The Road To Heron

“You are going to build a main road that runs below Morta and Enol?”

The next man called in, once the two village chiefs had gone back, was Builder. Between wrapping up the works at the village of Morta and running back and forth to the village of Enol on top of that, two bodies would not have been enough for him.

“I mean to make a road broad and sturdy enough that it won’t so much as flinch with several carriages going over it at once. To reach Heron you have to go the long way around our estate, and that takes far too much time, and the risk of accidents is high. Monsters come jumping out now and then too, I hear.”

Dong-hui asked, calling up the map of the country around Grace that she had seen in the library. Heron lay east of the Grace estate, and cold as the region was, the land there was fertile and free of monsters, so a city had grown up on its trade.

“Yes. That is why travelers are sometimes badly hurt.”
“So I mean to build a wide, safe road and take a toll on it.”

Builder could not picture the thing clearly, and yet an anticipation he could not account for went through him in a shiver. Even the repairs to the houses had been past believing.

And now to be handed charge of a work as great as this.

It was like a dream.

“The cost of the works will not be a small matter.”

Scrooge, standing at her side, looked worried as he said it. His brow was drawn into deep furrows; he was working out, by the look of him, what the construction would come to. A most desirable attitude in a treasurer.

“Don’t you worry about the cost. I can put up as much as it takes. And don’t ask where the money came from — knowing could get you hurt. Oh, by the way, how is the work on the vault coming along?”

Having boasted of how much money she had, she found herself curious about the work on the vault. She was curious as well about what shape of vault Grace’s blacksmith would come up with, Smith or Smashing or whatever the man’s name was.

Turning a whole room into a vault can’t be an easy job.

By Scrooge’s account, the man’s face had lit up for the first time in three years when the details of the work reached him.

“He came at first light this morning and measured out the room. He is a diligent man, so the result is certain to be a satisfactory one.”

Scrooge was as pleased with himself as if he had taken the work on personally, and just as glad of the estate’s finances, piling up like heavy snow fallen while he slept. And yet every time he looked at the gold coins heaped to the brim without knowing where they had come from, some part of him was uneasy. But with the lord taking that line, there was no asking any further.

“See that the workers are taken on from within our own estate.”
“From the villages of Rasen and Huka as well, and not only Morta and Enol?”
“Yes. From there too.”

Dong-hui knew next to nothing about Rasen and Huka, but she nodded as if it were the plainest thing in the world.

They must be some of the few villages that never went over to Patrasche.

She was wondering when she might get out to see them when she remembered the mercenaries she had ordered recruited a while back.

“How is the mercenary recruiting coming along?”
“They have been arriving one after another since yesterday.”

Red Bear, who had been standing at one side of the study like a telephone pole, answered at once, as though he had been waiting for his moment and was not about to miss it. The recruiting had been left entirely to him.

“Will gathering two hundred of them be any trouble?”

At Dong-hui’s question his face darkened considerably.

“There seem to be too few mercenaries worth the name. And a good many have come calling themselves mercenaries who, look at them how you will, are nothing of the sort.”
“Where have they come from?”
“Most of those came out of Rasen and Huka as well, with a few here and there from Idor or Fran.”
“Then don’t send them away — put them to work on the construction. They will have come because they need the earnings at once. Ah — are there rooms enough for the mercenaries and the workers to lodge in?”

Dong-hui knew Grace Castle was on a considerable scale, but she had no idea how many rooms it held altogether. Scrooge knitted his brows a moment, as though sunk in thought, and then nodded.

“If four sleep to a room we can take them all easily. A great many of the rooms the household staff used to use are standing empty.”
“How many rooms are there in Grace Castle altogether?”

Curiosity got the better of her, and she asked as though she were only casting back for something she had once known.

“Counting in all the household staff’s rooms, it comes to some hundred and fifty.”
“A hun— a hundred and fifty?”
“My apologies. More than fifty of them have gone past use for want of upkeep in good time.”

Scrooge added that quickly, taking her outburst for anger at how the number of rooms had dwindled. Dong-hui, though, was giving the matter serious thought.

Should I go into the lodging business?

“My lady, Helsa has come saying she has something she wishes to say to my lady.”

She was weighing in all seriousness whether the castle might be run as a hotel if it were remodeled when Delma’s voice came at her out of nowhere. Delma had knocked, crossed the room, and greeted her too, but Dong-hui, sunk in her own thoughts, had heard none of it.

“Helsa?”

The name came back to her, the one she had put together out of Frozen and a health club, and with it the face of the tall woman with the wide, open smile.

“Yes. She has been waiting since this morning.”
“Have her come in.”
“Yes!”

Delma opened the study door at once and called in Helsa, who had been waiting outside. She came in with a firm, even tread, without any of the looking about the village chiefs had done on their first visit. There was something to her beyond the ease of a woman who worked in the place: composure, self-assurance, a clear and vivid gaze. Her packed muscle and her great height were not the whole of it.

Dong-hui watched her closely as she came straight up and bowed her head respectfully. The more she looked, the more interesting a person she found her.

“You wished to see me, I hear?”
“Yes, my lady.”

Her voice was firm as well.

