“I like it. It’s not every day you get to experience something for the first time that you’re going to do over and over again.” Severine’s eyes were shining.

  “Over and over again?” Runa asked

  “Every year, right? Because we’re staying here. If we’re staying here. We are staying here, aren’t we?”

  Hope filled her eyes, lashed through with all the conversations they hadn’t made time for. The sword on Runa’s back and the fate looming ahead of her. The many, many swords on Severine’s back, and the threads dragging her in every direction but home.

  The crowd was settling down. There was still singing, but it was small groups singing their own songs, now, not the whole-village call-and-response that had everyone’s blood pumping. People were finding places to sit, and although a few still kept up the pretense of guarding against the fake lich lord, it was clear the focus was moving on. Someone even handed Errant a mug of cider, though he was careful to cackle evilly as he took it.

  Runa looked around, and then looked down at Severine.

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  “I’ll still need to leave, sometimes.”

  “And I’ll come with you. And we can both come back here, after.”

  Severine gave the sort of smile that made Runa feel like she was floating a foot above the ground. “I’d like that,” she said.

  They found a place to sit together, in the circle of all their neighbors.

  “Still be nice to know what’s going on,” Runa grumbled.

  Severine laughed and snuggled closer against her. “Next year, you will.”

  They sat together, talking about the day and trying to remember the lines to the songs everyone else had been singing, as the mill wheel turned and the great stone inside the building ground around and around. When Tam finally emerged with the first sack of flour from the running harvest, a cheer went up, and the villagers who were still up for a walk—Junilla had been very generous with her cider—followed Runa and Severine to the bakery.

  The bakehouse was warm. The fire had burned down, and the volcano sprite was sitting in pride of place among the embers.

  Runa took the flour and jerked her head to Severine, inviting her inside.

  “Oh no,” someone said, putting their hand on Severine’s arm. “Only the baker goes inside. The rest of us stand guard out here.”

  “Fair enough.” Severine grinned and stepped back. “You’re on your own, baker.”

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  Runa shut the door on her.

  It wasn’t silent inside the bakery. There was too much noise outside for that. But the thick stone walls muffled the celebrations, and gave Runa the space to let her own thoughts spread out a little.

  “So,” she said to herself, and to the glowing creature in the coals. “The first loaf from the harvest saved from the Seven Deathless. Not the sort of heroics I ever thought I’d find myself in.”

  She shrugged Bloodburster off her back and put it in its corner. It didn’t watch her, because its ruby eyes were still hidden under that piece of cloth, and she tried not to look at it, either.

  “Better than the sort I thought I’d find myself in,” she muttered, and got to work.

  The mother-of-dough was alive and bubbling. The fresh flour had a particular scent, or maybe it was the night and the music and the warmth all around making her senses sing. She measured and mixed and the dough came together easier than it ever had before, and soon it was ready for her to fold into the troughs and leave to rise.

  That didn’t seem like enough, and it wasn’t. Someone knocked on the door, and handed her another sack; when she’d made that up into dough, someone else knocked on the window, and handed her another delivery of flour.

  Presumably this was part of the festival ritual, too.

  The night wore on. Runa always enjoyed this part of the work, the quiet evenings, and she enjoyed this, too, even as the deliveries became stranger and the evening less quiet. A hunk of cheese. A piece of fruit. A single dried nut. She shrugged and added them to the mix, and by the time the knocking stopped, there was enough dough rising in every container on every surface in the bakery to feed the village and the town as well.

  ….Which was the whole point, she supposed.

  Runa stopped and stretched. The bakehouse was full of the yeasty smell of rising dough. More than it usually was. The damp, warm, alive smell of tomorrow’s fresh hot bread.

  It was quiet outside, now. She went to the window. At some point while she prepped the dough, someone had lit campfires outside, and brought out blankets; under the full moon and the autumn chill, the singing crowd had separated into little groups, and fallen asleep. She saw the kid who’d had to be rescued from an anxiously dangerous lich-Errant, asleep on their mother’s lap.

  There was a noise from the back of the building.

  She shut the window, picked up her lightstick, and slowly opened the back door.

  The bakehouse was the last building before the too-short village walls. Whatever curseland had dragged Pothollow in its wake all those decades ago had flung the bakery closest to the Cauldron.

  It seemed strange, that they hadn’t moved it after. Even the Pothollow locals, proud of their scraped-away village, might not want to go all the way to the top of the hill to get their daily bread.

  But now, maybe, she could see why.

  Something was moving beyond the town walls.

  She raised the lightstick. Not much; just enough to change the direction of the shadows, and get a better look at what was hiding in them.

  Skeletons.

  Old skeletons. She’d been around enough to know the difference. The bones grey and cracking, some pieces fallen off entirely. Barely enough rags of clothing to make a whole outfit between them, and the only armor they wore was what they hadn’t been able to tear or bash off what was left of their bodies.

  Her chest clenched. She waited for Bloodburster to slice into her mind with some hissing order to kill, kill, kill, but it was silent.

  Of course. They were all—all eight or ten of them, she thought, counting silently—they were all already dead. There was nothing for Bloodburster to kill here.

  And maybe that was why the lightstick didn’t throb with fire, either, jealous of Runa’s new piece.

  The skeletons weren’t attacking. They just stood, watching, from behind the wall, and Runa thought:

  This festival celebrates every harvest the Seven Deathless don’t destroy. But they did destroy one, to feed the starved and dead to their armies.

  “See them, do you?”