Lift smiled and dug a pancake out of her pocket. This woman had been visited by Darkness because of her. That sort of thing earned you a debt. So she tossed the woman the pancake—which was really more of a panball at this point—then used the Stormlight she’d gotten from the ones she’d eaten to start healing the wounds of the refugees.

The guard captain watched in silence, holding her pancake, as Lift moved along the line breathing out Stormlight on everyone like she was tryin’ to prove her breath didn’t stink none.

It was starvin’ hard work. But that was what pancakes was for, makin’ kids feel better. Once she was done, and out of Stormlight, she tiredly waved and strode onto the plain outside the city.

“That was very benevolent of you,” Wyndle said.

Lift shrugged. It didn’t seem like it had made much of a difference—just a few people, and all. But they were the type that were forgotten and ignored by most.

“A better knight than me might stay,” Lift said. “Heal everyone.”

“A big project. Perhaps too big.”

“And too small, all the same,” Lift said, shoving her hands in her pockets, and walked for a time. She couldn’t rightly explain it, but she knew that something larger was coming. And she needed to get to Azir.

Wyndle cleared his throat. Lift braced herself to hear him complain about something, like the silliness of walking all the way here from Azimir, only to walk right back two days later.

“… I was a very regal fork, wouldn’t you say?” he asked instead.

Lift glanced at him, then grinned and cocked her head. “Y’know, Wyndle. It’s strange, but … I’m starting to think you might not be a Voidbringer after all.”

Postscript

POSTSCRIPT

Lift is one of my favorite characters from the Stormlight Archive, despite the fact that she has had very little screen time so far. I’m grooming her for a larger role in the future of the series, but this leaves me with some challenges. By the time Lift becomes a main Stormlight character, she’ll have already sworn several of the oaths—and it feels wrong not to show readers the context of her swearing those oaths.

In working on Stormlight Three, I also noticed a small continuity issue. By the time we see him again in that book, the Herald Nale will have accepted that his work of many centuries (watching and making sure the Radiants don’t return) is no longer relevant. This is a major shift in who he is and in his goals as an individual—and it felt wrong to have him undergo this realization offscreen.

Edgedancer, then, was an opportunity to fix both of these problems—and to give Lift her own showcase.