Root writes DAY 2/7 on the pillar in chalk big enough for paper to feel shy.
The wax seal on our wall gives a thin ash-hiss and tries to shape an A. Root dusts it with a pinch of salt like you dust a pie so it doesn't misbehave. The hiss sulks itself into silence.
"We set a table in the market," Root says, fast as rope. "Not a stall. A table."
"Kitchens don't pay," Lelia adds, tying her hair and daring kettles to try her. "They carry."
Bora loops line over his shoulder. Ira tests a hook with her whole weight and calls it honest. Syth pockets chalk, salt, and a smile she swears she didn't borrow. Kirella buckles the strap on his bracer, checks my face the way a man checks a map.
"Two breaths," he says.
"Us first," I answer.
We carry the lantern together.
Pipe 2 coughs us into Ash Market. Morning here is always a tired joke: awnings yawn, mirrors blink, coin clears its throat. Today we take the joke away and give it soup.
We set two crates and a low board, chalk a thin ring on the stones—warmth like a kitchen's first exhale—and write in letters a child could read:
KITCHEN FAIRSOUP FOR BOWLS • BOWLS FOR HANDSWE KEEP EACH OTHER
The air changes—just a hair. Not holy. Not loud. Work remembers what it is for.
The city assessor from yesterday steps from a ribbon of shadow, white coat trimmed in glass that doesn't bite. She watches our ring the way a cat watches a string. Root meets her with a folded scrap—ink, stamp, ugliness made useful. "Bowl permit," Root says. "Counts bowls, not coin."
The assessor's mouth almost smiles. "Kitchens carry," she says, signing the corner with a mark that looks like a notch in a beam. "No mirrors in ring. No paper over door."
"Fair," Kirella says.
"Fair enough," she answers, and taps the board with two fingers the way people tap a blessing.
Syth explodes into stations before the ink dries. "This way," she calls, turning the Fair into a map. "Bowl-for-Hands—stir and you eat. Knot Clinic—we teach the knot that judges your shin. Chalk School—write WE KEEP EACH OTHER, swallow no chalk, or Lelia will make you spit. Ring Walk—step on four, not three, unless you like kettles biting. Pepper-Mint Smoke—what you smell is markets dying of rudeness."
Children arrive as if their names were on the air. Nim stands straight as a metronome by the Ring Walk with a small wooden spoon for a baton. "One—two—three—four," they count, solemn and proud, and the little swirl the lantern left on its glass yesterday flashes once in approval.
We hang a sign at eye-level: NO COIN. Then another, lower: NO NAMES TO PAPER.
People come.
A woman with ink-black hands from dyeing cloth wipes her palms on her skirt that refuses to be clean and asks "price." I put the ladle in her grip. "Five slow stirs," I say. She stirs. Her shoulders drop without permission. Her bowl is heavy and right.
A cartman with rope burns and a child on one hip learns the kept-knot from Syth; the rope smacks his shin once when he does it wrong and nods at him when he does it right. He laughs like a cough that changed its mind.
Kirella keeps time, one—two—three—four, square and steady; I hum low under it; the lantern's glow sits deep, not wide. The market's wrong perfume tries the edge of our ring and slides away, embarrassed.
Halfway to noon, a lockwright sets his auction board at the ring's edge—tin keys dangling like bait, a paper door folded on the crossbar. "Paper bid!" he calls, sweet as rot. "Key for light! Key for loyalty! Key for forgetting you were ever hungry!"
Syth takes two steps and plants the WORD tile from the Abbey on his paper like a thumb on a child's forehead. WE KEEP EACH OTHER imprints through flour-dust and bravado. The paper hesitates. He pulls it back quick, cheeks polite, eyes unkind.
"We don't duel," I say. "We feed."
He smooths his coat. "Coin dresses hunger better."
"Kitchens undress lies," Kirella answers, voice warm steel.
We don't clap. We stir.
The Kitchen Fair grows ribs. The Chalk School spills letters onto planks, stall legs, palms that promised not to wash until evening. Nim's count keeps rhythm. Lelia's pot learns to be quick without splashing. The assessor returns, lifts an earthen pot with both hands and no disgust, and carries it toward Blue Pantry like a verdict on our side.
