A short time later, the Stump called that playtime was over. She herded the kids into the orphanage for naps, though many were too old for that. The Stump gave Mik a displeased eye as he entered, but let him in.
Lift remained in her seat on the stone, then smacked her hand at a cremling that had been inching across the step nearby. Starvin’ thing dodged, then clicked its chitin legs as if laughing. They sure did have strange cremlings here. Not like the ones she was used to at all. Weird how you could forget you were in a different country until you saw the cremlings.
“Mistress,” Wyndle said, “have you decided what we’re going to do?”
Decide. Why did she have to decide? She usually just did things. She’d taken challenges as they’d arisen, gone places for no reason other than that she hadn’t seen them before.
The old people who had been watching the children slowly rose, like ancient trees releasing their branches after a storm. One by one they trailed off until only one remained, wearing a black shiqua with the wrap pulled down to expose a face with a grey mustache.
“Ey,” Lift called to him. “You still creepy, old man?”
“I am the man I was made to be,” he said back.
Lift grunted, climbing from her spot and strolling over to him. Some of the kids from before had left their pebbles, with painted colors that were rubbing off. A poor kid’s imitation of glass marbles. Lift kicked at them.
“How do you know what to do?” she asked the man, her hands shoved in her pockets.
“About what, little one?”
“About everything,” Lift said. “Who tells you how to decide what to do with your time? Was it your parents who showed you? What’s the secret?”
“The secret to what?”
“To being human,” Lift said softly.
“That,” the man said, chuckling, “I don’t think I know. At least not better than you do.”
Lift looked at the sky, up along slotlike walls, scraped clean of vegetation but painted a dark green, as if in imitation of it.
“It is strange,” the man said. “People get such a small amount of time. So many I’ve known say it—as soon as you feel you’re getting a handle on things, the day is done, the night falls, and the light goes out.”
Lift looked at him. Yup. Still creepy. “I guess when you’re old and stuff, you get to thinkin’ about being dead. Kind of like when a fellow’s got to piss, he starts thinkin’ about finding a convenient alleyway.”
The man chuckled. “Your life may pass, but the organism that is the city will continue on. Little nose.”
“I’m not a nose,” Lift said. “I was being cheeky.”
“Nose, cheek. Both are on the face.”
Lift rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant either.”
“What are you then? An ear, perhaps?”
“Dunno. Maybe.”
“No. Not yet. But close.”
“Riiight,” Lift said. “And what are you?”
“I change, moment by moment. One moment I am the eyes that inspect so many people in this city. Another moment I am the mouth, to speak the words of philosophy. They spread like a disease—and so at times I am the disease. Most diseases live. Did you know that?”
“You’re … not really talking about what you’re talking about, are you?” Lift said.
“I believe that I am.”
“Great.” Of all the people she’d chosen to ask about how to be a responsible adult, she’d picked the one with vegetable soup in place of brains. She turned to go.
“What will you make for this city, child?” the man asked. “That is part of my question. Do you choose, or are you simply molded by the greater good? And are you, as a city, a district of grand palaces? Or are you a slum, unto yourself?”
“If you could see inside me,” Lift said, turning and walking backward so she faced the old man on the steps, “you wouldn’t say things like that.”
“Because?”
“Because. At least slums know what they was built for.” She turned and joined the flow of people on the street.
11
“I don’t think you understand how this is supposed to work,” Wyndle said, curling along the wall beside her. “Mistress, you … don’t seem interested in evolving our relationship.”
She shrugged.
“There are Words,” Wyndle said. “That’s what we call them, at least. They’re more … ideas. Living ideas, with power. You have to let them into your soul. Let me into your soul. You heard those Skybreakers, right? They’re looking to take the next step in their training. That’s when … you know … they get a Shardblade.…”
He smiled at her, the expression appearing in successive patterns of his growing vines along the wall as they chased her. Each image of the smile was slightly different, grown one after another beside her, like a hundred paintings. They made a smile, and yet none of them was the smile. It was, somehow, all of them together. Or perhaps the smile existed in the spaces between the images in the succession.
“There’s only one thing I know how to do,” Lift said. “And that’s steal Darkness’s lunch. Like I came to do in the first place.”
“And, um, didn’t we do that already?”
“Not his food. His lunch.” She narrowed her eyes.
“Ah…” Wyndle said. “The person he’s planning to execute. We’re going to snatch them away from him.”
Lift strolled along a side street, and ended up passing into a garden: a bowl-like depression in the stone with four exits down different roads. Vines coated the leeward side of the wall, but they slowly gave way to brittels on the other side, shaped like flat plates for protection, but with planty stems that crept out and around the sides and up toward the sunlight.
Wyndle sniffed, crossing to the ground beside her. “Barely any cultivation. Why, this is no garden. Whoever maintains this should be reprimanded.”
“I like it,” Lift said, lifting her hand toward some lifespren, which bobbed over her fingertips. The garden was crowded with people. Some were coming and going, while others lounged about, and still others begged for chips. She hadn’t seen many beggars in the city; likely there were all kinds of rules and regulations about when you could do it and how.
She stopped, hands on hips. “People here, in Azir and Tashikk, they love to write stuff down.”
“Oh, most certainly,” Wyndle said, curling around some vines. “Mmm. Yes, mistress, these at least are fruit vines. I suppose that is better; it’s not completely haphazard.”
“And they love information,” Lift said. “They love tradin’ it with one another, right?”
“Most certainly. That is a distinguishing factor of their cultural identity, as your tutors said in the palace. You weren’t there. I went to listen in your place.”
“What people write can be important, at least to them,” Lift said. “But what would they do with it all when they’re done with it? Throw it out? Burn it?”
“Throw it out? Mother’s vines! No, no, no. You can’t just go throwing things out! They might be useful later on. If it were me, I’d find someplace safe for them, and keep them pristine in case I needed them!”
Lift nodded, folding her arms. They’d have his same attitude. This city, with everyone writing notes and rules, then offering to sell everyone else ideas all the time … Well, in some ways this place was like a whole city of Wyndles.