‘Are we going to Gisella’s?’ Milla skipped beside him, careful to avoid icy patches.
‘I thought you might want to go back there,’ Alen smiled.
‘She’s fun, and I like those biscuits, the warm ones. They’re so big.’
‘Big as your head!’ Alen pretended to struggle beneath the weight of a giant pastry.
‘Can we bring one back for Hoyt?’
‘Of course.’
‘Is he going to die?’ Milla twirled a length of ribbon around her finger.
‘No, Pepperweed. He’s going to be just fine.’ Alen tried to sound convincing.
‘But there’s a new hole in his shoulder,’ the little girl said sadly. ‘One of those soldiers stuck him with a sword.’
‘That’s almost all better, sweetie. The querlis is fixing that hole right up.’
‘But not the other one,’ she was quick to point out.
‘I know, Pepperweed.’
‘Do you think Gilmour will be able to help him?’
‘That’s a funny thing to ask.’
‘Because he’s almost here,’ Milla said.
‘How do you know? Can you sense him out there?’ Alen knelt beside her, ignoring the damp seeping through his leggings.
‘You know how we felt that big crash from Falkan a while ago?’ Milla whispered as if sharing a secret. ‘It’s like that, only a lot quieter.’
‘It must be.’ He looked around, thinking perhaps his former colleague might be coming up the quay to join them. ‘I can’t feel him at all.’
‘Well, it’s hard, because he’s really quiet, but I know where to find him, because I held him that time outside the room.’
‘Like you did with me and Hoyt in the wagons?’
‘I had to with you and Hoyt, because those Seron things were coming so fast, and you two were dreaming about fireplaces and pretty girls.’ Milla snorted with laughter. ‘But, yes, just like that.’
‘Any idea where he is, Pepperweed?’ Alen aligned his finger with hers and Milla wrapped them both in the ribbon.
‘A little bit that way.’ She pointed southeast, across the inlet and along the coast.
‘Are you sure?’ Alen asked, ‘because if he’s coming by sea, he would have to come from that way.’ He pointed northeast, where deep water met a wall of atolls and shallow islands in the Northern Archipelago. ‘Everyone coming on the water this Twinmoon has to come that way.’
‘Nope.’ Milla shook her head, her scribbled curls jouncing. Not Gilmour. He’s coming from over there, around that piece of ground sticking out in the water.’
‘All right, Pepperweed, we’ll watch for him from that way. And to answer your question: yes, I hope that Gilmour can help Hoyt, or help me help Hoyt get better.’
They walked for a while in silence. Milla stopped to consider, then hopped over a coil of mooring hawser some docker had left along the wharf. Beside them, the Welstar River was a steely grey ribbon.
‘Nice jump,’ Alen said, retaking her hand, ‘but be careful. You don’t want to fall in.’
‘I know,’ Milla shivered. ‘It’s so cold it made my head hurt, and my skin was like it didn’t feel anything.’
‘Numb.’
‘Numb,’ Milla echoed. ‘So I had to warm it up, or I would have been too scared to swim.’
‘I hear you did a good job swimming.’
Milla beamed. ‘I swam the scramble, just like Hannah showed me, but she calls it the dog-paddle, or something like that. I did have to hurt that one man, though – I didn’t want to, but he was going to stab Hoyt, and maybe Hannah, too. So I made him stop.’ Her lip started to tremble.
Alen picked her up and, holding her close, whispered, ‘Don’t you worry about it, Pepperweed, not for one more day. Those men were going to take you back to Welstar Palace.’
‘Back to Rabeth and the others?’ She looked cross. ‘But I don’t want to go back there. I want to go home to Mama and to find Resta with Hoyt.’
‘Resta?’
‘You know: Resta the Wonderdog, who writes his name and sings songs.’
‘Yes, of course, how could I have forgotten?’
A pair of barges laden with tarpaulin-covered crates moved slowly towards Welstar Palace. Milla waved at one of the sailors. ‘You don’t think those other soldiers are going to come and find me?’
‘Not after what you did to them.’
‘That was Hoyt’s idea,’ Milla said. ‘I didn’t know if I could do it, but Hannah helped me to come up with a good story, and I just told it to those men, the ones with the hurt legs, and they thought it was true.’
‘And Erynn too, right?’
‘She was even easier,’ Milla said. ‘I just make her think that Karel had taken me away because he was mad at her for being in love with Hoyt.’
‘That’s silly, isn’t it?’ Alen blew into his cupped hands; Milla mimicked him, warming her fingers.
‘Hoyt’s too old, anyway.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be glad you think that way, Pepperweed.’
She giggled. ‘Hoyt’s silly.’
‘That is an interesting trick you did, though. I wish I knew how to do that one,’ Alen said. ‘Did Nerak teach you that one: helping people to remember things the wrong way?’
‘No.’ Milla wiped her nose on her cloak. ‘It was Hoyt. He told me to try it, and so I did. It was hard at first, because those other soldiers were shouting. So it was hard to think about how to do it.’
‘I’m impressed,’ Alen said, ‘but Milla, please don’t try that one on me or the others, all right?’
‘All right.’ Milla didn’t seem to care. ‘Are we there yet? I’m cold.’
While the Hunter’s Glade did indeed have enormous biscuits, some the size of a child’s head, Milla’s favourite thing about visiting Gisella were her dogs. The lonely cafe owner had two, a big old wolf-like creature, and a small, feisty creature with a mass of tight curls, a fiery temper and a soft spot for children. As soon as they arrived at the cafe, Milla rushed over to the dogs and the three of them rolled and wrestled until, exhausted, she joined Alen at their small table near the fireplace. After devouring whatever delicacy Gisella had prepared for her, Milla donned her cloak, kissed the barmaid on the nose and climb into Alen’s arms for the journey back to the Wayfarer. After most visits, Milla was asleep before they rounded the first corner.
This aven, the little girl didn’t sleep. Alen?’ she asked, a tiny voice in the twilight air.
‘What is it, Pepperweed?’
‘I sent those dogs to the wagons, too.’
‘I know you did, Pepperweed.’
‘Was that a wrong thing to do?’
‘You saved me and Hoyt,’ he said, ‘so no, I don’t think it was wrong.’
‘But some of those soldiers-’
‘They were all fine.’ Alen stopped her with the lie he and Hoyt had prepared. ‘Hoyt and I were watching while we sneaked away, and when the dogs left, all those soldiers were fine.’ She had been so upset at killing the Malakasian sergeant; knowing she had wiped out an entire platoon of Seron warriors would be too much for Milla to handle right now. He changed the subject, saying, ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘What?’
‘How do you do it? How do you get those dogs inside our dreams? Hannah, Hoyt, and I all dreamed about dogs – the same dog, from Southport, the one you sent after Hannah when she came across the Fold. How did you get the dog to follow your orders, and how did you get the same dog to fit so perfectly into our dreams?’
‘It’s the way those ashes work.’ Milla didn’t lift her head from his shoulder.
‘The ashes?’
‘The ash dream,’ she yawned into his ear.
‘What is that, Pepperweed?’ He was getting more confused, not less.
‘The dream you get from the trees.’
Ashes, Alen thought, ashes – yes, there were ashes in the fire grate in Durham, and Hannah mentioned ashes from her father’s cigarettes. Hoyt remembered me smoking, although I never did, and Churn smelled the ashes of his family’s burning homestead. The ash dream? Dreams of ashes? It doesn’t make sense.
He asked, ‘So why did we all dream about ashes, Pepperweed?’
‘You dream about your life. I put in the dog for fun. It isn’t hard to do.’
‘So where do the ashes come from?’