The roofing question took four days to resolve and required a conversation with a man who collected rocks.
His name was Tomas, and he was the youngest son of the Fen family — not the careful Fen who had asked about replanting, but her husband's brother, twenty years old, who had spent the previous three summers doing what young men in this part of Erdenmoor apparently did when there was no particular war on: walking the countryside and returning with samples of interesting stones in his coat pockets.
Pell had mentioned him without apparent significance. 'Young Tomas Fen knows every rock face within a day's walk. He goes looking for them. I don't know why.'
Junho had immediately gone to find young Tomas Fen.
He found him behind the Fen farmhouse, sorting through a collection of stone samples arranged on a flat board with the focused attention of someone who found this deeply interesting and was slightly aware that other people did not.
Junho looked at the samples. Limestone, mostly. Some sandstone. A piece of dense grey stone he didn't immediately recognize. And in the corner of the board, almost apologetically, a slab of dark reddish-brown material about the size of his hand, thin, with a natural cleaving along its faces.
He picked it up.
Shale. Sedimentary, fine-grained, splitting along natural bedding planes.
This isn't quite slate — slate is metamorphic, harder, more durable. But this is its less prestigious cousin, and less prestigious cousin still makes functional roofing tiles.
'Where did you find this?' Junho asked.
Tomas looked at it. Looked at Junho. He had the expression of someone who had spent his life being asked why he collected rocks and had developed a defensive posture around the question.
'That's not an interesting one,' he said. 'It's just shale. It's everywhere in the ridge outcrop section about four kilometers north.'
'How thick are the layers?'
'Variable. Some sections are —' Tomas held his hands apart, maybe thirty centimeters, '—about this. Consistent layer, clean splits.'
'And the area of the outcrop?'
Now Tomas looked at him with new attention. Not the defensive posture anymore — the alert expression of someone being asked questions that suggested the questioner understood something.
'Maybe twenty meters of exposed face,' Tomas said carefully. 'Could be more behind it. I only went in a few meters.'
Twenty meters of exposed face, thirty-centimeter layers, consistent shale. That's more than enough for a single-building roof. Possibly much more.
'Can you take me there?'
Tomas looked at him for a moment.
'Now?' he said.
'If you're not doing something urgent.'
Tomas looked at his stone samples. He looked at Junho. He stood up without further deliberation.
'I'm not doing something urgent,' he said.
* * *
The shale outcrop was four kilometers north, as Tomas had said, on the slope below the ridge line where the geology shifted from the valley alluvials to the upland sedimentary deposits. They reached it in an hour, following a deer path that Tomas navigated without hesitation.
The outcrop was better than Junho had hoped.
A rock face maybe three meters high and running thirty-plus meters along the slope, the shale layers exposed in a clean section where water erosion had cut back the hillside over centuries. The layers were consistent — the thirty centimeters Tomas had described, some slightly thicker, splitting cleanly along the bedding planes with the characteristic sound of shale parting.
Krak.
He split a section by hand, pressing his thumbs into the natural cleavage. It came apart in a clean sheet, the face smooth and even, the edges slightly rough but manageable.
Ping—!
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
[ ENGINEER'S EYE — MATERIAL ASSESSMENT: SHALE OUTCROP ]
Location: North ridge slope, Ashmore Barony, 4km from farmstead
Material: Calcareous shale, fine-grained, consistent lamination
Layer thickness: 25–35cm (average 30cm)
Splitting quality: Good — natural bedding planes, clean fracture
Durability: Moderate (inferior to slate but adequate for roofing)
Expected lifespan as roofing tile: 20–35 years with good installation
Outcrop assessment:
Exposed face: 32m length × 2.8m height — confirmed accessible
Estimated accessible volume: HIGH — surface exposure likely minor
fraction of total deposit
Tile production:
Raw shale → finished tile: split, trim, punch nail holes, grade
No kiln required (cold process — major advantage over clay tile)
Estimated tiles for hall roof (280m² footprint): 4,200–4,800 tiles
Production rate (1 skilled worker): est. 80–120 tiles/day
Production timeline: 40–60 days
Transport: 4km on rough path — cart or sledge, multiple trips
Access improvement recommended: basic path to outcrop (3 days)
Cost: Labor only. Material is on Ashmore land.
