The contract was signed at midday on the third day, in Brek's office, with a clerk present as witness and a second copy made for each party.
It was written in the formal merchant script of Erdenmoor, which Junho could read adequately — Lloyd had apparently received a reasonable education, whatever his other failures — and he went through it twice before signing, checking each clause against what had been verbally agreed. Brek watched this without comment. When Junho finished and looked up, the merchant had the expression of someone who had expected less thoroughness and was mildly adjusting his opinion upward.
The advance payment was sixty-five silver coins, counted out on the counter by Brek's clerk in stacks of ten.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Junho put them in the satchel. He did not let himself feel anything particular about it, because sixty-five silver was a bridge, not a destination, and feeling good about a bridge before you'd crossed it was how you ended up in the water.
'First delivery in thirty days,' Brek said, as Junho prepared to leave. 'I'll expect your advance rider the day before, so I can have the yard crew ready.'
'You'll have it,' Junho said.
'And the sawmill. When it's running — I'd like to see it. If the quality of cut is what you say it will be, I may want to discuss a longer-term arrangement.'
...He's already thinking about expanding the contract.
Good. That's leverage for later.
'When it's running,' Junho said, 'you're welcome any time.'
He rode back north with sixty-five silver, a signed contract, a back that had not forgiven the previous day's saddle, and a revised sense of what the next twenty-seven days needed to look like.
* * *
The next morning, he called Calder to the foundation site before anyone else arrived.
The early light was thin and grey, the kind of morning that hadn't committed to being a good day yet. Mist sat in the low places along the creek. Calder arrived with a leather satchel of his own over one shoulder and the alert, slightly wary look of a young man summoned by his employer before breakfast with no stated reason.
Junho had a fresh piece of parchment, a stick of charcoal, and a flat stone to lean on.
'We need to talk through the full build before we touch another piece of timber,' Junho said. 'I'm going to draw it out. All of it — foundation to roof. You're going to tell me where my assumptions are wrong.'
Calder blinked. 'You want me to correct you.'
'I want you to tell me what you know about wood and joinery that I might not have accounted for. Yes.' Junho set the charcoal to parchment. 'I can design this mechanism. I cannot tell you whether a given joint will hold under wet conditions, or which salvaged beam has a hidden check crack that'll fail under load, or how long unseasoned pine takes to shrink enough to loosen a mortise. Those are craft questions. I need craft answers.'
There was a pause while Calder visibly processed being asked for his expertise rather than his labor.
'All right,' he said, and sat down on the foundation edge.
Junho drew. He worked from the bottom up the way you always worked — foundation first, then the structural frame, then the secondary framing, then the roof. He drew the wheel housing integration, the axle bearing locations, the position of the crank shaft relative to the floor level. He drew it in plan and in section, switching between the two the way he would have in a proper design meeting, giving Calder a moment to orient himself each time.
Calder watched in silence for the first few minutes. Then he started talking.
He talked about the oak beams — which ones had the grain running the right direction for the load they'd carry, which ones he'd want to flip. He talked about the bearing posts and the importance of sitting them on flat stone rather than directly on the foundation mortar, because mortar crept under sustained load and flat stone didn't. He talked about the roof pitch and why the angle Junho had drawn would shed rain correctly in summer but might ice up at the eave line in a hard winter, and did the lord want to add a steeper pitch or was summer functionality sufficient for now.
Junho listened to all of it and took notes.
He's thought about this. He's been thinking about it since I showed him the sketches.
'The bearing posts,' Junho said. 'Show me which flat stones in the foundation are best suited.'
They spent twenty minutes on that alone, Calder moving around the foundation and pressing his boot against each candidate stone, checking for rock, checking for level. He found three good candidates and two that had a slight tilt he didn't like. He marked them with charcoal.
Then Calder crouched at the wheel housing and looked at the axle channel — the slot through the housing wall where the wheel's axle would pass.
'This is sized for the old wheel,' he said.
'I know. What was the old wheel's diameter?'
Calder thought. 'Hendry worked on the housing when they were building. He'd know.'
