Chapter 83: Different Needs

Afterward, he had summoned the clerk in, dictated dimensions, road alignments, district divisions, and major structures under the excuse that these plans had been developed from old Althoff estate surveys and design concepts preserved among family records. Several copies were then produced on large parchment sheets.

The story was thin, but not unbelievable. Old noble houses kept plans nobody used for generations, and Raymond had already established a reputation for unexpectedly producing resources and information whenever circumstances became desperate enough.

Now he unrolled the largest copy across the joined tables.

The room went quiet.

Torren was the first to lean forward, then everybody else did.

"What am I looking at?" Boris asked.

"The future layout of Althoff," Raymond replied.

Boris stared at him, then at the parchment. "This is not Althoff."

"Not yet."

That answer bought him several seconds of silence.

Raymond pointed toward the center. "This is the current settlement. Castle here. Main road here. Existing market here. Northern defenses here."

He moved his finger outward. "Everything surrounding it is planned expansion."

Torren placed both hands on the table and bent closer. "My Lord, this wall alone would be longer than every defensive structure we currently have combined several times over."

He followed the projected road network with one finger before looking up. "And these are not village roads. These are proper stone roads. Drainage beneath several of them. Culverts. Foundations. Bridges. You have marked entire districts that do not exist yet."

"That would explain why we need to build them," Raymond said.

After a moment Torren rubbed his forehead. "I knew inviting me here was a trap."

A few people laughed, which was useful because the scale of the plan had started making the room uncomfortably serious.

Harlan leaned over from the other side and studied the eastern routes. "These roads toward the agricultural zones are wrong for what we’ll need by harvest."

He tapped two locations. "If we expand planting the way we discussed, wagons from the eastern fields will all enter through the same route. That will choke immediately during harvest season. We need at least two more agricultural access roads before anything fancy happens inside the town."

Gideon nodded. "And proper storage outside the crowded center. Grain should not cross residential streets every time it moves from field to warehouse."

One of the agricultural specialists quietly began marking alternate routes on a smaller copy.

Boris immediately objected from the opposite side. "Roads are useful. Walls are more useful. We have five thousand people spread beyond defenses that were built for a fraction of that. The northern wall is repaired, not sufficient. If something comes out of Blackridge again, half these new districts are outside the current defensive line."

Harlan looked toward him. "You cannot eat walls."

Boris answered, "And crops do not matter much if everything growing them gets eaten first."

Harlan frowned. "Nobody said ignore defense."

"You said roads first."

"Because people need roads now."

"People needed walls four months ago too."

Raymond watched the argument developing and decided not to stop it yet. Both men were right, which was exactly the problem.

Mira Tel pointed toward the proposed Central Commercial District. "If merchants are really going to start coming regularly, this part needs to move up the list. The current market worked during winter because nobody cared if stalls were crooked and wagons parked whereverthey could. That is already changing. We need permanent stalls, covered storage, caravan space, loading yards, places for merchants to sleep, and preferably somewhere to keep animals that is not directly beside people selling bread."

Pell Dorn, the blacksmith, grunted agreement. "And workshops need separation. Half the new smiths are working beside homes because those were the only buildings available. Nobody wants smoke and hammering outside their window from sunrise."

Torren looked toward Raymond. "Do you understand what they are asking for?"

Raymond spread his hands. "I invited them specifically so they could ask for things."

"That was your first mistake."

Marianne had remained quiet until then, reading the sanitation lines with an increasingly concerned expression.

She finally set down the page she was holding and spoke in the calm tone Raymond had learned usually meant somebody was about to lose an argument.

"Everyone is discussing walls, markets, workshops, and roads as if those are the first emergencies. They are not."

Boris turned toward her. "You are going to say the medical hall."

"No," Marianne replied. "I am going to say sewage."

The table became noticeably quieter.

Marianne tapped the proposed drainage network. "We now have more than five thousand people living in a settlement that was never designed for five thousand people. Waste pits are already filling faster. Meltwater is spreading filth through lower streets. Animals are kept too close to homes in several areas. If we expand without drainage, proper wells, waste removal, and clean-water separation, we will survive winter only to create our own disease outbreak in spring."

Raymond nodded slowly. That one moved immediately near the top of his own list.

Boris sighed. "So walls, roads, markets, farms, drainage."

"And housing," Oren added.

Everyone looked at him.

Oren remained completely serious. "Many families are still doubled together in communal buildings. If more people come, where do they live?"

Torren closed his eyes.

Edran decided this was the perfect moment to make things worse. "Scouts also need permanent stations outside the town if the territory now extends farther. We cannot patrol everything from one gate."

Darric nodded. "And if military recruitment expands, training inside residential streets needs to stop."

Pell added, "Workshops."

Mira said, "Market storage."

Harlan said, "Farm roads."

Marianne repeated, "Drainage."

Boris said, "Walls."

The voices began overlapping.

Raymond looked from one face to another while arguments started crossing the table. Nobody was being unreasonable. That somehow made it worse.

Then Lily cleared her throat. It was not loud but it still silenced almost everyone.

She had been writing throughout the entire discussion and now looked up from her ledgerwith the expression of someone disappointed by a room full of adults.

"You are all forgetting the administrative buildings."

Boris stared at her. "Lily, respectfully, nobody is dying because we do not have an administrative building."

"No," Lily replied. "They are simply coming to the castle every day asking where to register property, where to report births, where to request housing, where to complain about market disputes, where to receive food allocations, where to report missing relatives, where to apply for work, and where to ask Lord Raymond questions he already answered yesterday."

Raymond slowly turned toward her.

Marianne covered a smile with one hand.

Lily continued, "If the population keeps increasing, we need proper offices. Otherwise everyone will continue bringing everything to us."

Raymond looked down at the enormous plan spread across the table.

Walls, roads, drainage,farms, markets, workshops, warehouses, housing, military facilities, administrative offices, water, sanitation, transport.

And that was before they even started discussing schools, medicine, taxation, policing, territorial surveys, or the ten specialists he had not yet summoned.

Raymond had spent the entire winter wishing for the resources to save Althoff.

Now he finally had them.

Apparently the reward was paperwork.

He leaned back in his chair, stared at the city that did not exist yet, and realized with complete certainty that the next few months were going to be hell.