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
No kiln. Cold process. The material is on our land and the only cost is labor.
This solves the roofing problem completely.
It also solves it for the tenant housing repairs — every farmhouse with a deteriorating roof can be reshingled with this material instead of thatch. More durable, more fire-resistant, lasts decades instead of years.
He looked at Tomas, who was watching him with the alert expression he'd had since Junho started asking specific questions about the outcrop.
'This is on Ashmore land,' Junho said.
'I assumed so. The boundary marker is about half a kilometer that way.' Tomas gestured east.
'Does anyone else know this is here?'
'I know. I don't think anyone else has looked at this slope recently. There's nothing to bring people up here — no grazing, no timber, the path isn't on any regular route.'
Undiscovered resource on our own land, four kilometers from the construction site.
Sometimes the solution is already here and you just need someone who paid attention.
'Tomas,' Junho said. 'How would you feel about learning to cut roofing tiles?'
Tomas looked at the outcrop. He reached out and split another section himself, pressing his thumbs into the cleavage the way Junho had, examining the result.
'I'd feel fine about it,' he said.
* * *
The path to the shale outcrop was three days of work, cleared by Wyll's brother — whose name was Eddy, a fact Junho was slightly embarrassed to have only confirmed in the third month — and a tenant named Carra who had materialized in the third week of operations as someone who could build a path through rough terrain with the efficiency of a person who had done it many times and found it satisfying.
Carra, Junho had learned, had spent seven years on a road-building crew for a lord in the south before returning to Ashmore to care for an aging parent. She was thirty-eight, quiet, and had an eye for grade and drainage that matched his own.
Seven years of road building. Professional road-building experience. She's been in the barony for three months and I only found out she existed last week.
This is what happens when you're running too many things at once. People slip past.
That's what Sera is for, in part. She sees the people I'm moving too fast to see.
He had a conversation with Carra about the road improvement grant application that lasted forty minutes and produced three pages of notes that were more specific and technically grounded than anything he could have drafted alone.
She had taken one look at the grant application form and started filling it in from memory of the standard format for such applications.
'You've done this before,' Junho said.
'Three times,' Carra said. 'For the lord in the south. He never submitted them, though. Said the paperwork wasn't worth the time.'
He had a road-building professional in his territory and never used her expertise for grant applications.
I keep finding things like this. Capability sitting unused because nobody organized it.
The application went out to Veldmark with the next rider, carrying Carra's precise cost estimates and Junho's project description and Vane's fresh assessment as the supporting documentation. Sixty percent grant coverage, if approved, on a road improvement that his own estimate put at 140 gold total. Eighty-four gold back from the Crown for work the barony needed done regardless.
He sent it and went back to the hall foundation.
* * *
The foundation work on the northwest rise started on day ninety-one.
Hendry ran it with the four-person crew that had been reassigned from housing repairs — the urgent repairs complete, the remaining ones in the queue for the Harren carpenters who were now three weeks out.
The site preparation had taken two days: clearing the surface vegetation, pulling the shallow-rooted scrub that had established itself on the rise, leveling the building pad to Junho's stakes. The ground had behaved as the assessment promised — good bearing, minimal groundwater, no surprises.
Junho had given Hendry the foundation plan on parchment. Not a sketch — a proper dimensioned drawing, with the bearing wall lines, the corner geometry, the depth specification, the drainage detail at the perimeter.
Hendry had looked at it for a long time.
'This is a precise document,' he said.
'It needs to be,' Junho said. 'The frame goes on top of this. If the foundation dimensions are off, the frame won't square.'
'I've been building foundations for forty years,' Hendry said, with the careful tone of a professional who was not arguing but establishing context.
'I know,' Junho said. 'This is just documentation so we have a record. If something needs to be adjusted in the field, you adjust it and note what changed. The drawing is the plan, not the law.'
Hendry looked at the drawing again. Something in his expression settled.
'That's a sensible way to put it,' he said.
The foundation trenches went in steadily over the first week. Junho checked dimensions at the end of each day — not hovering, not correcting Hendry's work mid-process, just verifying the numbers at the close of day so problems appeared early rather than late.
