“What! I misspelled three words in the first paragraph alone!”
“I didn’t notice.”
“You didn’t … Of course you noticed! But this is pointless, because Axikk’s essay was obviously superior to mine.”
“Don’t bring me into this again. We disqualified me. I’m not fit to be Prime. I have a bad back.”
“Ashno of Sages had a bad back. He was one of the greatest Emuli Primes.”
“Bah! My essay was utter rubbish, and you know it.”
Wyndle moved along beside Lift. “Mother has given up on your kind. I can feel it. She doesn’t care any longer. Now that He’s gone…”
“This arguing does not befit us,” said a commanding female voice. “We should take our vote. People are waiting.”
“Let it go to one of those fools in the gardens.”
“Their essays were dreadful. Just look at what Pandri wrote across the top of hers.”
“My … I … I don’t know what half of that even means, but it does seem insulting.”
This finally caught Lift’s attention. She looked up toward the table above. Good cusses? Come on, she thought. Read a few of those.
“We’ll have to pick one of them,” the other voice—she sounded very in charge—said. “Kadasixes and Stars, this is a puzzle. What do we do when nobody wants to be Prime?”
Nobody wanted to be Prime? Had the entire country suddenly grown some sense? Lift continued on. Being rich seemed fun and all, but being in charge of that many people? Pure misery, that would be.
“Perhaps we should pick the worst application,” one of the voices said. “In this situation, that would indicate the cleverest applicant.”
“Six different monarchs killed…” one of the voices said, a new one. “In a mere two months. Highprinces slaughtered throughout the East. Religious leaders. And then, two Primes murdered in a matter of a single week. Storms … I almost think it’s another Desolation come upon us.”
“A Desolation in the form of a single man. Yaezir help the one we choose. It is a death sentence.”
“We have stalled too long as it is. These weeks of waiting with no Prime have been harmful to Azir. Let’s just pick the worst application. From this stack.”
“What if we pick someone who is legitimately terrible? Is it not our duty to care for the kingdom, regardless of the risk to the one we choose?”
“But in picking the best from among us, we doom our brightest, our best, to die by the sword … Yaezir help us. Scion Ethid, a prayer for guidance would be appreciated. We need Yaezir himself to show us his will. Perhaps if we choose the right person, he or she will be protected by his hand.”
Lift reached the end of the table and looked out at a banquet that had been set onto a smaller table at the other side of the room. This place was very Azish. Curls of embroidery everywhere. Carpets so fine, they probably drove some poor woman blind weaving them. Dark colors and dim lights. Paintings on the walls.
Huh, Lift thought, someone scratched a face off of that one. Who’d ruin a painting like that, and such a fine one, the Heralds all in a row?
Well, nobody seemed to be touching that feast. Her stomach growled, but she waited for a distraction.
It came soon after. The door opened. Likely the guards coming to report about the thief they’d found. Poor Gawx. She’d have to go break him out later.
Right now, it was time for food. Lift shoved herself forward on her knees and used her awesomeness to Slick her legs. She slid across the floor and grabbed the corner leg of the food table. Her momentum smoothly pivoted her around and behind it. She crouched down, the tablecloth neatly hiding her from the people at the room’s center, and unSlicked her legs.
Perfect. She reached up a hand and plucked a dinner roll off the table. She took a bite, then hesitated.
Why had everyone grown quiet? She risked a glance over the tabletop.
He had arrived.
The tall Azish man with the white mark on his cheek, like a crescent. Black uniform with a double row of silver buttons down the coat’s front, a stiff silver collar poking up from a shirt underneath. His thick gloves had collars of their own that extended halfway back around his forearms.
Dead eyes. This was Darkness himself.
Oh no.
“What is the meaning of this!” demanded one of the viziers, a woman in one of their large coats with the too-big sleeves. Her cap was of a different pattern, and it clashed quite spectacularly with the coat.
“I am here,” Darkness said, “for a thief.”
