James pulled the last tray of rolls out of the oven and set them on a cooling rack as the clock chimed six times.

He smiled to himself, heading to unlock the bakery door. He was getting pretty good at timing the bread-making process.

Two customers were already waiting; a night guard who had just gotten off his shift and a bleary-eyed woman in a wooly dressing gown and pink slippers. James exchanged coins for rolls with the woman without a word, then had a brief, cheerful conversation with the guard.

That done, James put the kettle on and sat back in the warmth of his shop to wait for the rest of the town to filter through.

He’d moved to this town a year ago, after the war had been lost and the king had discharged all his generals. Truthfully, James liked it here. He’d spent enough time fighting. He’d seen enough people die. He was barely forty, but he felt four hundred. Living out here, in this town at the edge of nowhere, having one job and being able to do it well… He was happy. This was all he wanted.

The bakery door opened.

“Mama says we need six rolls,” a small voice announced as a coin was shoved onto the counter.

James smiled, putting six rolls into a paper bag for the young customer who lived next door.

Yes, he was happy here.

At seven, after his breakfast, he made a tray of buns with cheese in the middle, and after they were done he got to work baking bigger loaves. By eleven nearly everything had been sold, and he closed the shop to make lunch.

At two he unlocked the shop, starting to make cookies for when the children finished their classes. This was where he got creative. As long as the cookies cost half a dren each, the children would buy them regardless of what was in them. Today he decided to try a recipe that involved honey and lemon rind.

He was measuring honey into the batter when the door opened.

A farmer by the name of Paul walked up to the counter. “Hello, James, have you got any of those with the cheese in them left?”

James looked to the cooling rack. “Two. Want ‘em?” he asked, noticing someone following Paul.

“Perfect, yes,” Paul said, placing a coin on the table. “This here is Tom March, he just bought Mrs. Lake’s old cottage out on the edge of town. He’s going to try reviving the apple orchard. Tom, this is James Baker, the baker.”

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James slipped the buns into a bag and slid them towards Paul, holding his hand out to the new man. “A pleasure to meet you.”

The man, who had been interestedly examining the big oven, finally turned to James, taking the hand in a firm handshake before looking him in the eyes.

The bakery faded away, replaced with a distant battlefield.

The kings had ordered all their higher-ranking officers to meet, to fight, to show the common soldiers that everyone had to shed blood. It had been a stupid order. James, then known as General Hopper, had been commanded to fight a man known as General Stand.

It had been raining for five days straight at that point. Food was running low on both sides. After three years of fighting few of the soldiers remembered what the original conflict had been about, and none cared. The kings, safe in their faraway castles, seemed to be treating the war like a game. Having the generals engage in hand-to-hand combat was the last straw.

The two men who’d been scheduled to battle first had sloshed through the mud and old blood, meeting each other in the agreed-upon battlefield. They’d looked each other in the eye: two worn, starving, homesick, freezing, soaking wet men who both truly did not want to fight. Minutes passed as they stood there, each waiting for the other to move first. There had been no sound but the wind and rain. Finally General Stand had reached out an empty hand. General Hopper took that hand in a firm handshake.

Then they’d turned around and sloshed back to their camps.

There had been no fighting that day, or any day after it. Both armies went home, not by an order, but with the unspoken knowledge that if no one stayed the war would have to be over. It was the biggest mass-desertion in history. Neither side won. Both kings had been assassinated within the month. The new kings had officially disbanded all military forces, declaring peace to two countries who wanted nothing more.

General Hopper had vanished in the paperwork, and two months later James bought the bakery from an old woman with no children to take over the business.

Across the counter, General Stand slowly smiled, recovering from shock first.

“A pleasure to meet you, too,” Tom said.

Paul looked back and forth. “Do you know each other?”

“No,” James said, counting out change for Paul. “I don’t believe we’ve ever met.”

“We haven’t,” Tom agreed. “But I have a feeling we’ll be great friends.”