entered, but Lift didn’t follow. Instead, she craned her neck upward. Eventually one of the windows near the top shone with spherelight, and the captain pushed open the shutters for some fresh air.
“Hm,” Lift said, squinting in the darkness. “Let’s head up that wall, Voidbringer.”
“Mistress, you could call me by my name.”
“I could call you lotsa stuff,” Lift said. “Be glad I don’t got much of an imagination. Let’s go.”
Wyndle sighed, but curved up the outside of the captain’s tenement. Lift climbed, using his vines as foot- and handholds. This took her up past a number of windows, but only a few of them were lit. One pair of windows on the same side helpfully had a washing line draped between them, and Lift snatched a shiqua. Nice of them to leave
it out, up high enough that only she could get to it.
She didn’t stop at the captain’s window, which Wyndle seemed to find surprising. She went all the way up to the top and eventually climbed out onto a field of treb, a grain that grew in bunches inside hard pods on vines. The farmers here grew them in little slits in the stone, just under a foot wide. The vines would bunch up in there, and grow pods that got wedged so they didn’t tumble free in storms.
The farmers were done for the day, leaving piles of weeds to get carried away in the next storm—whenever that came. Lift settled down on the lip of the trench, looking out over the city. It was pinpricked by spheres. Not many, but more than she’d have expected. That made illumination shine up from the slots, like they were cracks in something bright at the center. How must it look when people had more infused spheres? She imagined bright columns of light shining up from the holes.
Below, the captain closed her window and apparently hooded her spheres. Lift yawned. “You don’t need sleep, right, Voidbringer?”
“I do not.”
“Then keep an eye on that building. Wake me up anytime someone goes into it, or if that captain comes out.”
“Could you at least tell me why we’re spying on a captain of the city watch?”
“What else are we going to do?”
“Anything else?”
“Boring,” Lift said, then yawned again. “Wake me up, okay?”
He said something, likely a complaint, but she was already drifting off.
It seemed like only moments before he nudged her awake.
“Mistress?” he said. “Mistress, I find myself in awe of your ingenuity, and your stupidity, both at once.”
She yawned, shifting on her stolen shiqua blanket and swatting at some lifespren that were floating around. She hadn’t dreamed, thankfully. She hated dreams. They either showed her a life she couldn’t have, or a life that terrified her. What was the good of either one?
“Mistress?” Wyndle asked.
She stirred, sitting up. She hadn’t realized that she’d picked a spot surrounded by and overgrown with vines, and they’d gotten stuck in her clothing. What was she doing up here again? She ran her hand through her hair, which was snarled and sticking out in all sorts of directions.
Sunlight was peeking up over the horizon, and farmers were already out working again. In fact, now that she’d sat up out of the nest of vines, a few had turned to regard her with baffled looks. It probably wasn’t often you found a little Reshi girl sleeping by a cliff in your field. She grinned and waved at them.
“Mistress,” Wyndle said. “You told me to warn you if someone went into the building.”
Right. She started, remembering what she’d been doing, the fog leaving her mind. “And?” she asked, urgent.
“And Darkness himself, the man who almost killed you in the royal palace, just entered the building below us.”
Darkness himself. Lift felt a spike of alarm and gripped the edge of the cliff, barely daring to peek over. She’d wondered if he would come.
“You did come to the city chasing him,” Wyndle said.
“Pure coincidence,” she mumbled.
“No it’s not. You showed off your powers to that guard captain, knowing that she’d write a report about what she saw. And you knew that would draw Darkness’s attention.”
“I can’t search a whole city for one man; I needed a way to get him to come to me. Didn’t expect him to find this place so quickly though. Must have some scribe watching reports.”
“But why?” Wyndle said, his voice almost a whine. “Why are you looking for him? He’s dangerous.”
“Obviously.”
“Oh, mistress. It’s crazy. He—”
“He kills people,” she said softly. “The viziers have tracked him. He murders people that don’t seem to be connected. The viziers are confused, but I’m not.” She took a deep breath. “He’s hunting someone in this city, Wyndle. Someone with powers … someone like me.”
Wyndle trailed off, then slowly let out an “aaahh” of understanding.
“Let’s get down to her window,” Lift said, ignoring the farmers and climbing over the cliff’s edge. It was still dark in the city, which was waking up slowly. She shouldn’t be too conspicuous until things got busier.
Wyndle helpfully grew down in front of her, giving her something to cling to. She wasn’t completely sure what drove her. Maybe it was the lure of finding someone else like her, someone who could explain what she was and why her life made no sense these days. Or maybe she just didn’t like the idea of Darkness stalking someone innocent. Somebody who, like her, hadn’t done anything wrong—well, nothing big—except for having powers he thought they shouldn’t.
