Bellows huffed and puffed from the side, making the red flame with a heart of solid blue dart and dance up through a narrow slot above. It was barely an inch wide but over two feet long and the sweating figure of a Mason watched his charges carefully. Each was a massive brick of basalt propped carefully to present a chalk line to the flame. A chalk line that was already showing a red tint through its natural dark hue. A very narrow strip of red.

  The Mason leaned forward, dipping a rag into a bucket of water, bits of snow floating around his ash-blackened hand and carefully wiping the stone to the sides of that light. Keeping the heat as concentrated as he could.

  Finally, he leaned back. "Now!" A pair of Labori pushed on the far end, moving the stone rapidly off the flame and to an overhang to the side where another Labori lifted a block of packed snow on the end of his shovel forcefully against the glowing stone.

  A gout of steam erupted outward, drawing a flinch, but no retreat from the worker, his gloved hands showing the scars of many such blasts.

  He gave it several more seconds, as the snow block melted rapidly into the waiting bucket below, one that looked considerably like the one the Mason was dipping from, Ethan noted, then set down his shovel and started to pack more snow from a waiting crate onto it.

  The stone, noticeable cracks gracing its side, was pushed forward again, rollers picked up from behind and moved to the front as needed, the two men brute-forcing the nearly 200-pound object across gaps or over obstructions as needed, but trying to use the rollers where they could. They didn’t move it far, to a new station where another Mason and a pair Labori with mallets waited. The mason carefully placed a tier 1 chisel against a crack and called the Labori to slam their large wooden hammers into it. Repeatedly. Carving an angle into the stone that even Ethan could see was both deliberate and precise.

  “Gods above. And they need to do that for how many?” Ethan spat, staying well out of the way in the main thoroughfare, merely looking in to the busy work zone that would eventually become a kitchen.

  “Not that many Milord. Just the 18 voussoirs and a key stone for each arch and twelve total arches.”

  A third mason, his clothes spotted with ash and stone dust stood on one side of Ethan, Ermina on the other. He wiped his head absently with a rag that looked like it had served its own duty cooling rocks. It spread the dirt and sweat on his forehead around, but Ethan doubted it actually removed any.

  He pointed into the room at four columns, each 2 feet on a side that stood about 10 feet in from the walls and from each other.

  “A far sight faster than I’ve ever done before, My Lord. These bricks of yours… they’re a stone-cold bitch to move about, pardon the pun, but damn but they make for strong, stable walls.”

  The man nodded emphatically, looking at the stones like a besotted parent at a child.

  Ethan on the other hand, felt a bit guilty about it. BPs were precious and smaller blocks would cost; he’d done this math before, a bit less than double for a brick that was half the size in each dimension. An easier brick to work with, but half the space available. He mentally selected a chunk, and not for the first time, queried the core for the cost.

  How Much?

  He sighed and let it go. He’d noticed it before, but the core seemed to round costs up to the nearest whole unit. He blinked, then looked at the bricks in front of him, how many hours of work could he save by doing one full unit of these voussoirs?

  He started to imagine it, then stopped. Why do the difficult when you had experts who could do it for you? “Master Mason,” He gently interrupted the man’s gushing about the to heavy bricks.

  “I might be able to make you these voussoirs, or rather the Core will. But I need to know some things. When I had this space carved into your, ah, beloved bricks-” Ethan noted with the side of his lip twitching. Ermina turned her back on them to look at a suddenly interesting brick wall. “-The core charged me based on the cuting. More or less at least. It rounds up to the nearest point in cost so this might not be accurate, but somewhere around 38 full-length cuts for that BP.”

  He caught the man’s eye and he nodded along. “How do I arrange these cuts and how many of these voussoirs could we get out of it? Perfect ones mind you. Or at least as perfect as my mind can imagine. That means I need mostly straight flat cuts, though I could do a few more of them so long as they’re part of a regular pattern.”

  The man nodded rapidly then, with a whispered apology, darted into the room, emerging with a bit of chalk and quickly beginning to sketch on an open section of wall. First 6 vertical lines, each about 2 feet apart. Then an angle up, then down, then up again between them, like a repeating bow tie that was a half foot tall at its tallest point. Ethan shook the image of some impractically silly neck scarf from his mind.