'Find out today. I need to know if we're building a new wheel to fit the existing channel, or widening the channel to fit a wheel that's more efficient for the current flow rate.' Junho paused. 'If the old wheel was undersized for this creek's output, widening the channel and building a larger wheel gives us more power output from the same water. More power means faster cutting.'
'Widening the channel means stonework,' Calder said.
'Which Hendry can do. He was already repointing the housing — he knows the stone.'
Calder nodded slowly. He was looking at the housing with the expression of someone re-evaluating something he'd thought was settled. 'The old wheel was maybe...' He held his hands apart. 'About this across. Six handspans, maybe seven.'
Junho converted that roughly. Somewhere between 120 and 150 centimeters diameter. For the creek's assessed flow rate, the system had suggested an overshot or undershot configuration — an overshot wheel, where water fell onto the top of the wheel from a raised channel, was significantly more efficient but required a millrace elevated above the creek level. An undershot wheel sat directly in the current, simpler to install, but captured less of the water's energy.
Ping—!
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
[ ENGINEER'S EYE — WHEEL CONFIGURATION ANALYSIS ]
Ash Run Creek — Current flow: 2.8 m³/sec
Option A: Undershot Wheel (existing channel, minimal modification)
Diameter: match existing (est. 130cm)
Efficiency: 25–35% of available water energy captured
Power output: sufficient for light sawmill operation
Build time: minimal (use existing channel)
Option B: Overshot Wheel (new elevated millrace required)
Diameter: 180–220cm recommended
Efficiency: 60–80% of available water energy captured
Power output: 2.1–2.6x Option A
Build time: +8–12 days (millrace elevation work)
Recommendation for current timeline: Option A.
Option B superior long-term. Consider upgrade in Phase 2.
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Undershot it is. I don't have twelve extra days.
'We're keeping the existing channel geometry,' Junho told Calder. 'Build the new wheel to fit it. Same diameter as the old one, or as close as Hendry's memory is accurate. We'll upgrade to a larger overshot wheel later, once the mill is earning.'
Calder nodded. 'The wheel itself — who builds it?'
'You do. With my drawings.'
'I've never built a wheel.'
'You've worked wood your whole life. A wheel is a hub, spokes, and float boards. The critical part is that the float boards are set at the right angle to catch the current efficiently — not flat, angled about fifteen degrees from vertical.' Junho sketched it quickly. 'If they're flat they deflect the water before capturing it. At fifteen degrees they scoop it.'
Calder studied the sketch. His hands, as always, were doing something — in this case pulling a thin strip of wood from his satchel and bending it absently while he thought. 'The hub needs to be hardwood. Oak or elm. The spokes I can cut from the salvaged beams. The float boards — green wood or seasoned?'
'Seasoned if we have it. Green wood will warp as it dries and the boards will stop sitting flat in the frame.'
'We have some seasoned pine in the barn. It's been in there since the flood two years back, nobody moved it. Three or four boards, decent width.'
Of course there's random useful material in a barn somewhere. There's always random useful material in a barn somewhere.
'Check it today. If it's sound, that's your float board stock.' Junho rolled the parchment and tucked it under his arm. 'One more thing. The saw frame. I need to show you the pitman arm attachment before you start cutting the crank shaft mount.'
'The what?'
'The arm that connects the rotating crank to the saw frame. It converts circular motion to up-and-down motion. The attachment point is a pivot — if the pivot is too tight it binds, too loose it slops. Either one destroys your cut consistency.' Junho crouched and drew it in the dirt again. 'Gorvan in Crestfall is making the iron fittings. But the wooden arm itself is yours, and the wooden collar around the pivot point needs to be cut to very specific dimensions so the iron sleeve fits properly.'
He gave Calder the dimensions.
Calder looked at the numbers. He was quiet for a moment in his thinking way.
'You want me to hit those tolerances with hand tools,' he said finally.
'Can you?'
'...Yes.' Not boastful — factual, with a small undercurrent of someone accepting a challenge they found interesting. 'I'll need to make a gauge. A template to check against while I'm cutting.'
