The wax seal on our wall doesn't click. It hisses—a thin ash-breath, letters without lungs.
Somewhere far the Pipe Choir hums wrong—one low note, then another the size of a child's chest. The lantern grows heavier in my hands, a kitchen weight.
Root draws two lines on the pillar with fast chalk.
"Team A—Ash Market," they say. "Find the smell-child. Cut the song. Bring them home."
"Team B—Blue Pantry," Lelia adds, tying her hair like a flag. "Pepper smoke. Kept-knots. Quiet Wharf on call."
Bora coils rope. Ira slings a hook. Syth shoves chalk and salt into three pockets and a fourth she swears we don't see. Kirella buckles his belt, breath even.
"Two breaths," he says, checking my eyes.
"Us first," I answer.
We take Pipe 2 while the kiln is still yawning. The market wakes slow at this hour—awnings limp, mirrors veiled, smoke yawning from cold braziers. The wrong smell crawls under everything: cheap resin, sweet fruit, a note that tries to pry your ribs open.
Syth walks a line I can't see, fingertips brushing stall legs, knee bones, cracks in the stone. She marks × where mirror scutes and cloth strips reek—spread like garlands at shin height. She stoops to cut one strip free and lifts it to her nose with an expression like a cat staring down a lie.
"Perfume rope," she says. "Walk under and you wear the market."
Kirella pulls a strip of his cloak and rubs it with salt, then ties it over my mouth and his. We breathe through salt and mint Lelia ground in last night's pot. The wrong smell wilts.
I kneel and draw a thin ring on the ground. Warmth rises soft as bread steam. People stepping near slow without meaning to; shoulders fall half an inch; a woman laughs once like a hiccup and looks around to see who stole it.
We hunt the hum.
Down an alley of broken spice tables, the note tightens. A brazier sits cold. Behind it, two lockwright hunters stand with knives asleep and mirrors half-tucked. Between them a child sits on a crate—seven? eight?—eyes wide, mouth tied in a shiny collar. The collar is not iron. It's paper varnished hard and set with mirror seeds.
Every breath the child takes makes a pipe note. They flinch at their own air.
Syth's jaw locks. "I hate this," she says without volume.
"Me too," I say.
Kirella steps forward with his hands open, empty, soldier-patient. He moves like a wall choosing to be a door. The first hunter notices too late. Kirella turns his wrist, then his elbow, then his whole idea of balance. The man sits down on the ground the way a chair sits when it remembers it used to be a tree.
The second hunter lifts his knife. I lift a ring. It rises as tall as my knee, warm and polite. He runs into it and forgets what he meant to do. His knife lowers like a hand that remembered manners.
I kneel by the child. The collar hums under my fingers, paper skin over glue and stolen breath. "We won't sell you," I say. "We will keep you."
Their eyes flood once, then steady like a full cup that learned not to spill.
Syth touches the collar's seam. "Kitchen cut," she says, and pulls Lelia's bread knife from her belt. Not sharp enough to brag. Sharp enough to matter. She finds the join—paper over paper—and slides the knife through once, twice.
The collar loosens.
The child's next breath is only breath.
The Pipe Choir in their chest coughs and loses the melody.
Behind us, the first hunter scrabbles toward his mirror. Kirella puts a boot gently on the glass. "No," he says. It is a simple word, and it obeys itself.
The child swallows. Their voice arrives small but theirs. "They told me to blow," they whisper. "To make the market sing. They gave me sugar smoke when my head hurt."
"What's your name?" I ask.
They hesitate like it's a coin. "Nim," they say at last.
"Hi, Nim," Syth says, cheer too sharp to cut. She pulls a mint-salt cloth from her pocket and wraps it around the collar halves as if bandaging a stupid idea. "This won't go back on a neck," she tells it. "It can sit in a jar and smell sorry."
The market wakes louder—the clatter of pans, the dour cough of knives, the whisper of coin counting itself. The wrong smell pushes. The hum puts a hand on Nim's ribs and tries to remember how to own them.
"Kitchen Choir," Kirella says, almost a smile.
Syth grins for real. "Bowl beat."
She runs three stalls in three breaths, grabs spoons, lids, cups, presses them into strangers' hands. "Hit on four," she says. "No, like this. Hard. Not angry. Hungry."
