Edda brought the household containers herself.
They stood in two rows beside the new standpipe: buckets, narrow-necked cans, a jar carried in a wicker sleeve, the battered clinical vessel whose measure everyone trusted because Thessa had checked it too often to let it lie.
“Not all the same mouth,” Edda said. “Not all the same pair of hands.”
Iven put his tool roll beside the service frame.
“Who starts?”
“She does.”
The woman Edda indicated had come from the upper ward. Until the new point opened, her household’s water had to be carried from the lower distribution yard. The basic supply existed. Getting it uphill through the cold was the labor they had come to shorten.
She lifted her can beneath the outlet.
