This Is Chloment

“Oh dear, this dirt over here won’t do. Far too many pebbles in it.”

Delma had gone out into the garden with the bucket, and she worked her way from patch to patch, hunting for dirt as fine as she could find, deep in color and good in quality.

“There are far too many dead leaves mixed into this dirt, aren’t there? That patch over there looks all right.”

Round and round the garden she went with the bucket, until at last she found dirt entirely to her liking and squatted down in front of it. She took up a small trowel and set to filling the bucket in earnest.

To get even a little more in, she patted down the small dome of dirt heaped up inside, and then her hand stopped short. She had just remembered that until a moment ago her head had been full of nothing but the need to put a stop to her ladyship’s nonsense.

“Why am I holding a trowel?”

So far from stopping anyone, she had somehow ended up with a trowel in her hand, busily scooping dirt. She felt for all the world as though something had bewitched her.

When Delma brought the dirt, Dong-hui’s face lit up. She stirred it into the solutions she had made up, varying the amount a little each time, and the stuff that had been setting rock hard the instant it was mixed went thick and pliable, as easy to shape as clay.

“That’s it! That’s it!”

Dirt and Tiestone powder at five to one set hardest of all. She adjusted the Komo tree sap any number of times and found that even half of what she had started with made hardly any difference to how hard it came out.

Looking at what she had pulled off, Dong-hui could not keep the pride off her face. The solution in the bowl was firming up as she watched, and she spoke in a voice full of assurance.

“This is Chloment.”
“Chloment?”
“I invented it, so I’m putting my own name on it. Chloment. Splendid, isn’t it?”

Cement, Chloment!
Sick rhyme!
Maybe I should be a rapper?

Dong-hui wondered, in all seriousness, whether she might not have a real gift for naming things. She had slapped this one on any old how, and yet the more she said it aloud the better she liked it.

Somewhere along the way, the letter Eileen had sent had gone clean out of her head.

And,

— Ding!

A vivid blue status window floated up with the welcome chime.

No, never mind the applause, just give me the reward.

Where it had picked up the rhythm, heaven only knew, but the status window was clapping away on a beat that would have had the Red Devils waving the Taegukgi like mad¹, and Dong-hui glared at it.

Dong-hui was about to say yes when she narrowed her eyes.

That isn’t Boramdang.
It’s Borimdang.
Trying to sell me snake oil, is it?

Even something that wasn’t a person, Dong-hui learned, could turn in a piece of wooden acting. She checked the letters spelling Borimdang over any number of times, and nodded.

The minuscule letters tacked on at the end grated on her horribly, but Dong-hui grinned all the same.

I happen to be in a very good mood right now, so I’ll spare you the swearing.

One way and another, it had been a night with a great deal to show for it.

The next morning Dong-hui woke up looking thoroughly refreshed. What with the estate inspection and an experiment she had never in her life attempted, she had been too tired the day before to go through the front door.

Her plan had been to get up in the morning, make a careful tour of her activated areas, then stop by Borimdang and bring back more gold. At her leisure, of course, with no time restriction of any kind hanging over her.

She must have been more worn out than she knew, though, because she overslept, and the plan to be at Borimdang and back early in the morning came to nothing. She was glaring at the firmly shut front door, wondering what to do about it, when a knock came.

— Knock, knock.

“Come in.”

At the lord’s answer Delma came in, and the first thing she did was check her ladyship’s complexion.

“Are you all right, my lady? You were sleeping so soundly I left you on purpose.”

She studied Chloe’s face closely, hunting through every corner of it for anything amiss. Dong-hui, warmed right through by the sight of Delma fussing so tenderly over her, beamed at her like a child.

To Delma, Chloe’s twinkling smile was lovely all over again. She was dying to stroke her hair, but she held it in hard and only peeled a strand carefully away from her cheek instead.

“Oh, honestly. She’s still a baby and no mistake.”

Even Delma’s grumbling, half under her breath, was good to hear as far as Dong-hui was concerned.

After a simple breakfast and a quick job of getting dressed, Dong-hui called Handsome in and asked him about the day before at the village of Enol. Handsome must have had a hard day of it himself; his fine face had gone a little rough around the edges. His eyes, though, were still glittering with zeal.

“We have arranged for the construction to begin next week.”
“Why? Why not begin at once?”
“I gave the village chief the list of work, and he said he needed time to assign the jobs suitably, according to what each of the villagers is able to do, and to make ready.”

