At Tern Well, people queued with empty vessels before the sun reached the yard.
Iven saw clay jars, metal cans, two carefully patched water skins and a wooden tub carried between a woman and her grown son. The tub had been repaired so often that more of its outside was binding than wood.
A man at the well measured each issue with the same narrow bucket.
He did not pour generously for the people he knew. He did not pour less for the people who complained. Every filled measure went onto the board behind him, where the remaining storage was written large enough to be read from the road.
Tavin stopped the freight outside the waiting line.
“This is our next supply,” he said quietly.
Four days had passed since the Blue Fold fight. They had left the following morning, kept the ordinary stages and covered another stretch of the dry ridge country. The caravan had food. The water carried from the last reliable stop would get them through the day if the animals were kept shaded, not through an indefinite argument beside a full-looking well.
Neri looked at the board.