Kirella sets his count: one—two—three—four, steady as ropes, square as a table that doesn't wobble. I set my voice under it, a hum the color of the places light doesn't bully. Nim breathes with us—little ribs, big job. The lantern warms, not bright, deep.
Clack—pause—clack—pause. Spoons strike wood. Lids tap pans. The sound builds wrong and then right, not applause, not coin—work. The perfume wave hits the ring at our feet and flattens. Mirrors search for shine and find bowls instead.
Nim's shoulders drop. The muscle at their jaw remembers it was made for chewing, not for songs that don't feed.
The two hunters blink like sleepers. Syth snatches their mirror scutes with quick fingers and practices mercy by not breaking fingers that might tie knots properly one day.
A new trick drops from the awning above—a paper door unfolding. It cascades down in pleats, neat as taxes. On its face a stamped M preens. Numbers march along the edge: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.
The door stops a foot above our ring and asks without a mouth: COUNT.
It smells like fruit and rules.
"Wrong number and it stings," Syth mutters, eyeing the tiny holes in the pleats. "Perfume darts."
Kirella smiles with only a corner of his mouth. "Then we teach it."
He taps the count again: one—two—three—four. I widen the ring in two breaths, slow, steady. Syth fishes the WORD tile from her collar—the one we took from the Abbey—and presses it to the paper. Letters imprint like a handprint on a child's back after a good hug: WE KEEP EACH OTHER.
The door shivers. The numbers on its edge hesitate as if considering a new language.
"Five?" it expects.
"Four," Kirella says. "We don't clap for markets."
"Four," I say. "We stir soup."
"Four," Syth says, delighted to be rude to paper.
The perfume holes fail. The pleats fold up halfway and wait—half door, half banner. The M looks suddenly foolish, a monogram on a napkin someone used too long.
We move Nim under the ring and into shade. Syth ties the cut collar halves with a kept-knot and drops them into a bag like a guilty fish. Kirella nudges the huntsmen toward the far stall with three fingers and a patient stare. They go. Nim leans into my side with the right weight for a kid who slept on the wrong ideas for too long.
"Home," I tell them.
We take the short line back through the spice alley, past a pan that insists on being iron, past a stall that sells sugar as medicine. The market notices our pot, our ring, our kid, and chooses to look away because choosing to look at kindness is hard until it isn't.
Halfway, the paper door trick again—this time over a cross-street: two wings, numbered wrong, the M upside down like a crown on a drunk. It drops fast. I set a ring; Kirella counts; Syth slaps WORD down with the glee of a saint scolding a spoon. The door learns "wait" twice in one morning, which is more schooling than it expected.
At Blue Pantry, the air is pepper. Good. The paper door there has already tried to fold. Bora and Ira have it in a kept-knot harness, wings held open like a silly bird. Lelia fans smoke with a pan lid, queen of rude weather. Root writes WE KEEP EACH OTHER along the door's hem with a brush dipped in salt water. The paper stiffens and refuses to learn "closed" while "kept" is still warm.
We bring Nim through the ring. Syth sets them on a stool as if it were a throne. Lelia puts a mug in their hands. "Sip," she orders. "Burn your tongue and I'll laugh and then fix it."
Nim sips correctly. Progress.
The lantern notices Nim and warms over their wrist, leaving a faint narrow swirl on the glass, like the sign for a good breath that finally decides to stay.
"Paper will spread," Root says, quiet. "Before Mirrors came, Markets used lists. Paper is older than applause."
"Then we teach paper to read," I say.
Syth whoops. "Kitchen School," she announces, victorious and instantaneous. "Lesson one: write WE KEEP EACH OTHER large enough that paper gets embarrassed and gives up."
"Lesson two," Lelia says, still fanning smoke. "Tie kettles so they bite less and stir when asked."
"Lesson three," Bora rumbles. "Don't sell kitchens."
Ira taps the door harness with a knuckle. "Lesson four: ropes can judge."
We feed Nim soup. They hold the bowl steady with two hands like it has a pulse. Kirella kneels, his eyes level with theirs. "If anyone asks you to sing for coin," he says, "you breathe for yourself instead."
Nim nods, solemn. "I breathe for soup," they say, and Lelia almost drops a ladle laughing.
