On the morning the bread ran out, the sky looked like it was going to cooperate.

Mila always checked first thing, out of habit she’d brought from the inn. Rain meant more people staying close to home, fewer wandering through the square. Clear skies meant markets, deals, spilled coin.

Today was one of those in-between mornings—thin clouds, pale sun, a breeze that couldn’t decide if it was still spring or already summer.

Inside the bakehouse, nothing could decide either. The flour was still sulking.

Two days ago, the miller’s wagon had arrived late and wrong. The sacks were heavy in all the wrong ways—damp from a leaky tarp, clumped in odd places. Crumb had said, “We’ll make do,” and he had, but every bowl since had needed coaxing.

Today, they needed more than coaxing.

Market day meant extra loaves. Not Harvest-crowd big, but enough that the order slate looked fuller than the racks. Names and quantities crowded the board:

● 8 – daily sour loaves – market

● 6 – walnut rounds – tavern

 ● 12 – rolls – schoolhouse

 ● 5 – sweet twists – inn three roads over

 ● + walk-ins

Mila had been awake half the night, mind listing them like a song she’d rather not sing.

When she came downstairs, Crumb was already at the big mixing bowl, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back with a strip of worn cloth. The pre-ferment—what he called “yesterday’s thoughts”—sat in the bowl like a sulking cloud.

“Morning,” she said, tying on her apron. “Morning,” he replied. “Come feel this.”

She came closer and dipped her fingers into the dough. It was cooler than usual. Heavy. Like it hadn’t quite forgiven them for the damp flour.

“It’s slow,” she said.

“Like me today,” Crumb agreed. “I tried stretching it last night. Less flour in the first build, hoping the damp won’t weigh it down.” He grimaced. “Might’ve stretched too far.”

Mila frowned. “Do we have enough?” she asked.

“For what we promised?” Crumb said. “If everything goes right, yes. If it doesn’t…” He trailed off.

Bryn barreled in then, hair sticking up, boots still damp with morning dew. “Did I miss anything?” he asked, grabbing his apron.

“Only Crumb doubting his life choices,” Lorne said from the corner, where she was checking proofing baskets for splits. “So, no. Not really.”

“We’re fine,” Crumb said. “We’ll just have to keep an eye on the proofs. Stay close to the oven. No wandering off to flirt with the fishmongers.”

“I don’t flirt,” Bryn said.

“You talk to them for extra herring,” Mila said. “That’s bartering,” he objected.

“It’s eyelash bartering,” Lorne muttered.

The first batch of loaves went into their baskets, then into their warm corner. Crumb set his hand over the cloth as if listening.

“Faster,” he murmured. “We need you faster today.”

Mila busied herself at the bench, shaping rolls and trying not to stare at the covered mounds. She could feel the edge in the room—the feeling of being one step behind and trying to pretend otherwise.

By the time the first customers drifted in—a farmer’s wife with a basket of early radishes, a pair of dockhands arguing about rope—the proofing baskets had warmed, but not as much as Mila liked.

“Should we wait?” she asked Crumb quietly as he lifted the cloth.

“They’ll finish in the oven,” he said. “If we wait too long, the next batch won’t have room. Sometimes you nudge them out of bed even if they’re grumbling.”

He scored the tops quickly and slid the first round of loaves into the oven. The door closed with a sharp thump.

Mila winced.

She moved to the front for the first wave, leaving Lorne and Bryn with the next doughs.

The line was steady, not yet overwhelming. People bought daily loaves. A few asked after the walnut rounds. Someone from the schoolhouse came by to confirm the rolls.

“We’ll have them by second bell,” Mila promised, because that was what the slate said, and the slate was usually right.

“Bless you,” the woman said. “If I feed them porridge one more day, they’re going to mutiny.” Mila smiled weakly.

Behind her, the oven hissed and crackled.

The first sign something was wrong came as a sound.

Usually, when loaves finished, they made a faint, hollow crackling as they cooled, the crust settling. Today, as Crumb opened the door, Mila heard more of a dull whump—the sound of something giving up.

