Two Vessels

The count began at the cistern, where the waterline had been scratched into the stone in a row of uneven marks. Sella had made the latest one herself, a dark stroke just above the old lime stain. She checked it against the notch Kaelen had cut into a measuring rod, then read the number aloud for the people gathered around her.

“Twenty-six vessels below the mark from yesterday.”

A low murmur passed through the group. It meant the ration cut had slowed the loss. It also meant the cistern was still losing water.

Kaelen stood beside the slate, waiting for the shrine figures. Nobody had brought a hymn. Orr had kept the shrine door sealed through the night, and the clan had come to the cistern instead, carrying cups and ledgers and the tired suspicion of people who had already given something up.

Sella tapped the public record with her stylus. “The machine’s count first.”

They went down together. Orr unlocked the shrine and stayed at the threshold while Kaelen and Sella entered with two witnesses. A few paces beyond them, the machine lay in its bed of rusted framework and old stone. Moss clung to one of its legs. The blue light at its center showed faintly through a slit in the plating.

Kaelen kept his hands to himself. He had been ritually washed before entering, as doctrine required, though no one had asked him to touch anything. Sella held the terminal while he checked the displayed figures. The screen took a moment to brighten.

“Water recovery active,” he said. “Intake standby. Reserves, ninety-three point eight percent.”

“Recovery volume?” Sella asked.

He read the line again, then looked at the witnesses. “Twenty-eight vessels since the last count.”

One witness wrote it down. The other repeated the number, slowly, as if giving it a place among the facts the clan might keep.

Outside, Sella set the terminal’s reading beside the cistern mark in the ledger. The clan had issued twenty-eight vessels to households. The cistern had lost twenty-six more than the machine had restored.

She checked the sums once. Then she checked them again.

“Two vessels are missing from the household tally,” she said.

The group shifted. Someone asked if the measuring rod had slipped. Kaelen tested it against the stone notch. It had not. Sella sent two witnesses to inspect the cistern outlets, and they returned with the same answer: no leak, no broken channel, no water left running into the waste trench.

Orr looked from the ledger to the people waiting around it. “Then someone drew beyond the ration.”