They were within tolerance every time.
He stopped checking daily after the first week and checked every third day instead.
* * *
On day ninety-five, the Colwick second delivery went smoothly.
Twenty-four primary beam sections and forty secondary structural pieces, loaded with the efficiency of a crew that had now done this twice and knew the sequencing. Harwell came again with the carts. He walked the yard and looked at the staging timber and made notes and said very little, which Junho had come to understand was his way of expressing satisfaction.
At the gate, before leaving, Harwell stopped.
'The master builder at Harren asked me to pass something on,' he said.
'What?'
'He asked if you would be available to consult on the granary structural design. He's having a disagreement with Lord Colwick's steward about the floor loading specifications for the main storage volume.' Harwell paused. 'He said — and this is a direct quote — that the man who can identify old-growth oak and design a mill mechanism has better structural instincts than anyone he's currently working with.'
...
He wants a structural consultation.
A working master builder on an active construction project, in another territory, asking for my input on floor loading calculations.
'Tell him I'll send a written response within five days,' Junho said. 'If he can describe the specific loading scenario and the proposed floor assembly.'
Harwell looked at him. 'In writing.'
'I can't come to Harren right now. But I can analyze a loading problem on paper if I have the dimensions and material specs.' He paused. 'Tell him to write down what he has and what he's proposing, and I'll tell him if it works.'
Harwell made a note. He looked like a man storing something interesting.
I just agreed to provide structural consultancy to a construction project in a neighboring territory. I didn't charge for it. I should have asked what the going rate for structural consultation is in this world.
Except the value of the relationship with Colwick is worth more than a consultation fee.
Besides. I want to know if the floor spec is right. I'm going to want to know if it's right.
He went back to the foundation.
* * *
Day one hundred arrived without ceremony.
One hundred days since he'd woken up in the east field with mud in his hair and two moons overhead and a system notification floating in the dark.
He marked it in the operational log the way he marked everything: factually, without editorial.
Day 100. Foundation work 60% complete. Tomas producing 95 tiles/day at the outcrop. Housing repairs batch in progress — 4 of 12 complete. East field clover established — ground coverage 65% by visual estimate. Northeast ridge harvest continuing. Year-one payment projected covered at Day 95 (Colwick delivery 2). Road grant application pending.
He read it back.
A hundred days.
He sat with that for a moment.
Not with sentiment — he was not a sentimental man and Lloyd Ashmore's body had not apparently been one either — but with the particular quality of attention that a project milestone deserved. Not celebration. Assessment.
What was the plan on day one?
Keep the barony out of foreclosure. That was it. That was the entire plan. That was the ninety-day clock and the 2,400 gold and the one working idea: build a mill, process timber, generate revenue, buy time.
The clock stopped. The time was bought. Everything else came from decisions made while the clock was running.
None of the rest of it was planned. The northeast ridge. Sera. Vane and the Crown assessment. Colwick. Carra. Tomas and the shale outcrop. The hall.
None of that was in the plan because you can't plan for what you don't know yet. You can only plan for what you can see, and act on what you find.
He closed the operational log and went to see how the foundation was progressing.
* * *
The Harren carpenters arrived on day one hundred and two.
Their names were Pol and Bett. Pol was forty-five, stout, with the dense competence of a man who had been doing his craft long enough that skill had become architecture — built into how he moved, how he looked at things, how he held tools before using them. Bett was younger, perhaps thirty, leaner, with the quick eyes of someone who learned fast and enjoyed it.
They came with their own tools, which was a good sign. A craftsman who traveled with their own tools was a craftsman who took their tools seriously.
Calder met them at the mill.
Junho watched the introduction from a few paces away. He had decided, without announcing the decision, that this particular meeting was Calder's to manage. The Harren carpenters were coming to work in a structure that Calder had built and operated and understood at every level. The introduction should come from him.
Calder shook hands with Pol with the professional assessment of one craftsman meeting another — the brief taking-measure that happened faster than words. He walked them through the mill mechanism, talking about the construction in the way he'd been talking about it for three months: specifically, technically, with the quiet authority of someone who had built the thing they were describing.
