Chapter 99: A Hundred Houses
The first house began with a rectangle of white string stretched across bare earth.
By the end of the morning, there were one hundred of them. They covered the eastern residential district in neat rows on both sides of the newly graded streets, each plot marked by stakes driven into the ground and connected by measuring lines.
From the rise above the district, Raymond could see the beginnings of an entire neighborhood where only grass and muddy fields had existed weeks earlier. Workers moved between the rectangles carrying shovels, baskets, measuring rods, and picks.
Wagons from the quarry rolled along the unfinished avenue and split toward three unloading yards, dumping stone beside foundation crews.
Other wagons arrived from the sawmill carrying standardized beams and planks stacked so evenly that Raymond still found the sight satisfying.
Talia stood beside Lucan Veyr with several plans spread across a temporary drafting table while foremen waited for assignments.
Nobody was discussing what might someday happen. The first residential district was being built beneath Raymond’s eyes.
Talia and Lucan had refused to design one hundred separate houses. They had also rejected Raymond’s joking suggestion that they simply copy one building one hundred times and create the most depressing neighborhood in Solaria.
Instead, they developed several standardized designs that shared dimensions, structural components, doors, windows, roofing measurements, and common materials while allowing different arrangements.
Small family homes formed the largest group, usually containing two bedrooms, a common room, kitchen space, storage, and a small rear yard. Larger homes accommodated bigger households or families likely to expand.
Multi-family buildings divided larger structures between two or three households while preserving private living spaces. Worker residences offered simpler, cheaper accommodation near future employment districts.
Courtyard housing grouped several homes around shared open spaces where children could play, washing could be done, and neighbors could gather. Exterior details could change later.
The important thing now was that a carpenter who learned how to construct one standard roof frame did not need new measurements every morning.
The effect on construction speed became obvious immediately. Foundation crews moved from plot to plot using identical measuring templates. Instead of waiting for an architect to mark every wall individually, foremen knew the dimensions of each house type before arriving.
Trenches were dug simultaneously across entire rows. Workers followed behind with compacted gravel, then masons laid stone foundations according to repeated patterns.
At one end of the district, twenty plots were still lines in dirt. Farther down, trenches surrounded another twenty. Beyond those, stone bases already rose knee-high from the ground.
Construction advanced in stages like the road crews had learned to do: one team excavated, another prepared foundations, another laid stone, and the carpenters followed once masonry was ready.
Nobody waited for one house to be completed before starting the next. The neighborhood moved forward as a whole.
Raymond walked between the plots with Lily beside him, stepping around baskets of mortar and stacks of cut stone.
The noise was completely different from demolition. Instead of walls crashing downward, there were hammers striking chisels, saws trimming lumber, foremen calling measurements, carts rattling between plots, and masons arguing about joints.
Every few minutes another wagon entered carrying materials. Corvin’s clerks stood near the district entrance recording deliveries and directing loads toward numbered storage areas. Lumber marked for roof frames went one way, floorboards another, stone toward the masons, iron fittings into a guarded shed.
Nothing was simply dumped wherever space appeared. Each street had a construction designation, each plot a number, and each house type a letter.
Raymond stopped beside a sign reading East Residential — Street Three — Plots 41–60 and laughed quietly.
Months earlier, Althoff had barely possessed proper street names. Now empty houses had addresses before they had walls.
The first timber frames began rising two days later.
That was when the district truly changed. Carpenters assembled standardized wall sections on the ground using beams cut at the sawmill, fitted joints, wooden pegs, and iron brackets from Roderic’s workshops.
Teams then raised them together with ropes while workers below guided the bases into prepared positions atop stone foundations. One frame rose, then another, then five more farther down the street.
Crossbeams connected them. Roof trusses followed. By sunset, silhouettes of houses stood against the orange sky where there had been nothing that morning.
They had no finished walls, doors, or roofs yet, but people walking along the avenue slowed to stare.
Children ran between the safe sections pretending to choose which houses belonged to them until Watchmen and construction supervisors repeatedly chased them away.
