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“The well started it,” Toma replies.

I crouch and examine the scrape. It is shallow, though grit is embedded in the skin.

“The well appears to have won.”

“It cheated.”

“Wells are known for dishonorable tactics.”

I take them inside, clean the injury, and wrap it with a narrow strip cut from an old linen cuff. Their mother will try to pay when she discovers what happened. I will refuse. She has five mouths to feed and no work until the stronghold’s laundry mistress needs more human hands.

When I step outside again, the market has thinned.

People do not linger in this cold. They conduct their trades quickly, count every coin twice, and retreat to buildings that offer the illusion of shelter. Wind finds the cracks between stones. Frost spreads across the inside of windows. At night, families sleep pressed together while their hearths consume wood faster than Lowtown can obtain it.

I stack Bran’s delivery against the clinic wall and count.

Thirty-seven pieces.

Enough for ten days if I heat only the treatment room. Seven if the temperature falls. Fewer if I shelter patients overnight.

My eyes move to the marketplace.

Old Neris has perhaps four days of fuel beside her door. The tailor has begun burning scraps. Bran’s household will use more while he is ill. The communal storehouse should contain emergency logs, but the lord’s tithe collectors emptied its driest section last month to cover a levy Lowtown could not pay in coin.

They called it lawful substitution.

The law keeps no one warm.

Above the roofs, Morwen’thir Stronghold cuts into the grey sky.

Its black walls rise from the mountain as though the stone itself has grown teeth. Towers guard the pass. High windows catch what little daylight penetrates the clouds. Smoke pours steadily from chimneys broad enough for a child to crawl through.

No one inside those walls is dismantling furniture for fuel.

Bran returns before I finish counting. He carries an empty handcart and wears the expression of a man who has remembered an argument halfway home.

“I knew you’d count it,” he says.

“I count everything.”

“That’s why I came back.”

“You need another remedy?”

“I need you to look at this.”

He pulls a folded notice from inside his coat. The paper is too fine for Lowtown use. A dark seal marks the bottom, pressed with the angular crest of House Morwen’thir.

I unfold it.

The notice announces that winter tithes remain due at the established rate. Grain, fuel, metalwork, and labor may replace coin. Delayed payment will incur penalties.

I read it twice.

“They posted three at the well,” Bran says. “One on the storehouse.”

“When?”