The thing about rebellion is that it attracts inconvenient accessories.
Aras always suspected charm would get him into trouble. He did not expect that trouble would arrive wearing skirts, armor, and the most inconveniently timed blushes. By the third week of their little insurgency, the barn behind the river cottages had become less of a refuge and more of a crossroads where people who liked him—very much—kept turning up for reasons that ranged from genuine loyalty to the simple desire to be near someone who made life feel like the best kind of mischief.
Lina had been the first: small, quick-witted, and disastrously fond of bread. She took to organizing the kitchen with more fervor than a general at parade practice, and people followed the scent of her loaves like sailors follow stars. Lira, the singer, arrived next with a bundle of dresses and an alarming number of fans who actually liked the dresses because she made them look as if they had tales stitched into their seams. Then there were the girls from the garrison who simply could not resist danger if it wore a grin; they volunteered to guard the barn and stayed because Aras had the terrible habit of remembering the names of the men and women who laughed at his jokes.
Serane, predictably, did not sign up for fanfare. She arrived with orders, maps, and a face that suggested she'd been inconvenienced by romance before and had not enjoyed it. Yet she sat beside a sack of flour and fed a bootless recruit with the sort of absent kindness that could undo an empire. It made people notice the way danger can tuck itself behind duty.
They called the collection of admirers a harem in the kind of private joke that begged to be shouted at market stalls. Aras, narrating from the corner of a table while balancing Keen like a cane, insisted on calling it the "Coalition of Questionable Good Ideas." That name lasted until someone painted a better logo and girls began to bring flowers and unknown cooks began to bring pies.
Keen hummed against his palm like an observant third wheel. You gather admirers the way a storm gathers stray cats, it complained one morning. It will complicate plans.
Aras winked. "Complication is an aesthetic," he said. "Besides, they're useful."
Useful took many shapes. Lina taught reading, which turned out to be helpful for planning routes, forging documents, and composing convincingly humble letters to distraught relatives. Lira's songs made the new arrivals feel less like specimens in a collection and more like people, which reduced the number of suspicious questions the awakened asked at odd hours. A pair of garrison girls, twins named Mara and Fina, learned to set nonlethal traps and were mercilessly proud of it. A noblewoman, Lady Celine—whose carriage had broken down in the rain and who had liked Aras's hat—donated fabrics, information about patrol patterns, and a precise recipe for a scandal that would distract half the temple for a fortnight.
Romance in their world, Aras decided, was not a single thread but a whole tapestry you could hang on the wall when you wanted the light to look pretty. That didn't make the stitches less dangerous.
The more useful a person was, the more fiercely some of the others defended them. Jealousy came along predictable rails. Lina, practical and quietly brave, often found herself on the wrong end of a conspiratorial glance when Aras flirted—flirted as if the world were a book to be annotated, not a person to be broken. Lira, messy and theatrical, staged "accidental" duets with Aras just to watch the twins turn purple with indignation. Serane remained a cliff of composure, but she had corners—sharp little ones—where she would quietly test Aras with impossible questions that were not about battle at all but about whether he could be trusted not to make a joke of everything sacred.
One evening, as twilight softened the river into a smear of silver, the barn became the scene of an unplanned tournament.
"It's simple," Aras announced, standing on a crate and trying not to make the speech too dramatic. "We have enemies with ledger-obsessed hearts and an increasingly annoyed pantheon. We also have women who can throw a dagger and people who can bake a bargain into bread. Between those two skills is our hope."
Mara and Fina leapt forward, clashing in a mock duel that left the rest of them cheering. Lina handed out slices of bread like medals. Lina and Lira teamed up to teach improvised choreography—noisy, ridiculous, and utterly convincing to the sort of crowd that liked its revolution with footwork.
Serane, having watched the chaos with a look that suggested she was cataloguing every possible failure mode, finally stepped forward. "This is not a festival," she said.
"No," Aras agreed. "It's a training exercise with sequins."
She folded her arms, and the rest went silent. The moment the hush settled, Serane made a small, abrupt motion: she drew her sword and held it outward, not in threat, but as an offering.
"Show me how you fight for them," she said.
It was a question that was not a challenge. It was the kind of test only a soldier with the habit of trust would give. Aras's grin softened into something like concentration. He lifted Keen and moved through a series of simple forms—parries, feints, a flourish that made the sun catch the blade's edge and throw starlight into people's eyes.
Then the women moved. Not an armada of lovers, but a web of strengths: Lira with a sling that sang like a bell when it flew, Lina with a blade she'd learned to hold as if it were chalk again, Mara and Fina with their snaps and traps, Lady Celine with a hidden dagger in her sleeve that had a civilized air and a terrible efficiency. Each of them stepped into the space where Aras had been teaching and took turns showing he could trust them and they him.
When it was over, Serane nodded. It was a small nod—the kind that comes halfway between approval and an order. "You fight well," she said. "And you meant it for people, not theater. That matters."
Aras felt the warmth of a compliment like a sun on his back. Around him the barn hummed—girls laughing, the baker humming, the old woman knitting an argument into a scarf. The moment was not precisely triumph, but it was a close cousin.
After the training, the harem—coalition, tapestry, or coalition-of-questionable-good-ideas, depending on who you asked—sat in a messy circle eating bread. Aras had a flower behind his ear because Lina insisted it improved morale; he wore it like a crown. The talking sword rested across his knees, disgruntled but content.
"What happens when the priests come?" Lina asked, crumbs decorating her lips like tiny crowns.
Aras considered this seriously for a breath. "We will be loud. We will be charming. We will make them prefer storytelling to counting."
Serane hummed in a way that was almost laughter. "You will be reckless."
"Yes," Aras said. "But not stupid."
Keen, who had the patter of a conscience and the temperament of a critic, added, And you will be beloved with disastrous efficiency.
Aras raised his cup. "To disasters," he said. "To bread, and to those who like us despite the obvious risk."
They all drank to that. The clink of cups muffled the distant bell—a persistent, unhappy sound that could not decide whether to be thunder or a reprimand.
Outside, the city would continue to count, to judge, to prepare. Inside, there were plans to teach the awakened to laugh, to sing, and to fight if they had to. Outside, there would be consequences. Inside, there were hands reaching for each other, stubbornly, defiantly human.
Aras looked around at the faces—Lina's open curiosity, Lira's theatrical grin, Serane's guarded warmth, the twins' mischievousness, Lady Celine's quiet intelligence—and realized how much power there was in people who chose to stand beside you because they wanted to, not because they had to.
He tapped Keen on the pommel. "Keep your edge," he said, light and true. "But remember—this is not just my show."
Keen's hum softened, like something resigned to be companioned by fools and saints. Very well, it said. But I will complain.
They all laughed, and in the laughter there was a sound that discipline could not tally. The ledger might mark their names with prayers and accusations, but it could not account for this—bread shared under a willow, boots mended beside lullabies, a man with a grin and the bad sense to believe people could be better than their pasts.
A harem, Aras thought with fond irritation, was not the worst burden to bear. Especially when it came with bread.