Pol listened with the attentive stillness of a man who was checking what he was hearing against his own knowledge.
After ten minutes he said: 'The sistered primary span. The connection detail.'
'Nine through-bolts,' Calder said. 'Washer seats cut to spread the bearing. Through-bolted, not spiked.'
'The bolt pitch,' Pol said. Not challenging. Checking.
'Even spacing plus one tighter pair at each quarter point where the bending moment is highest.'
Pol looked at the beam. He walked to the nearest end and crouched, looking at the bolt heads.
'You did that yourself?' he said.
'Me and the lord,' Calder said. 'He specified the pitch. I drilled and bolted.'
Pol looked at Junho. Then back at Calder. Then at the mechanism.
'Show me the crank geometry,' he said.
That was apparently the point at which the professional evaluation concluded and the working relationship began.
Bett, who had been quiet through the mill walkthrough, came to stand beside Junho while Pol and Calder moved deeper into the mechanism.
'Is there a drawing of the hall layout?' Bett asked. Not preamble, not introduction. Straight to work.
I like this one.
'In the farmhouse,' Junho said. 'Come and look.'
* * *
The hall drawings had been evolving for two weeks.
What had started as a rough layout sketch on the northwest rise had become, through a series of evening discussions between Junho, Sera, and most recently Calder, a proper set of construction drawings. Not by the standards of Junho's previous profession — there were no CAD files, no structural calculations in the formal sense — but by the standards of what this world's building practice required, they were exceptionally detailed.
Bett spread the drawings on the farmhouse table and looked at them with the careful attention he'd given the mill. He was quiet for a long time.
'The arcade,' he said. 'Three-meter span, timber columns on stone bases. You're using mortise-and-tenon connection at the top with a horizontal tie to prevent spread?'
'Pegged mortise-and-tenon at column head,' Junho confirmed. 'Horizontal tie beam at roof plate level, one per bay. The tie prevents outward thrust from the roof load.'
'What's the column section?'
'Thirty by thirty centimeters, oak, three meters clear height. I can show you the load calculation.'
Bett looked up. 'You have load calculations.'
'I have load calculations.'
'Written down.'
'Written down.'
Bett was quiet for a moment. Not the silence of skepticism. The silence of someone encountering something unexpected and adjusting.
'Show me,' he said.
Junho produced the calculation sheet. It was not a formal engineering document — it was hand-written on parchment in a mixture of numbers and abbreviated notation that was essentially the format he'd used in late-night project office sessions in his previous life. But the math was correct and the logic was clear and when Bett worked through it slowly with his finger tracking the numbers, his expression moved through several stages and arrived at something that was close to impressed.
'Where did you learn this?' Bett asked.
'I've been doing it for a long time,' Junho said, which was true and sufficiently vague.
Bett looked at the drawing again. 'The kitchen separation. You want a fire break wall between the kitchen and the main hall.'
'Stone, full height, no openings. Access between kitchen and hall via an external covered walkway, not internal.' He paused. 'Fire in the kitchen doesn't reach the hall.'
'I've seen three halls burn,' Bett said. 'All of them from kitchen fires.'
'I know.'
'Most lords don't.'
'Most lords haven't thought about load paths and fire compartmentation,' Junho said.
Bett looked at him one more time with the recalibrating expression that everyone eventually had.
'When do we start?' he said.
'The foundation is sixty percent complete,' Junho said. 'Two and a half weeks to finish it. After that: frame.'
'Pol will want to inspect the foundation before we commit to the frame geometry.'
'He should,' Junho said. 'Tell him he's welcome to look at it with me when it's done.'
* * *
Day one hundred and four.
A letter arrived from the Veldmark grain consortium.
It was brief, formal, and positive. The consortium expressed interest in establishing a buyer relationship with Ashmore Barony for Year Two grain production, contingent on confirming the nature and volume of the crop. They asked for a meeting at the holder's convenience.
Junho read it twice.
The east field clover was at sixty-five percent ground coverage. The drainage was working. The soil, in the northwest corner, was beginning to develop the crumb structure of productive ground. It would not be ready for a grain crop this year — the clover needed to complete its nitrogen-fixing cycle and be turned in — but next year the field was viable.