Crumb muttered something under his breath that definitely wasn’t a blessing. “Bryn,” he said. “Lorne.”

Mila, caught between customers, craned her neck as best she could. She saw Bryn’s face go still in a way that wasn’t his usual mischief. Lorne hissed softly.

The next customer stepped up.

“One sour loaf and two twists,” he said cheerfully. “Heard you’ve got fresh ones just out.” Mila swallowed.

“We do,” she said automatically. “Let me just—”

Crumb’s hand came down, light but firm, on her shoulder.

“Hold a moment,” he told the customer. “We’re checking something.” The man blinked, puzzled but not angry. Yet.

Crumb stepped around Mila, a loaf in his hand. It looked fine.

Mostly.

The crust was the right color. The score had opened properly. But in his hand, it felt… wrong. The shape sagged a little more than it should have.

He set it on the counter and picked up the bread knife. “Watch,” he said quietly, more to Mila than to the guest. He cut.

The knife met more resistance than usual. The slice that fell away showed a crumb that was dense in the center, tighter than it should be.

“Under,” Lorne said from the doorway.

“Slow ferment,” Bryn added. “Starter’s sulking.” Crumb nodded once, jaw tense.

“We can toast it,” he said. “We can stew it. But we can’t call it a daily loaf. Not at the price we’re charging.”

The man waiting frowned. “It looks fine,” he said. “We’re not picky.” Crumb shook his head.

“I am,” he said. “At that price, that loaf is a lie.” Mila’s stomach sank.

“How many?” she asked, voice low. Crumb didn’t answer immediately.

He turned back to the oven and pulled out the rest of the batch, one by one. Every loaf looked the same—handsome on the outside, slouched at the core.

“First run’s all like this,” he said finally. “We can sell some as stew bread. Staff can eat some. But none of these can go to the market as what we promised.”

Mila thought of the slate. Eight market loaves.

Six walnut rounds. Twelve schoolhouse rolls.

And that was just the first column. “How long to rebuild?” she asked.

Crumb did a quick reckoning in his head.

“If we start another batch right now,” he said, “we won’t have proper proof until… too late. People will be here. The line’s already forming.”

He glanced through the front window.

She followed his gaze and saw it—the thin snake of people beginning to coil outside, drawn by smoke and habit.

“We could bake smaller loaves,” Bryn said. “Stretch the dough more.”

“And serve fifty people who feel cheated instead of twenty who feel seen,” Crumb said. “No.” “We could sell these cheaper,” Lorne said. “Tell them they’re stew bread. Let people choose.” “We will,” Crumb said. “To a point.”

He rubbed his forehead, leaving a streak of flour.

“But we’re not making what we said we’d make, when we said we’d make it,” he said. “That’s on me.”

Mila’s throat tightened.

“We can still catch up,” she said. “If we move faster—”

“No,” Crumb said, sharper than usual. “If we move faster, we’ll make new mistakes in a hurry. We misjudged the starter last night. We can’t unmix it now.”

He took a breath, let it out.

Then he did something Mila hadn’t seen him do in all the months she’d been there.

He went to the door.

Before she could protest, he flipped the sign from Open to Wait and stepped outside onto the stoop.

The murmurs in the line quieted.

“Problem with the oven?” someone called. “Fire gone out?” another asked.

Crumb held up his hands.

“Morning,” he said. “Before we go any further, I need to tell you something.”

Mila hovered in the doorway, heart pounding. Bryn and Lorne stood just behind her, peeking over her shoulders.

“We’re short today,” Crumb said simply. “I misjudged the dough last night. The first batch we put in looks like good daily bread, but it’s not. Not inside. If I sell it to you at full price, I’ll be lying. I won’t do that.”

A ripple went through the line. Someone muttered, “Bread is bread.”

Someone else said, “At least he’s honest.”

“We’ll have some decent stew bread,” Crumb went on. “Lower price. Tougher crumb. Good for soups and strong teeth. We’ll have rolls and twists; those are behaving better. But we won’t have as many loaves as we said. Not in time for the market.”

