06:10 a.m. — South Mills Lane, Frosthaven (The Plan)
The lane held the cold like a bowl holds water. The dye vats were dark and still, the tanners' racks showed pale hides like sleeping sails, and the surveyor's stakes around the little plot sang thin in the wind. The coal shed wall Murdock had promised was half‑raised behind the plank fence, its timber frame bare as ribs. Sariel stood near the corner post with her ledger and her tied hair; a pencil sat crosswise behind her ear. Jory came out of the mist with two masons and a line of brick stacked on a hand sled. Marn's cart creaked into view later, a bed full of sacks roped tight and white with ash dust around the seams.
Ryan set his gloved hands on the corner stake and looked at the space like a man reading a schematic that hadn't been drawn yet. He breathed in the rank lane smell and let it settle. He had been in holes and halls and slow offices these last weeks. This morning he wanted a plan that would take root and keep growing.
"We build cleanliness first," he said. He kept his voice even and plain, as if he were starting a workday stand‑up in a room without computers. "Not holy. Not luck. Just a cleaner way to work."
Sariel lifted her eyes and read him. "Outline," she said. She didn't waste words before there were columns to hang them on.
Ryan nodded. He held up his hands and ticked points off in the air like a man writing on a whiteboard only he could see.
"Step zero: soap. Soft soap, not pride. Potash lye from hardwood ash. Rendered tallow. We make a batch that cleans hands and benches. Then we make more," he said. "This isn't just for us. It's for the lane. We put jars where the rope‑walkers wash, where the dyers stain their wrists. We show that our work reduces sickness, not just makes coin. The inspector finds a clean shop and a clean street."
Jory scratched his jaw. "Soap," he said. The word sounded odd in his mouth; he was a stone man, not a salve man. "And where does the smoke go?"
"We're not boiling hell," Ryan said with a flicker of a smile. "The fire ring sits under the flue. The fan is hand‑cranked. The twin filter pots go on the stack exactly as we told the Fire Warden. No stink in the lane. If there's stink, it's my boots — not Murdock's forge."
A grunt came from the gate; Murdock had arrived quietly, a dark block of a man with soot in his beard and heat still in his clothes. He folded his arms and looked at the half‑frame he'd promised. "I'll hide your door," he said, businesslike. "You keep smoke neat. If the inspectors smell alchemy where I sleep, I'll say it is your boots, not my forge."
"Agreed," Ryan said. He tapped the post that would become the back lintel. "Inside, we set this like a small lab: a lye leach barrel here, with a false bottom of pebbles and straw so the first runnings don't carry grit. A lime trough beside it — clay‑lined. We'll slake quicklime to slaked lime and use it to causticise the potash; that gives us clearer KOH. Iron kettle on a brick ring there. Hand crank fan here to pull fumes into the flue and through the filters. Pails: one eye‑wash, changed daily; one vinegar jug for skin splashes. Gloves and aprons hung by the door. Rules posted where even a drunk can read them."
Sariel was already writing. "List," she said flat. "Ash, lime, tallow, kettle, brick, paddles, sacks. Witness marks for deliveries."
"Copper tags," Ryan said. "Twin notch stamp. Date and hour engraved. If a parcel crosses the threshold without a tag that matches the ledger, it stops. We got hit once with forged wrappers. We're not getting hit again when our hands are full of lye."
Marn clambered down from his cart, the boards creaking. He clapped his big hands. "Ah, Ryan! Good to see you again! What brings you this way today?" he said, the old friendly tone smoothing the morning air.
"Hardwood ash," Ryan said. "Oak or beech. No coal ash. Sacks kept dry and tied. Two gold now for the wood world last week; today I want ash and a steady run of it. Half the money now on these sacks. If you're late, the one silver per day fine stands. Same as we said."
Marn rubbed a sack rope with his thumb and felt the ash grit. He nodded, practical. "Two gold now for the wood, and the rest when delivered. Fair enough?" His tone had edges but no malice.
"Fair," Ryan said. He counted coins into Marn's palm, then turned to the butchers' boy who had come on foot with a covered tub. "And tallow," he told him. "Clean scraps, no hair, less mess. I'll pay fair. If it stinks, it goes back."
The boy lifted a corner of cloth; pale fat shone like off‑white wax. Ryan leaned in and smelled, nose trained now not only for rancid meat but for the little signs of poor rendering. Not terrible. "We'll render wet," he said to Sariel. "Less stink. We're not doing this just once."
Jory's men thumped a line of brick onto the mud near the flue. He hooked his thumbs in his belt. "Measure twice, cut once," he said. "Lip around the lye barrel. If it spills, it stops. Drain to a sump, not the public run. You want containment? You pay two silver per head today, bonus if it holds."
