Chương 49: Chapter 47 – Moving

Alric stood in front of his new warehouse building. As it worked before, this would also be his home. The stone walls and wings stretching toward him couldn't help but give a sense of purpose, as if the building had decided it intended to be taken seriously and expected everyone else to keep up. Hands on his hips, he took a deep breath and noted that horses had definitely passed through recently. He breathed out.

The smile that followed was deeply smug, the sort that appeared when plans survived contact with the real world. He walked up to the wagon and the main entrance. A sense of wrongness struck him as he stepped inside. He looked up and realised the roof facing away from the entrance was gone. A section of it hung suspended on thin ropes. Alric moved slightly away, on the general principle that gravity rarely needed encouragement.

A man was working on the roof from that side, and the lack of any safety harness made him blink before he remembered these were workers hired through the merchants' guild. Nothing he said would have mattered, and anything he shouted would probably only have distracted someone holding something heavy. He looked down at his new favourite upgrade. The entire floor was now stone. Dusty, wet in patches, but this was huge. He let out a slow sigh of relief.

The packed earth of the old warehouse had been his never-ending gripe, an opponent that could be beaten daily and still return stronger by morning. Sound carried differently too. It bounced, echoed, and revealed a grumbling dwarf somewhere nearby, which narrowed the search considerably. Next to a stone upcropping from the floor, Stromni was in a debate with another man holding a large chisel and covered in grey dust.

Alric immediately pegged him as the stonemason, largely because no one else looked that offended by the idea of being interrupted mid-argument. He moved closer to see what the fuss was about, but the problem was immediately clear. The stone base was sloped the wrong way on the wrong side. If the boiler were placed there, it would never reach a distribution barrel, no matter how optimistic the pour. It was also set too low. Alric considered this a Stromni problem and moved on to the boiler itself.

The new boiler lay on its side, looking temporarily embarrassed. Wheels had been fitted to both ends, larger than before, and Stromni had added a handle to each. Alric crouched to look underneath. A reinforced copper plate had been added, along with a place to anchor a chain. Stromni really had thought this through, which meant the argument would take a while. The one section he understood to be complete was the staff wing. Eight bedrooms, a bathing room, a kitchen, two offices, and a latrine. Alric headed over.

The walls were all in. Wood, but he accepted that. The first room was empty of furniture, which made it feel larger than it would ever be again. Each room had a window with wooden shutters that opened inward, revealing bars set across the frame. He hadn't requested them, so he assumed they came with the building, like unexpected in-laws or local customs. He noticed the same arrangement along the germination side.

Satisfied, he crossed to the other major alteration, the cellar expansion on the far side of the building. As he passed through, he noted Stromni now using the boiler as a conversational barrier while the stonemason looked increasingly uncomfortable. Alric ignored it and continued on, having learned that craftsmen often needed space to arrive at the correct conclusion on their own. The cellar was larger, but the ramp was unfinished.

It ended halfway, replaced by rough timber beams that suggested strong intentions and a lack of time. Alric smiled, imagining the space filled with barrels and casks. Shelving would come the next day. The rear section already held thick wooden beams for stacking barrels on their sides, with overhead supports for lifting using straps and systems Alric was content not to understand. He had learned that ignorance, when chosen carefully, could be a form of safety. He headed back toward Stromni.

On the way, a worker entered, glanced up, and muttered to another, "You don't remove a roof in spring." The second man only shrugged as they carried timber toward the cellar, which suggested either agreement or resignation. Another worker slowed and stared at Alric as he passed. It made him briefly uncomfortable. When he glanced back, the man was already heading down the ramp, interest satisfied and conclusions apparently drawn. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve.

Read this novel on Royal Road. By the time Alric reached Stromni, the argument was winding down. Stromni glanced at him, gestured at the stone emplacement, and shrugged. Alric nodded, then pointed upward. Stromni shrugged again, this time with a smile, the sort that acknowledged shared risk without inviting discussion.

"Staff area's ready," Alric said. Stromni nodded.

"I'll let them know," Alric added, earning another nod. Stromni seemed to be saving all his words for disapproval, and the stonemason had received most of them. Taking that as a good sign, Alric left. It was the following morning when Alric walked alongside a wagon. Stephen was driving. The wagon was on loan from Moreen, but the oxen pulling it were his. He remembered Garrick's advice and was grateful not to be the one holding the reins, especially given how much confidence the oxen placed in their own judgment.