“Do you realize where you are? How dare you interrupt—”
“I have,” Darkness said, “the proper forms.” He spoke completely without emotion. No annoyance at being challenged, no arrogance or pomposity. Nothing at all. One of his minions entered behind him, a man in a black and silver uniform, less ornamented. He proffered a neat stack of papers to his master.
“Forms are all well and good,” the vizier said. “But this is not the time, constable, for—”
Lift bolted.
Her instincts finally battered down her surprise and she ran, leaping over a couch on her way to the room’s back door. Wyndle moved beside her in a streak.
She tore a hunk off the roll with her teeth; she was going to need the food. Beyond that door would be a bedroom, and a bedroom would have a window. She slammed open the door, dashing through.
Something swung from the shadows on the other side.
A cudgel took her in the chest. Ribs cracked. Lift gasped, dropping face-first to the floor.
Another of Darkness’s minions stepped from the shadows inside the bedroom.
“Even the chaotic,” Darkness said, “can be predictable with proper study.” His feet thumped across the floor behind her.
Lift gritted her teeth, curled up on the floor. Didn’t get enough to eat … So hungry.
The few bites she’d taken earlier worked within her. She felt the familiar feeling, like a storm in her veins. Liquid awesomeness. The pain faded from her chest as she healed.
Wyndle ran around her in a circle, a little lasso of vines sprouting leaves on the floor, looping her again and again. Darkness stepped up close.
Go! She leaped to her hands and knees. He seized her by the shoulder, but she could escape that. She summoned her awesomeness.
Darkness thrust something toward her.
The little animal was like a cremling, but with wings. Bound wings, tied-up legs. It had a strange little face, not crabbish like a cremling. More like a tiny axehound, with a snout, mouth, and eyes.
It seemed sickly, and its shimmering eyes were pained. How could she tell that?
The creature sucked the awesomeness from Lift. She actually saw it go, a glistening whiteness that streamed from her to the little animal. It opened its mouth, drinking it in.
Suddenly, Lift felt very tired and very, very hungry.
Darkness handed the animal to one of his minions, who made it vanish into a black sack he then tucked in his pocket. Lift was certain that the viziers—standing in an outraged cluster at the table—hadn’t seen any of this, not with Darkness’s back to them and the two minions crowding around.
“Keep all spheres from her,” Darkness said. “She must not be allowed to Invest.”
Lift felt terror, panicked in a way she hadn’t known for years, ever since her days in Rall Elorim. She struggled, thrashing, biting at the hand that held her. Darkness didn’t even grunt. He hauled her to her feet, and another minion took her by the arms, wrenching them backward until she gasped at the pain.
No. She’d freed herself! She couldn’t be taken like this. Wyndle continued to spin around her on the ground, distressed. He was a good type, for a Voidbringer.
Darkness turned to the viziers. “I will trouble you no further.”
“Mistress!” Wyndle said. “Here!”
The half-eaten roll lay on the floor. She’d dropped it when the cudgel hit. Wyndle ran into it, but he couldn’t do anything more th
an make it wobble. Lift thrashed, trying to pull free, but without that storm inside of her, she was just a child in the grip of a trained soldier.
“I am highly disturbed by the nature of this incursion, constable,” the lead vizier said, shuffling through the stack of papers that Darkness had dropped. “Your paperwork is in order, and I see you even included a plea—granted by the arbiters—to search the palace itself for this urchin. Surely you did not need to disturb a holy conclave. For a common thief, no less.”
“Justice waits upon no man or woman,” Darkness said, completely calm. “And this thief is anything but common. With your leave, we will cease disturbing you.”
He didn’t seem to care if they gave him leave or not. He strode toward the door, and his minion pulled Lift along after. She got her foot out to the roll, but only managed to kick it forward, under the long table by the viziers.
“This is a leave of execution,” the vizier said with surprise, holding up the last sheet in the stack. “You will kill the child? For mere thievery?”
