women at a table. Nobody looking her direction. She slipped through the door.
Then became awesome.
She ducked down, kicked herself forward, and for a moment, the floor—the carpet, the wood beneath—had no purchase on her. She glided as if on ice, making no noise as she slid across the ten-foot gap. Nothing could hold her when she got Slick like this. Fingers would slip off her, and she could glide forever. She didn’t think she’d ever stop unless she turned off the awesomeness. She’d slide all the way to the storming ocean itself.
Tonight, she stopped herself under the table, using her fingers—which weren’t Slick—then removed the Slickness from her legs. Her stomach growled in complaint. She needed food. Real fast, or no more awesomeness for her.
“Somehow, you are partly in the Cognitive Realm,” Wyndle said, coiling beside her and raising a twisting mesh of vines that could make a face. “It is the only answer I can find to why you can touch spren. And you can metabolize food directly into Stormlight.”
She shrugged. He was always saying words like those. Trying to confuse her, starvin’ Voidbringer. Well, she wouldn’t talk back to him, not now. The men and women standing around the table might hear her, even if they couldn’t hear Wyndle.
That food was in here somewhere. She could smell it.
“But why?” Wyndle said. “Why did She give you this incredible talent? Why a child? There are soldiers, grand kings, incredible scholars among humankind. Instead she chose you.”
Food, food, food. Smelled great. Lift crawled along under the long table. The men and women up above were talking in very concerned voices.
“Your application was clearly the best, Dalksi.”
“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