He glanced at them applying steady, tireless power. They were far larger than he had expected. He imagined what those slabs of muscle could do if they turned on him and shuddered, eyeing the horns as their breath fogged the air, each exhalation suggesting patience rather than restraint. Alric quickened his pace on the final approach. Stephen swung the wagon wide to bring it alongside the entrance while the others went ahead. The building never seemed to empty.

Every time Alric thought he had a clear line of sight, someone crossed it carrying something awkward. A crate scraped along stone. A sack was dragged, then lifted, then dragged again when the grip failed. Someone called out a warning that came a moment too late, followed by laughter and a quick apology, which appeared to cover most minor accidents. Mara moved through it all with her sleeves tied up, redirecting traffic with short gestures rather than words.

She sent Henry back outside for another load before he'd even finished setting the last one down. Hal reappeared from the bathing room with wet hands, left damp marks on a doorframe, and vanished again toward the cellar without explanation, as if the building itself required constant appeasement. Casks rolled in slow arcs across the stone floor, guided by boots and wedges. Two were nudged into place, one overshot, and was hauled back with a grunt and a rope looped clumsily around a handle. The sound was constant.

Wood on stone, iron ringing briefly, voices overlapping and cutting off as people passed each other in doorways that were only just wide enough. Someone had propped the outer doors open despite the cold. Meltwater ran in thin lines across the threshold, tracked further inside by boots that did not bother to wipe themselves. A worker slipped, caught himself on a beam, laughed it off, and carried on without comment. Alric found himself stepping aside repeatedly, adjusting his path to avoid becoming an obstacle.

Each time he paused to look, the shape of the space changed again. A pile of bedding appeared where there had been none. A stack of crates vanished between blinks. The fermentation area grew denser, then looser, then dense again as casks were shifted to make room for more. Stephen passed him twice without stopping, once carrying a chest under one arm, once empty-handed and breathing hard. Henry followed with a coil of rope over his shoulder and nodded without slowing.

Alric returned the nod and only afterwards realised neither of them had waited for acknowledgement, which suggested that nods were now optional. The sense of direction came from everywhere and nowhere at once. No one asked where to put things anymore. They simply did, corrected when necessary, and moved on. Alric recognised the pattern from dockside work, from places where time mattered more than comfort and hesitation cost more than mistakes.

He stood still long enough for someone to brush past him with a muttered apology, then long enough for another to say nothing at all and simply expect him to move. He did. Alric's assignment was the fermentation section. Using his item box, he began unloading casks. One after another lined the wall. Shelving would come later in the week. The space filled faster than he expected. He would need to head back to the old warehouse to fetch the rest of the casks.

Finishing up, he moved back toward the entrance just in time to see his bed carried past by Henry and Stephen toward the staff section. The mood was jovial, almost celebratory, and Alric found himself smiling along with it. He put it down to the slightly larger rooms, missing that for the others this felt like something that would last. He followed his bed and paused when he saw the room the staff had chosen for him. Henry and Stephen wrestled the frame through the door.

Alric glanced at the neighbouring room, the bathing room. The wash tub was already in place. Hal was cutting holes so it could be fitted with bungs like the barrels. Three stones had been removed at the base of the nearby wall to serve as a makeshift drain, a solution that suggested experience rather than elegance. Alric realised he was in the way. He tried to move, but it didn't matter where he stood. Eventually, he headed toward the open roof instead.

As he stepped beneath it, meltwater spilled down onto his shoulders, cold and unapologetic. He let out a long breath and decided to fetch the remaining casks from the old warehouse. They would be fetching the cats this evening. Unbeknownst to Alric and his staff, a small group of men were moving through the crafters' quarter, pausing at workshops, peering through open doors, and lifting wooden shutters just far enough to look inside.

"Nothing here," one of them said, letting a shutter fall closed.

"No fires." The other frowned and glanced down the street.

"Then check again. If he's not working, he's living somewhere." He gestured away from the workshops.

"I'll take my team toward the inns and the housing rows. You finish up here."