We leave Bora and Ira with the harness and Root with the brush. Syth tucks the cut collar halves into a jar with the mint-salt cloth and writes SORRY on the glass in bad letters that make good sense.
The market won't sleep just because we fed a kid. Keys keep calendars. Men with half-locks always think they invented math.
The wax seal on our wall hisses again.
Root puts a palm near it. "Don't touch," they warn. "Let it talk long enough to tell on itself."
The hissing grows into a rustle, as if paper under stone wants the last word. Root slides a thin knife along the mortar and pries up a strip of paper no wider than a finger. Lelia salts the edge because she salts everything that thinks it knows more than kitchens.
Root unfolds the strip with two fingers and a mouth that doesn't blink.
On the paper is a tiny, neat map—three loops in ink: Quiet Wharf → Blue Pantry → Ash Market → back, drawn as if a child learned to spell trap. Along the bottom a line of keys with numbers under them: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. In the corner in a hand I'll know under dirt or ashes: Kitchen lantern: auction day 7.
My stomach goes cold, then warm. The lantern tightens in my hands, heavy in a way that says it is ready to be carried, not sold.
"Markets can count," Kirella says, voice steady.
"So can we," I answer.
"School starts now," Syth declares, already dragging a plank to the middle of the Commons. She chalks three words large enough to shame paper: WE KEEP EACH OTHER. Kids gather because chalk is fun and rules are complicated. Adults gather because rules that feed are rare.
We teach.
Write the three words. Tie the kept-knot—two fingers, two breaths. Make a thin ring with a hand and a lamp. Don't clap when men tell you to clap. Stir on four. Breathe for soup.
Ira shows the rope judge trick: if the knot slides, the rope hits your shin like a polite warning. Bora shows how to carry two bowls and never drop one even if someone yells tithe in your ear. Lelia shows the proper way to spit out chalk if you forget you're not Syth.
Root posts two maps on the pillar: Blue Pantry—claimed and Quiet Wharf—claimed. Under them they chalk Ash Market—ring on ground. Then, larger than the bounty's letters, larger than the wax seal's learning: DAY 1/7.
The bridge-tooth bell taps once like a heartbeat you can share. The paper door in the Pantry rustles, tries to remember the number for closing, sees we written in salt and ink, and sighs into wait again.
We split duties until night. Bora and Ira make rounds to Quiet Wharf. Root rewrites the numbers on stall edges, teaching paper to count bowls instead of coin. Syth and I cut perfume ropes and tie them back as wind bells that sing pepper over mint whenever wrong air tries to push. Kirella talks to men who thought they lived by orders and asks them to carry a pot one street and count a breath one to four without cheating. Half of them say no. A quarter lie and then help anyway. The rest learn we.
By dusk the market smells like soup and pepper instead of sugar and rot. The mirrors hang bored. A lockwright watches from under a hat and practices not clapping. He leaves a tin key on a post because he believes in bait the way some men believe in gods. Syth salts it into rudeness and writes NO on it with a smile.
We go home heavy and right.
The Commons breathes when we enter. Nim naps under the lantern, an empty bowl hugged like a pillow. The paper moth in the shade wakes, flutters once, and changes its wing:
BOWLS KEPT: 27
I touch the glass near the new swirl where Nim's breath left a sign. Kirella's hand covers mine over the handle. Warmth covers warmth.
"Us first," he says.
"Then the rest," I answer.
"Then ten quiet years," Syth says from the ladder, too loud, pretending not to mean it and failing beautifully.
We hang the lantern. The wax seal stays sulky. Root pins the strip with auction day 7 to the pillar and draws a big ugly ring around it so no one mistakes it for a secret.
"Tomorrow," Lelia says, "we teach the market to spell no in six more ways."
"Tomorrow," Bora adds, "we eat something that isn't lentils."
"Tomorrow," Ira says, "we tie rope that bites back."
"Tomorrow," I whisper, touching the words on the pillar, we first, then the rest.
The kiln sighs. The bell sleeps. The city does not, but it forgets to bite for a little while. That is enough.
And the chapter ends there, with paper learning to wait, a child breathing their own breath, the looped map nailed to our wall, and our kept light heavy between our hands counting the first of seven days out loud where markets can hear it.