Morning smells like rope and courage.
We leave before the kiln warms—Root, Lelia, Bora at the gate; Syth with a pack of chalk and salt; Kirella and I with the lantern and bowls. The bounty is still nailed by the hook: NOT FOR SALE. Good. Let it watch us carry a kitchen where coin thinks it owns the street.
"Rules," Root says at the rope bell, counting on their fingers. "One: You trade bowls for hands, not coin. Two: You keep each other. Three: If a lock talks, you don't answer with your name."
"Four," Lelia adds, tying my cloak. "Eat something, then feed others. Cooks who faint make thin soup."
Bora presses a ladle into Kirella's belt like a sword. "Big end forward," he says, grinning.
We take Pipe 2 up and slide through a slit that smells like old smoke and new chalk. The world opens into Ash Market—a long courtyard under torn awnings, stalls made from doors and pride, smoke that tastes like yesterday's fire. Mirrors hang everywhere: shards in frames, scutes glued to poles, pieces set into jars to make light go where it does not belong. Eyes watch from behind glass and from behind lids. Keys ring on belts. Prices ring in voices.
The lantern does not flare. It settles, a kitchen breath in a loud room.
"Where?" Syth asks.
"There," Kirella says, nodding at a patch of cracked stone between a spice table and a man selling knives that look bored. We set a low board on two crates. We mark a thin ring on the ground with my palm. I write on the board in big letters:
SOUP FOR BOWLSBOWLS FOR HANDSWE KEEP EACH OTHER
Syth draws a little picture of a kettle with a grin. Two children appear as if she said their names in a friendly way and offer to pump water from a squealing pump. They pump. We salt it. Lelia's chickpeas go into the pot with onions we brought and garlic someone "found." The lantern warms the pot without turning it holy. It is a good trick.
A woman with a hat like a nest steps close. "Price?" she asks, wary and hungry.
"Bowl," I say. "Not coin."
She blinks. "I have no bowl."
"Then hands," Kirella says, and passes her the ladle. "Stir five counts. You earn a bowl."
She stirs. The smell grows bold. She passes the ladle with a face that forgot how to carry pride gently. We hand her a cracked bowl full. She eats with small bites as if the soup might run away.
A man with a bundle of rope stops. "Pay?" he tries.
"Hands," I say. "Tie this knot and hang this sign."
He does—good hands, quick—then holds his bowl with those same hands and looks surprised it fits.
People gather. Some come for soup. Some come for the joke. Some come because the bounty told them a story about a girl with a lantern and a man who won't sell kitchens.
We feed. We teach kept-knot. We write WE KEEP EACH OTHER on the stall edge and let the chalk pass from hand to hand. Each time a new palm touches the board, the lantern's hum drops deeper. It feeds.
A mirror-boy slinks near, skinny and bright with wrongness, a shard tied to a string at his wrist. He lifts it to catch our light.
"Don't," Syth warns.
He does.
The shard shows him a trick: me big, the lantern bigger, Kirella a wall. It tells him this has a price.
I press my palm to the ring on the ground. Warmth rises like breath. The boy's shard dulls. His eyes clear for the first time today. He lowers the string and stares at his own hand like it just made a choice.
"Soup?" I ask.
He nods without swagger. We give him soup. He eats fast, then slower, then sets the bowl down and ties our sign tighter without being asked.
The lockwright arrives before noon.
Not the man from Blue Pantry. A different one—hat sharp, coat neat, smile rented. A silver half-lock hangs on a ribbon at his throat. Two quiet hunters walk behind him, mirrors tucked, knives asleep.
"Trade?" he says, voice sweet like rot. "I buy broken things and sell them right."
"We don't sell kitchens," I answer.
He looks at the lantern as at a pretty tool he already imagines on his shelf. "Coin for that light," he says, and sets a small purse on the stall. It clinks polite. "Or favors. Keys."
I shake my head. "Bowls. Hands."
He tilts his head at Kirella. "You're the one who holds her hand," he says. "You look like a man who likes orders. Take this, and I'll write you into a place where doors open when you frown."
Kirella's mouth almost smiles. "Two truths," he says softly. "We won't pay. We won't sell."
The lockwright's eyes narrow, pleased to be challenged. "Then we play a market game," he says. "You feed for free. I feed for coin. We see who keeps a crowd. Winner keeps the place."
Syth sucks a breath between her teeth. "Market duel," she whispers, excited and angry.
