“Probably.” Selenay shrugged. “I think she said something like that herself. At any rate, you’ll find statues like that all over Haven now; when they aren’t fountains and pumps, they can be almost anything useful. After a while, the artists that people hired to put up such things got to enjoy thinking up practical purposes. There’s a clever basin over in the square where Pitcher and Bright cross where women can wash clothing—it was made that way on purpose. And there’s dry mangers with stone canopies over them for feeding your horses or whatever at nearly every market square. There are covered benches, too, with inscriptions instead of statues, and an enormous public pigeon cote, which serves the purpose of giving poor people a place for birds for their pot, and gives the birds a place to go besides making nests in people’s roofs.” Both of them looked at him, clearly expecting some sort of comment from him; he thought about the larger towns in Karse that he had been in. Nothing this size, of course, but the only public sources of water were the wells in temple courtyards, and to use them…

To be fair, there were plenty of Sunpriests who encouraged all comers to take the water freely. But—well, it seemed to him there were fewer of the generous ones from year to year, and more who at the least, if they did not exact a tithe of work, cash, or goods for the water, insisted on daily attendance at one of the services before you got your water. That might not sound like much, but in the day of a busy woman, there were not many marks to spare, and in order to fetch her water, she might face a choice between leaving some task undone or walking farther to fetch water from another source. “One wishes,” he said slowly, “that all leaders like-minded were.”

Selenay beamed; Mirilin grunted, but at least he didn’t seem displeased.

The Court of Justice was held in a building over the Corn Market—literally over it, for it stood on four pillars above the valuable stall space. If the courtroom was filled, this covered space below—used on market days for the most valuable of merchandise, and food vendors—enabled people who were waiting their turn to wait out of the weather or sun.