Every year, not coincidentally, the Bakers’ Festival is swiftly followed by the Beggars’ Feast. The current Champion Baker is intimately familiar with both of these events from different periods of her life. The Feast once kept her alive, so now she always bakes more than she strictly needs for the Festival. And the rest of the year round.

  Meanwhile, a teenage boy and an agricultural robot are finding creative new ways to cheat at the festival’s games and scam those who bet on the contests. They figure that getting caught is no worse than the life they live now and is well worth the chance of climbing their way to something more.