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 with 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.”