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The line begins moving.

Bran and I stay beside the pump, watching the brace each time the lever rises. The wet leather stiffens as it freezes, tightening around the wooden support.

A woman fills two buckets, then offers to take the handle. Bran lets her relieve him. Every pull requires strength, but water continues flowing.

“It might hold,” he says.

“It will hold.”

“You sound confident.”

“I am cold enough to become violent if it does not.”

His laugh turns into a cough. It is looser than yesterday’s, without the painful depth that first alarmed me.

I touch the back of my hand to his cheek.

“I took the remedy,” he says.

“Both doses?”

“Yes.”

“Your fever?”

“Gone.”

His skin is cold from the wind but no longer hot beneath it.

“Satisfied?”

“Temporarily.”

He watches residents carry their water away. “You know more about keeping this town alive than every overseer in that keep.”

“I know how to repair one broken pump.”

“You know which families need medicine, who has enough fuel, whose roof leaks, and who missed the last grain allotment.”

“So do you.”

“I know who owes me dalers.”

“You ignore that information whenever collecting would cause hardship.”

“That is slander.”

“It is praise. Endure it.”

A boy near the back of the line points above the rooftops.

“There is a light in the lord’s tower.”

I follow his finger.

Morwen’thir Stronghold rises against the darkening sky, its towers half concealed by snow. A single golden light burns in the highest eastern window. Lowtown rumor identifies it as Rhysandir’s study.

Perhaps he works there. Perhaps a servant tends an empty room. None of us know enough about the lord’s movements to tell the difference.