They had camped on the hill above the town, because Maximus said no.
Pip had argued — loudly, at length, with gestures — that the inn was right there, the lamps were lit, and she could smell bread. Maximus had stood at the edge of the firelight, watching the lamplight in the valley, and said: "We wait until morning."
"Why?" Pip demanded.
He hadn't answered. He never answered that question. He just stood there, and the rest of them learned, the way you learn with Maximus, that the silence was the answer.
In the morning, there was no smoke from the chimneys.
Lyra noticed it first. She stood at the edge of the camp, looking down at the valley, and said: "The fires went out."
"All of them?" Seraphina asked, coming up beside her. "At once? Overnight?"
Below them, the town lay in the gray morning light — the church bell tower, the mill wheel, the little houses. And the lamps. The lamps were still burning.
Nobody had put them out.
---
They rode in through the north gate — a wooden arch with the town's name carved into it, weathered past reading. The street was empty. The lamps burned in their posts, flames pale and pointless in the daylight, oil half-gone — they'd been burning all night, and nobody had come to trim them. A cart stood in the middle of the road, its horse gone, a sack of grain split open on the cobbles, the grain scattered in a fan where something had kicked through it. A shutter banged, somewhere, in the wind. Bang. Bang. Bang. Nobody closed it.
"Hello?" Pip called, her voice too loud in the quiet. "Innkeeper? Anybody?"
Nothing answered. Not even a dog. Towns have dogs. This one didn't. Not anymore.
Maximus dismounted. He stood in the street, turning slowly, reading the town the way he'd read the ruins of Millhaven — but this wasn't ruins. This was yesterday.
"We split up," he said. "Four directions. Check the houses. Call out if you find —" He paused. "If you find anything."
"Anything what?" Pip asked.
"Anything."
---
Maximus took the smithy. The forge was cold, the coals gray. A hammer lay on the anvil — dropped, not set down, the head still rocking faintly when he touched it, as if the hand had left it moments ago. Horseshoes hung on the wall in neat rows. A half-finished blade cooled in a slack tub. Whoever had been working here had simply... stopped.
Lyra took the houses on the east side. The first door stood open. Inside: a table set for supper, the food half-eaten — a bowl tipped over, stew congealed on the wood, a spoon on the floor where small fingers had dropped it. A woman's shawl hung over the back of a chair, as if she'd just stepped away. A child's wooden horse lay on its side by the hearth, one wheel still spinning slowly, slowly, slowing.
Lyra stood in the doorway for a long moment, looking at that wheel. She thought of Veyloria — her city, her people, the lamps along the queen's road. She thought of how quickly a table becomes a monument.
Then she closed the door gently behind her, as if the house were sleeping.
Pip took the inn — because of course she did. The common room was empty, the tables cleared except one: a mug of ale, half-drunk, a fly walking circles on the rim. The kitchen beyond — a pot on the stove, gone cold, bread blackened in the oven. Somebody had left in the middle of baking. Pip stood there, her grand dreams of a bath curdling in her chest, and then she did something none of them ever learned about: she set a copper coin on the counter, next to the cold pot.
*For the room,* she thought. Somebody should pay.
Seraphina took the west side, moving house to house, calling softly: "Hello? Is anyone here? I'm not — I'm here to help."
The fourth house — a small one, paint peeling, a garden gone leggy — the door was barred from the inside. She knocked. Nothing. She pushed — the bar gave with a crack — and stepped into the dim.
"Hello?"
A sound. Small. From the corner — behind the table, under the window. A scraping, like something trying to press itself through the wall.
Seraphina went still. Then she crouched, making herself low, and peered under the table.
A girl. Small — seven, maybe eight — curled into the corner with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, her face buried. She wore a nightdress and one shoe.
"It's okay," Seraphina said softly. "I'm not here to hurt you."
The girl curled tighter, making a sound like a wounded animal.
Seraphina didn't move closer. She sat down on the floor — right there, in the dust, her skirts pooling around her — and made herself as small as she could.
"My name is Seraphina," she said. "I'm a healer. That's all. I help people who are hurt." She reached slowly into her pack and pulled out a heel of bread. She set it on the floor between them. "Are you hungry?"
A long silence. Then — small fingers, quick as a mouse, snatching the bread back into the corner. Chewing. Fast, desperate chewing. The kind of chewing that said she hadn't eaten in longer than a night.
Seraphina waited. Healers learn waiting the way warriors learn the sword — it becomes part of the body. She sat in the dust and let the quiet do the work.
"Are they gone?" The voice was tiny. "The dead ones."
