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 breaking 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