Brandon Sanderson - Edgedancer 

Actually, so did she. How bizarre.

Darkness’s two apprentices stepped into the room. The Assassin in White remained outside in the hallway. He settled down on the floor across from the doorway, his strange Shardblade across his lap. He sat mostly still, but when he did move, he left that fading afterimage behind.

Lift pulled into the side corridor again, back pressed to the wall. People shouted somewhere distant in the Grand Indecision, calls for people to be orderly.

“I have to get into that room,” Lift said. “Somehow.”

Wyndle huddled down on the ground, vines tightening around him.

Lift shook her head. “That means getting past the starvin’ assassin himself. Storms.”

“I’ll do it,” Wyndle whispered.

“Maybe,” Lift said, barely paying attention, “I can make some sorta distraction. Send him off chasin’ it? But then that would alert the two in the room.”

“I’ll do it,” Wyndle repeated.

Lift cocked her head, registering what he’d said. She glanced down at him. “The distraction?”

“No.” Wyndle’s vines twisted about one another, tightening into knots. “I’ll do it, mistress. I can sneak into the room. I … I don’t believe their spren will be able to see me.”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

His vines scrunched as they tightened against one another. “You think?”

“Yeah, totally,” Lift said, then peeked around the corner. “Something’s wrong about that guy in white. Can you get killed, Voidbringer?”

“Destroyed,” Wyndle said. “Yes. It’s not the same as for a human, but I have … seen spren who…” He whimpered softly. “Maybe it is too dangerous for me.”

“Maybe.”

Wyndle settled down, coiled about himself.

“I’m going anyway,” he whispered.

She nodded. “Just listen, memorize what those two in there say, and get back here quick. If something happens, scream loud as you can.”

“Right. Listen and scream. I can listen and scream. I’m good at these things.” He made a sound like taking a deep breath, though so far as she knew he didn’t need to breathe. Then he shot out into the corridor, a vine laced with crystal that grew along the corner where wall met floor. Little offshoots of green crept off his sides, covering the carpeting.

The assassin didn’t look up. Wyndle reached the doorway into the room with the two Skybreaker apprentices. Lift couldn’t hear a word of what was being said inside.

Storms, she hated waiting. She’d built her life around not having to wait for anyone or anything. She did what she wanted, when she wanted. That was the best, right? Everyone should be able to do what they wanted.

Of course if they did that, who would grow food? If the world was full of people like Lift, wouldn’t they just leave halfway through planting to go catch lurgs? Nobody would protect the streets, or sit around in meetings. Nobody would learn to write things down, or make kingdoms run. Everyone would scurry about eating each other’s food, until it was all gone and the whole heap of them fell over and died.

You knew that, a part of her said, standing up inside, hands on hips with a defiant attitude. You knew the truth of the world even when you went and asked not to get older.

Being young was an excuse. A plausible justification.

She waited, feeling itchy because she couldn’t do anything. What were they saying in there? Had they spotted Wyndle? Were they torturing him? Threatening to … cut down his gardens or something?

Listen, a part of her whispered.

But of course she couldn’t hear anything.

She wanted to just rush in there, make faces at them all, then drag them on a chase through the starvin’ building. That would be better than sitting here with her thoughts, worrying and condemning herself at the same time.

When you were always busy, you didn’t have to think about stuff. Like how most people didn’t run off and leave when the whim struck them. Like how your mother had been so warm, and kindly, so ready to take care of everyone. It was incredible that anyone on Roshar should be as good to people as she’d been.

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?”

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.