Well, they obviously didn’t, or the place wouldn’t be here. She continued strolling down the road, passing lines of homes cut into the wall, and strings of other homes smushed between them. Those shanties looked inviting—warm, packed, full of life. She even saw the green, bobbing motes of lifespren floating along among them, something you usually only saw when there were lots of plants. Unfortunately, she knew from experience that sometimes no matter how inviting a place looked, it wouldn’t welcome a foreigner urchin.

“So,” Wyndle said, crawling along the wall next to her head, leaving a trail of vines behind him. “You have gotten us here, and—remarkably—avoided incarceration. What now?”

“Food,” Lift said, her stomach grumbling.

“You just ate!”

“Yeah. Used up all the energy getting away from the starvin’ guards though. I’m hungrier than when I started!”

“Oh, Blessed Mother,” he said in exasperation. “Why didn’t you simply wait in line then?”

“Wouldn’t have gotten any food that way.”

“It doesn’t matter, since you burned all the food into Stormlight, then jumped off a wall!”

“But I got to eat pancakes!”

They wove around a group of Tashikki women carrying baskets on their arms, yammering about Liaforan handicrafts. Two unconsciously covered their baskets and gripped the handles tight as Lift passed.

“I can’t believe this,” Wyndle said. “I cannot believe this is my existence. I was a gardener! Respected! Now, everywhere I go, people look at us as if we’re going to pick their pockets.”

“Nothing in their pockets,” Lift said, looking over her shoulder. “I don’t think shiquas even have pockets. Those baskets though…”

“Did you know we were considering bonding this nice cobbler man instead of you? A very kindly man who took care of children. I could have lived quietly, helping him, making shoes. I could have done an entire display of shoes!”

“And the danger that is coming,” Lift said. “From the west? If there really is a war?”

“Shoes are important to war,” Wyndle said, spitting out a splatter of vines on the wall about him—she wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean. “You think the Radiants are going to fight barefoot? We could have made them shoes, that nice old cobbler and me. Wonderful shoes.”

“Sounds boring.”

He groaned. “You are going to slam me into people, aren’t you? I’m going to be a weapon.”

“What nonsense are you talking about, Voidbringer?”

“I suppose I need to get you to say the Words, don’t I? That’s my job? Oh, this is miserable.”

He often said things like this. You probably had to be messed-up in the brain to be a Voidbringer, so she didn’t hold it against him. Instead, she dug in her pocket and brought out a little book. She held it up, flipping through the pages.

“What’s that?” Wyndle asked.