The more she learned about the village chief, the higher her regard for him climbed.

“Then is the village chief to be the one in charge of the construction at Enol?”
“Yes, my lady. Unless you had other instructions, that was what I intended. Is there perhaps someone else you have in mind?”
“Hmm… I can see the village chief is a man to be trusted, but this is work with a great deal of money going into it. I’d like you to take overall charge.”
“…Yes, my lady. I will do my very best.”

The end of Handsome’s answer cracked a little.

“Is it because it’s too much work? Will it be hard on you?”
“No, my lady. It is only that I am grateful you would trust a fellow like me with the work.”

Handsome broke off in the middle of his answer and rubbed at his eyelids with the back of his hand. His eyes went bloodshot on the instant.

Awkward for no good reason, Dong-hui made a show of looking elsewhere, then held a sheet of paper out to him.

“What is this, my lady?”

He had taken the paper and muttered his way through the writing on it before he looked up at the lord and asked.

“Tell them to mix the materials in those proportions when they put up the houses and lay the roads.”
“Chloment? I have never heard of it. Is it a famous method of construction?”
“No, it’s a secret formula that’s going to become famous. I made it. Which is why it’s called Chloment. Well?”
“A very… good name, my lady.”

Flattery was plainly not a gift of his; a hesitation came through in the answer. That was exactly why she liked it all the more. Handsome, and Chloment both.

“Pass that on to Builder. Tell him to try it in the village of Morta first, and then apply it to the next village.”
“Yes, my lady!”

Since this was her very first invention, she wanted it in the hands of Builder first, the first craftsman she had ever come to know.

Dong-hui could not hide how pleased she was with herself, and when she broke into a contented smile Handsome put in a question, his face troubled.

“But my lady, if we are to produce Chloment in quantity we shall need a great many Komo trees. The trees in the garden will not be enough.”
“Of course. We’ll have to go into the Black Forest and cut Komo trees, won’t we?”
“But so many of the knights are committed to the villages at present that we lack the manpower to go into the Black Forest.”
“Is that so? Then hire mercenaries.”
“That will take a considerable amount of money, my lady.”
“It’s fine. I have plenty of money.”

She said it with a grin.

Is this what it feels like to carry a black card with no limit?

“The cost will vary enormously depending on what sort of mercenary. What level of mercenary should I hire?”

Handsome asked it with care. Hire mercenaries of middling quality and they might eat up the grain to no purpose and do the village harm instead.

But a more skilled mercenary cost far, far more, which was why Handsome was picking his words.

“The very best. Find me men who can keep every one of the estate’s residents who goes into that forest from taking so much as a scratch. It doesn’t matter in the least what it costs.”
“Yes, my lady!”

The fervor in Handsome’s gaze was a little more than she could bear, and Dong-hui gave a needless little cough to clear her throat.

That afternoon.

Dong-hui took Red Bear and ten knights and combed the ground around the village of Morta in earnest.

She had the carriage driven slowly so she could look the country over in as much detail as possible. What she was after was more farmland, ground that could be put under the plow.

However much Dural there was, they could not lean on the wild growth forever. And the Dural harvested from the field was dwindling fast besides.

That was the terrain information for the village of Morta, out of Terrain Information Level 1. She had no idea what that certain work was, but before she could carry it out she had to find suitable land.

Dong-hui knew little enough about farming, but she glared around her all the same, hunting out anywhere that looked even slightly better than the rest.

But,

“It’s all a mess, isn’t it?”

Even Dong-hui’s slender store of common sense could tell that much. The land spread out in front of her was barrenness itself.

The soil was a pale brown, like desert sand, and it had set hard; even the sparse weeds seemed to be struggling to survive, drooping and sickly. The ground was so hard and parched that a pickaxe swung down with all one’s strength would only ring out a metallic clang, clang, and leave not a single mark.

What land did have plants growing thickly on it was choked with brambles, and merely cutting them back looked like a month’s work. When the wind blew, the settled dust rose up in a dull haze. The ground held no damp, let alone water, so bringing it under the plow was not going to be easy.

“What to do.”

Dong-hui’s gaze stayed fixed outside the carriage window. She stared out like that for a long while, and then suddenly she shouted at the top of her voice.

“Stop the carriage!”