“Can’t you just bake more?” a woman near the front asked, clutching an empty basket. “We walked two roads for the sour loaves.”

“If I start them now,” Crumb said, “they’ll be half-done when you need to leave. Bread doesn’t care how far you walked. It cares how long it rises. I can’t make it live faster just because we’re embarrassed.”

Mila watched his shoulders.

He stood straight. Not proud. Just… unwilling to duck.

“It’s my mistake,” he said plainly. “Not these three’s. If you want to yell, yell at me. If you want your coin back, I’ll give it. If you want half a loaf instead of a whole so there’s enough for more families, we can do that too. But I won’t pretend we have what we don’t.”

There was a long pause.

Mila felt the whole valley hold its breath.

Then Mistress Elka’s voice cut across the crowd like a knife.

“I told you,” she said, stepping forward with her glossy black cloak and sharper eyes. “Ever since he started all these fancy vigil breads and crowns and whatnot, he’s been distracted. You’re spreading yourself thin, Crumb. Now your loaves are following.”

A few heads nodded. A few others rolled their eyes. Crumb didn’t flinch.

“I misjudged the starter,” he said again. “The crowns didn’t climb into the bowl and push the water out. I did that with my own hands, trying to stretch flour in a way that didn’t work. That’s on me, not Lantern Week or the crowns.”

“You could have mixed more when you saw it was slow,” Elka said. “Gone to the mill and shouted at them. Something.”

“I could have,” Crumb said. “And then the next batch would have been rushed and worse. Anger doesn’t make dough rise either.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” someone else called. “You’re not the one with an empty pantry.” Crumb’s expression softened.

“I know,” he said. “Which is why I’m standing here instead of hiding behind the counter. I can’t give you bread I don’t have. I can share what I do have more thinly than usual."

He pointed to the baskets just inside the door.

“We’ll cut the good loaves in halves and quarters,” he said. “So more tables get something. We’ll sell the stew bread at cost. If you can pay, pay. If you can’t, take it from the jar line. No one leaves with nothing if we can help it. But no one gets as much as they planned either.

Including me.”

“Who decides who gets what?” a voice from the back demanded.

“We do,” Crumb said. “In there. Face to face. If you want, you can decide too. Buy half instead of whole. Take rolls instead of rounds if that helps the next person. Or turn around and go to the next town. But I won’t stand here and pretend we can feed everyone full today.”

The murmur rose again.

This time, there was less anger in it. More… calculation. Mila swallowed.

He could have blamed the miller. The damp sacks. The guild man and his distracting charts. He could have said they’d had a fire, or a crack in the oven, or anything that made them look less… human.

He hadn’t.

He’d walked out and put “I misjudged” on the table like a loaf.

Elka sniffed.

“I suppose that’s something,” she said. “Admitting it. Doesn’t put bread on the table, though.” “It can keep the next loaf from tasting like a lie,” Crumb said.

Elka’s mouth twitched.

“You and your stories,” she said. “Fine. I’ll take stew bread and rolls. We’ll live.” She moved closer to the door.

Others followed.

The line didn’t disappear. It… rearranged.

Some people left, muttering about wasted mornings.

Some stayed and adjusted their orders down. The schoolhouse woman agreed to take rolls instead of loaves. The tavern sent word they’d stretch last night’s bread one more day and buy stew loaves cheap.

Bryn and Lorne took their posts at the counter, jars of coin and baskets of awkwardly sliced halves between them. Mila joined them, hands slightly shaking, trying to track who had changed what.

“Half loaf, stew round, four rolls,” Bryn repeated, labeling each scrap of paper as he handed them over.

“Half loaf, stew round, four rolls,” Mila echoed. “No charge. Jar credit from last Lantern.” The woman blinked. “I thought that was for… other people,” she said.

“Today, it’s for whoever finds themselves shorter than they expected,” Mila said. “Including you.”

The woman hesitated, then nodded, eyes shiny. “Thank you,” she murmured.