  Really? Where the hell did that come from?

  “It’s no the full pattern, My Lord. I can’t reach that high! But if yous follow it up and add 10 cuts a foot each into the wall My Lord, she should do it right.”

  Ethan stared… just that? It was much simpler than he’d somehow imagined. He focused on the box ahead, and the rough lines on it expanded to 10 rows in height and 10 more into the wall.

  How Much?

  Ethan stared. That easy? Huh. But it wasn’t quite a square box when it was done. Some inner demon of conformity pushed him and he imagined a final pair of cuts top and bottom to fix that.

  How Much?

  Huh. 1 BP. For all a thousand of them. Ethan glanced at the man beside him and the pride his face bore for the highly efficient stone work going on inside. He’d have to be a bit gentle about this.

  “If I made these, I’d have to make a full block of them. A full thousand that is. And you only need a bit over two hundred, right? Would you use the rest?”

  “Oh, aye milord. She’s a common-sized arch for stone rooms like this, and if no, then it can still be chiseled down for a larger arch.”

  Ethan nodded. Then politely excused the man to head back to his work. Waiting till he was out of earshot before turning to Ermina. “One. One BP to make a thousand arch stones.”

  She nodded, clearly unsurprised. “And normally that doesn’t matter, My Lord. A Mason needs to mason to level up. Labori have to labor and BPs are limited. Even with all the time saved, it’s still frequently worth it to let them do their jobs.”

  “Frequently, but not now. Not when they are burning our limited fuel to, well, fuel it.” Ethan spoke, following her chain of logic.

  She nodded.

  “So why let them set all that up?”

  “They still need those 12 key stones and the springers at the base of each arch. It’s not wasted, even if it was just a learning exercise in how to deal with basalt.”

  He raised an eyebrow, silently urging her to continue.

  She obliged. “It’s harder than equal-tiered iron Ethan. Not like limestone or feldspar. You have to either have a tier advantage, skills or some real skill to work with it.”

  He winced. “So it’s a subpar resource?”

  “What? No, of course not. It’s a high-quality one.”

  “On buildings that don’t need to withstand a siege or carry some massive load.” He pointed out easily, stepping around a pile of the bricks in question to get a different angle into the room, where two Labori under the direction of their former guide were walking up stone brick steps the same as the stone they carried and carefully placing it on top of the wall.

  Very carefully. Ethan shook his head softly. Smashed hands… he really needed to get that Magister's Tower upgrade.

  “Its still worth it, My Lord. For all I’d like to move faster, high-quality ingredients give high ‘quality’ results.”

  He caught the emphasis this time. That could put a different spin on things. But it still seemed a waste to wall a cook house in the equivalent of marble!

  “No, what might interest you more is this. Try to tap into the core and see what it would cost, with the resources piled in the room, to finish the cook house.” The walls were a quarter done at best, the arches not even started and only one oven was built, a make-shift affair that had more in common with a furnace than a baking apparatus. He glanced at her doubtfully, but did as she asked.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  How Much to Complete?

  He flicked the box at Ermina and she nodded in acceptance. “Father said it was about 1 BP to build every 10 base resource units. That’s wall materials, structural and even the stones around the ovens.”

  She waved to a pair of Labori she’d brought with them, sitting on their haunches against the tunnel wall just out of easy earshot.

  They nodded, then picked up a stretcher between them piled high with what looked like traveling cooking gear. A grate, several large soup pots, ladles and even some cleaning rags and hot pads.

  They walked to the entrance and froze, looking in but not finding anywhere that was really safe for them to step. Ermina waved for them to stop when they looked back at her.

  “Now try, but include that.” She pointed to the pile of goods.

  Huh.

  “Tools, worked metal, cloth. The core can make from base materials, but for a high price. The rule of thumb is 2 BP at tier 0 per unit of tools, hardware or cloth goods required. It’s more than that for metal work and far less for something like a basket, but it’s a reasonable enough starting point.”

