Edgedancer 

20

“SO you don’t hafta be a sword,” Lift said. She sat on the Stump’s dresser, ’cuz the woman didn’t have a proper desk for her to claim.

“A sword is traditional,” Wyndle said.

“But you don’t hafta be one.”

“Obviously not,” he said, sounding offended. “I must be metal. There is … a connection between our power, when condensed, and metal. That said, I’ve heard stories of spren becoming bows. I don’t know how they’d make the string. Perhaps the Radiant carried their own string?”

Lift nodded, but she was barely listening. Who cared about bows and swords and stuff? This opened all kinds of more interesting possibilities.

“I do wonder what I’d look like as a sword,” Wyndle said.

“You went around all day yesterday complainin’ about me hitting someone with you!”

“I don’t want to be a sword that one swings, obviously. But there is something stately about a Shardblade, something to be displayed. I would make a fine one, I should think. Very regal.”

A knock came at the door downstairs, and Lift perked up. Unfortunately, it didn’t sound like the scribe. She heard the Stump talking to someone who had a soft voice. The door closed shortly thereafter, and the Stump climbed the steps and entered Lift’s room, carrying a large plate of pancakes.

Lift’s stomach growled, and she stood up on the dresser. “Now, those are your pancakes, right?”

The Stump, looking as wizened as ever, stopped in place. “What does it matter?”

“It matters a ton,” Lift said. “Those aren’t for the kids. You was gonna eat those yourself, right?”

“A dozen pancakes.”

“Yes.”

“Sure,” the Stump said, rolling her eyes. “We’ll pretend I was going to eat them all myself.” She dropped them onto the dresser beside Lift, who started stuffing her face.

The Stump folded her bony arms, glancing over her shoulder.

“Who was at the door?” Lift asked.

“A mother. Come to insist, ashamed, that she wanted her child back.”

“No kidding?” Lift said around bites of pancake. “Mik’s mom actually came back for him?”

“Obviously she knew her son had been faking his illness. It was part of a scam to…” The Stump trailed off.

Huh, Lift thought. The mom couldn’t have known that Mik had been healed—it had only happened yesterday, and the city was a mess following the storm. Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad here as it could have been. Storms blowing one way or the other, in Yeddaw it didn’t matter.

She was starvin’ for information about the rest of the empire though. Seemed everything had gone wrong again, just in a new way this time.

Still, it was nice to hear a little good news. Mik’s mom actually came back. Guess it does happen once in a while.

“I’ve been healing the children,” the Stump said. She fingered her shiqua, which had been stabbed clean through by Darkness. Though she’d washed it, her blood had stained the cloth. “You’re sure about this?”

“Yeah,” Lift said around a bite of pancakes. “You should have a weird little thing hanging around you. Not me. Something weirder. Like a vine?”

“A spren,” the Stump said. “Not like a vine. Like light reflected on a wall from a mirror…”

Lift glanced at Wyndle, who clung to the wall nearby. He nodded his vine face.

“Sure, that’ll do. Congrats. You’re a starvin’ Knight Radiant, Stump. You’ve been feasting on spheres and healing kids. Probably makes up some for treatin’ them like old laundry, eh?”

The Stump regarded Lift, who continued to munch on pancakes.

“I would have thought,” the Stump said, “that Knights Radiant would be more majestic.”

Lift scrunched up her face at the woman, then thrust her hand to the side and summoned Wyndle in the shape of a large, shimmering, silvery fork. A Shardfork, if you would.

She stabbed him into the pancakes, and unfortunately he went all the way through them, through the plate, and poked holes in the Stump’s dresser. Still, she managed to pry up a pancake.

Lift took a big bite out of it. “Majestic as Damnation’s own gonads,” she proclaimed, then wagged Wyndle at the Stump. “That’s saying it fancy-style, so my fork don’t complain that I’m bein’ crass.”

The Stump seemed to have trouble coming up with a response to that, other than to stare at Lift with her jaw slack. She was rescued from looking dumb by someone pounding on the door below. One of the Stump’s assistants opened it, but the woman herself hastened down the steps as soon as she heard who it was.

Lift dismissed Wyndle. Eating with your hands was way easier than eating with a fork, even a very nice fork. He formed back into a vine and curled up on the wall.

A short time later, Ghenna—the fat scribe from the Grand Indifference—stepped in. Judging by the way the Stump practically scraped the ground bowing to the woman, Lift judged that maybe Ghenna was more important than she’d assumed. Bet she didn’t have a magic fork though.

“Normally,” the scribe said, “I don’t frequent such … domiciles as this. People usually come to me.”

“I can tell,” Lift said. “You obviously don’t walk about very much.”

The scribe sniffed at that, laying a satchel down on the bed. “His Imperial Majesty has been somewhat cross with us for cutting off the communication before. But he is understanding, as he must be, considering recent events.”

“How’s the empire doing?” Lift said, chewing on a pancake.

“Surviving,” the scribe said. “But in chaos. Smaller villages were hit the worst, but although the storm was longer than a highstorm, its winds were not as bad. The worst was the lightning, which struck many who were unlucky enough to be out traveling.”

She unpacked her tools: a spanreed board, paper, and pen. “His Imperial Majesty was very pleased that you contacted me, and he has already sent a message asking for the details of your health.”