He handed the letter to Sera.
She read it. Set it down. Looked at him.
'The forward purchase model,' she said. 'Like Brek and the timber.'
'Exactly. Commit to a volume and delivery date, receive partial advance now to fund seed and preparation.' He paused. 'The advance would go toward the hall construction.'
'And if the harvest is short?'
'Penalty on the shortfall, same as the timber contract. Which is why the volume commitment needs to be conservative — commit to what the field can reliably produce under adverse conditions, not the optimistic projection.'
Sera was quiet for a moment. 'Mara should be in that meeting.'
'I know,' Junho said. 'The volume commitment is her expertise, not mine. I can calculate the field area and theoretical yield potential. She knows what this specific soil, in this specific climate, in a recovery year, will actually produce.'
'She'll be conservative.'
'Good,' Junho said. 'Conservative is the right commitment to make with a new buyer.'
Sera picked up her pen and wrote the reply: Lord Ashmore of Ashmore Barony welcomes the meeting at the consortium's convenience, and requests that the consortium's representative be prepared to discuss forward purchase terms on the assumption of a conservative Year Two grain yield from three hectares of recovering agricultural land.
She wrote it in two minutes without asking him to review it, because they had been working together long enough that she knew what he would want it to say.
He noticed this and did not comment on it because commenting on it would make it self-conscious and it was working exactly as it should.
* * *
The letter from Lord Colwick's master builder arrived on day one hundred and seven.
It was four pages long. The floor loading problem was carefully described — a granary main storage volume, fifteen by twelve meters, expected to carry grain at a density and depth that the master builder's own calculation suggested required a floor assembly of one specification and the steward's budget suggested should be a lighter, cheaper specification.
Junho read it over supper and did the calculation mentally before he'd finished the meal.
The steward's proposed lighter floor is undersized by about thirty percent for the maximum design load. Not catastrophically — it would hold a partial load, maybe two-thirds capacity. But a full grain store at the depth they're planning would overload it within a season.
The master builder is right. The steward is wrong.
The interesting question is how to say that in a way that's useful.
He wrote back that evening. Three pages. He walked through the calculation explicitly — the grain load per square meter at the specified storage depth, the tributary area per floor beam, the required section modulus for the specified span, the actual section modulus of the steward's proposed lighter beam.
He concluded: *The proposed lighter assembly will carry approximately 68% of the maximum design load before deflection becomes problematic. If the granary will never be more than two-thirds full, the lighter assembly is adequate. If it will ever be filled to capacity, the heavier assembly is required. The choice depends on the intended operating condition, which is a management decision rather than a structural one.*
That framing — 'management decision rather than structural one' — puts the choice back in Colwick's court without making the steward look incompetent. The steward was wrong, but the master builder can now have the conversation with his lord about intended operating conditions without it being a structural argument.
Everybody wins except the understrength floor.
He sent the letter with the next Crestfall rider.
Then he went to look at the foundation, which was at seventy-five percent by end of day.
* * *
The first day of autumn came while he was watching Tomas split tiles.
Not astronomically — in this world the season markers were different from the ones he'd grown up with, tied to the local agricultural calendar rather than celestial positions. But the quality of the light had been changing for a week, the morning air carrying a new edge, and on the morning of day one hundred and twelve, Pell said 'first day of harvest season' with the authority of someone who had been saying it for forty years and knew exactly when it was.
Tomas had been at the shale outcrop for three weeks. He had produced 2,140 tiles, stacked carefully on wooden pallets that he and Eddy had carried up the path and which the tiles would come back down on when the roof was ready. He had developed a technique — a specific angle of chisel to the natural bedding plane, a particular hammer weight and stroke — that produced consistent tile thickness with minimal waste.
He had, without being asked, graded the tiles. First-quality: flat, consistent, clean edges. Second-quality: slight irregularities, suitable for less visible roof sections. Culls: cracked or excessively thick, set aside.
First-quality rate: 87%.
Junho had not specified a grading system. Tomas had invented one.
Ping—!
