KETTLHAND - Everything a Cup Can Do

It is enough to heat a bath. Everyone agrees it is enough for nothing else. At seven, every child is measured and given two words. The first says what you are for. The second says how much of it you have. Sinder's say Kettlhand, Cup. A cupful of warmth, and only in whatever he is touching. The smallest thing the Registry writes down. Thirteen years of carrying other men's water and watching them work, because a boy with one small thing will eventually try it on everything. So he knows a mortar board goes at the edges first, and what that costs a wall by spring. He knows what every gift in that town costs the man who has it, and exactly where each one stops. And he knows what he is worth to the man who pays him, because he did the arithmetic. It is eight times his wage. There is no safe way to say that out loud. Nobody has ever asked him. They measured him once, when he was seven. They have never thought to check again. He will never be the strongest man in the room. He has spent thirteen years making sure he is the one who understands it.