Chapter 93: The Law Has An Address

The first problem with giving Althoff ten Departments was that many existed only on parchment.

Citizens knew there was a Department of Trade and Commerce but knowing that Ysabel Merrow handled merchants did little good if nobody knew where to find Ysabel.

The same problem followed Agriculture, Public Works, the Registry, Health, Resources, Survey, Logistics, and Treasury.

The planned Administrative Hall would eventually gather the civil government together, but construction had not even begun, and Raymond refused to spend several months personally redirecting citizens while waiting for a beautiful building.

So Alaric proposed something less impressive and more useful: take existing buildings, assign rooms, hang signs outside, and start governing immediately.

Raymond approved before Alaric finished explaining.

"A government people can’t find is just a rumor," he said. "Use whatever buildings work. We can move everyone later."

Over the next four days, several buildings around Althoff changed purpose. An old merchant house near the market became the temporary home of the Department of Trade and Commerce.

The former grain office beside the eastern storehouses went to Logistics and Stores. Population and Civil Registry remained in the larger merchant house it occupied, while Public Works took over a repaired stone building close to Torren’s construction yard.

Health and Sanitation established itself near the existing treatment rooms, and Treasury remained inside the castle until a proper facility could be prepared.

Agriculture claimed a building near the road leading toward the farming basin, where farmers could reach Harlan’s people without crossing half the settlement.

Military Affairs operated near the barracks, while the Althoff Watch took over an old guardhouse beside the central road. Resources and Survey shared a building until their staffs grew enough to separate.

Then came the signs. Raymond insisted they be large enough that nobody needed literacy worthy of a royal scholar merely to locate the government. Department Of Trade And Commerce appeared above Ysabel’s entrance.

Department Of Population And Civil Registry stretched awkwardly across another sign until the carpenter complained that the name required half a tree.

Raymond permitted a smaller second line reading Civil Registry beneath it. Public Works received its own sign, as did Agriculture And Husbandry, Health And Sanitation, Logistics And Stores, and Survey And Resources.

The guardhouse received the simplest: Althoff Watch.

By the end of the week, directional boards appeared at major intersections, and clerks were instructed to learn what every Department actually did so citizens could be redirected properly.

Raymond considered the arrangement embarrassingly basic. Alaric reminded him that three weeks earlier Althoff’s administrative directions consisted largely of "try the castle."

The first morning proved that signs alone could not cure confusion. An elderly woman named Marta entered the Department of Trade and Commerce, waited patiently behind two merchants, reached Ysabel’s reception clerk, and announced that her goat had disappeared.

The clerk stared at her.

Marta stared back.

"Was the goat being sold?" He finally asked.

"No."

"Was there a dispute involving a merchant?"

"No."

"Do you operate a livestock business?" Marta narrowed her eyes. "Young man, someone stole my goat."

The clerk cautiously explained that theft belonged to the Althoff Watch and gave her directions.

Marta listened, thanked him, walked outside, then returned thirty seconds later to ask whether the Watch would also help if the goat had simply wandered away.

By lunchtime, the story had reached Raymond. Boris laughed hard enough to spill water. Darric was less amused because two Watchmen had spent an hour searching alleys before finding the animal eating laundry behind a communal house.

The Watch experienced its own confusion. A young couple arrived holding hands and nervously asked where they could register their marriage.

The Watchman at the desk, who had spent most of his adult life dealing with gates, drunks, and knives, apparently panicked at the sight of matrimony and sent them to Treasury. Treasury sent them to the Civil Registry.

The Registry correctly handled the matter, then sent a written note to Darric asking why his men believed marriage was a financial transaction.

Elsewhere, a farmer seeking permission to repair an irrigation channel was sent from Agriculture to Public Works, then back to Agriculture because the first clerk thought irrigation automatically meant farming while the second thought digging automatically meant construction.

Harlan and Mara eventually established a simple rule: Agriculture decided irrigation need and allocation; Public Works handled major engineered channels. Minor farm ditches remained Agriculture’s problem.

