and an insult to the gods, sometimes all before breakfast.
Aras liked mornings that left him unsure whether he'd been a hero or a curse by noon. This morning, dawn arrived sticky with incense and the faint tang of panic. The horn from the temple had grown hoarse overnight; priests were running numbers with the fervor of men balancing too many debts. The city was full of people who hadn't washed the notion of fear out of their hair.
Down the corridor, Lina was teaching an elderly shoemaker to whistle—strictly for morale. The shoemaker blew three notes disastrously; Aras pretended to be scandalized and awarded him a single, theatrical clap. Humor was a tool; sometimes it was the only tool that didn't make fresh enemies.
Serane moved like someone in a suit of purpose. She kept the newly awakened in line with the efficiency of a teacher doing roll call for the rebellious. The baker set a table with thick, steaming loaves; crumbs made a constellation down the stone stairs. The shoemaker mended shoes as if he was sewing people back into the world. The old woman hummed lullabies that smoothed the rough edges of panic.
"You're running out of bandages," Serane told Aras, pointed and efficient. "And security. And excuses."
Aras, who had been attempting to teach a group of former sleepers to clap in rhythm (an exercise he claimed built solidarity), wiped flour on his face like war paint. "I'm experimenting with charm as a currency," he said. "It works well until the priests discover how well it's been minted."
Serane's mouth twitched. "We need a relocation plan that doesn't involve giving a sermon to every guard with a conscience."
"Conscience is a luxury at market price," Aras said, with mock solemnity. "We accept coins, promises, and extremely persuasive pies."
Lina listened, earnest, then ventured, "We could take them to the river cottages. My mother's friend has a barn. It's small, but hidden. Bread travels well."
Aras lifted an eyebrow. "Bread as diplomacy," he said, approvingly. "I once convinced a militia to stand down with a focaccia. It was an expensive night, but memorable."
Serane's sigh was real this time, less theatrical. "Fine. River cottages," she conceded. "We move at dusk. We use Lira's cart. We travel light and quiet."
They moved like a caravan of odd ghosts: a man whose grin made taverns forgive him, a general who practiced mercy like a weapon, a girl who remembered chalk dust, a baker, a shoemaker, a lullaby-singer, and two dozen others who were waking to the fact that someone had snatched their lives back from a bureaucratic ledger and dropped them into chaos.
The serious part of the morning happened in intervals. A shriek from the street as a priest recognized an old face who claimed a home; a scuffle with a guard who tried to search the cart; father Mael's pallid expression when Aras tried to bribe him with bread and bad jokes. Each moment added weight. Each moment expanded the list of people who would either hate them for lying or love them for giving a second chance.
Yet those heavy notes were punctuated by small absurdities. Lina discovered she liked Aras's hat and tried it on; he allowed it for exactly three minutes before the hat declared itself a symbol of reckless leadership and slid off. The shoemaker, upon finding his hands could still make things, insisted on custom boots for Aras that were, by consensus, terrible—fashionable in a way only bootmakers with a personal vendetta can manage. Aras wore them anyway and declared them a trend. Lira dropped whistles into pockets like emergency cheer; the bakery smelled so convincing that even Serane paused, nostrils flaring, as if remembering a childhood bread she'd almost forgotten.
They left the fortress in a crawl of carts under the gray hush of late afternoon. Aras rode shotgun, hands in the pockets of his coat because he liked to look like someone with plans he'd decided not to share. The priests had doubled their patrols; whispers followed them like moths. On the road, a woman crossed herself when she saw Lina awake and wept quietly. A child offered the caravan a flower, small and brave. Aras took the flower and stuck it in his coat like it was a medal.
"Keep it," Lina said. "For luck."
"Luck is overrated," Aras replied, but his fingers stayed near the petal. Sometimes charm is not an instrument but a memory you can carry in your chest.
At dusk the river cottages glimmered in the wet light like a cluster of honest things. The barn was smaller than Aras expected and larger than the priests had warned. It smelled of hay and the kind of silence that had room to breathe. They unloaded quietly; the baker arranged loaves on a table like offerings. Inside, people folded into beds and blankets and became, for the first time, plausible in their own skins.
Then the horn cut across the dusk like a blade asking for payment. It was closer now; its note had teeth. Out in the lane, torches bobbed as patrols scanned the horizon. Someone had told the priests where to look. The ledger was being read aloud in public squares; names slipped from mouths like accusations.