The lockwright sees the crowd bend toward us and changes tactics. He whistles low. A paper door unfurls from his crossbar and drops its pleats in front of our board. Numbers march the edge: 1 2 3 4 5. The door smells like fruit the city can't afford. It has no mouth but somehow asks: COUNT.
"Wrong count, it sprays perfume," Syth mutters, spotting pinholes like freckles.
I kneel, draw a second ring inside the first, narrow, neat. Kirella taps his count, one—two—three—four. I widen the ring in two breaths. Syth slaps WORD against the paper and leaves WE like a handprint.
"Five?" the door expects.
"Four," Kirella says, steady.
"Four," I echo. "We stir on four."
"Four," Nim says, firm as a gavel.
The perfume holes fail. The pleats sag to WAIT. The lockwright's smile sheathes itself.
He leaves a tin key on our board like a gentleman leaves a glove and drifts back into mirrors. Syth salts around the key. It ticks once, offended, and keeps sulking for an hour.
Rope bell from far off: two short, one long, the sound a river makes when someone tells it to behave and it bites the rope instead.
Ira's signal. Quiet Wharf.
"Go," Lelia says, already planting her feet at the Fair like a cook guarding a door. "We'll carry."
Bora rolls his shoulders and takes her place at the Knot Clinic. The assessor tilts her chin at the lockwright stall and two plainclothes clerks you don't notice until you do walk slow circles like patience wearing shoes.
We take Pipe 6 down. The air shifts from spice to iron to water that remembers storms. Quiet Wharf heaves into view—lip, posts, three boats, and the river not talking, thinking.
Paper sails bead the water—rafts the size of doors, varnished to last, painted with wrong flowers. Mirror scutes glitter at their corners; perfume threads run their seams. The rafts kiss the wharf's stones and leave scent like a bruise.
Children cough. Ira's jaw is a cliff.
"Paper-sail rafts," Syth says, disgust soft and hot. "They'll mark us from the water. Rope won't catch smell."
"Brine will," Ira says. "Dump."
The brine cauldron—salt water and stubbornness—sits on a low tripod over coals. Kirella and I tip it with a board under its belly. The water falls in a slow silver sheet, heavy as regret. It drenches the first raft. The paper droops, then slumps, then melts into a skin of paste that slides off the stones and sinks with the dignity of failure. Mirror scutes clink and vanish. The smell fights and loses.
"Again," Ira says, and we do, brine like rain you buy with work. Syth runs along the lip with two small ring-stones from our packs. She drops one at Post Saint, one at Post Dummy. Their rings join and make a warm strip across the water like a ribbon the river chooses to wear.
"Boards," she pants.
I hand her three thin chalk boards we carved for teaching. She squats, writes WE, KEEP, EACH, OTHER in big wrong letters a boat could read and slides the boards into the strip. They drift slow, obedient, words linked by warmth. The river reads. The smell's nerve fails where it tries to float past OTHER and finds itself small.
Above us Ira's crew swings pepper-mint pots on ropes like bells. Smoke walks the air, not pretty, correct. The coughing thins. A teen with webbed toes ducks under a beam and laughs when the smoke slaps a perfume rope into honesty.
A last raft bumps the lip stubborn. Kirella leans, catches it with the hook, doesn't stab—guides—and we drown the last of wrong flowers in brine.
"Name the posts again," Syth tells the kids, chalking faces on the wood so they're friends, not strangers. "This one? Big Wrist. That one? Broken Thumb. What's this?"
"Saint," the smallest says, reverent with a fish in her hand.
"Right," Syth says, and ties a kept-knot on Saint for luck and lesson.
The river settles from plot to plan. The word QUIET on the far wall looks cleaner.
"We owe you bowls," Ira says, and means more. "Go. Your market burns the right way."
We go.
Back through Pipe 6, the chalk line Syth drew—NO PERFUME with a kettle doodle—still holds. We add a loop and an arrow for new feet. The market opens around us like a crowd exhaling. The Kitchen Fair is a soft storm: BOWL BEAT at the Ring Walk; Knot Clinic shins stinging then grateful; Chalk School palms white and proud. The paper moth sleeping in our lantern shade blinks, lifts, and shows a new wing: BOWLS KEPT: 38.
The assessor makes a stamp in the air with two fingers. "Kitchens marked," she says, lifting a pot toward Blue Pantry without asking if she may. That's what marked means.