Lorne, passing, murmured to Mila, “Nice catch.” Mila’s cheeks warmed.

They worked like that for over an hour. It wasn’t neat.

They ran out of halves and had to start cutting quarters. Bryn forgot twice and reached for a whole loaf before catching himself. Lorne over-explained “stew bread” once to someone who didn’t need it, making the customer’s face go tight.

But no one left with nothing. Not that Mila saw.

By the time the last person in line shuffled away—a boy with a quarter loaf and a promise from Crumb to save him first slice tomorrow if he came early—the baskets were nearly empty.

Crumb flipped the sign to Closed.

The silence that fell when the door latched was louder than the crowd had been. Mila leaned on the counter, arms trembling.

“Is it always going to feel like that?” she asked. “Like we’re balancing the whole valley on our palms?”

“No,” Bryn said hoarsely. “Some days will be worse.” Lorne let out a shaky laugh.

Crumb came around the counter, moving slower than usual. “Bake room,” he said. “We’ll debrief there. Not on the stoop.” They followed him back.

The remainders sat on the bench: a few stew loaves, a heel or two of decent bread, crumbs everywhere.

Crumb set his hands on the wood, palms flat. “First,” he said. “Thank you.”

Mila blinked. “For… what?”

“For not hiding,” he said. “For not quietly selling the underbread out the side door and hoping no one noticed. For managing the line without making promises we couldn’t keep.”

He looked at Bryn.

“You’re usually the first to suggest hustling the mistake bread out the door as ‘rustic,’” he said. “Today you didn’t. I noticed.”

Bryn shrugged, face pink. “Didn’t seem like the right time to be clever,” he muttered. “It wasn’t,” Crumb agreed.

He looked at Lorne.

“You took the stew loaves without flinching,” he said. “Marked them clearly. Didn’t try to score them pretty and hide their nature. That matters.”

Lorne nodded once, lips pressed thin. He turned to Mila.

“You caught the schoolhouse woman before she overpaid for less than she’d planned,” he said. “That saved me from having to chase her down later.”

Mila swallowed. “I thought of my father,” she said. “Stretching stew. Pretending it was enough.” Crumb nodded, understanding.

“Now,” he said. “We name what went wrong on our side. All of it. Not just mine.” They shifted uneasily.

“You already said it was your—” Bryn began.

“Yes,” Crumb interrupted. “The starter misjudgment? That’s mine. I stretched too far, trying to make damp flour behave like good flour. But if we stop there, we won’t learn everything.”

He tapped the bench.

“What else happened?” he asked. Mila thought.

“We saw the dough was slow,” she said. “But we went ahead because the slate was full. We didn’t… push back. Or suggest we mark the board before we opened the door.”

Crumb nodded. “Good,” he said. “What else?”

“We didn’t have a plan for ‘what if it fails,’” Lorne said. “Just for ‘what if it works.’”

“Exactly,” Crumb said. “That’s on me for not teaching it yet. And on all of us now that we know better.”

He looked at Bryn.

Bryn shifted, then sighed.

“And… I almost told that first man that the loaf was fine because it looked fine,” he admitted. “If you hadn’t cut it, I would’ve handed it over.”

Crumb’s mouth twitched.

“Thank you for not doing that,” he said. “Even almost.” He straightened slightly.

“We can’t fix this morning,” he said. “We can only decide what it means the next time we’re staring at a slow bowl.”

He picked up a piece of chalk and went to the task slate.

Under the columns they’d made with Kett—House, Hearth, Open Hand—he added, in smaller letters:

● What we do when we fail

 Then, beneath it, three bullets:

● Tell the truth sooner than feels comfortable.

● Share what we have thinner, not prettier.

● Don’t promise tomorrow’s loaves with today’s regret.

 Mila read it twice.

“Tomorrow’s loaves,” she repeated. “You mean… don’t promise extra to make up for this?” Crumb nodded.