'Good idea. Make the gauge first.'
'Takes half a day.'
'Then take half a day.'
Calder looked at him with an expression that Junho was starting to recognize — the look of someone who had worked for people who treated time spent on precision as time wasted, and was encountering the alternative for the first time.
'Most people just say cut it close enough,' Calder said.
'Close enough fails eventually,' Junho said. 'Usually at the worst time. Make the gauge.'
* * *
The next ten days developed their own rhythm.
Junho had managed construction projects before, and the rhythm was always the same regardless of scale: a morning planning session, a day of work, an evening assessment of what had been accomplished versus what had been planned, and a quiet recalibration of tomorrow's tasks. The variables changed. The rhythm didn't.
What surprised him was how quickly the tenant workers adapted to it.
He'd expected resistance — not aggressive resistance, just the passive friction of people who had their own ways of doing things and didn't particularly want to change them. In his previous life, half his job on any construction site had been managing the gap between the way things were supposed to be done and the way the crew had always done them.
Here, the friction was minimal. Partly because the tenant workers were not construction professionals with entrenched habits, just farmers lending their labor during the pre-planting period when field work was light. They had no established method for building a mill and were therefore willing to be shown a method. Partly because Junho was careful to explain why each task was done a particular way, not just how. You dragged timber along the ground on rollers rather than carrying it not because he said so but because rollers reduced the load per person by distributing it, which meant the same four people could move a beam that would otherwise require eight. Once people understood the physics, they usually accepted the practice.
And partly — though Junho catalogued this as a factor only reluctantly, because it was not a quantifiable thing — because they were watching Calder.
Calder worked with his hands and his eyes and occasionally his entire body, wedging himself into tight spaces between the foundation stones to check alignments, hanging off the wheel housing wall to examine the axle channel from below, lying flat on the foundation surface and sighting along a beam the way a surveyor would sight along a level. He was not doing any of this for show. He was doing it because the work required it, and he had apparently decided, in the privacy of his own professional judgment, that this project was worth doing correctly.
The tenants watched him and worked harder.
Social proof. The same in every world.
Ping—!
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
[ QUEST PROGRESS UPDATE ]
「 The Inheritance 」 — Phase 1: Restore the Ashmore Mill
Day 10 status:
✓ Foundation cleared and prepared
✓ Wheel housing repointed (Hendry Voss)
✓ Salvaged beams re-mortised and staged
✓ Bearing posts seated on flat stone
✓ New wall studs felled and rough-cut (from north forest, 2-day operation)
✓ Wheel hub blank roughed out (Calder Voss, elm — found in barn)
✓ Pitman arm gauge completed (Calder Voss)
□ Primary frame erection (begin Day 11)
□ Wheel spoke and float board assembly
□ Ironwork delivery — fittings (expected Day 14)
□ Saw frame construction and installation
□ Ironwork delivery — blade (expected Day 21)
□ Final assembly and calibration
Current funds: 56 silver, 5 copper
Crew labor cost (10 days): 6 silver, 2 copper
Days remaining: 79
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Junho closed the panel and looked at the mill site.
In ten days it had gone from a tangle of fallen timber on a stone rectangle to something that looked, if you squinted and were charitable, like the beginning of a building. The foundation was clean. The bearing posts were in. The salvaged beams were stacked beside the foundation in sorted order, mortise holes re-cut, ready to go up. The wheel housing gleamed faintly where Hendry had repointed it, the new mortar a brighter grey than the old.
Tomorrow they raised the frame.
Frame erection was the phase of any construction project that felt like the most significant moment, even though it wasn't — the foundation was really the significant moment, because if the foundation was wrong nothing else mattered. But foundations happened underground or at ground level, invisibly, slowly. Frame erection happened upright and fast, and at the end of the day you had a thing that looked like a building, which was psychologically satisfying in a way that no amount of subsurface preparation ever was.
I've missed this part.
In the final years of his previous life, Junho had been mostly a desk engineer. Calculations. Reviews. Sign-offs. He had stopped going to sites regularly because there was no time, and the sites were run by site managers who didn't need him standing around, and the clients wanted reports not presence.