  “That’s…” He paused, running it through his head first. Then, trying again. “So it will make metal tools for you, if you give it the metal, but it costs a great deal, and you lose a chance at increasing quality? But it can create perfect stones for an arch? Which doesn’t drop quality?”

  “A stone's quality is determined by nature. You can drop that quality with poor harvesting or handling, but raising it isn’t something I know how to do. Metal is different. Smelting raw ore takes skill and can give a quality bump to the results. Then more again when forged into shape.”

  She nodded to the Labori. They picked the stretcher up and dragged it back down the tunnel towards the temporary practice field.

  “The core can touch up the metal, fix a hinge that binds or stretch a grate a bit to fit the opening without losing that quality, but just turning a bit of ore to a kitchen grate would cost, what, nearly 5 BP?”

  Ethan considered the pile of goods, fitting the pots and ladles into the same framework and shrugged. Somewhere in there. “So will we use the camp supplies?”

  “I have a Blacksmith hammering out the fixtures the core wants. But when he’s done, if the quality is better on your camp gear, then yes, we will use the highest quality goods we have available. The end results will be worth every extra fractional bit of benefit.”

  Ethan nodded slowly, considering the problem as he tucked Ermina’s hand into the crook of his elbow and began to walk down the tunnel in the opposite direction.

  “And this?” Ethan offered, pointing with his chin to an opening another 50 feet down the tunnel. “A tannery so close to food, are you not worried that the smell will put you off your appetite?”

  “Have you ever smelled a tannery in a core-built settlement?”

  Ethan’s mouth opened, then stopped mid-move. That was right. Hadn’t he always noticed that a Core’d town or city always smelled good? Despite the masses of infrequently washed Basics and industries within?

  “If you look under upkeep, it might make sense.”

  Ethan brought the entry up quickly and flicked it her way.

  “A build point per month and for what? To purify the air. Oh, it will do the maintenance for you as well, but you could do that manually easy enough. The issue is, I’ve never seen or heard of a fractional BP being charged. So when you have a task that only the core can do, then you get charged at least one. For buildings like this –“

  She tapped the entry.

  “You will want to upgrade it as soon as possible. You might be able to expand the number of work stations two or three times before it charges another build point. Or grab the running water and accept a smaller but more convenient station.”

  Ethan tapped at the screen. “And what about this?”

  He tapped again on the line without waiting for her to answer.

  “Two entries for a wall material, but one of them impermeable?”

  She nodded. “You don’t make an oven out of wood, nor a tank to soak hides, I imagine.” She tapped at (impermeable), glanced at the results and nodded. “Definitely want stone or clay for that.”

  He shook his head. None of it was all that complex, but he hadn’t known he could even tap on entries for an explanation until she’d prompted him! Everything was buried behind those small bits of insider knowledge and he wondered, and not for the first time, how the other new Baronets were managing without help. Then again, that might be another reason why Rainer harped on the difficulties of independence.

  He pushed the thought away, glancing into the opening where a couple Masons were supervising 15 Labori as they slowly stacked walls against the smoothed rock cave walls. Two adjacent walls only, with six pillars standing in for the rest to leave the building with what Ethan imagined was a cross flow of air. When it wasn’t built in a tunnel at least.

  Pillars with the same spacing as the Cook House, Ethan noticed with a sigh. He really was going to have to make those voussoirs, wasn’t he? Another drain on the limited points. He tapped his menu again and grimaced at the 18 that remained.

  Still, he’d do it. Just as soon as the Masons could chalk out neatly and exactly what they wanted on a suitable wall. No reason to spend a point and get it wrong and even less to not place the opening where it was needed.

  They continued on, moving through a steady trickle of other walkers, some carrying crates or water buckets, others just trying not to go stir crazy in the limited space. All made way for their Lord and Lady, but after a bit of prompting and some hard limits from Ermina and Rainer, it had turned into a rather fast salute and step to the side, before hurrying on with their tasks.

  They slowly made the end of the tunnel, talking softly behind Ermina’s privacy shield, and the closed nascent gatehouse that overlooked the river. The tunnel widened quite a bit here, enough room to store the manual draw bridge, guards to run it out and hopefully, in the future, some of the excellent defensive buildings and options that the core also offered.

