Edda put thirty marks on the cookhouse table and covered them with her hand.
Joss looked at the money, then at the three names on her new slate.
Cookhouse.
East Steps.
River Households.
“Whose?” he asked.
“People who need water and still have something to sell.
Some of it is tomorrow’s bread money.”
He sat opposite her.
Tan stood beside the stove checking the repaired cart’s wheel shoes.
Latch watched the new route plate from its warm recess, occasionally tapping it with a foot.
The bridge outside carried morning traffic.
Each cart that crossed felt like proof they could do another impossible job.
Joss distrusted that feeling enough to ask the ugly questions first.
“How long on stored water?”
“Today if we use only drinking and cooking.
Longer in houses with barrels.
People without them are already queuing here.”
“The river?”
“Boil it.
Burn our winter fuel.
Give everyone smoke and hope the water wasn’t taken below the tannery.
We can do that while you travel.
We can’t make it our next season.”
Nera laid an old route card beside the marks.
It showed a wellhead at a settlement called Wellmouth, twelve difficult miles up the river route.
“Miren Hale maintains the bore,” she said.
“Their head’s still in a carrier frame.
Old receiver fittings run downriver, including one under our tap house.”
Joss looked toward the red cutoff notice.
“Orren can shut that fitting too.”
“He owns the upper supply head.
Not the buried lower conduit.
We haven’t used it since the old carriers lost the route.”
“Wellmouth will just give us theirs?”
Nera shook her head.
“They’ve asked for someone to repair its seals and carry it to a working receiver.
Their present outlet’s sinking.
Toll holding offered to buy the head and scrap the local fittings.”
Tan came to the table.
“Then the source gets less water once it’s gone.”
“Unless someone builds a bypass before moving it.”
Joss drew the card closer.
The little lines connecting bore, head, and outlet had names beside them.
He followed the buried conduit with his finger.
“Fixed bore,” he said.
“We’d still depend on their groundwater.”
“Yes.
Dry season means less draw.
Broken source means none.”
“And no attaching it wherever we fancy?”
“Needs a prepared receiver.
You cannot pour a route out of the spout.”
He traced the existing line to Reed Dock.
The receiving mark sat under the same tap house whose valve Orren had locked.
Edda moved her hand off the marks.
“Find out if it can be done.
Thirty total.”
Joss took his pencil.
“Twenty for approved costs.
Ten fee after water reaches the tap and the source still works.
If we can’t agree with Wellmouth, we don’t buy a dry machine to make the invoice look finished.”
“How much of the fee is yours?”
“Whatever’s left after crew pay and old bills.”
Tan shook her head.
“Put our share down now.
Don’t make every job another conversation about whether you ate.”
They wrote a simple split: four marks to Joss, four to Tan, two for cart and maintenance reserve.
The old food and rope debts would come from Joss’s first earnings, not vanish into another community’s repair budget.
He made a separate pouch for the twenty marks of expenses.
Edda kept the ten until delivery passed.
Before signing, she asked, “And the water belongs to us?”
“The water we agree to draw.
The source won’t belong to us because we moved a head.”
She thought about the households who’d paid.
“Write that.
I’ll tell them.”
They signed.
The three household representatives arrived before Joss could put the contract away.
The river families’ representative, a tall man called Senn, pointed at their contribution.
“Our nets paid for those marks.
River houses get the first draw.”
“East Steps sold fuel,” the other representative said.
“We need the same tap.”
Edda drew the slate between them.
“The cookhouse tests it.
After that, household shares.
Selling a bigger thing doesn’t make your children thirstier.”
Senn turned to Joss.
“You’re agreeing to this?”
“If your nets buy you the pipe, we’ve hired the wrong courier.”
He wrote the test requirement beneath the shares: outlet seal, draw rate, source flow.
Until those passed, they kept boiling river water.
Senn read the contract again and signed last.
Edda gave him a copy for the river families.
He folded it lengthways to fit his coat pocket.
Joss stood carefully.
His ribs still warned him when he forgot to move slowly.
Outside, three customers waited at the cookhouse door with ordinary parcels.
A bridge open again had already created work.
One man needed a loom shuttle taken to East Square.
Another had medicine for his aunt.
Sella held a sealed cloth bundle addressed to the upper laundry.
“Two marks each?” she asked.
“Ordinary district rate.”
“Your sign says independent.
Thought that might make you expensive.”
“It makes me responsible for getting there.”
She handed him the parcel and paid in advance.
Tan wanted the water supplies purchased before they left.
Joss wanted to settle seven marks of debt before those supplies were swallowed by another emergency.
They could do both by spending the day on paid deliveries and leaving at dawn.
Edda started the river-boiling crew while he planned the paid runs.
The extra day would cost fuel.
Leaving unprepared would cost the wellhead.
In the workshop, Tan tested Latch’s hinge splint.
The creature withdrew from her first attempt to fit a permanent plate.
She changed the work: showed it the rounded edge, let it press the linen lining, and waited until it lifted the damaged corner itself.
Joss watched while fitting the ordinary parcels into a basket above the frame.
“You charge for that patience?”
“Already on the job.”
He left her to finish.
The three parcels took him across the restored bridge and through neighborhoods that had heard more about its failure than its repair.
At the laundry, a woman asked whether Reed Dock had surrendered its route.
He showed her the plate on his cart.
She gave him a second parcel for the return journey.
Same rate, payable on receipt.
“Whose account?” she asked, starting to write Krail on her board.
“Flint.”
She rubbed the old name out with her sleeve and wrote his.
Joss kept smiling long enough for her to check the price again.
On the way home, he read Bess’s letter again during a rest stop.
Moving survey posts.
Western camps.
No old south marks.
For once, he could choose when to get up.
Krail would have docked his wage for sitting on this wall.
Joss took another minute, with Bess’s crooked cart open on his knee.
Then he folded the letter and turned toward the next customer.
At the lane’s corner, Bren waited with news from an up-river hauler.
“The toll buyer leaves for Wellmouth tomorrow,” he said.
“They’ve paid for a crew to strip the source fittings.”
Joss looked at the day’s remaining light.
“Then tomorrow we’ll be on the road before them.”