Chapter 8: How to Defeat Bandits with Pastries

The first thing Owen Mercer learned about living with a sleeping archmage was that she produced an unreasonable amount of blankets.

The second thing he learned was that she still managed to look annoyed even unconscious.

Lunae was sprawled across the restored couch in the old archive, one arm over her eyes, silver hair spilling like moonlight over the cushions. The ancient room around her still smelled faintly of dust, parchment, and old mana—an odor like rain striking hot stone. Sunlight came through the cracked stained-glass windows in watery bars, painting the floor in blues and reds. Somewhere deep in the walls, the surviving wards of the archive hummed softly, like a sleeping beast turning in its den.

Owen stood at the doorway with a ledger in one hand and a pastry in the other, doing his best impression of a man who had not, in the last seventy-two hours, been legally engaged to three terrifying women and appointed emergency administrator of a cursed frontier settlement.

He took a bite of the pastry. It flaked beautifully. The apple filling was warm, tart, and heavily cinnamon’d. He closed his eyes for a moment.

Okay. I get it. The world is trying to bribe me into relaxing.

Behind him, the archive’s doors creaked open. One of the household guards poked her head in, armor half-fastened, braid swinging over one shoulder.

“You’re eating in here again,” she said.

“I’m supervising,” Owen replied.

She eyed the pastry. “That looks like breakfast.”

“It is breakfast.”

“You had breakfast.”

“This is second breakfast.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“It is if morale is low enough.”

She snorted and vanished before he could recruit her into his pretend authority.

From the adjacent chamber came the clatter of pots and the bright, irrepressible voice of the smiling one. “If he eats all the apple tarts before noon, I’m telling everyone the Demon Bridegroom has a secret vice.”

“I have many secret vices,” Owen called back. “Most of them involve pretending I understand construction.”

“That’s not a vice,” she said sweetly. “That’s a cry for help.”

He grinned despite himself and stepped into the main hall of the archive-turned-household quarters.

The place no longer looked like a tomb for forgotten knowledge. It still had the bones of one—towering shelves, stone arches, a circular mosaic floor that depicted an obsolete cosmology of stars and crowns—but Owen’s people had begun to occupy it like raccoons taking over a cathedral. Folding screens marked off sleeping spaces. Crates of salvaged supplies sat under draped cloth. Strings of little enchanted lanterns glowed warm gold between the shelves. A kettle boiled on a brazier. Someone had hung a ridiculous embroidered sign above the central table that read: HOUSEHOLD MEETING PLACE — NO CURSED ARTIFACTS LEFT UNATTENDED.

He had not authorized the sign, which meant it was probably the work of the smiling one. He was afraid to ask where she’d found the thread.

At the table sat the battle maniac, sharpening a spear with a look of deep, almost sensual satisfaction. She was in full armor except for one greave, which had been abandoned beside her chair. Her dark hair was tied back with the merciless efficiency of someone who would absolutely stab a problem until it became paperwork.

“You’re late,” she said without looking up.

Owen looked at the wall clock. “It’s still morning.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m beginning to suspect your concept of time is mostly aggression.”

Her mouth twitched. “If enemies attack after noon, they deserve a head start.”

Lunae, still wrapped in a blanket, had arrived somehow and now sat at the far end of the table with her chin in her hand, hair a silver curtain over her shoulder. She looked freshly unearthed from a legend and intensely unconcerned about it. Her half-lidded gaze flicked to him, then to the pastry.

“That one smells good,” she said.

Owen held it out. “Apple.”

She accepted it with the solemnity of a treaty signing. “You are learning household politics.”

“I’m learning bribery.”

“Same thing.” She took a bite, closed her eyes, and for the briefest instant looked spiritually restored. “Mmm.”

The smiling one leaned across the table, elbows planted, grin bright enough to startle birds from rooftops. “See? Our domestic situation improves by the hour. Soon we’ll be a respectable noble family.”

“We’re nowhere near respectable,” Owen said.

“That’s what makes us promising.”

He set the ledger down, slid into a chair, and rubbed at his eyes. Outside the archive walls, the settlement rang with morning labor. Hammers struck timber. Voices called over scaffolds. A donkey brayed in wounded protest somewhere near the western trench. The little frontier town they’d claimed from rubble and monster-infested ruins was still more suggestion than city, but the suggestion had become persistent.