Raymond watched the confusion multiply and realized that creating jurisdictions on parchment had been the easy part.

Teaching dozens of clerks and thousands of citizens how those jurisdictions worked was another matter entirely.

The most stubborn habit was coming directly to the castle. On the fifth morning, Raymond found a farmer named Pell waiting outside the gate with a folded petition concerning a boundary dispute.

The guards had already told him to visit Agriculture, but Pell refused because his father had brought disputes to the previous lord’s steward, and his grandfather had once petitioned Raymond’s grandfather.

"That’s how we’ve always done it, my Lord," Pell explained when Raymond happened to encounter him.

Raymond looked at the petition, then at the man. "And how well has ’always’ worked for Althoff?"

Pell wisely remained silent.

Raymond softened his tone. "Harlan has authority to settle ordinary field boundaries. If you bring this to me, I’m going to send it to him. If you bring it directly to him, you save yourself the walk and me the parchment."

Pell hesitated. "And if I think his decision is wrong?"

"Then there will be an appeal process. Government doesn’t mean nobody can challenge a decision. It means you start with the people whose job is to make it."

That conversation gave Raymond another idea. Alaric ordered every Department to post a simple list outside explaining what matters it handled. Clerks received written referral sheets rather than relying on memory.

Civil Registry handled citizenship, births, deaths, marriages, households, property records, and immigration. Trade handled merchants, businesses, markets, stalls, and commercial disputes.

Public Works handled roads, public construction, repairs, permits, drainage, and major infrastructure. Agriculture handled farmland, livestock programs, crop matters, and ordinary irrigation.

The Watch handled theft, violence, disturbances, missing property, and civil security. Health handled medical services and sanitation complaints.

Resources handled extraction permissions. Logistics dealt with government stores and transport, not citizens looking to rent private wagons. More complicated matters could still cross Departments, but citizens would at least have a sensible first door to knock on.

For several days, those doors seemed to produce more noise rather than less. Clerks complained about queues. Citizens complained about forms.

Department leaders discovered responsibilities nobody had remembered to define. Oren spent half a morning explaining to refugee families why registering property did not mean the government intended to seize it.

Ysabel had to stop merchants from assuming business registration guaranteed them market space. Darric discovered that people reported every lost object as theft, including a missing cooking pot later found beneath its owner’s bed.

Mara threatened to throw one carpenter out of Public Works after he submitted the same repair request four times because he believed repetition improved approval speed.

Raymond listened to the reports at the Lord’s Council and found himself grinning. It was messy, inefficient, occasionally ridiculous, and somehow exactly what progress looked like.

The change became noticeable during the second week. The queues shortened. Farmers began going directly to Agriculture. Merchants learned Ysabel’s building before they learned the route to the castle.

New arrivals were directed to the Civil Registry, where their residency could be recorded before they sought work or housing.

Construction crews went to Public Works for approved assignments. Citizens reported disturbances to Darric’s Watchmen instead of hunting for Boris.

Marianne noticed fewer strangers appearing at the castle asking servants where to find medicine.

Even the guards at Raymond’s gate reported that petitions had dropped sharply because most people now knew another place capable of answering them.

Raymond tested it himself one afternoon by walking through town without announcing an inspection.

Outside Trade and Commerce, a merchant argued about stall placement while a clerk calmly pulled out the market plan.

At the Registry, Oren helped an elderly refugee correct the spelling of his daughter’s name. Public Works had a line of builders carrying permits and repair requests.

A woman entered the Watch complaining about stolen firewood, and nobody suggested she seek the Baron. None of these problems were important enough to appear before Raymond, yet each mattered enormously to the person experiencing it.

That was when he understood what they had actually built.

Power in Althoff had always possessed a face. The lord.

The captain. The headman. Someone important whom ordinary people needed to know, persuade, or somehow reach. Now authority was beginning to possess an address instead.

A citizen did not need to know Raymond von Althoff personally to receive an answer.

They only needed to know which door to open.

And behind that door, for the first time, Althoff answered.