She pressed her ear against the shutters of the captain’s room. Within, she distinctly heard his voice.
“A young woman,” Darkness said. “Herdazian or Reshi.”
“Yes, sir,” the captain said. “Do you mind? Can I see your papers again?”
“You will find them in order.”
“I just … special operative of the prince? I’ve never heard of the title before.”
“It is an ancient but rarely used designation,” Darkness said. “Explain exactly what this child did.”
“I—”
“Explain again. To me.”
“Well, she gave us quite the runaround, sir. Slipped into our guard post, knocked over our things, stole some food. The big crime was when she dumped that grain into the city. I’m sure she did it on purpose; the merchant has already filed suit against the city guard for willful neglect of duty.”
“His case is weak,” Darkness said. “Because he hadn’t yet been approved for admittance into the city, he didn’t come under your jurisdiction. If anything he needs to file against the highway guard, and classify it as banditry.”
“That’s what I told him!”
“You are not to be blamed, Captain. You faced a force you cannot understand, and which I am not at liberty to explain. I need details, however, as proof. Did she glow?”
“I … well…”
“Did she glow, Captain.”
“Yes. I swear, I am of sound mind. I wasn’t simply seeing things, sir. She glowed. And the grain glowed too, faintly.”
“And she was slippery to the touch?”
“Slicker than if she had been oiled, sir. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
“As anticipated. Here, sign this.”
They made some shuffling noises. Lift clung there, ear to the wall, heart pounding. Darkness had a Shardblade. If he suspected she was out here, he could stab through the wall and cut her clean in half.
“Sir?” the guard captain said. “Could you tell me what’s going on here? I feel lost, like a soldier on a battlefield who can’t remember which banner is hers.”
“It is not material for you to know.”
“Um … yes, sir.”
“Watch for the child. Have others do the same, and report to your superiors if she is discovered. I will hear of it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Footsteps marked him walking for the door. Before he left, he noted something. “Infused spheres, Captain? You are lucky to have them, these days.”
“I traded for them, sir.”
“And dun ones in the lantern on the wall.”
“They ran out weeks ago, sir. I haven’t replaced them. Is this … relevant, sir?”
“No. Remember your orders, Captain.” He bade her farewell.
The door shut. Lift scrambled up the wall again—trailed by a whimpering Wyndle—and hid there on the top, watching as Darkness stepped out onto the street below. Morning sunlight warmed the back of her neck, and she couldn’t keep herself from trembling.
A black and silver uniform. Dark skin, like he was Makabaki, with a pale patch on one cheek: a birthmark shaped like a crescent.
Dead eyes. Eyes that didn’t care if they were looking at a man, a chull, or a stone. He tucked some papers into his c
oat pocket, then pulled on his long-cuffed gloves.
“So we’ve found him,” Wyndle whispered. “Now what?”
“Now?” Lift swallowed. “Now we follow him.”
8
Tailing Darkness was a far different experience from tailing the captain. For one, it was daylight now. Still early morning, but light enough that Lift had to worry about being spotted. Fortunately, encountering Darkness had completely burned away the fog of sleepiness she’d felt upon awaking.
At first she tried to stay on the tops of the walls, in the gardens above the city. That proved difficult. Though there were some bridges up here crossing over the slots, they weren’t nearly as common as she needed. Each time Darkness hit an intersection she had a shiver of fear, worrying he’d turn down a path she couldn’t follow without somehow leaping over a huge gap.
Eventually she took the more dangerous route of scrambling down a ladder, then chasing after him within a trench. Fortunately, it seemed that people in here expected some measure of jostling as they moved through the streets. The confines weren’t completely cramped—many of the larger streets had plenty of space. But those walls did enhance the feeling of being boxed in.
Lift had lots of practice with this sort of thing, and she kept the tail inconspicuous. She didn’t pick any pockets, despite several fine opportunities—people who were practically holding their pouches up, demanding them to be taken. If she hadn’t been following Darkness, she might have grabbed a few for old times’ sake.
She didn’t use her awesomeness, which was running out anyway. She hadn’t eaten since last night, and if she didn’t use the power, it eventually vanished. Took about half a day; she didn’t know why.
She dodged around the figures of farmers heading to work, women carrying water, kids skipping to their lessons—where they’d sit in rows and listen to a teacher while doing some menial task, like sewing, to pay for the education. Suckers.
People gave Darkness lots of space, moving away from him like they would a guy whose backside couldn’t help but let everyone know what he’d been eating lately. She smiled at the thought, climbing along the top of some boxes beside a few other urchins. Darkness, though, he wasn’t that normal. She had trouble imagining him eating, or anything like that.