“Is the Dural harvest coming to a good finish?”
“Yes. Besides the Dural field my lady found, we have found two more. They lie nearer the Black Forest, but there is no trouble at all if we go by day, and they are twice as wide as the field we found first.”
“Truly? That is wonderful news! If you need more hands, say so and you shall have them. There will be more workers coming in before long.”

Dong-hui could not hide her delight.

“How were they found?”
“Word is Helsa found them herself, while she was searching the ground nearby.”

Delma answered for her, proudly, when Helsa hesitated. Helsa, awkward perhaps at being boasted of, smiled shyly and fiddled with her hair for no reason at all; she looked for all the world like a very bashful girl.

“Treasurer!”
“Yes! My lady.”

Scrooge, no less pleased than Dong-hui at the news of the new Dural fields, answered at once, without managing to get the smile off his face.

“See that Helsa is given two gold as special pay.”
“I beg your pardon? Two whole gold?”
“Yes. Why? She found Dural fields of an enormous size, did she not. Then I should think she has every right to that much and more?”

Chloe went so far as to shrug, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and every person in the study was left with their mouth hanging open. Two gold, of all things. A maid could lay hands on a sum like that only by saving her monthly wages solidly for years.

But Helsa, whom every one of them had expected to be overjoyed, answered with a calm face.

“As it is given, I shall receive it with thanks. But it was not done by my own strength alone. The prize you give me I shall divide evenly with my fellows, and take the same share as they do.”
“How many were there altogether who found the fields with you?”
“We moved as a party of ten, in case of trouble.”
“Then that leaves each of you no more than two silver?”
“Yes. That is quite enough. Were I to hold any more than that I should be too uneasy to sleep at night.”

Helsa answered with a good-natured smile, uncommonly white teeth showing neat and even between her large lips. The more one saw of her, the more thoroughly likable she was.

“Very well. Then from now on I shall give special pay to more people, and more often.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you something else to say?”

Dong-hui asked, looking at Helsa, who had stayed standing there instead of going straight out. She did not look like a woman who was after anything more.

“Yes. The fertilizer made from Dural leaves is finished.”

When Handsome had told her Helsa was to be put in charge of producing the fertilizer, she had wondered whether she was not setting the woman to work far beneath what she was capable of. But Helsa did her utmost at whatever work was handed her, and anyone who saw her out at the farming saw somebody genuinely happy. Once the work had begun, Dong-hui had braced herself for days of it, weeks at the outside. The success came far earlier than she had reckoned on.

“Truly? I thought it would take a week yet?”

It had not been so much as a few days since she gave the order. In that time Helsa had produced a fertilizer out of Dural leaves and Moh moss.

“When Moh moss was mixed into the Dural leaves, the compost came together at speed. At first I thought the more Moh moss went in the faster the fertilizer would be made, but that was not so either.”

So the women’s Moh-moss gathering has gone well too.

Dong-hui pictured them delighted with their daily wage, and a satisfied smile spread over her face.

“So there was a proper proportion to it?”
“Yes. I have written it down here.”

Helsa held out a single sheet of paper in front of Chloe, one she had made ready beforehand. The page looked to have been torn out of a small notebook, and it set down the proportions for the fertilizer in detail, in a very flowing hand. The moment Dong-hui saw the writing she was certain the woman was no ordinary member of the household staff.

“Helsa. How long have you worked at Grace Castle?”
“This year I enter my fifth.”

The answer came in a level voice.

“Might I ask your age?”
“I have turned thirty.”
“So you came into Grace Castle at about twenty-five. I am curious what you did before that — if I ask, will you tell me?”
“If it is my lady’s command I shall answer, but I should be glad if my lady would give me a little more time.”

Somehow the answer alone was enough to satisfy Dong-hui.

“Of course. Tell me when Helsa wants to tell me. I have no wish to hear it dragged out of you.”

This time Helsa looked a little startled. She had expected the answer to be demanded of her by force if it came to that, and she had never once imagined she might hear anything like this.

“For finishing the Dural fertilizer you really must have a reward, though?”
“I only did it the way my lady taught me. I did not work hard enough to deserve a reward.”

Helsa answered firmly. Dong-hui liked her more and more.

“Then how would it be to make a gift of a feast to the whole of the household staff who have worked so hard?”
“A f— a feast?”

Helsa, who had not batted an eyelid at being given two gold, opened her eyes wide and round.

“Yes. A feast. I shall tell them to load the table with food until its legs give way.”
“Might there be Dural fries as well?”

Helsa asked with her hands clasped as though in prayer and her eyes shining. Steamed Dural was easy enough to come by; fries were not. Oil cost far too much.

“I shall have Dural fries heaped up in a mountain for you as well.”
“Ah—!”

Helsa clapped a great hand over her mouth in delight.

“I shall have fried dumplings of every kind set out too.”
“Dumplings?”

Dumplings were a food that did not exist here. The ramyeon always kept stocked in the servants’ dining hall was wonder enough on its own, and Helsa could hardly wait to learn what sort of food a dumpling might be.

“They are very good indeed. You can fry them, or steam them, or put them into a thin soup and eat them that way.”

Helsa had no notion what the food even was, and her mouth watered all the same. She swallowed hard.