Kill? No. No!
“That, in addition to trespassing in the Prime’s palace,” Darkness said, reaching the door. “And for interrupting a holy conclave in session.”
The vizier met his gaze. She held it, then wilted. “I…” she said. “Ah, of course … er … constable.”
Darkness turned from her and pulled open the door. The vizier set one hand on the table and raised her other hand to her head.
The minion dragged Lift up to the door.
“Mistress!” Wyndle said, twisting up nearby. “Oh … oh dear. There is something very wrong with that man! He is not right, not right at all. You must use your powers.”
“Trying,” Lift said, grunting.
“You’ve let yourself grow too thin,” Wyndle said. “Not good. You always use up the excess.… Low body fat … That might be the problem. I don’t know how this works!”
Darkness hesitated beside the door and looked at the low-hanging chandeliers in the hallway beyond, with their mirrors and sparkling gemstones. He raised his hand and gestured. The minion not holding Lift moved out into the hallway and found the chandelier ropes. He unwound those and pulled, raising the chandeliers.
Lift tried to summon her awesomeness. Just a little more. She just needed a little.
Her body felt exhausted. Drained. She really had been overdoing it. She struggled, increasingly panicked. Increasingly desperate.
In the hallway, the minion tied off the chandeliers high in the air. Nearby, the vizier leader glanced from Darkness to Lift.
“Please,” Lift mouthed.
The vizier pointedly shoved the table. It clipped the elbow of the minion holding Lift. He cursed, letting go with that hand.
Lift dove for the floor, ripping out of his grip. She squirmed forward, getting underneath the table.
The minion seized her by the ankles.
“What was that?” Darkness asked, his voice cold, emotionless.
“I slipped,” the vizier said.
“Watch yourself.”
“Is that a threat, constable? I am beyond your reach.”
“Nobody is beyond my reach.” Still no emotion.
Lift thrashed underneath the table, kicking at the minion. He cursed softly and hauled Lift out by her legs, then pulled her to her feet. Darkness watched, face emotionless.
She met his gaze, eye to eye, a half-eaten roll in her mouth. She stared him down, chewing quickly and swallowing.
For once, he showed an emotion. Bafflement. “All that,” he said, “for a roll?”
Lift said nothing.
Come on …
They walked her down the hallway, then around the corner. One of the minions ran ahead and purposefully removed the spheres from the lamps on the walls. Were they robbing the place? No, after she passed, the minion ran back and restored the spheres.
Come on …
They passed a palace guard in the larger hallway beyond. He noted something about Darkness—perhaps that rope tied around his upper arm, which was threaded with an Azish sequence of colors—and saluted. “Constable, sir? You found another one?”
Darkness stopped, looking as the guard opened the door beside him. Inside, Gawx sat on a chair, slumped between two other guards.
“So you did have accomplices!” shouted one of the guards in the room. He slapped Gawx across the face.
Wyndle gasped from just behind her. “That was certainly uncalled for!”
Come on …
“This one is not your concern,” Darkness said to the guards, waiting as one of his minions did the strange gemstone-moving sequence. Why did they worry about that?
Something stirred inside of Lift. Like the little swirls of wind at the advent of a storm.
Darkness looked at her with a sharp motion. “Something is—”
Awesomeness returned.
Lift became Slick, every part of her but her feet and the palms of her hands. She yanked her arm—it slipped from the minion’s fingers—then kicked herself forward and fell to her knees, sliding under Darkness’s hand as he reached for her.
Wyndle let out a whoop, zipping along beside her as she began slapping the floor like she was swimming, using each swing of her arms to push herself forward. She skimmed the floor of the palace hallway, knees sliding across it as if it were greased.
The posture wasn’t particularly dignified. Dignity was for rich folk who had time to make up games to play with one another.
She got going real fast real quick—so fast it was hard to control herself as she relaxed her awesomeness and tried to leap to her feet. She crashed into the wall at the end of the hallway instead, a sprawling heap of limbs.
