Chapter 880: Millbrook

She came at dawn.

Almond was asleep on the hearth bench with Lily against his shoulder when the hall door opened. He woke at the sound. Big D was already standing.

The old woman was in the doorway.

She was out of breath. Her gray coat was wet with dew to the knees, and she was holding Ainen’s bread bag against her chest with both arms.

Behind her, the square was empty. There was no one with her. There was no road she could have come by.

"How did you..." Almond started.

"The bag," she said. "Ainen said I could always find my way back to his table." She looked past them at Ainen, who was sitting up on the bench with his hair on end.

"It’s true. I walked, and I didn’t know where I was walking, and then I was here."

Ainen was on his feet.

"Open Door," he said. "I didn’t know it worked like that."

"Neither did I." She came into the hall and sat down on the nearest bench before her legs could give out. "He felt it, Ainen. Your new door. He felt it last night, sitting at the edge with me. He went still."

"What did he say?" asked Lily.

The old woman held the bag tighter.

"He said it’s a climb." She looked at the tall gray door at the end of the hall, standing in the firelight with Sunfield’s morning on the other side.

"He said it’s going up from the bottom, and he can feel it the way he feels the big Door. He says nobody told him there was another way up. Nobody ever told him."

"Is he angry?" asked Big D.

"No." She shook her head slowly. "He’s frightened. I’ve never seen him frightened. Not even on the road, before he fell." She looked at Almond. "He’s coming to see it."

"When?"

"He said he’d walk. The long way, around the lines, like he promised. Three days." She hesitated. "I came ahead to tell you. I thought you should know before he got here."

Big D looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded once.

"Three days," he said. "Good. Then we have three days."

Through the door, Ainen went back to Sunfield an hour later with a pot on his back.

Rudra was waiting under the shrine eaves. John was still sitting against the old stone. Kael and Natalia came through behind Ainen, and Hessa came with them, because Big D had asked her to.

"If there’s anyone left in Millbrook," Big D had said, "I want to know before you get there."

Tobin walked them to the east stones. He would not come further. Wren tried to come, and Tobin held on to the back of her shirt.

"An hour east," Tobin said. "Follow the dry ditch. You’ll see the stones." He looked at Ainen. "There’s nothing there."

"We’ll see," said Ainen.

They walked east through the gold grass.

It was already hot. The rain had stopped before dawn, and the sun had come up white and hard over the plain, and the wet grass was steaming. Hessa walked in the middle of them with her hand over her eyes.

"It’s dark," she said, after a while. "Millbrook. The stones are there, but there’s nothing in them."

"Anyone inside?" asked Rudra.

"I can’t see anyone."

Ainen kept walking.

Halfway there, Hessa stopped.

"Wait," she said. "Wait. There’s something under the ground."

"Ender?" asked Kael.

"No." Hessa pressed her hand harder. "It’s a room. Under one of the houses. A cellar." Her voice changed. "There are people in it."

Ainen ran.

He was not fast. He never had been. But he ran down the dry ditch through the gold grass with the pot banging on his back, and Rudra and Kael ran beside him, and they came over the last low rise and saw Millbrook.

It was a little bigger than Sunfield. Its white stones ran around a hill of mud brick houses with a mill at the top, a wooden wheel standing still over a dry stream. The stones were gray and dull. There was no light in any of them.

And there were Enders in the village.

Natalia saw them first.

Mark.

Red light touched them, one after another, all through the empty streets. Ainen knew them. They were tall and long-legged, with heads like bent lanterns.

"Strayers," said Kael. "Eight of them."

"They’re nesting," said Hessa. "In the houses. The line’s dead, so they just walked in."

"And the cellar?"

Hessa pointed at the biggest house near the mill.

"Under that," she said. "They’re right on top of it."

Rudra put his hand on his chest.

True Heading.

"Straight," he said. "That house. Nobody turns."

They went in over the dead stones.

The Strayers felt them come. Ainen felt the road turn under his feet, and every direction went soft. But Rudra’s heading held. Ainen could feel it in his chest like a rope pulling, that way, and he followed it.