Shared Destiny didn’t care whether he knew how to build a wall. It only cared that the household had people who did.

And the household, inconveniently, was starting to become very good at things.

Shared Destiny — Household Synchronization

Bonded proximity detected.

Skills available for temporary amplification:

— Martial Instinct (high)

— Arcane Reservoir (absurd)

— Administrative Deception (disturbing)

— Breadmaking (unexpectedly high)

Owen stared at the last line. “Breadmaking?”

The smiling one beamed. “I told you the pastries were strategic.”

“You told me they were for morale.”

“That too.”

“Why is breadmaking in my skill list?”

“Because the world understands that bread is civilization,” Lunae said around another bite of tart. “And civilization is a magic system.”

“I hate that this makes sense.”

The battle maniac leaned her spear against the table. “Why are we talking about bread?”

“Because,” said the smiling one, tapping a finger against a page of Owen’s ledger, “our scouts saw riders on the ridge before dawn.”

The room changed.

Not much. Not visibly. But the air tightened in that way it did when a joke stepped aside and the world showed its teeth.

Owen sat up straighter. “How many?”

“Eight, maybe ten. Light armor. Mixed human and beastfolk by the look of them. Not army regulars.” She smiled, but there was steel under it. “Raiders.”

The battle maniac’s eyes brightened at once. “Finally.”

“That is not the correct emotion,” Owen said.

“It is for me.”

“They’re likely to hit the eastern stores,” the smiling one continued. “The granary’s closest to the ridge road, and they’ll assume the new settlement can’t defend it yet.”

“Can we?” Owen asked.

She folded her hands. “We can pretend until they regret it.”

He looked at Lunae. “You’re awake enough for war?”

She considered the question with grave seriousness, then yawned behind her hand. “If it is small war. And if I can sit down during it.”

“You always look like you’re about to fall asleep.”

“I am always about to fall asleep.”

“And yet somehow still terrifying.”

She gave him a sleepy, self-satisfied glance. “Thank you.”

Owen dragged a hand through his hair. “All right. We do not let raiders burn our grain, steal our tools, or murder anyone. Preferably in that order.”

“A clear strategic framework,” the smiling one said.

“I’m trying.”

“He’s adorable when he pretends to be competent,” the battle maniac said.

“I’m right here.”

“Yes,” said Lunae, deadpan. “That is the problem.”

He stared at all three of them and felt, with a small internal groan, the absurd gravity of his situation settle more firmly onto his shoulders. Somehow this was normal now: the sleepy archmage, the battle-devoted spear woman, the scheming smiling one with a talent for making everyone else’s life harder and better in the same breath. His household. His accidental fiancées. His legally disastrous miracle.

His team.

Owen exhaled. “Fine. We do this my way.”

The smiling one’s grin sharpened. “That sentence never ends well.”

“For the record,” Owen said, rising, “I would like everyone to know that I am not unhinged. I am only willing to use what the setting gives me.”

“That’s exactly what an unhinged person says,” the battle maniac replied.

He ignored her and started pointing.

“We have the outer palisade, the half-built watchtowers, the ditch line, the minefield of shame—”

“That is what you called it?” the smiling one asked.

“It’s full of caltrops.”

“A practical name, then.”

“—and the old dungeon gate under the west hill.”

That got everyone’s attention.

The hill, once part of a buried ruin, had been one of the first strange things Owen had dared to touch after the settlement began. Beneath the roots and collapsed stones was a living dungeon chamber, one that responded to his household bond and his broken skill in ways that still gave him headaches. It was not a dungeon in the traditional sense, with screaming skeletons and loot chests that grew teeth. It was a mechanism, a breathing architecture of mana and danger that could be coaxed, redirected, and—if Owen was feeling reckless—weaponized.

“You’ve got something in that face,” the smiling one said.

He pointed at her. “No comment.”

She clasped her hands in delighted anticipation. “Oh, I adore when you’re vague. It means disaster is being assembled.”

“We use the dungeon gate as a funnel,” Owen said. “If they try the east approach, we bait them into the old service road, force them between the palisade and the orchard fence, and cut their mobility. The gate’s warding chambers can produce terrain shifts if we trigger them from inside the control niche.”

The battle maniac blinked. “You just said a lot of words.”