The lockwright reappears in a clean coat as if the river didn't just eat his trick. He pastes a fresh poster to a pillar where people pretend not to look and everyone does: AUCTION—DAY 5. The numbers swagger. The ink smirks.
The wax seal at home must feel the ink move even from here. In my head I see it scratch D-5 in our wall's sleep.
"Counting backwards suits him," Syth says, and eats a handful of mint because it tastes like winning.
We break once to drink water that doesn't smell like fruit someone lied into being. Nim perches on the table edge, legs too short to dangle properly, spoon upright like a banner. "Four," they say to a boy about to step on three. The boy blushes, corrects, grins.
We start closing when the sun slaps the far wall in a strip that tells kettles to wash and knives to lie down. The lockwright watches me pack the ladle and pretends to be bored.
"Light fetches a price," he says as if discussing weather.
"Not here," I say.
He taps the tin key he left earlier. "Prices move," he says, and disappears into mirrors that forgot how to be brave.
We carry the ring with us, thin and obedient, back toward Blue Pantry. People fall into our wake not because we asked but because bowls learned to follow kitchens. Bora keeps pace with two on his arm and a rope across his chest. Lelia counts mouths and refuses to count coin. Root chalks KITCHEN FAIR—CLAIMED on the pillar and underlines FAIR twice as if the word were a knife they chose not to use.
At Blue Pantry the door behaves, the paper harness still on like a ribbon that learned better. We step inside to the smell of onions that forgave us for yesterday's lentils. A new paper trick waits just above the sign: a fresh fold slides down and asks without mouth, not COUNT this time, but SIGN—letters raised like a bruise.
"Contract door," Root says, voice low. "It binds by name-smell. Sign and the room obeys paper, not people."
Kirella plants himself between door and lantern with all the patience of stone that remembers hands. "We don't give names to paper."
I lift the lantern and pour a thin ring around the door's feet. It warms the wood, not the paper. Kirella sets his count, one—two—three—four. I give the Promise Choir we've been building since the day we weren't sold—my low hum, his steady numbers. "We won't pay," he says. "We won't sell," I answer. The paper trembles. The raised SIGN blurs at the edges like ink that smelled soup and lost self-respect.
It doesn't flee. It waits—like it learned the command and hates it.
The rope bell at the gate rings one, two, three—half. The last note fumbles like a drunk reaching for truth. The room freezes, then breathes again.
"Three and a half?" Bora says, frowning.
Root's eyes narrow. "He's mimicking our calls," they say. "Close enough to make hands hesitate."
Lelia lifts a pan lid and bangs it once, hard—the kitchen's own bell. The note sets the air straight.
We seal the contract door for now—salt letters along its bottom: WE KEEP EACH OTHER—and tie a kept-knot through the pull so it can't drop without permission. The paper sulks and rustles the way bad manners do when they meet a mother.
At the Commons, Root underlines DAY 2/7 and writes D-5 beside it with a face that doesn't blink. Syth drags a board into the middle and paints a new station sign for tomorrow in letters as arrogant as they need to be:
KITCHEN SCHOOLWRITE • KNOT • RING • BREATHE
Nim falls asleep under the lantern with the spoon still in their fist like a king with a sensible scepter. The paper moth flutters, peeks, then inks a new number on its wing with the sleepy confidence of a clerk who ate before counting:
BOWLS KEPT: 41
I hang the lantern on its hook and let its weight pull my shoulders down in the good way. Kirella stands next to me, shoulder a beam against mine. We look at the pillar, the ugly poster we ripped down and nailed back face-out with NOT FOR SALE across it, the little maps Root draws in chalk as if chalk could patent mercy.
"Hungry?" he asks.
"Always," I say, and mean soup and seven days and ten quiet years.
He puts his palm over mine on the handle.
"Us first," he says.
"Then the rest," I answer.
The rope bell yawns like it was about to fake a note and thought better of it. The kiln breathes. The market mutters in its sleep. The wax seal learns nothing new and that, too, is a mercy.
And the chapter ends there, with the Kitchen Fair stamped on stone, the river reading we, the contract door sulking in salt, and our kept light steady and heavy between our hands while a clock we can see and one we can't both count us toward Day 5.