"Rules?" I ask, because rules are fences you can paint.
"Clean food, no blood," the lockwright says. "No breaking stalls. No stealing bowls—unless they come to you. I call three judges. You call three. We count bowls and breaths."
"Breaths?" I ask.
He smiles. "How many shoulders you lower. Market isn't charity. It's trade in relief."
He expects me to flinch. I don't. "Fine," I say. "But my judges don't carry mirrors."
He bows. "As you wish."
He whistles. Three people step forward in clothes too fine for this dust. He names them Tithe Clerk, Mirror Steward, Coin-Teller. I point to my judges: the woman with the nest hat, the rope man, and the mirror-boy who put his shard down. The lockwright's mouth pinches. He doesn't argue. Markets hate to look petty before noon.
We start.
He sets two pans on a brazier and throws coin oil into them until the air smells rich enough to buy a wall. He cracks eggs with a flourish, dusts spice with a wink, sings a silly song that makes people clap against their will. His food is pretty—yellow, red, a little green. His knives flash. His mirrors catch it and fling it at faces.
We stir chickpeas and onions and garlic and bread heels. We cut nothing fancy. We don't sing. We let the lantern cast warm rings on the ground for feet to find. We show a child how to hold a ladle. We show a grandmother how to tie a knot so the kettle handle stops biting her. We trade bowls for hands and names, not coin.
People drift to him first because new is loud. They drift back because hunger knows which bowl forgives a long day. My judges count quietly. His judges clap on time.
A man with an apron stands between our stalls, unsure. The lockwright flings a coin at his feet like a trick. I set a bowl on the board like a seat.
He sits.
The lockwright sees his crowd thin and adds a flourish: a paper fish with a wax seal. He holds it over his pan like a blessing and pops the seal with his knife. A sweet, wrong smell bursts—market perfume—and people sigh without meaning to. He smiles. The mirrors drink the sigh and shine.
"Root would salt his shoes," Syth mutters.
"Salt his trick," I say.
I lift the lantern and pour a thin ring around our board. Warmth rises, soft and steady. The perfume hits the ring and flattens like hot air meeting a cool wall. People blink and breathe like themselves again. The clapping stutters. The mirror-boy laughs once, short and rude, then hides it in his bowl.
The rope man ties a line between our stall leg and a post: a quick kept-knot. The knot looks like nothing and changes the room a little. The lockwright sees the knot and bares his nice teeth.
"Illegal knot," he says.
"Illegal mirror," Syth says back, and flips his ribbon with two fingers and a face.
Voices rise. The mirror stewards put hands on knives. Kirella doesn't touch his. He is a fence. He is a door. He is patient.
"Count?" the lockwright asks, too soon.
"Half-day only," the nest-hat woman says, stern as a bell. "We count at sun-slap."
He clicks his tongue. His hunters adjust their coats.
We cook. We teach. We feed. The lantern grows heavier, not brighter—the way good bread gets heavy with steam before it relaxes. The wrong mirrors search for purchase and find a kitchen instead.
A small procession pushes through the crowd then—three figures in white cloaks trimmed with glass threads. Not temple. City assessors—men and women who count stalls and break them when papers say so. Their leader is a woman with hair pulled tight and eyes that can read math off a wall.
She stops at our ring. The glass at her collar catches the lantern and does not bite. "Permit?" she asks.
I set a bowl on the board. "Bowl," I say.
"We are not paying," she answers, and her mouth almost smiles.
"You don't," Kirella says. "You carry. One pot to Blue Pantry when you finish counting."
The assessor considers the map of her day. "Fair," she says, and picks up the pot handle with two fingers to test the weight. "Fair enough."
She glances at the lockwright's stall. "You have a permit," she tells him.
"Of course," he says.
"You have two," she adds. "One for you. One you bought yesterday from a man who needed more bread than paper."
He smiles like she paid him a compliment. She doesn't.
"We don't break kitchens," she says quietly to me, too quiet for mirrors. "We mark them. If they keep each other. Do you?"
"We do," I say.
"Then feed," she says, and moves on.
The lockwright's smile drops. He moves to step over our ring, to make a point of stepping on it.
Kirella blocks him with his body, polite as a wall that refuses to gossip. "Two truths," he says. "You know them."
The lockwright's hand twitches toward his knife. He stops because he can count. He whistles to call the judges early.
"No," the nest-hat woman says. "Sun-slap."
