Chapter 114: Who Owns This House

Raymond was halfway through the eastern Residential District when shouting from beyond the old wall dragged his attention away from a row of newly completed houses.

He had been inspecting the next foundations with Mara, comparing the speed of standardized construction against the previous week’s work, when a woman’s voice rose sharply from the Historical Core.

Another voice answered just as loudly.

By the time Raymond crossed through the old gate, a crowd had formed around a narrow two-story house wedged between an old cooper’s workshop and a newer drainage channel.

Two families stood in the street facing each other while Oren attempted to keep the argument from becoming physical.

One family consisted of a middle-aged man, his wife, and two young adults carrying travel bundles. The other was a refugee couple Raymond recognized from the winter camps, accompanied by three children who looked frightened that somebody might throw them out.

The returning man pointed at the house with a shaking hand. "My father built this house. I was born upstairs. We left because there was no food and my youngest brother was dying. That doesn’t mean I gave our home away."

The refugee father, Tomas, had dirt beneath his nails and the exhausted expression of someone who had already repeated himself too many times.

He gestured toward the repaired roof and answered, "Then where was your father when the roof collapsed? We repaired it. We replaced half the rafters, patched the walls, cleared the rubbish, and lived here all winter because the Administration told us the building was abandoned and we could use it temporarily."

The returning man’s wife immediately seized on one word. "Temporarily. You heard him, Lord Althoff. Temporarily does not mean yours."

Tomas’s wife tightened her grip around her daughter’s shoulder and replied, "We never said his family never lived here. We’re saying this became our home too."

Raymond looked at Oren. "Who owns it?"

Oren’s expression gave him the unpleasant answer before he spoke. "That depends on what you mean by owns, my Lord."

Raymond stared at him. "I was hoping for something involving a name."

Oren opened the Civil Registry folder he carried and explained that the returning family, the Kellans, had unquestionably occupied the house before winter.

Several old residents remembered them, and tax records connected Kellan’s father to the property years earlier. Unfortunately, the father had died during the family’s flight south.

No formal inheritance transfer had occurred. The Kellans had left without registering whether they intended to return because, at the time, Althoff barely possessed functioning administration.

Months later, officials dealing with refugees had classified the damaged building as abandoned and granted Tomas’s family temporary occupancy. Nobody had transferred ownership, but nobody had written down what should happen if the original residents returned after the refugees spent their own labor repairing it.

"Fine," Raymond said after several seconds. "We register the Kellans’ original claim, register Tomas’s repairs and temporary occupancy, determine the value of the improvements, and settle it from there."

Oren did not move. R

aymond narrowed his eyes. "That look means I’ve missed something."

Oren nodded apologetically and explained that the Kellans’ claim itself still required determination. The father had died, leaving three surviving children. One was standing in the street.

Another apparently lived in Valmere. The third had not been heard from since winter. There was no written will. The dead man’s brother had submitted a separate claim that morning, arguing that an old verbal agreement entitled him to the workshop space behind the house.

Worse, the rear fence had been moved during winter, and the neighboring cooper insisted the new line swallowed part of his yard.

Raymond slowly looked from the house to the fence, then back to Oren. "Of course it did."

The argument could not be solved in the street, so Raymond ordered both families to remain in their current accommodation until the Administration reviewed the claim.

The Kellans would receive temporary lodging rather than displacing Tomas’s family immediately, and neither side could sell, alter, demolish, or transfer the disputed property while the matter remained unresolved. It felt reasonable.

It also produced six more people from the watching crowd who immediately announced that they had property problems too. One elderly woman claimed her nephew had taken over her dead son’s workshop.

A carpenter insisted his neighbor had shifted boundary stones while everyone was sheltering during winter. Another man wanted to know whether a house purchased through a handshake seven years earlier actually belonged to him when the seller’s daughter now claimed no sale had occurred.

By noon, Raymond had abandoned his construction inspection and followed Oren to the Civil Registry, where the scale of the problem became considerably less amusing.

The registry had already identified dozens of questionable properties while documenting Althoff’s population.

Some houses had been abandoned when families fled famine or the Beast Tide. Others belonged to people confirmed dead, but inheritance was unclear.

Refugees occupied buildings that had stood empty long enough for nobody to object until spring.

Workshops had changed hands through verbal agreements witnessed by people who were now dead, missing, or living elsewhere. Old documents had been lost to fire, damp, flight, or simple neglect. Property boundaries depended on fences, stones, trees, ditches, and memories that did not always agree.