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
[ TERRITORY STATUS — DAY 112 ASSESSMENT ]
CONSTRUCTION:
Hall foundation: 90% complete — frame start in 5 days
Harren carpenters (Pol + Bett): Integrated, productive
Tile production: 2,140 of est. 4,500 required — Day 45 of production
OPERATIONS:
Mill: Running at 22 logs/day (autumn timber pace, slightly reduced)
Northeast ridge: 41 of 60 primary beams delivered to Colwick
Brek 4th delivery: Completed Day 100 — 270 gold
AGRICULTURE:
East field clover: 78% coverage — on track for full coverage pre-winter
Grain consortium meeting: Scheduled Day 120
PEOPLE:
New active contributors identified: Carra (road/path), Tomas (quarry/tile)
School: Sera has begun informal literacy sessions (Gess barn, 3x/week)
Attendance: 11 children, 4 adults (including Wyll)
FINANCES:
Current funds: approx. 680 gold
Year-one payment: COVERED (732 gold target — funds sufficient)
Road grant: Pending (application Day 88 — response expected Day 118)
Territory Status: STABLE
Days since arrival: 112
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Sera had started the school.
He had known she was doing it — she'd mentioned it, and the Gess barn had been repaired and the interior cleared with suspicious thoroughness for a building that supposedly had no scheduled use yet. But seeing it in the status window, in official form — School: Sera has begun informal literacy sessions — made it real in a different way.
Eleven children and four adults. Wyll was one of the adults.
Wyll. Who can already read and do arithmetic. He's going to be bored.
Or he's going to help teach.
Actually that's probably why he's there.
He walked to the Gess barn that afternoon during the session's scheduled hour — not to inspect, just to see.
The barn interior had been arranged with the simple pragmatism of someone who knew how to teach in spaces that weren't designed for teaching. A cleared central area. Flat boards on trestles serving as writing surfaces. A section of smooth-plastered wall that had been finished with a lime wash and was serving as a blackboard, Sera's notation on it in charcoal.
Sera was at the front, writing something. The eleven children ranged from six to fourteen and were paying attention with variable success — the six-year-old near the back had lost interest in the lesson and was quietly building something with offcut wood scraps, but was at least silent about it.
Wyll was at the far end of a trestle, working with two of the older children on something Junho couldn't see. He was explaining, quietly, pointing at their boards. Teaching.
Yes. He's helping teach.
He stood in the barn doorway for perhaps two minutes. Sera saw him but didn't stop the lesson. She gave him a brief nod — acknowledging his presence without making it the center of attention — and continued.
He left before the session ended.
* * *
The road grant approval came on day one hundred and eighteen.
Not sixty percent. Seventy percent. The Northern March improvement fund, apparently, had remaining budget from the current cycle and the application had been reviewed and approved at the higher coverage tier based on the quality of the documentation.
Seventy percent of 140 gold was 98 gold.
Carra looked at the approval letter with an expression that suggested she was revising her opinion of the lord she worked for upward.
'The lord in the south,' she said. 'He never submitted because he said the paperwork wasn't worth the time.'
'The paperwork took three days,' Junho said. 'And returned 98 gold.'
'Yes,' Carra said. 'That's what I mean.'
The road project went on the active schedule: Carra as project lead, starting after the foundation work completed. The south road from the barony track to the Crestfall junction — 2.3 kilometers — would be surfaced with compacted gravel over a clay binder base, with proper side drainage ditches, the worst soft sections treated with the corduroy technique from the extraction paths. Not a perfectly engineered road. A road that would carry loaded carts in all weathers without becoming impassable.
A road that stayed passable in November was worth considerably more than 140 gold in revenue protection.
He told Carra to order the gravel through Brek — it was available from a river-gravel operation near Crestfall — and to plan for a start in fifteen days.
'The whole 2.3 kilometers?' Carra asked.
'Start at the barony end and work south. If we run out of season before we run out of road, the most-used section is already improved and we finish next spring.' He paused. 'Better one good kilometer than two mediocre ones.'
Carra made a note. She had a small notebook now — actual bound pages, a thing she'd apparently been carrying for years — in which she kept her site notes in the cramped, precise handwriting of someone who had learned to write for function rather than elegance.
She had also, over the past weeks, started noting things beyond her immediate scope. Drainage improvements she'd observed near the forest extraction paths. A section of the mill approach track that needed attention. The angle of the new access path to the shale outcrop that she thought could be improved.