“He means we make the ground annoying,” Lunae translated through a yawn. “Then we hit them while they are being annoyed.”

“Exactly.”

Owen pointed at the smiling one. “You handle the people part.”

“What people part?”

“Convincing every noncombatant in the settlement to stay put, keep quiet, and not panic.”

She gasped, offended. “I’m excellent at panic management.”

“You once talked a merchant into buying his own wagon back at triple price.”

“And he thanked me.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“It is in a well-regulated economy.”

He turned to the battle maniac. “You’re with me at the palisade.”

Her smile could have cut leather. “Finally.”

“That’s not a compliment.”

“I know.”

He faced Lunae with a quieter tone. “You can stay here.”

She opened one eye. “I can also destroy the raiders from a sitting position.”

“I know you can. I’m trying to preserve the countryside.”

“Wise.” She took another bite of pastry. “The countryside is one of your better investments.”

Owen pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can you at least be ready in case things go badly?”

She nodded once, already half asleep again. “Wake me if there is thunder.”

“That’s oddly specific.”

“It’s my favorite kind of violence.”

He had no further questions. Some things in this world were better left mysterious.

Within an hour, the settlement changed from a construction site into something resembling a trap with civic ambitions.

Owen moved through it with the fervor of a man trying to outrun his own incompetence. He sent runners. He issued orders. He double-checked the east stockroom, the granary, the water barrels. He watched as the smiling one spread through the streets like sunlight wearing a person’s face, speaking to carpenters, farmers, and the half-dozen former bandits they’d reluctantly hired as laborers. People listened to her. They always listened to her. Owen didn’t know whether that was because she was persuasive or because she made disobedience feel like a bad financial decision.

By the time the ridge scouts returned with their second report, the town had gone silent in a way that felt almost holy.

Owen stood atop the eastern palisade with the battle maniac and a pair of apprentices carrying sealed clay jars filled with flour dust, oil, and enchanted ash. Below, the orchard fence stretched in a crooked line around young fruit trees, their branches laden with early blossoms. Beyond that lay the road cut, the ditch, and the old service lane that ran between the hill and the granary.

It was a pretty place, in the fragile, unfinished way of all new settlements. The kind of place that made men imagine peace and then regret their imagination when they saw how easy it was to burn.

The battle maniac rested her spear against her shoulder. “You look like a doomed lord about to announce taxes.”

“I feel like a doomed idiot about to announce pastries.”

She glanced down the road. “I still don’t understand the pastries.”

“You will.”

“That is not reassuring.”

“It’s not meant to be.”

He looked over the defenses one more time. Wooden spikes. Narrow sightlines. Hidden pits. A row of hooked ropes strung low enough to catch horses’ legs. Two watchmen in the tower with signal mirrors. And, tucked in the shaded bend near the old gate, a crate stamped with the bakery’s mark.

The bakery was not technically a bakery yet. It was a squat stone building converted from a granary and staffed by three exhausted women, one of whom had once been a field cook in an army and now treated flour like an element of civilization. Owen had discovered, to his surprise and delight, that in any frontier settlement, the path from “roughly stable” to “possibly thriving” ran directly through bread.

He glanced at the battle maniac. “How hungry are you?”

“Why?”

“Because if this works, no one gets to say I don’t contribute militarily.”

“That’s not how war works.”

“It is today.”

A horn sounded from the ridge road.

Then another.

And another.

The raiders came into view in a ragged line: ten riders, one wagon, and a half-dozen footmen trailing behind, all cloaked in travel dust and the unearned confidence of people who thought a half-built settlement looked easy to terrorize. Their leader wore a boar-skull helm and carried a curved sword across his saddle. The others had spears, axes, and the loose, predatory gait of men accustomed to taking what they wanted from the weak.

They slowed when they saw the palisade. That was the first crack.

Then they saw the ditch.

The second crack.

Then they saw the pastry cart.

“What,” said the battle maniac slowly, “is that.”

Owen smiled without humor. “Battlefield logistics.”

At his signal, one of the apprentices wheeled the bakery crate into view on the inside of the fence, where the raiders could see it clearly through the slats. Another set up a folding sign that the smiling one had insisted on painting herself.

FRESH PASTRIES AVAILABLE IN EXCHANGE FOR PEACE