The first Strayer came out of a doorway on the left.

Quickstep.

Kael met it six steps out and put his sword through its long neck. It fell across the doorstep. Two more came out of the house behind it, and Natalia put an arrow through the lantern head of one.

Rudra caught the other one by its leg and swung it into the wall of the house, and it did not get up.

The rest came all at once.

They came out of every door on the street. They were fast, and the turning they made was strong. Ainen felt Rudra’s heading bend under it. He felt the rope in his chest go slack.

"Rudra," he said.

"I’ve got it," Rudra said through his teeth. "I’ve got it."

He did not have it. Ainen could see his face.

Ainen put the pot down in the street.

He did not have anything to fight with. He had never fought the way Kael fought, or Rudra. He had a ladle and a pot and a fire. So he did what he always did.

Hearth.

The fire came up in the middle of the dead street, small and bright and real. It caught the dry wood of a broken cart and burned clean and hot.

Open Table.

"Sit down," Ainen said to the Strayers. "All of you. It’s hot. It’s food. Come and sit down."

The Strayers stopped.

They did not come to the fire. They were not hungry. But they stood in the street with their lantern heads turning toward it, the way moths turn toward a lamp. For a moment, the turning went out of the air.

Rudra’s heading caught.

"Now," he said.

Kael went through them in a line, six steps and six steps and six steps. Natalia shot two more. The last one tried to run, and Rudra put a broken plank through its back as it went.

The street was quiet.

Ainen picked up his pot. His hands were shaking.

"That was new," said Rudra.

"I didn’t know if it would work," said Ainen.

"Neither did I." Rudra wiped his face. "Don’t do it again."

They found the cellar door under a heap of broken furniture in the big house by the mill.

Kael pulled the furniture away. Rudra lifted the door. It was dark down there, and it smelled of earth and roots and people who had not washed in a long time.

"Hello?" Ainen called down. "It’s all right. They’re gone. We’ve killed them."

Nobody answered.

"My name’s Ainen," he said. "I’m a cook. I’ve come from Sunfield. Tobin sent me."

There was a sound in the dark. Then a voice. It was a woman’s voice, thin and hoarse.

"Tobin?" she said. "Tobin’s alive?"

"Alive," said Ainen. "And it’s raining in Sunfield. The river’s back."

There was another long silence.

Then a face came up into the light at the bottom of the stairs. It was a woman’s face, gray-haired and filthy and thin. Behind her were others.

Ainen counted them as they came up into the light, one by one, blinking and shading their eyes. There were eleven of them. Four were children.

The woman at the front stood at the top of the stairs and stared at Ainen.

"You’re Tobin’s sister," Ainen said.

She nodded. She did not seem able to speak.

Ainen took the pot off his back and set it down on the floor of the big empty house. He took off the lid.

"Sit down," he said gently. "All of you. It’s still warm."

They sat.

Hessa had come in last. While they ate, she walked out of the house and down to the dead stones at the edge of the village. She stood there with her hand flat on the nearest stone.

"There’s people inside again," she said, when Ainen came out to find her. "Eleven. That’s enough. The line knows."

Relight.

She pushed.

Light ran into the stone under her hand. It ran along to the next stone, and the next, the way it had run along Greywatch’s line on the night the Gapmaker came.

All around the hill, Millbrook’s dead white stones lit up one after another, until the whole ring was glowing in the hot noon sun.

Down in the big house, someone cried out.

Hessa took her hand off the stone. She was smiling.

"One," she said.

"One," said Ainen.

Then Hessa’s smile went away.

She put her hand back over her eyes. She did not look east, at the rest of the dark lines on the plain. She looked back the way they had come. Back to Sunfield, and the tall gray door in the shrine, and Brightwater beyond it.

"Ainen," she said.

"What is it?"

"The old woman said three days," Hessa said slowly. "Didn’t she? He’d walk the long way. Three days."

"Yes."

Hessa lowered her hand. Her face had gone white.

"He’s not walking," she said. "He’s already there. He’s standing in Brightwater’s north field."