The City Master Plan had created another category of trouble.

Several structures stood where future roads, drainage lines, public spaces, or infrastructure needed to pass.

Raymond had already guaranteed replacement homes or equivalent recognized property for residents displaced by necessary redevelopment, but compensation required knowing who actually possessed the rights being compensated.

One family claimed a shed scheduled for removal. Three cousins claimed they inherited the land beneath it. A fourth relative claimed their grandfather had sold it twenty years ago. The alleged buyer had no document.

Two witnesses remembered a payment but disagreed about whether it purchased the land or merely rented it.

Raymond read the summary twice before asking, "How did anyone buy anything before paperwork?"

Oren allowed himself a tired smile. "Usually, my Lord, everyone involved remembered the same story."

Raymond’s first instinct was painfully modern. Register everything. Survey every plot. Assign property numbers. Record owners, boundaries, transfers, leases, inheritances, liens, and whatever else was necessary.

The Civil Registry already gave Althoff something close to the foundation for such a system, and Kael’s surveyors could establish reliable boundaries going forward.

Raymond began outlining the idea until Oren quietly interrupted him. "Registration will help us greatly, my Lord, especially from this point onward. But registration tells us who claims a property. It does not necessarily tell us who is right."

Raymond stopped writing.

Oren continued carefully, pointing toward the Kellan file. "If I register Kellan because his family lived there first, I have effectively judged the dispute against his siblings, his uncle, Tomas’s improvements, and perhaps the cooper’s boundary claim. If I register Tomas because he currently occupies the house, I have judged against Kellan. Someone has to decide which evidence matters before the registry can record the answer."

That distinction irritated Raymond mostly because it was obviously correct. On Earth, he had understood property ownership as something supported by deeds, records, surveys, contracts, courts, and laws that already existed around him.

Knowing those things should exist was very different from knowing how to create them from nothing. He was not a lawyer. He was not a judge. He was not a professional surveyor, inheritance specialist, historian, or archivist.

He could order every building numbered tomorrow and still have no idea whether the name written beside House 184 belonged there. Modern knowledge could tell him that reliable property rights mattered to investment and commerce.

It could not magically tell him whether a dead farmer’s undocumented promise twenty years ago outweighed his daughter’s inheritance claim.

Oren brought another stack from a shelf and placed it beside the first. "These are only the disputes people have formally reported."

Raymond looked at the stack. "Only?"

Oren nodded, then explained that more would surface once residents realized the Administration intended to create permanent property records.

People who had tolerated vague boundaries for years would suddenly care where those boundaries were drawn. Relatives would return. Old debts would appear. Occupants would claim improvements.

Owners would demand buildings back. Tenants would claim purchases. Neighbors would discover that the new survey placed a fence two meters beyond an old line. The more valuable Althoff became, the more valuable every argument about a piece of Althoff became with it.

Raymond leaned back and rubbed his face. "So before we create definitive records, we need someone capable of deciding disputed claims."

Oren nodded. "And not only property, my Lord. The Registry already receives people complaining about debts, contracts, inheritance, damaged goods, unpaid work, and compensation. We redirect them where we can, but there is no consistent place for disputes that cannot be settled administratively."

Raymond understood where the road led. Althoff had Departments to administer policy, a Watch to maintain order, and military forces to protect the territory.

What it did not possess was a proper institution whose job was to hear evidence, apply rules, record judgments, and resolve civil disputes without every angry citizen eventually climbing the castle hill demanding Raymond personally decide who owned a chicken, a workshop, or half a fence.

He pulled the Kellan file toward him again. "Don’t register a final owner yet. Record every claimant, preserve the current occupancy, have Survey document the boundaries and improvements, and collect witnesses while people still remember what happened."

Oren nodded and asked what authority would decide the final claim.

Raymond looked across the desk at the growing stacks and answered, "Apparently we’re building a court."

By evening, construction reports had been replaced on Raymond’s desk by property disputes. One stack concerned abandoned homes. Another involved inheritance.

A third contained workshops, boundaries, verbal sales, refugee occupancy, improvements, and structures affected by redevelopment. More files were expected tomorrow.

Raymond stared at them for a long moment before glancing through the window toward the roofs spreading beyond the old wall.

Building houses, he decided, was considerably easier than determining who owned them.