He had forgotten what it felt like to watch something become real.
* * *
Frame day started badly.
The first primary beam — the largest salvaged oak, the one that would run the length of the structure as the main carrying beam — had a problem that Calder discovered at first light when he went to do his pre-lift inspection.
He came to find Junho at the farmhouse with the look of a man bringing news he'd personally rather not be delivering.
'The big beam,' Calder said. 'I found a check crack.'
'How deep?'
'Come and see.'
They went. The crack was on the tension face of the beam — the underside, where the beam would bow downward slightly under load. A longitudinal check crack, running along the grain for about sixty centimeters, opening to perhaps four millimeters at its widest. It had been there before the building fell, probably — a stress crack that had developed slowly as the timber dried unevenly. The fall had opened it slightly but not caused it.
Junho crouched and examined it. He pressed his thumbnail into the wood on either side. Solid. He put his palm flat against the beam and felt along the crack's length.
Ping—!
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
[ ENGINEER'S EYE — STRUCTURAL ASSESSMENT ]
Primary beam — oak, est. 28cm x 32cm section, 7.2m length
Defect: Longitudinal check crack, tension face
Depth: est. 30–40% of section depth at widest point
Length: 62cm
Assessment: Compromised in bending. NOT suitable as primary span.
Failure risk under dynamic sawmill load: HIGH.
Salvage options:
A) Recut to shorter length (eliminate crack) — results in 5.8m beam
Consequence: insufficient span for full building width
B) Use as secondary beam (compression only, no bending load)
Suitable for wall plate or ridge function
C) Replace with new-felled timber (unseasoned — shrinkage risk)
Allow 3–4 weeks minimum drying before load. Timeline impact: severe.
Recommended: Option B + source replacement primary span.
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Option C is off the table. I can't wait three weeks.
Option B works but I need a replacement primary span from somewhere.
He stood up and looked around the site. At the sorted timber piles. At the forest visible through the tree line to the north.
'When we felled the new wall studs,' Junho said, 'what was the largest tree we took?'
'Two of the pine were big,' Calder said. 'I used them for the studs. The butt cuts — the bottom sections of the trunks before they taper — I left at the site. Too heavy to move without purpose.'
'How long are the butt cuts?'
'Maybe...' Calder calculated. 'Three meters each. Maybe three and a half.'
Not long enough individually. But if I sister them—
'If we bring both butt cuts in and sister them alongside each other — bolt them together along the length — the combined section is stronger than either alone, and the combined length can reach span.' He was already working out the bolt spacing in his head. 'The bolts are the weak point. We need through-bolts with good bearing area, not spikes.'
'Gorvan,' Calder said.
'He won't have through-bolts made already. But he can make them. I need to send someone today—'
'I'll go,' Calder said. 'I need to check on the fittings anyway. You said day fourteen, but if I'm there today I can see how far along he is.'
...That's actually useful. Two birds.
'Go this afternoon,' Junho said. 'Give him the bolt dimensions — I'll write them out. Tell him I need them before the fittings if possible, because I need them tomorrow.' He paused. 'Tell him I'll pay a premium for the speed. Two silver over the fitting price if the bolts are ready by tomorrow morning.'
Calder nodded and went to get his horse.
Junho went to find the two tenant workers he trusted most with precision tasks — a quiet man named Aldric, and Mara Dunwick's eldest son, Wyll, who had his mother's eyes and his mother's habit of watching everything twice before touching it — and set them to hauling the pine butt cuts in from the forest site.
It took the rest of the morning.
Hrk— Hrk— Hrk—
The two sections came in on log rollers, four men to each, inching forward across the cleared ground. Junho walked alongside and said nothing useful but felt the specific, useless anxiety of a project manager who knew that talking made things slower and couldn't entirely stop himself from wanting to.
By early afternoon the butt cuts were on the foundation. Junho spent an hour examining them — checking the grain direction, looking for defects, assessing the diameter differential between the two sections and calculating how to orient them for the best combined performance.