"Now," he says, and snaps his fingers.
His hunters surge. Not at us. At the lantern.
I was waiting for that.
The ring at our feet rises a palm's height, soft as breath, firm as a promise. The first hunter runs into it like into warm water and forgets to raise his knife. The second stumbles and his mirror tilts—not to me, but to the crowd behind, flashing their own faces back at them. People snort, annoyed, and annoyance is proof of health.
The lockwright steps in, fast—too fast for soup, just right for market theft. Kirella meets him, forearm to wrist, elbow to elbow. No blood. No show. He turns the man with a move he learned in a place that sold applause and refuses to use like that now. The lockwright's ribbon pops. His half-lock medal swings free and kisses the dirt.
"Count," he gasps, breathless and furious.
We do.
The Tithe Clerk counts coin at his stall. The Coin-Teller counts eyes at ours and hates what they find. The Mirror Steward tallies faces looking like they forgot to frown. My judges count bowls and then stop counting and start eating, because counting on an empty stomach is a sin here.
"Who wins?" Syth asks, chin up.
The nest-hat woman lifts her bowl and her voice. "Kitchen."
The rope man ties a knot in the air and grins. "Kitchen."
The mirror-boy bangs his spoon once on our board. "Kitchen."
The assessor from the city lifts the pot she promised to carry and nods like a stamp. "Kitchen."
The crowd answers with the tired cheer of people who do not have time to cheer but do anyway. The lockwright's smile goes thin as wire.
"Place is yours," he says, and I hear for now inside the words because men like him keep those words in their sleeves.
"We'll claim it again tomorrow," I say, "and teach it your name so it spits you out."
He laughs and steps back. "You can't teach stone," he says.
"You can," Kirella says. "With work."
We ladle the last bowls. We stack the pots. We leave the ring on the ground like a tattoo the market will have to scrub to forget. The assessor shoulders the promised pot toward Blue Pantry. People fall in behind with their own bowls like a quiet parade.
When the crowd thins and the mirrors turn to other prey, the lockwright drops one more trick on the board between us and leaves like he didn't: a tiny tin key with two teeth and a hole where a ribbon used to be.
Syth pokes it with a spoon. "Gift?"
"Bait," Kirella says.
"Lesson," I say.
We don't touch it. We salt around it. The key ticks once, offended at not being picked up. It writes a sound in the dirt like a scribble.
We pack up slow, not hiding, not daring. The lantern is heavier now, a good heavy. We carry it together.
On the way out of the market a small statue catches my eye—a saint with a bowl in one hand and a knife in the other, not holy, not cruel. Someone chalked a crooked ring at her feet. I bend and write three words on the pedestal:
WE KEEP EACH OTHER.
We take Pipe 2 down. The market noise thins and becomes water speech again. The lantern hums like a kitchen singing to itself.
Gloam Inlet opens the gate. Children run to smell our sleeves and declare the day soup. Lelia counts pots and mouths and approves with a pinch. Bora reads our faces and nods once, heavy as a stamp. Root underlines Ash Market—claimed on the pillar and draws a crooked little kettle beside it for joy.
"Trouble?" Root asks.
"Games," Kirella says.
"Keys," Syth adds. "Biting air."
"Kitchen wins," I say.
The wax seal on our wall scratches three letters fast and proud: K I T—then stops, confused, like a student who tried to spell kitchen and ran out of chalk.
The rope bell makes a half chime, then another, then learns to finish the note properly all on its own. It sounds like a child practicing until they get it right. It sounds like the city listening and failing to say what it means. Good.
We hang the lantern and breathe. The Commons breathes with us. The red scrap on the hook flares a little as if it were a flag and we were a country.
Kirella leans his shoulder to mine. "Hungry?" he asks.
"Always," I say, and mean soup and years.
"Us first," he says.
"Then the rest," I answer.
We don't kiss. We don't need to. The room knows.
At the edge of the Commons, near the sealed mouth, a tiny paper moth flutters from a crack and lands on my palm. No mirror. No wrong. Just a wing made from a ledger scrap with one line that matters:
BOWLS KEPT: 12
I show it to Root. They smile, a real one. "Ledger learns," they say.
The moth lifts, folds, and slides into the lantern's shade as if it belongs there—booklight in kitchenlight, word in bread.
And the chapter ends there, with bowls returned, a stall claimed, a key salted into silence, and our kept light heavy and good between our hands.