She was, Junho had concluded, the third person in the barony who noticed things and wrote them down. Himself. Sera. Carra.
That's a pattern. The people who are most useful are the people who pay attention and document what they see.
Which suggests the school needs to teach documentation and observation, not just reading and arithmetic.
I should mention that to Sera.
He mentioned it to Sera that evening.
She looked at him for a moment.
'I'm already doing that,' she said. 'The older children have observation notebooks. We go outside twice a week and they write down five things they notice.'
Of course she is.
'Good,' he said.
'You should come sometime,' she said. 'Watching twelve children try to describe the same drainage ditch in their own words is instructive.'
Twelve children learning to observe and describe. In a barn that didn't exist as a school three months ago. With a teacher who arrived uninvited on a grey horse and asked if the bridge was passable.
He looked at the farmhouse wall. The production tallies. The project schedules. The letter from the grain consortium. The road grant approval. The hall construction drawings.
'I'll come,' he said.
* * *
The foundation was completed on day one hundred and fourteen.
Pol inspected it the morning after completion, walking the perimeter with a deliberate pace, crouching at the corners, pressing his hand against the mortar, checking the level of the bearing surfaces with his own tools.
He took an hour.
When he was done he came back to Junho and said: 'It's square. The northwest corner is two millimeters out of true but that's within what the frame can accommodate.'
'Hendry will want to know about the two millimeters,' Junho said.
'I'll tell him. It's not a problem. I just want him to know I noticed.' He paused. 'He's a good mason.'
'I know,' Junho said.
'Tell him I said so.'
Junho told Hendry. The old mason's response was to look at the northwest corner for a moment and say 'I know which course it is' and go back to his work. Which was, Junho had come to understand, as close to pleased as Hendry got.
The frame started the next morning.
Thwk. Thwk. Thwk.
The sound of a building beginning.
Pol and Bett and Calder and Hendry's grandson Ott, who had in three months transformed from a useful boy into a useful young man, working the first day's framing with the particular focused energy of construction work in its most satisfying phase — the phase where something rises.
Junho stood at the foundation edge and watched the first wall plate go up, the bearing posts under it, the mortise-and-tenon connections that Calder had cut to the same improved profile they'd used in the mill.
Bett had looked at those joints on the mill and asked about them. Calder had explained the asymmetric shoulder angle. Bett had cut two test joints that afternoon and spent the next morning's session teaching the profile to Pol.
The improved joint was now, quietly and without announcement, the standard connection method for this construction.
Ping—!
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
[ QUEST MILESTONE ACHIEVED ]
Hall of Ashmore — Construction Begun
Day 115. Frame commenced.
Completion estimate: Day 171 (14 weeks from foundation)
Active crew: Pol, Bett (Harren), Calder Voss, Ott Voss (apprentice)
Roofing: Tomas producing shale tiles on schedule
Stone: Hendry Voss sourcing creek limestone for wall courses
REWARD:
[Blueprint: Lord's Hall (Standard)] — UNLOCKED
[Territory Status: STABLE → DEVELOPING]
+200 EXP
New territory classification: DEVELOPING
Criteria met: Active construction, growing productivity,
population stable, Crown assessment on file
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Territory status: Developing.
Five classifications since he'd arrived: Critical. Distressed. Recovering. Stable. Developing.
One hundred and fifteen days.
Five steps from the worst classification to something that means growth.
And a hall going up on the northwest rise, and a school in the Gess barn, and a clover field that's almost covered, and a shale quarry that nobody knew about, and a woman doing correspondence at my table who arrived without warning and has been exactly what the operation needed.
The hammers continued.
Thwk. Thwk. Thwk.
The frame rising.
He watched it for another few minutes, then turned back toward the farmhouse. He had a consultation response to write for Colwick's master builder — the man had replied with follow-up questions about the tributary area calculation — and the grain consortium meeting was in three days and he needed to sit down with Mara to agree on the conservative yield number before he walked into that room.
One thing at a time. There were more things now. The pace was still one at a time.
Day 115.
Build.
—
[ End of Chapter 15 ]
~ To be continued ~
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