They were not identical. One was slightly larger in diameter, slightly straighter in the grain. That one went on the bottom of the sister pair, because the lower member of a sistered beam carried more of the bending load.
He marked the bolt positions on the timber with charcoal. Nine locations, evenly spaced, with washer seats to be cut by hand so the bearing area was sufficient.
Then he waited for Calder.
* * *
Calder came back in the last of the afternoon light with the bolts.
Gorvan had made twelve of them — he'd made extras without being asked, which was the mark of a craftsman who understood tolerances and contingencies. The bolts were iron, hand-forged, with squared heads and threaded ends — not machine threads, but close-pitched hand-cut threads, with matching iron nuts. The threading was not perfect. It was adequate, which was what mattered.
Clunk.
Calder set the bundle of bolts on the foundation stone.
'He said he's ahead on the fittings,' Calder reported. 'Says he'll have them ready on day twelve, not fourteen.'
'Two days early,' Junho said.
'He seemed pleased with himself about it.'
Good. Two extra days on the fittings means I have buffer on the mechanism assembly.
'How does the saw frame look to you?' Junho asked. 'You were watching him work on it.'
'The cam profile is — different from anything I've seen. He's done it the way your sketch showed, the gradual rise and then the drop. He said it was a strange shape to cut.' Calder paused. 'But he cut it right. I measured it against the sketch.'
'You measured it.'
'You told me to verify. So I verified.'
...He's learning.
'Good,' Junho said, and meant it more than the word conveyed. 'Come on. We've got two hours of light and I want the bolt holes started tonight.'
* * *
They worked until they couldn't see.
Boring iron-hard pine with hand augers was the kind of work that made you understand, viscerally, why the invention of powered drilling equipment had been one of humanity's most significant quality-of-life improvements. Each hole took fifteen minutes of sustained effort, the auger biting slowly through the dense grain, requiring regular withdrawal to clear the chips, the handles vibrating in a way that traveled up the forearms and settled in the shoulders.
Junho bored holes alongside Aldric and Wyll. He did not supervise from a distance. This was a pragmatic decision as much as anything — he had three workers and nine holes and the geometry of it required four people.
Skrk— Skrk— Skrk—
Wyll, who was twenty and had the uncomplicated physical confidence of someone who had never in his life been in an office, bored holes faster than anyone. He found a rhythm with the auger that was almost musical, a consistent pressure and rotation that produced a steady spiral of chips and a clean entry.
Junho watched him for a few minutes between his own holes and made a mental note. Wyll Dunwick. Worth keeping track of.
By the time they stopped, seven of the nine holes were done. Junho straightened up and pressed his hands to his lower back.
Krk.
...I keep forgetting this body is twenty-two. Twenty-two should not make that sound.
I've broken it already.
Aldric put his auger away with the efficiency of someone who had decided this was simply how evenings ended now and had made his peace with it. Wyll was coiling the rope they'd used to mark alignment, doing it in the fast automatic loop of someone who'd coiled rope his whole life.
'Same time tomorrow?' Wyll asked.
'Earlier,' Junho said. 'I want to start the framing as soon as we have light. Finish the last two bolt holes first, then we go up.'
Wyll nodded. 'My mother wanted me to ask you something.'
Junho had been collecting his tools. He looked up. 'What?'
'The drainage on the east field. She said you mentioned it your first day, and then nothing's happened with it and she wants to know if you forgot.'
...I did not forget. I've been building a mill.
But from her perspective, she's watching to see if my promises have a shelf life.
'I haven't forgotten,' Junho said. 'The mill is the priority because without the mill there's no money, and without money the barony gets taken and the drainage is someone else's problem. But I have a plan for the east field and I'll walk it with her after the frame goes up.'
Wyll received this without visible reaction, which meant he was his mother's son and had inherited her talent for giving nothing away. 'I'll tell her,' he said.
They walked back toward the farmstead in the dark. The creek ran along to their left, constant and indifferent. Above them the two moons were up — the large pale one three-quarters full, the red crescent a faint scratch of light near the horizon.
Junho looked at the moons for a moment.