She came out of it with a grin. That had gone way better than the last few times she’d tried this. Her first attempt had been super embarrassing. She’d been so Slick, she hadn’t even been able to stay on her knees.
“Lift!” Wyndle said. “Behind.”
She glanced down the hallway. She could swear he was glowing faintly, and he was certainly running too quickly.
Darkness was awesome too.
“That is not fair!” Lift shouted, scrambling to her feet and dashing down a side hallway—the way she’d come when sneaking with Gawx. Her body had already started to feel tired again. One roll didn’t get it far.
She sprinted down the lavish hallway, causing a maid to jump back, shrieking as if she’d seen a rat. Lift skidded around a corner, dashed toward the nice scents, and burst into the kitchens.
She ran through the mess of people inside. The door slammed open behind her a second later. Darkness.
Ignoring startled cooks, Lift leaped up onto a long counter, Slicking her leg and riding on it sideways, knocking off bowls and pans, causing a clatter. She came down off the other end of the counter as Darkness shoved his way past cooks in a clump, his Shardblade held up high.
He didn’t curse in annoyance. A fellow should curse. Made people feel real when they did that.
But of course, Darkness wasn’t a real person. Of that, though little else, she was sure.
Lift snatched a sausage off a steaming plate, then pushed into the servant hallways. She chewed as she ran, Wyndle growing along the wall beside her, leaving a streak of dark green vines.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Away.”
The door into the servant hallways slammed open behind her. Lift turned a corner, surprising an equerry. She went awesome, and threw herself to the side, easily slipping past him in the narrow hallway.
“What has become of me?” Wyndle asked. “Thieving in the night, chased by abominations. I was a gardener. A wonderful gardener! Cryptics and honorspren alike came to see the crystals I grew from the minds of your world. Now this. What have I become?”
“A whiner,” Lift said, puffing.
“Nonsense.”
“So you were always one of those, then?” She looked over her shoulder. Darkness casually shoved down the equerry, barely bre
aking stride as he charged over the man.
Lift reached a doorway and slammed her shoulder against it, scrambling out into the rich hallways again.
She needed an exit. A window. Her flight had just looped her around back near the Prime’s quarters. She picked a direction by instinct and started running, but one of Darkness’s minions appeared around a corner that way. He also carried a Shardblade. Some starvin’ luck, she had.
Lift turned the other way and passed by Darkness striding out of the servant hallways. She barely dodged a swing of his Blade by diving, Slicking herself, and sliding along the floor. She made it to her feet without stumbling this time. That was something, at least.
“Who are these men?” Wyndle asked from beside her.
Lift grunted.
“Why do they care so much about you? There’s something about those weapons they carry…”
“Shardblades,” Lift said. “Worth a whole kingdom. Built to kill Voidbringers.” And they had two of the things. Crazy.
Built to kill Voidbringers …
“You!” she said, still running. “They’re after you!”
“What? Of course they aren’t!”
“They are. Don’t worry. You’re mine. I won’t lettem have you.”
“That’s endearingly loyal,” Wyndle said. “And not a little insulting. But they are not after—”
The second of Darkness’s minions stepped out into the hallway ahead of her. He held Gawx.
He had a knife to the young man’s throat.
Lift stumbled to a halt. Gawx, in far over his head, whimpered in the man’s hands.
“Don’t move,” the minion said, “or I will kill him.”
“Starvin’ bastard,” Lift said. She spat to the side. “That’s dirty.”
Darkness thumped up behind her, the other minion joining him. They penned her in. The entrance to the Prime’s quarters was actually just ahead, and the viziers and scions had flooded out into the hallway, where they jabbered to one another in outraged tones.
Gawx was crying. Poor fool.
Well. This sorta thing never ended well. Lift went with her gut—which was basically what she always did—and called the minion’s bluff by dashing forward. He was a lawman type. Wouldn’t kill a captive in cold—