Aras's grin dimmed in a way that frightened the girls in the cart—he had a look for trouble that suggested he'd planned it, but this was different. He called a meeting under an old willow with leaves that had the generous patience of trees and, for once, no one made a joke. The seriousness sat like a heavier blanket.
"We can't stay here long," Serane said. "They'll send more."
"We need to get people out of the city, to safety, beyond the list-making priests," Aras said. "We need allies. We need a distraction."
"A distraction?" Lina echoed, hopeful.
Aras tapped his fingers against the hilt of Keen. The blade thrummed like an impatient animal. "Yes. Something loud, something amusing, something that makes the temple's bell sound like background noise."
Serane's jaw tightened. "You propose what—parade? Festival? A theatrical reenactment of divine accounting?"
Aras grinned at the image. "Exactly. Only with more pies and fewer clerical objections."
"You can't be serious," she snapped, though a private, ember-like part of her entertained the notion.
"Who says we can't?" Aras countered. "Listen. The temple worships order and spectacle. They love displays because it makes people feel the gods are useful. What if we give them a show so convincing they mistake the stage for righteousness?"
Serane glared, then sighed—again, not with humor but with that soldierly acceptance of chaos. "Fine. But if we are doing this, we do it smart."
They worked like conspirators with a limited rehearsal period. Lira sewed banners overnight from spare cloth. The shoemaker made clumsy masks from leather scraps. Aras recruited a handful of the awakened—an ex-minstrel with an unbroken throat, a farmer who loved fireworks for reasons he couldn't properly justify, and an old woman whose stories could make children sleep even in storms. Lina baked a mountain of bread to hand out like peace offerings. Serane coordinated routes with precise maps that fit in the palm of a hand.
On the night the plan went live, the square pulsed with expectation. Priests had gathered, faces bright with righteous anger, to read the ledger and pronounce punishments. Aras, wearing the dreadful boots and Lina's flower, mounted a small cart converted into a stage. He flourished Keen theatrically and announced, "Behold! The Unsuspecting Rescue Theatre! Tickets gratis—bring your grievances!"
At first the priests booed. Then the crowd, starving for spectacle and bread, crowded around. Aras began to speak: not confession, not apology, but a tall, ridiculous story about a man who stole back the world's forgotten things because he couldn't stand polite cruelty. He told jokes that were sharper than his sword and softer than his conscience. He performed the minstrel's worst song with so much badness it became endearing. Lina handed out bread like contraband. Somebody set off a string of fireworks with the solemnity of a prayer and the smell of cheap gunpowder.
Serane watched from the edge, arms crossed and the tiniest of smiles betraying the tiniest crack in her armor. The priests, flustered and furious, shouted for order while the crowd laughed and cheered. For one wild, foolish night the ledger's voice was drowned by simpler noises: laughter, clapping, and the small, hungry sound of people eating bread.
It worked. Or it worked badly enough that it mattered.
When the priests realized the crowd's attention was lost, their authority looked small and brittle. They banged the lectern and read bits of the ledger, but people were busy learning clapping exercises from the awakened baker and arguing about whether Aras's boots could be considered haute couture. The temple's bell kept ringing, but the people noticed they could speak over it.
Back at the barn, under quilts and hay and a chorus of lullabies, the awakened slept with the ease of people who've been given a second draft at life. Outside, the priests regrouped and plotted. It was only a matter of time before they worked up enough righteous fury to torch a cart, or worse.
Aras, leaning against the barn wall with Keen across his knees, glanced at Serane. "We'll have to keep improvising," he said.
She nodded. "We will. And when the ledger comes for its tally, we will be ready."
Lina, sitting with a loaf in her lap, looked at both of them like a child watching two adults decide which color to paint the sky. "Promise me one thing," she said suddenly. "If we have to fight the ledger, don't let me be a footnote."
Aras winked. "Noted. You'll be the prologue."
They laughed then—nervous and honest—because life asks for both at once: to be brave and to be ridiculous. In the distance, a priest swore a vow that sounded like thunder. Under the willow, Aras, Serane, and Lina planned their next impossible caper—half strategy, half improvisation, all heart.
The gods could count. The priests could plan. The world could pretend morality was simple.
They, however, would keep stealing chances.
And when the ledger finally came to collect, Aras thought, they would at least have bread on the table and a joke ready.