Edgedancer 

5

ROUGHLY a half hour later, Lift lay on a stretched-out tarp atop a shanty, puffing from an extended run. That guard had been persistent.

She swung idly on the tarp as a wind blew through the shantied alleyway. Beneath, a family talked about the miracle of an entire cart of grain suddenly being dumped in the slums. A mother, three sons, and a father, all together.

I will remember those who have been forgotten. She’d sworn that oath as she’d saved Gawx’s life. The right Words, important Words. But what did they mean? What about her mother? Nobody remembered her.

There seemed far too many people out there who were being forgotten. Too many for one girl to remember.

“Lift?” Wyndle asked. He’d made a little tower of vines and leaves that blew in the wind. “Why haven’t you ever gone to the Reshi Isles? That’s where you’re from, right?”

“It’s what Mother said.”

“So why not go visit and see? You’ve been halfway across Roshar and back, to hear you talk. But never to your supposed homeland.”

She shrugged, staring up at the late-afternoon sky, feeling the wind. It smelled fresh, compared to the stench of being down in the slots. The city wasn’t ripe, but it was thick with contained smells, like animals locked up.

“Do you know why we had to leave Azir?” Lift said softly.

“To chase after that Skybreaker, the one you call Darkness.”

“No. We’re not doing that.”

“Sure.”

“We left because people started to know who I am. If you stay in the same place too long, then people start to recognize you. The shopkeepers learn your name. They smile at you when you enter, and already know what to get for you, because they remember what you need.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

She nodded, still staring at the sky. “It’s worse when they think they’re your friend. Gawx, the viziers. They make assumptions. They think they know you, then start to expect things of you. Then you have to be the person everyone thinks you are, not the person you actually are.”

“And who is the person you actually are, Lift?”

That was the problem, wasn’t it? She’d known that once, hadn’t she? Or was it just that she’d been young enough not to care?

How did people know? The breeze rocked her perch, and she snuggled up, remembering her mother’s arms, her scent, her warm voice.

The pangs of a growling stomach interrupted her, the needs of the now strangling the wants of the past. She sighed and stood up on the tarp. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go find some urchins.”