Chapter 121: The City That wasn’t here
Several weeks into spring, Raymond discovered that walking through Althoff without turning it into an official inspection required considerably more effort than expected.
He left the castle after breakfast with Lily beside him and only two Household Knights following far enough behind to avoid making everyone on the street feel inspected.
Raymond wanted to walk. That was all. Yet the moment he reached the broad avenue below the Historical Core, he stopped because he could remember when none of it had existed.
Two months ago, the ground beneath his boots had been frozen dirt beyond a miserable collection of buildings. Now stone-lined drainage channels ran beside a packed roadway wide enough for carts to pass comfortably in both directions.
Houses stood along one side while workshops occupied the other. Painted signs hung above doors, laundry moved between upper windows, and a carpenter argued with an apprentice over a crooked frame while hammers sounded farther down the road.
Children raced around a public water point until a woman threatened to make all four carry her buckets if they knocked another one over.
A Watch patrol passed wearing dark coats and numbered badges, exchanging greetings with shopkeepers as naturally as if they had walked that street for years.
Raymond continued slowly, watching a vegetable seller arrange spring greens beside a woman selling boiled eggs and fresh bread. A cart loaded with cut timber rolled toward the Artisan District while another returned carrying finished furniture.
Farther ahead, masons worked on buildings that existed only as foundations, and beyond them survey stakes marked another street that would probably be crowded before summer ended.
Lily noticed Raymond staring and tilted her head.
"Is something wrong, Young Master?" she asked, clutching the small satchel she insisted on carrying whenever she accompanied him.
Raymond shook his head and pointed toward the road beneath them. "This street didn’t exist two months ago."
Lily looked around as though this were not particularly remarkable and replied, "It exists now, Young Master."
Raymond glanced at her. "Thank you, Lily. Your mastery of urban development remains unmatched."
Lily smiled brightly. "You’re welcome, Young Master."
The Central Market was louder than Raymond remembered from his last casual visit. Golden Road’s permanent branch occupied one of the better commercial buildings, its golden wheel emblem hanging above a steady flow of clerks, teamsters, and customers.
Their leased warehouse space was already receiving regular shipments, and Golden Road was no longer alone. Smaller merchant houses had followed the traffic north, independent traders rented stalls by the week, and caravan wagons filled designated unloading areas instead of blocking market streets.
Raymond spotted imported glass, textiles, iron tools, spices, paper, medicines, and goods he could not immediately identify. Althoff products moved the other direction: timber, agricultural goods, crafted items, hides, and inspected Beast materials.
Coins changed hands everywhere. Nobody waited for Raymond to distribute System gold. Nobody even appeared interested in whether their lord was watching. They were too busy making money.
Then Raymond discovered the pastry.
The bakery was new, occupying a narrow shop near the southern edge of the market. A wooden board advertised meat pies, honey rolls, fruit bread, and something called THE DEADBEAT for three copper coins.
Raymond stopped so abruptly that Lily nearly walked into him. He stared at the board, then at the display containing ugly folded pastries bulging unevenly with reddish fruit filling.
"No," Raymond said, his expression immediately flattening as he pointed toward the sign. "Absolutely not."
Lily followed his finger, read the name, and pressed both hands over her mouth. Her shoulders began shaking.
Raymond looked down at her. "Don’t."
Lily tried to compose herself and failed spectacularly.
"I’m sorry, Young Master" she said between giggles, "but it looks drunk."
That, unfortunately, was apparently the origin. The baker recognized Raymond halfway through explaining it to Lily and nearly dropped his tray.
His name was Pelan, and after being assured he was not about to be arrested for pastry-related treason, he nervously explained that the folded dough had originally been called a spring fruit pocket.
One batch collapsed in the oven, customers joked that the pastries looked drunk, someone called one a deadbeat, and the name spread because Althoff’s former Deadbeat Lord was the most famous deadbeat anyone knew.
Raymond listened in growing disbelief before asking, "And you decided attaching your lord’s disgraceful reputation to baked goods was a sound business decision?"
Pelan swallowed, but before he could answer, Lily cheerfully informed Raymond, "They seem to be selling very well, Young Master."
Raymond looked at the nearly empty tray. "I have somehow become branding."