  But that was a future quite far out. In the meantime, they merely circled the room, avoiding the drawbridge where it stuck up a foot on scavenged wagon wheels set into their own carved tracks.

  Then they were headed back down the way they came. Stopping here or there for Ermina to single someone out for a quick gossip session. A very useful gossip session, as Ethan had long since discovered. Even more so if he didn’t have to be the one to collect it.

  Passed the Tannery and having to stop himself from trying to see some visible improvements in such a short time. Then to the Cook House to drop a word of instruction about the voussoirs.

  At last, they turned into the side tunnel that would lead them to the council-cum bedroom. And to the new room that sat inset into the wall just short of it, where Blake and two newly promoted Scrimshawers were kneeling in front of a monstrous bird’s nest of bones, if one that lacked a bottom. The white and tan bones were visually spectacular, framed against the basalt black and faint reds as they were, and despite the initial impressions, it wasn’t really that many bones. Twenty thicker bones with knobby ends, each about half Ethan’s height, provided the frame of it, bound together with sinew and some kind of magical glue that Blake had just nodded at and proceeded to produce with a good bit of elbow grease from his magical font.

  Something about powder from both bones along with blood, sweat and a shared racial connection giving birth to a new connection. Explained to a captive audience over 5 minutes while they all tried to eat faster.

  Ethan hid a grin. It had been rather entertaining.

  They came to an easy stop behind the Magister, and waited for the hauntingly beautiful singing to stop and for Blake to put down the wand-like instrument of bone.

  “How goes it?”

  “Slowly. T-” Blake stopped himself, then rose to his feet and gave a full body shake, stretching his hands to the ceiling until a soft pop came from his back. “Sextus, Vitus, go take a break. Be back in a quarter turn of the glass.”

  “Yes Magister.” They muttered on voices that were starting to sound more than a bit hoarse. They saluted Ethan and Ermina before eagerly jogging down the hall behind them. The rest of their muscles weren’t overworked at least.

  “To damn slowly!” Blake complained once they were out of earshot. “And that’s without the constant interruptions. Just how many ham-handed workers are going to drop stones onto their fingers? We don’t have endless…. Baa.” He waved a hand, and Ethan hid a grin. They were actually quite plush on cores. That tier 2 rift alone had set them up with 14 smalls, a ludicrously generous number, but one he wasn’t going to complain about.

  It was still a waste to spend them this way. If nothing else, they made excellent trade goods. Light, valuable and not particularly fragile.

  “How much longer than?” Ermina asked, looking a bit nervous at the way the odd letters and shapes carved into the wreath of bones flickered and flared with light as Blake’s voice rose.

  He caught the direction of her eyes and glanced backwards, before grimacing and dropping his voice to a quiet, controlled tone. “A month at least. Maybe a month and a half. Depends on how many interruptions I face. It would be a great deal longer without those bone singers. A right blessing they are.”

  “I thought only Magisters could do this?” Ethan observed.

  “No, she said it took magic.” Blake broke in before Ermina could. “That’s not quite the same thing, and frankly, I don’t think they could do much alone. They don’t understand what they’re doing enough to direct. But they take directions well enough.”

  An image popped into his head, Labori following a Mason. Then it morphed into a choir of pale-faced men wearing pointy, jagged outfits of bone and sinew lined up behind Blake with his wand raised to direct the song.

  He snickered softly as Blake continued, oblivious, to describe the ways their vocal magic could interact with and support his in technical terms that were rapidly escalating into complete unintelligible babble.

  Ethan slid a word in, gracefully, with the ease of long practice. “Can I have some food brought? Tea?”

  He stopped easily, his eyes visibly brightening. “A pot of tea would be lovely! And I’d not turn down a snack either. That vegetable paste over mutton we had last night…”

  He trailed off, drool beading the corner of his mouth and Ethan didn’t blame him. He might produce a bit of drool himself at the thought. Onions, tomatoes, chilies and a few spices simmered to a paste and used to slow cook the mutton to a texture so tender he could tear it apart with his fingers.

  He had half a mind to hurry along as well. Not that there was any left, of course. But a man could dream.

  ___

  Ghost in the City!