"Yes," Seraphina said. "They're gone. I promise."
"...How do you know?"
"Because I'm still here." Seraphina smiled, gentle. "And I'm very hard to get rid of. Ask anyone."
A sound from the corner — not quite a laugh, but the ghost of one. The girl uncurled, just a fraction. Enough for Seraphina to see her face: seven, maybe eight, dust-streaked, tear-tracked, one shoe.
"What's your name?" Seraphina asked.
"...Annabelle."
"Annabelle." Seraphina smiled. "That's a brave name."
"I'm not brave." The voice was tiny. "I hid."
"Hiding is brave, sometimes." Seraphina kept her voice low and steady. "Can you tell me what happened here, Annabelle?"
---
They gathered in the street — the four of them, and the small girl in the nightdress and one shoe, holding Seraphina's hand like it was the only solid thing in the world.
Pip landed on the cart and sat down hard, her wings drooping. "Nobody," she said. "Not one person. It's like—" She stopped.
"Like what?" Lyra asked.
"Like the town just... stopped."
Annabelle looked up at them — these strange tall people, the fairy, the queen, the warrior with the black sword — and said, in a voice they'd have to lean in to hear:
"They came at night. An army. Dead ones." She swallowed. "They rounded everyone up in the square. Mama told me to hide. I went in the cellar, under the potatoes." Her fingers tightened on Seraphina's hand. "I heard them. Marching. And Mama crying. And then —"
She stopped.
"Then what, sweetheart?" Lyra knelt, bringing herself to the girl's level.
"One of them had a black sword," Annabelle whispered. "It drank the light. I peeked — through the cellar door — I wasn't supposed to, Mama said not to look, but I looked." Tears cut clean lines through the dust on her face. "They fell down. Everyone fell down. And then they stood up again. But they weren't — they weren't them anymore." Her voice dropped to nothing. "They marched away. All of them. Marching. And the marching sounded... wrong. Like their feet didn't remember how."
Silence in the street. The lamps burned on, pointless in the daylight.
"We're a small town," Annabelle said. "We don't have weapons to defend ourselves." She looked at Maximus, at the sword on his back. "They took everyone."
Maximus crouched down, slowly, the way you'd approach a spooked horse. "You hid," he said. "That was the bravest thing you could have done. Your mama was right to tell you."
Annabelle stared at him. Then, suddenly, she let go of Seraphina's hand and threw herself at Maximus, wrapping her arms around his neck. He froze — the great warrior, the Ancient, undone by a child in a nightdress — and then his arms came up around her, gentle as anything.
Pip's wings gave a single hard beat. She flew over and landed on Maximus's shoulder, and put her small hand on Annabelle's head.
"Hey," Pip said softly. "Hey, kiddo. We've got you."
---
They couldn't leave her. That was never a question — though Maximus stood apart for a while, looking down the empty street, his face heavy with the arithmetic of it: another life to protect, on the road toward Morikk. He'd seen what Morikk did with children. Fen's mechanical walk was still fresh in his memory.
Lyra came and stood beside him. "We can't leave her."
"I know." He didn't look at her. "That's what worries me."
"She has family," Annabelle said, when they asked. "In the next town. My auntie. Past the Miller's Wood." She looked up, fierce through the tears. "Can you take me? Please?"
Lyra looked at Maximus. Maximus looked at the empty street, the burning lamps, the split grain sack.
"We'll take you," he said.
They found her clothes — a dress, both shoes, a coat too big for her that had been her brother's. Whose brother — where he was now — none of them asked. Pip braided Annabelle's hair with fierce concentration, her tongue sticking out, while Seraphina packed food. Lyra found a doll under the girl's bed — a rag doll with button eyes — and tucked it into Annabelle's pack without a word.
By midday they rode out through the north gate, Annabelle riding double with Pip on Devastator, Pip pointing out clouds and naming them rude names until the girl laughed — a small, surprised sound, like she'd forgotten how.
Behind them, the lamps burned on in the empty street.
---
Beneath the Old King's Fall, in the dark that had never known a sun, something stirred.
It had felt them for days — four lights on the road, moving north. Bright. Warm. Alive. It had watched them through borrowed eyes, tasted their names through borrowed mouths. The swordsman. The queen. The healer. The little storm.
And now — a fifth light. Small. Flickering. New.
A child.
In the dark, Morikk reached — the way a man reaches for a candle in a lightless room.
*Hello, little one,* he whispered, across the miles, into the sleeping corners of her mind. I see you.
Far away, on the road past the Miller's Wood, Annabelle shivered in her sleep — and did not wake.
Chapter 10