Many of the people watching were refugees.
Oren had come with several families from Reth whose names appeared among the first households scheduled for permanent housing. Raymond found him beside a half-finished courtyard block speaking with an older woman and her two sons.
Months earlier, they had arrived at Althoff after abandoning their village with little more than blankets and whatever food they could carry. They had spent winter in communal housing shared with three other families.
Now one son was working on the very building his family might occupy. He stood on the foundation passing fitted timber upward to a carpenter while his mother watched from beyond the work boundary.
She did not cry or deliver some dramatic speech about salvation. She simply asked Oren three times whether the allocation was truly permanent. Each time, Oren answered yes.
That reaction repeated across the district in quieter ways. Former residents of Fellcross hauled stone for streets where their children would eventually play.
A Marden carpenter who had arrived half-starved now supervised apprentices fitting doors for homes belonging to people who had traveled beside him during winter. Women who had once queued for ration grain prepared paid meals for construction crews.
Farmers waiting for their new fields worked temporary shifts digging foundations, earning wages while helping create the neighborhoods their families would occupy.
Raymond noticed one man carving a tiny mark into a roof beam before it was raised. When asked why, the man shrugged and explained that his daughter wanted to know which piece of the house her father had built.
Raymond pretended not to find that answer particularly affecting and continued walking before Lily could study his expression too closely.
By the fifth day, roofing crews had caught up with the first completed frames. Rafters appeared in repeated triangular lines above the streets, followed by boards, waterproofing layers, and roofing material.
Masons and carpenters filled exterior walls according to each design while window frames arrived already measured from workshops.
Doors no longer needed to be individually fitted from scratch because openings followed standard dimensions.
Lucan demonstrated the advantage by walking Raymond through three houses under construction at different stages.
The same door design fit dozens of small family homes.
The same roof truss could be produced repeatedly. Standard window frames reduced wasted lumber.
Even repair would become easier later because common components could be kept in storage. "Standardization doesn’t mean every house must look identical,"
Lucan explained. "It means we stop solving the same structural problem one hundred times." Raymond nodded. "Exactly. Solve it once, then build."
Talia ensured the district itself avoided becoming monotonous. House types alternated along streets. Courtyard blocks interrupted rows of family homes. Small public spaces were reserved at intersections.
Trees already standing in useful locations were retained where possible instead of clearing every plot bare. Alleys behind certain streets provided access for waste collection and deliveries.
Water distribution branches installed before construction reached marked junctions where future public fountains and household connections could be added.
Drainage channels followed the street grades. Space had been reserved for a small neighborhood market, green areas, and future community facilities.
Raymond could walk through unfinished streets and understand how people would actually live there, rather than seeing nothing except maximum houses squeezed onto minimum land.
One week after foundations began, the first completed house stood ready for inspection. It was not luxurious. Stone foundation, timber structure, plastered walls, tiled roof, wooden floors in the main rooms, practical windows, a proper cooking area, storage, and a small yard behind it.
Yet when Raymond stepped through the doorway, he immediately compared it with the overcrowded winter shelters many citizens still occupied.
This had privacy. Space. Light. A roof built to last. Drainage outside. A road in front. Water infrastructure waiting nearby. More importantly, it belonged within a neighborhood designed to remain part of Althoff decades from now.
Outside, construction continued without waiting for anyone to celebrate the first completion. Thirty-seven houses had roofs. Twenty-four had frames. Nineteen were at foundation level. The remaining plots were being excavated or prepared.
New streets stretched beyond them toward land already marked for later residential phases. The first hundred houses were not enough for every family needing better accommodation, but nobody had ever claimed they would be.
They were proof that the system worked.
Raymond climbed the low rise again before sunset. Below him, unfinished roofs and timber frames now interrupted the horizon.
Smoke rose from temporary cooking stations.
Wagons crawled between material yards. Hammers continued striking even as crews began changing shifts. Families stood along the completed road watching their future neighborhood take shape.
Months ago, many of them had reached Althoff without homes.
Now they were building them.
And the empty field was gone.