“Regret is like over-kneading,” he said. “Feels like you’re ‘doing something,’ but all you’re doing is tightening things that need to rest. If I’d stood out there and said, ‘I promise twice as much bread tomorrow for half the price,’ I’d be writing a debt on your backs. On the oven’s. On the flour we don’t own yet.”

“And on the millers, and the river, and whoever else doesn’t know they’re part of the promise yet,” Lorne said quietly.

“Exactly,” Crumb said. “We fix what we can today. We don’t sell the next day’s heat before we’ve lit the fire.”

Bryn squinted at the slate.

“How do we know when to push through and when to stop?” he asked. “Sometimes the starter’s slow and we coax it and it works. Sometimes we’re just late. Today we’re late and… wrong.”

Crumb considered.

“When the bread is a little behind but right,” he said, “we can ask people to wait. That’s what we do for Lantern loaves sometimes—say, ‘Come back at dusk.’ When the bread is on time but wrong, we can adjust the price or the shape. That’s stew bread. But when it’s both behind and wrong?” He shook his head. “That’s when we stop. Tell the truth. Share the loss.”

Mila looked at the remaining stew loaves. “Share the loss,” she echoed.

Crumb nodded.

“Today, everyone lost a little,” he said. “You. Me. Guests. No one got as much as they wanted. That feels awful in the moment. But in the long run… it’s fairer than some people losing everything and some pretending they lost nothing.”

He set the chalk down.

“Last thing,” he said. “You need to know: this will happen again.” Bryn groaned. “You mean you’ll misjudge the starter again?”

“I mean we will misjudge something,” Crumb said. “Starter. Orders. Weather. People. Something. If you stay in kitchens long enough, you’ll have days when the bread runs out or runs wrong. If you can’t bear that, find work where nothing depends on you.”

“Does that exist?” Lorne asked dryly.

“Not that I’ve seen,” Crumb said. “But some work hides it better.”

Mila thought of her parents’ inn. Of the quiet nights when they’d pretended business was slow by choice. Of the louder nights when someone had shouted about watered ale.

“I’d rather have this,” she said softly. “As awful as it feels, I’d rather have… us standing on the door and saying, ‘We don’t have enough,’ than pretending we do and letting the room figure it out without us.”

Crumb smiled, tired and warm. “Good,” he said. “Me too.”

He clapped his hands once.

“All right,” he said. “No more bread for the valley today. But we still have mouths in this room. Let’s see what we can make with what’s left.”

They turned the underbaked loaves into cubes for pudding, soaked in milk and scrap syrup. The better crusts became tomorrow’s crumbs for coating. The stew loaves went into a crate labeled Staff, Neighbors, and Anyone Who Shows Up Crying in Lorne’s neat hand.

Later that afternoon, when the worst of the embarrassment had settled into a dull ache, a knock came at the side door.

Mila opened it to find the schoolhouse woman standing there, hat askew.

“I brought soup,” she said, hefting a pot. “The stew bread held up. Figured you might like some of what it was floating in.”

The smell—thick and savory—made Mila’s stomach clench. “We should be feeding you,” she blurted.

“You are,” the woman said. “Just… sideways.”

They set the pot on the bench and ate out of chipped bowls—Crumb, Bryn, Lorne, Mila, and the schoolhouse woman, perched on an upturned flour crate.

They dipped stew bread into the broth.

It was dense. Chewy. Unapologetically honest about what it was.

“This isn’t your best bread,” the schoolhouse woman said, chewing thoughtfully. Crumb grimaced. “No,” he said. “It isn’t.”

“But it’s the best apology I’ve ever eaten,” she added. “I’ll take that.” Bryn choked on a laugh.

Mila smiled into her bowl.

That night, as they banked the oven and swept the floor, Mila paused by the slate. She traced the words What we do when we fail with one flour-dusted finger.

Then, below the three lines Crumb had written, she added a fourth in small, careful letters:

● Eat the lesson together.

 The next morning, when the starter was bubbling properly and the flour felt like it wanted to cooperate again, Crumb saw it.

He didn’t say anything.

He just shut the oven door with a solid, satisfied thump and smiled, very slightly, as the heat began to build.