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A bustling crowd gathers at the steps of a grand, tiered temple-like bakery, with racks of bread and people selling wares.

A bustling crowd gathers at the steps of a grand, tiered temple-like bakery, with racks of bread and people selling wares.

Every morning, on the steps that mount to their Bakery, the Bakers of Kekk distribute thousands of delicious jombils free of charge to long lines of supplicants from Troika and beyond. Bakers haul out fresh jombils by the barrel and arrange them on great cooling racks placed around the Bakery’s pillars. The racks are refilled constantly until precisely 4 pm, when the Bakers retreat into the temple, leaving out all undistributed jombils for free consumption. (Around Jombiltown the hour is known as “Bakers’ teatime.”) [ART OF THE OVENS IN JOMBILTOWN, SHOWING THE HUGE STEPPED PYRAMID/HILL WITH LONG, WINDING LINES LEADING UP TO THE BAKERY/TEMPLE AT THE TOP] Many destitute Troikans spend their lives on the Ovens. The charity of the Bakers means they will not starve; moreover, the stone steps are pleasantly heated by the actual ovens underground. Joining the poor each morning in well-ordered lines are a mix of gourmets, gourmands, slumming aristocrats, tourists, and beings whose motivations are less easily discerned, including some that have no obvious way of ingesting a jombil. Alongside the supplicants, mongers sell napkins, kettles, tea leaves, water, crumb brushes, sleeping bags, souvenirs, local journals of news and gastronomy, and other sundries. Representatives of religions that oppose charity and/or baked goods exhort supplicants to leave their places in line. Street performers enjoy the captive audience before queueing for jombils themselves. Philosophers from faraway Mehr sehen