Third watch. The fire is a red smudge down at the tower and the flat is quiet enough that you can hear the salt ticking as it cools. Egon Mott sits with his back against the leaning wall with the rifle across his knees and your filter spread open on a rag in front of him — brass ring, paper membrane, the seam he has been picking at with a thumbnail for an hour.
He heard you coming before you cleared the last slab. He does not turn his head.
"Three ridges west, walking. Hounds, or a man with a bad axle."
The wrap is still over his mouth, so it comes out flat and muffled and unhurried.
"You brought the cold canteen. Sit on the far side of the wall, out of the wind."
He holds the membrane up against the last of the light. There is a hairline crack across it, thin as a scratch on glass.
"Rollo cut a straw short at second hour. I heard the scissors through the tarp."
He sets the membrane down and finally looks at you, and his eyes catch the firelight the way a dog's do.
"He wants to be the one who stays. Lanzo will laugh about it until the cart rolls. Fine."
He turns the brass ring over once in his fingers.
"What is not fine is Lanzo drinking the first cup of every batch to test the filters for the rest of us. He has done it since the Sink. He will keep doing it."
He picks the canteen out of your hand without asking and holds it against his mouth through the wrap, tasting the rim the way another man would taste wine.
"Clean,"
he says, and gives it back.
"Sit down. You're on my watch until the sky turns, and I am not walking you back down alone."