“Tell him I ain’t eaten nearly enough pancakes,” Lift said. “And I got this strange wart on my toe that keeps growin’ back when I cut it off—I think because I heal myself with my awesomeness, which is starvin’ inconvenient.”

The scribe looked to her, then sighed and read the message that Gawx had sent her. The empire would survive, it said, but would take long to recover—particularly if the storm kept returning. And then there was the issue with the parshmen, which could prove an even greater danger. He didn’t want to share state secrets over spanreed. Mostly he wanted to know if she was all right.

She kind of was. The scribe took to writing what Lift had told her, which would be enough to tell Gawx that she was well.

“Also,” Lift added as the woman wrote, “I found another Radiant, only she’s real old, and kinda looks like an underfed crab without no shell.” She looked to the Stump, and shrugged in a half apology. Surely she knew. She had mirrors, right?

“But she’s actually kind of nice, and takes care of kids, so we should recruit her or something. If we fight Voidbringers, she can stare at them in a real mean way. They’ll break down and tell her all about that time when they ate all the cookies and blamed it on Huisi, the girl what can’t talk right.”

Huisi snored anyway. She deserved it.

The scribe rolled her eyes, but wrote it. Lift nodded, finishing off the last pancake, a type with a real thick, almost mealy texture. “Okay,” she proclaimed, standing up. “That’s nine. What’s the last one? I’m ready.”

“The last one?” the Stump asked.

“Ten types of pancakes,” Lift said. “It’s why I came to this starvin’ city. I’ve had nine now. Where’s the last one?”

“The tenth is dedicated to Tashi,” the scribe said absently as she wrote. “It is more a thought than a real entity. We bake nine, and leave the last in memory of Him.”

“Wait,” Lift said. “So there’s only nine?”

“Yes.”

“You all lied to me?”

“Not in so much—”

“Damnation! Wyndle, where’d that Skybreaker go? He’s got to hear about this.” She pointed at the scribe, then at the Stump. “He let you go for that whole money-laundering thing on my insistence. But when he hears you been lying about pancakes, I might not be able to hold him back.”

Both of them stared at her, as if they thought they were innocent. Lift shook her head, then hopped off the dresser. “Excuse me,” she said. “I gotta find the Radiant refreshment room. That’s a fancy way of saying—”

“Down the stairs,” the Stump said. “On the left. Same place it was this morning.”

Lift left them, skipping down the stairs. Then she winked at one of the orphans watching in the main room before slipping out the front door, Wyndle on the ground beside her. She took a deep breath of the wet air, still soggy from the Everstorm. Refuse, broken boards, fallen branches, and discarded cloths littered the ground, snarling up at the many steps that jutted into the street.

But the city had survived, and people were already at work cleaning up. They’d lived their entire lives in the shadow of highstorms. They had adapted, and would continue to adapt.

Lift smiled, and started off along the street.

“We’re leaving, then?” Wyndle asked.

“Yup.”

“Just like that. No farewells.”

“Nope.”

“This is how it’s going to be, isn’t it? We’ll wander into a city, but before there’s time to put down roots, we’ll be off again?”

“Sure,” Lift said. “Though this time, I thought we might wander back to Azimir and the palace.”

Wyndle was so stunned he let her pass him by. Then he zipped up to join her, eager as an axehound puppy. “Really? Oh, mistress. Really?”

“I figure,” she said, “that nobody knows what they’re doin’ in life, right? So Gawx and the dusty viziers, they need me.” She tapped her head. “I got it figured out.”

“You’ve got what figured out?”

“Nothing at all,” Lift said, with the utmost confidence.

But I will listen to those who are ignored, she thought. Even people like Darkness, whom I’d rather never have heard. Maybe that will help.

They wound through the city, then up the ramp, passing the guard captain, who was on duty there dealing with the even larger numbers of refugees coming to the city because they’d lost homes to the storm. She saw Lift, and nearly jumped out of her own boots in surprise.

Lift smiled and dug a pancake out of her pocket. This woman had been visited by Darkness because of her. That sort of thing earned you a debt. So she tossed the woman the pancake—which was really more of a panball at this point—then used the Stormlight she’d gotten from the ones she’d eaten to start healing the wounds of the refugees.

The guard captain watched in silence, holding her pancake, as Lift moved along the line breathing out Stormlight on everyone like she was tryin’ to prove her breath didn’t stink none.

It was starvin’ hard work. But that was what pancakes was for, makin’ kids feel better. Once she was done, and out of Stormlight, she tiredly waved and strode onto the plain outside the city.

“That was very benevolent of you,” Wyndle said.

Lift shrugged. It didn’t seem like it had made much of a difference—just a few people, and all. But they were the type that were forgotten and ignored by most.

“A better knight than me might stay,” Lift said. “Heal everyone.”

“A big project. Perhaps too big.”

“And too small, all the same,” Lift said, shoving her hands in her pockets, and walked for a time. She couldn’t rightly explain it, but she knew that something larger was coming. And she needed to get to Azir.

Wyndle cleared his throat. Lift braced herself to hear him complain about something, like the silliness of walking all the way here from Azimir, only to walk right back two days later.

“… I was a very regal fork, wouldn’t you say?” he asked instead.

Lift glanced at him, then grinned and cocked her head. “Y’know, Wyndle. It’s strange, but … I’m starting to think you might not be a Voidbringer after all.”