She shouldn’t have had to die. Least, she should have had someone half as wonderful as she was to take care of her as she wasted away.
Someone other than Lift, who was selfish, stupid.
And lonely.
She tensed up, then prepared to bolt around the corner. Wyndle, however, finally zipped out into the hallway. He grew along the floor at a frantic pace, then rejoined her—leaving a trail of dust by the wall as his discarded vines crumbled.
Darkness’s two apprentices left the room a moment later, and Lift pulled back into the side corridor with Wyndle. In the shadows here, she crouched down against the floor, to avoid standing out against the distant light. The woman and man in uniforms strode past a moment later, and didn’t even glance down the hallway. Lift relaxed, fingertips brushing Wyndle’s vines.
Then the assassin passed by. He stopped, then looked in her direction, hand resting on his sword hilt.
Lift’s breath caught. Don’t become awesome. Don’t become awesome! If she used her powers in these shadows, she’d glow and he’d spot her for sure.
All she could do was crouch there as the assassin narrowed his eyes—strangely shaped, like they were too big or something. He reached to a pouch at his belt, then tossed something small and glowing into the hallway. A sphere.
Lift panicked, uncertain if she should scramble away, grow awesome, or just remain still. Fearspren boiled up around her, lit by the sphere as it rolled near her, and she knew—meeting the assassin’s gaze—that he could see her.
He pulled his sword out of the sheath a fraction of an inch. Black smoke poured from the blade, dropping toward the floor and pooling at his feet. Lift felt a sudden, terrible nausea.
The assassin studied her, then snapped the sword into its sheath again. Remarkably, he left, following after the other two, that faint afterimage trailing behind him. He didn’t speak a word, and his footfalls on the carpet were almost silent—a faint breeze compared to the clomping of the other two, which Lift could still hear farther down the corridor.
In moments, all three of them had entered the stairwell and were gone.
“Storms!” Lift said, flopping backward on the carpet. “Storming Mother of the World and Father of Storms above! He about made me die of fright.”
“I know!” Wyndle said. “Did you hear me not-whimpering?”
“No.”
“I was too frightened to even make a sound!”
Lift sat up, then mopped the sweat from her brow. “Wow. Okay, well … that was something. What did they talk about?”
“Oh!” Wyndle said, as if he’d forgotten completely about his mission. “Mistress, they had an entire study done! Research for weeks to identify oddities in the city.”
“Great! What did they determine?”
“I don’t know.”
Lift flopped back down.
“They talked over a whole lot of things I didn’t understand,” Wyndle said. “But mistress, they know who the person is! They’re heading there right now. To perform an execution.” He poked at her with a vine. “So … maybe we should follow?”
“Yeah, okay,” Lift said. “Guess we can do that. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?”
16
TURNED out it was way hard.
She couldn’t get too close, as the hallways had grown eerily empty. And there were tons of branching paths, with little side hallways and rooms everywhere. Mix that with the fact that there weren’t many spheres on the walls, and it was a real trick to follow the three.
She did it though. She followed them through the whole starvin’ place until they reached some doors out into the city. Lift managed to slip out a window near the doors, falling among some plants beside the stairs outside. She huddled there as the three people she’d been tailing stepped out onto the landing overlooking the city.
Storms, but it felt good to be breathing the open air again, though clouds had moved in front of the setting sun. The whole city felt chilly now. In shadow.
And it was empty.
Before, people had been swarming up and down the steps and ramps into the Grand Indishipium. Now they held only a few last-minute stragglers, and even those were rapidly vanishing as they ducked through doorways, seeking shelter.
The assassin turned eyes toward the west. “The storm is coming,” he said.
“All the more reason to be quick,” the female apprentice said. She took a sphere from her pocket, then held it up before her and sucked in the light. It streamed into her, and she started to glow with awesomeness.
Then she rose into the air.
She rose into the starvin’ air itself!
They can fly? Lift thought. Why in Damnation can’t I fly?
Her companion rose up beside her.
“Coming, assassin?” The woman looked down toward the landing and the man wearing white.
“I’ve danced that storm once before,” he whispered. “On the day I died. No.”
“You’re never going to make it into the order at this rate.”
He remained silent. The two floating people eyed each other, then the man shrugged. The two of them rose higher, then shot out across the city, avoiding the inconvenience of traveling through the trenches.
They could storming fly.
“You’re the one he’s hunting for, aren’t you?” the assassin said softly.
Lift winced. Then she stood up and peeked over the side of the landing where the assassin stood. He turned and looked at her.
“I ain’t nobody,” Lift said.
“He kills nobodies.”
“And you don’t?”
“I kill kings.”
“Which is totally better.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, then squatted down, sheathed sword held across his shoulders, with hands draped forward. “No. It is not. I hear their screams, their demands, whenever I see shadow. They haunt me, scramble for my mind, wishing to claim my sanity. I fear they’ve already won, that the man to whom you speak can no longer distinguish what is the voice of a mad raving and what is not.”
“Oooookay,” Lift said. “But you didn’t attack me.”
“No. The sword likes you.”
“Great. I like the sword too.” She glanced at the sky. “Um … do you know where they’re going?”
“The report described a man who has been spotted vanishing by several people in the city. He will turn down an alleyway, then it will be empty when someone else follows. People have claimed to see his face twisting to become the face of another. My companions believe he is what is called a Lightweaver, and so must be stopped.”
“Is that legal?”
“Nin has procured an injunction from the prince, forbidding any use of Surgebinding in the country, save that specifically authorized.” He studied Lift. “I believe the Herald’s experiences with you were what taught him to go straight to the top, rather than dancing about with local authorities.”
Lift traced the direction the other two had gone. That sky was darkening further, an ominous sign.
“He really is wrong, isn’t he?” Lift said. “That one you say is a Herald. He says the Voidbringers aren’t back, but they are.”
“The new storm reveals it,” the assassin said. “But … who am I to say? I am mad. Then again, I think that the Herald is too. It makes me agree that the minds of men cannot be trusted. That we need something greater to follow, to guide. But not my stone … What good is seeking a greater law, when that law can be the whims of a man either stupid or ruthless?”