Day thirteen.
Seventy-six left.
He did the arithmetic the way he always did, without deciding to. Total debt: 2,400 gold. Current funds: roughly fifty silver minus recent expenses. A silver was — he'd gathered from overheard prices in Crestfall — about one-thirtieth of a gold mark. Fifty silver was under two gold.
I'm so far from 2,400 gold it's almost funny.
Almost.
The timber forward contract would yield, over sixty days, a total payment of roughly — he estimated based on Brek's price points — somewhere between 180 and 250 gold, depending on volume delivered and final grading assessment. That was the ceiling, not a guarantee.
Even at the ceiling, it's barely ten percent of what I owe.
But it's not about paying the debt. It's about showing the Galden Group a viable operation. Viable means they renegotiate instead of foreclose. Renegotiation means time. Time means I can actually build this into something worth saving.
He had explained this logic to himself every day since he'd arrived. Today it sounded slightly more plausible than it had yesterday.
Small progress.
* * *
The frame went up on day fourteen.
It took all day. It was loud, physical, and at several points terrifying in the specific way that heavy timber framing was always terrifying — the moment a beam left the ground and was in the air, supported only by the people holding it and the temporary props under it, was a moment where everything depended on everyone doing exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.
Heave—!
The primary beam — the sistered pine pair, now bolted tight, a solid composite section that the [Engineer's Eye] had assessed as marginally stronger than the cracked oak would have been — went up first. It required eight people: four at each end on rope lifts, two on the bearing posts ready to guide the ends into their seats, Junho calling the pace, Calder watching the alignment from twenty meters back with both hands in the air to signal corrections.
It seated on the first try.
Thunk.
A sound like something significant being decided.
Junho let out a breath he'd been holding for approximately forty seconds. The beam sat true, level, the ends correctly located on their flat stone seats. Calder lowered both hands. From somewhere behind Junho, one of the tenant workers said something that wasn't words, just a sound of relieved exhalation, and someone else laughed.
The secondary beams were smaller, easier. The wall plates went in — the horizontal members at the top of the walls that the roof would bear on — and then the wall studs, the new-felled oak ones, pegged in place with green hardwood pegs that would swell as they dried and lock tighter than any nail.
By mid-afternoon the structural frame was standing.
Junho stood back and looked at it.
It was not a beautiful thing. It was a functional thing — rough-cut timber, mis-matched in color between the salvaged grey-brown oak and the pale new pine, open to the sky where the roof sheathing hadn't gone on yet. But it was square. He'd checked it three times. It was level. It was connected correctly at every joint.
It was standing up and it would continue to stand up.
Calder came and stood beside him.
They looked at it together for a moment without speaking.
'The pegs need to be driven fully home on the east wall studs,' Calder said finally. 'The third from the left is sitting about a thumb short.'
'After lunch,' Junho said.
'After lunch,' Calder agreed.
They stood there a moment longer.
Ping—!
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
[ QUEST PROGRESS UPDATE ]
「 The Inheritance 」 — Phase 1: Restore the Ashmore Mill
✓ Foundation cleared and prepared
✓ Wheel housing repointed
✓ Salvaged beams re-mortised
✓ Primary frame erected — Day 14
□ Roof sheathing and covering
□ Water wheel construction and installation
□ Crank shaft mechanism assembly (fittings due: Day 12 — RECEIVED EARLY)
□ Saw frame construction and installation
□ Blade installation and calibration (blade due: Day 21)
□ Test run
Projected completion: Day 27–29
Contract first delivery deadline: Day 30
Buffer remaining: 1–3 days
Days remaining on foreclosure notice: 76
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
One to three days of buffer.
It's not comfortable. But it's not zero.
He looked at the frame one more time. Timber and pegs and careful joints, standing in a creek-side clearing on the edge of a forest, in a world with two moons and no building codes and seventy-six days until someone tried to take it away.
Don't admire it too long. There's still a roof to build.
'Come on,' he said to Calder. 'Let's go fix that peg.'
—
[ End of Chapter 4 ]
~ To be continued ~
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