“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 kno
w 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 name 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
THE hungry sky rumbled above, dark and angry. Lift knew that feeling. Too much time between meals, and looking to eat whatever it could find, never mind the cost.
The storm hadn’t fully arrived yet, but from the distant lightning, it seemed that this new storm didn’t have a stormwall. Its onset wouldn’t be a sudden, majestic event, but instead a creeping advance. It loomed like a thug in an alley, knife out, waiting for prey to wander past.
Lift stepped up to the mouth of the alleyway beside the orphanage, then crept in, passing between shanties that looked far too flimsy to survive highstorms. Even if the city had been built to absolutely minimize winds, there was just so much junk in here. A particularly vigorous sneeze could leave half the people in the alley homeless.
They realized it too, as almost everyone here had gone to the storm bunkers. She did catch the odd face peeking suspiciously between rags draped on windows, anticipationspren growing up from the floor beside them like red streamers. They were people too stubborn, or perhaps too crazy, to be bothered. She didn’t completely blame them. The government giving sudden, random orders and expecting everyone to hop? That was the sort of thing she usually ignored.
Except they should have seen the sky, heard the thunder. A flash of red lightning lit her surroundings. Today, these people should have listened.
She inched farther into the alleyway, entering a place of undefined shadows. With the clouds overhead—and everyone having taken their spheres away—the place was nearly impenetrable. So silent, the only sound that of the sky. Storms, was the old man actually in here? Maybe he was safe in a bunker somewhere. That scream from earlier could have been something unrelated, right?
No, she thought. No, it wasn’t. She felt another chill run through her. Well, even if the old man was here, how would she find his body?
“Mistress,” Wyndle whispered. “Oh, I don’t like this place, mistress. Something’s wrong.”
Everything was wrong; it had been since Darkness had first stalked her. Lift continued on, past shadows that were probably laundry draped along strings between shanties. They looked like twisted, broken bodies in the gloom. Another flash of lightning from the approaching storm didn’t help; the red light it cast made the walls and shanties seem painted with blood.
How long was this alleyway? She was relieved when, at last, she stumbled over something on the ground. She reached down, feeling at a clothed arm. A body.
I will remember you, Lift thought, leaning over and squinting, trying to make out the old man’s shape.
“Mistress…” Wyndle whimpered. She felt him wrap around her leg and tighten there, like a child clinging to his mother.
What was that? She listened as the silence of the alley gave way to a clicking, scraping sound. It encircled her. And for the first time she noticed that the figure she was poking at didn’t seem to be wrapped in a shiqua. The cloth on the arm was too stiff, too thick.
Mother, Lift thought, terrified. What is happening?
Lightning flashed, granting her a glimpse of the corpse. A woman’s face stared upward with sightless eyes. A black and white uniform, painted crimson by the lightning and covered in some kind of silky substance.
Lift gasped and jumped backward, bumping into something behind her—another body. She spun, and the skittering, clicking sounds grew agitated. The next flash of lightning was bright enough for her to make out a body pressed against the wall of the alleyway, tied to part of a shanty, the head rolling to the side. She knew him, just as she knew the woman on the ground.
Darkness’s two minions, Lift thought. They’re dead.
“I heard an interesting idea once, while traveling in a land you will never visit.”
Lift froze. It was the old man’s voice.
“There are a group of people who believe that each day, when they sleep, they die,” the old man continued. “They believe that consciousness doesn’t continue—that if it is interrupted, a new soul is born when the body awakes.”
Storms, storms, STORMS, Lift thought, spinning around. The walls seemed to be moving, shifting, sliding like they were covered in oil. She tried shying away from the corpses, but … she’d lost where they were. Was that the direction she’d come from, or did that lead deeper into this nightmare of an alleyway?
“This philosophy,” the old man’s voice said, “certainly has its problems, at least to an outside observer. What of memory, and continuity of culture, family, society? Well, the Omnithi teach that each are things you inherit in the morning from the previous soul that inhabited your body. Certain brain structures imprint memories, to help you live your single day of life as best you can.”
“What are you?” Lift whispered, looking around frantically, trying to make sense of the darkness.
“What I find most interesting about these people is how they continue to exist at all,” he said. “One would assume chaos would follow if each human sincerely believed that they had only one day to live. I wonder often what it says about you that these people with such dramatic beliefs live lives that are—basically—the same as the rest of you.”
There, Lift thought, picking him out in the shadows.
The shape of a man, though as lightning lit him she could see that he wasn’t all there. Chunks were missing from his flesh. His right shoulder ended in a stump, and storms, he was naked, with strange holes in his stomach and thighs. Even one of his eyes was missing. There was no blood though, and in a quick succession of flashes she picked up something climbing his legs. Cremlings.
That was the skittering sound. Thousands upon thousands of cremlings coated the walls, each the size of a finger. Little beasts of chitin and legs clicking away and making that awful buzz.
“The thing about this philosophy is how difficult it is to disprove,” the old man said. “How do you know that you are the same you as yesterday? You would never know if a new soul came to inhabit your body, so long as it had the same memories. But then … if it acts the same, and thinks it is you, why would it matter? What is it to be you, little Radiant?”
In the flashes of lightning—they were growing more common—she watched one of the cremlings crawl across his face, a bulbous protrusion hanging off its back. The thing crawled into the eye hole, and she realized that bulbous part was an eye. Other cremlings swarmed up and began filling in holes, forming the missing arm. Each had a portion on the back that resembled skin. It presented this outward, using its legs to interlock with the many others holding together on the inside of the body.
“To me,” he said, “this is all no more than idle theory, as unlike you I do not sleep. At least, not all of me at once.”
“What are you?” Lift said.
“Just another refugee.”
Lift backed away. She didn’t care anymore about going back in the direction she had come—so long as she got away from this thing.
“You needn’t fear me,” the old man said. “Your war is my war, and has been for millennia. Ancient Radiants named me friend and ally before everything went wrong. What wonderful days those were, before the Last Desolation. Days of … honor. Now gone, long gone.”