He bought two.
The Deadbeat was annoyingly good.
Raymond was still eating his wounded dignity when he noticed something stranger. People were extremely polite to Lily. Not ordinary politeness toward a child accompanying their lord, either.
A merchant greeted her by name. A carpenter asked whether her aunt’s cough had improved. One Department clerk passing with documents immediately straightened and wished her good morning.
A Watch officer thanked Lily for reminding him the previous week that a permit complaint belonged with Trade rather than Civil Registry. Lily responded to each person naturally, remembering names, relatives, occupations, and seemingly half their problems.
When a seamstress asked where she should submit an application to supply uniforms, Lily answered, "Trade first for the commercial registration, Mistress Vena, but the Watch handles its own purchasing requirements. Don’t give the application to me because I can’t approve anything."
She then continued walking while Raymond stared at her.
"Lily," Raymond said carefully, "how many people in this city do you know?"
Lily looked thoughtful before answering, "I don’t know. A lot?"
Raymond glanced behind them at the clerk who had practically bowed to a ten-year-old maid. "And why does everyone behave like offending you will result in their entire bloodline losing access to government services?"
Lily’s eyes widened. "They don’t."
Raymond looked toward a fruit seller who had just moved his best apples forward when Lily approached. "That man absolutely does."
Lily frowned at the accusation and replied, "Master Orven is nice. His daughter works with Mistress Marianne."
Raymond suddenly understood. Lily carried no authority whatsoever, but she lived inside the castle, managed pieces of Raymond’s personal schedule, carried messages, knew which Department handled which problem, remembered everyone she met, and was constantly seen around the most powerful people in Althoff.
Somehow, without anyone formally deciding it, his ten-year-old maid had become a walking social intersection.
Raymond rubbed his forehead. "I’m going to wake up one morning and discover you’ve built an information network."
Lily blinked innocently. "What’s an information network, Young Master?"
Raymond sighed. "Exactly what someone with an information network would say."
Their next stop quieted his amusement. The first completed section of the Elementary Academy stood near the Residential District, built according to the System blueprint but constructed by Althoff hands.
Only part of the planned complex had opened, with additional classrooms still being finished, yet the occupied rooms already held children learning letters, numbers, basic history, and practical arithmetic.
Raymond and Lily remained outside one classroom rather than interrupting. Through the open windows, Raymond watched perhaps thirty children seated at simple desks while a teacher wrote numbers across a board.
Some children came from families that had lived in old Althoff for generations. Others had arrived from Reth or smaller settlements during winter. A few had lost parents. Others were children of craftsmen, farmers, laborers, or soldiers. Inside that classroom, none wore labels announcing where they had come from.
One boy raised his hand and confidently gave the wrong answer.
Several children laughed until the teacher made another student solve the problem, only for her to get it wrong too. Raymond smiled as the entire class became involved in an increasingly serious argument over multiplication.
Lily watched through the window and whispered, "Can I attend sometimes?"
Raymond looked at her in surprise before remembering that Lily was ten, despite the castle constantly treating her as though she were twenty-seven.
"Yes," Raymond answered, his expression softening. "We’ll arrange your duties around lessons."
Lily’s face brightened immediately. "Really?"
Raymond nodded. "Really. Being terrifyingly well-connected is not a substitute for education."
They continued beyond the school toward one of the rising roads overlooking the developing districts.
Raymond passed completed houses beside unfinished ones, workshops producing goods, drainage channels carrying spring runoff, public wells surrounded by families, wagons entering warehouses, Watchmen changing patrols, and construction crews extending Althoff farther outward.
The sounds followed him uphill: saws, hammers, wheels, merchants calling prices, children shouting, animals protesting, and hundreds of conversations blending into the noise of a living city.
At the top, Raymond stopped.
Below him stretched the Althoff he remembered: the castle, fragments of the old wall, familiar roofs of the Historical Core. But roads now flowed through and beyond them into districts that had not existed when winter began.
New roofs spread eastward. The Central Market crowded the south. Workshops and warehouses extended west. Construction frames reached farther still, while smoke rose from chimneys where empty ground had once been.
Raymond searched for the boundary of the old town.
For the first time, he couldn’t find it.