Brandon Sanderson - Edgedancer 

Below it, sitting on the floor, was a tray with a metal covering—the type fancy people put over plates so they wouldn’t have to look at food while it got cold. Underneath, like the emerald treasures of the Tranquiline Halls, Lift found three plates of pancakes.

Darkness’s breakfast. Mission accomplished.

She started stuffing her face with a vengeful enthusiasm.

Wyndle made a face from vines beside her. “Mistress? Was this all … was this all so you could steal his food ?”

“Yeph,” Lift said, then swallowed. “Course it is.” She took another bite. That’d show him.

“Oh. Of course.” He sighed deeply. “I suppose this is … this is pleasant, then. Yes. No swinging about of innocent spren, stabbing them into people and the like. Just … just stealing some food.”

“ Darkness’s food.” She’d stolen from a palace, and the starvin’ emperor of Azir. She’d needed something interesting to try next.

It felt good to finally get enough food to fill her stomach. One of the pancakes was salty, with chopped-up vegetables. Another tasted sweet. The third variety was fluffier, almost without any substance to it, though there was some kind of sauce to dip it in. She slurped that down—who had time for dipping?

She ate every scrap, then settled back against the wall, smiling.

“So, we came all this way,” Wyndle said, “and tracked the most dangerous man we’ve ever met, merely so you could steal his breakfast. We didn’t come here to do … to do anything more, then?”

“Do you want to do something more?”

“Storms, no!” Wyndle said. He twisted his little vine face around, looking toward the hallway. “I mean … every moment we spend in here is dangerous.”

“Yup.”

“We should run. Go found a farm, like I said. Leave him behind, though he’s likely tracking someone in this city. Someone like us, someone who can’t fight him. Someone he will murder before they even start to grasp their powers…”

They sat in the room, empty tray beside them. Lift felt her awesomeness begin to stir within her again.

“So,” she asked. “Guess we go spy on them, eh?”

Wyndle whimpered, but—shockingly—nodded.

“JUST try not to die too violently, mistress,” Wyndle said as she crept closer to the sounds of people talking. “A nice rap on the head, rather than a disemboweling.”

That voice was definitely Darkness. The sound of it gave her chills. When the man had confronted her in the Azish palace, he’d been dispassionate, even as he half apologized for what he was about to do.

“I hear that suffocation is nice,” Wyndle said. “Though in such a case, don’t look at me as you expire. I’m not sure I could handle it.”

Remember the girl in the market. Steady.

Storms, her hands were trembling.

“I’m not sure about falling to your death,” Wyndle added. “Seems like it might be messy, but at the same time at least there wouldn’t be any stabbing. ”

The hallway ended at a large chamber lit by diamonds that gave it a calm, easy light. Not chips, not even spheres. Larger, unset gemstones. Lift crouched by the half-open door, hidden in shadows.

Darkness—wearing a stiff white shirt—paced before two underlings in uniforms in black and white, with swords at their waists. One was a Makabaki man with a round, goofish face. The other was a woman with skin a shade lighter—she looked like she might be Reshi, particularly with that long dark hair she kept in a tight braid. She had a square face, strong shoulders, and way too small a nose. Like she’d sold hers off to buy some new shoes, and was using one she’d dug out of the trash as a replacement.

“Your excuses do not befit those who would join our order,” Darkness was saying. “If you would earn the trust of your spren, and take the step from initiate to Shardbearer, you must dedicate yourselves. You must prove your worth. Earlier today I followed a lead that each of you missed, and have discovered a second offender in the city.”

“Sir!” the Reshi woman said. “I prevented an assault in an alleyway! A man was being accosted by thugs!”

“While this is well,” Darkness said, still pacing back and forth in a calm, even stroll, “we must be careful not to be distracted by petty crimes. I realize that it can be difficult to remain focused when confronted by a fracture of the codes that bind society. Remember that greater matters, and greater crimes, must be our primary concern.”

“Surgebinders,” the woman said.

Surgebinders. People like Lift, people with awesomeness, who could do the impossible. She hadn’t been afraid to sneak into a palace, but huddled by that door—looking in at the man she had named Darkness—she found herself terrified.

“But…” said the male initiate. “Is it really … I mean, shouldn’t we want them to return, so we won’t be the only order of Knights Radiant?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Darkness said. “I once thought as you, but Ishar made the truth clear to me. If the bonds between men and spren are reignited, then men will naturally discover the greater power of the oaths. Without Honor to regulate this, there is a small chance that what comes next will allow the Voidbringers to again make the jump between worlds. That would cause a Desolation, and even a small chance that the world will be destroyed is a risk that we cannot take. Absolute fidelity to the mission Ishar gave us—the greater law of protecting Roshar—is required.”

“You’re wrong,” a voice whispered from the darkness. “You may be a god … but you’re still wrong.”

Lift nearly jumped clear out of her own skin. Storms! There was a guy sitting just inside the doorway, right next to where she was hiding. She hadn’t seen him—she’d been too fixated on Darkness.

He sat on the floor, wearing tattered white clothing. His hair was short, a brown fuzz, as if he’d kept it shaved until recently. He had pale, ghostly skin, and held a long sword in a silvery sheath, pommel resting against his shoulder, length stretching alongside his body and legs. He held his arms draped around the sheath, as if it were a child’s toy to hug.

He shifted in his place, and … storms, he left a soft white afterimage behind him, like you get when staring at a bright gemstone for too long. It faded away in a moment.

“They’re already back,” he whispered, speaking with a smooth, airy Shin accent. “The Voidbringers have already returned.”

“You are mistaken,” Darkness said. “The Voidbringers are not back. What you saw on the Shattered Plains are simply remnants from millennia ago. Voidbringers who have been hiding among us all this time.”

The man in white looked up, and Lift shied away. His movement left another afterimage that glowed briefly before fading. Storms. White clothing. Strange powers. Shin man with a bald head. Shardblade.

This was the starvin’ Assassin in White !

“I saw them return,” the assassin whispered. “The new storm, the red eyes. You are wrong, Nin-son-God. You are wrong.”

“A fluke,” Darkness said, his voice firm. “I contacted Ishar, and he assured me it is so. What you saw are a few listeners who remain from the old days, ones free to use the old forms. They summoned a cluster of Voidspren. We’ve found remnants of them on Roshar before, hiding.”

“The storm? The new storm, of red lightning?”

“It means nothing,” Darkness said. He did not seem to mind being challenged. He didn’t seem to mind anything. His voice was perfectly even. “An oddity, to be sure.”