"Two silver per worker today, full pay when the frame is done, bonus if it's done well," Ryan said, not missing a beat. "Then we'll call it even and buy dinner. Stone and brick don't lie if you listen."
Murdock eyed the sack labels. "Where does this sit in your grand idea of contraptions?" he asked, teasing but not entirely.
"In the only part that matters," Ryan said. He dragged a short plank over and began to chalk a sequence as if the wood were a slate: a simple ladder of steps, the rungs tight.
"From soap," he said, tapping the first line, "we go to alkali understanding. We causticise potash — we learn what a base is, what it does, how it answers acid. From alkali to glass. Potash lowers the melt of sand; we make better glass, jars that don't break when you look at them, flasks that don't leak. From soap's pot to glycerin – by‑product. Keep it; it's valuable. From glass to acid: when we can distil clean, we can refine vinegar better, understand vitriol when the day comes. Acid leads to better dyes, better leather, better ink. Later, lime and ash teach us soil, and we give farms what they lack instead of prayer. Clean water, clean hands, less death. The rest is craft and time. We do it slow. We do it right."
He stopped and looked up. He didn't grandstand. He watched their faces to see if the sequence landed as something beyond ambition — something a man could hold with both hands and use.
Sariel's mouth twitched, the closest her face came to a smile when a plan held water. "Translate to work," she said. "Day one tasks."
Ryan turned the wood over and wrote like a quartermaster. "Today: set the lye leach. Start slaking lime. Render tallow. Install fan on flue. Safety rules written, hung, and read aloud. Two sample tests for lye strength: egg float and a small feather test for demonstration only; we trust egg and practice. We make a small soft‑soap batch, put it in jars. We keep one jar in the shop for QC — degreasing before final polish so ink flows are consistent for the inspector. We gift jars to the rope‑walk and the dyers so they talk when people ask who cleans their hands."
Murdock rubbed at a welt on his thumb with a thick finger. "You'll put my mark on it," he said. "If it leaves this lane from my shed, it better come back with my name not dragged in mud."
"We stamp 'Technologia — Mill Soap' on a little collar and emboss your mark on the cork," Ryan said. "It's not a brag. It's a guarantee. Partnerships demand trust—and trust is built on results, not promises," he added, and Murdock's eyes flicked to him in quick amusement; a man likes to hear his truths back in his own language.
Jory pointed at the corner. "Lip here," he said. "We build a low wall under the barrel. The spill won't run. I always say, measure twice, cut once. It saves a lot of time and trouble in the end."
"Build it," Ryan said. "Two inches higher than you think, because men are taller fools when they're tired."
Marn gestured at the sacks. "If I'm late, I'll honour it with a silver a day. Can't have my word going down the river," he said, half to Ryan and half to the ledger in Sariel's hands.
"We're all saying the same thing," Ryan said. "Let's do it."
He glanced down the lane. The day was taking shape — a day of small, exact acts.
He made one more, private act: an audit in his head. Domain: Space House. Authority: Choice Mandate. Cooldown: still cold. Near‑death: not invited. Audit note: Choice Mandate — no call. Not mercy. Procedure.
He felt calmer. Not joyous. Just aligned, like a gear that had found its tooth.
09:30 a.m. — Across Frosthaven (Materials)
The city woke fuller as they moved. The rope‑walk men had begun their long, meditative turns of hemp, the tanners' boys splashed in vats and cursed softly when brine climbed over their boots, the dyers lifted buckets the colour of evening and made small rivers run pink and blue into the gutters. Frosthaven's morning sounded like a hundred minor industries rubbing shoulders: bells, cart wheels, the dull, patient thud of things being made.
They broke the morning into errands like a program broken into discrete functions, each with its inputs and outputs. Sariel managed the sequence, her pencil quick and exact; Ryan walked two steps ahead so he could point and make deals without tripping on his own ambition. Murdock went with them for the ironmongers and the fan. Jory steered the brick and mortar like he was pushing thought itself.
First stop: the masons' yard. They wanted lime. The lime man had a face like a chipped block, white dust sitting in the cracks in his knuckles.
"Quicklime," Sariel said, before the man could ask what they were making. "Clean, not caked. We'll slake it under cover and clay‑line the trough. Delivery to South Mills Lane — hidden shed."
The lime man eyed her ledger, then Ryan. "We don't sell to fools," he said. "You want to burn your hands in my lime, you can do it without paying me."
Ryan nodded at the foul humour and leaned his weight on numbers. "We purchase two sacks today. We'll need steady supply. We're lining the trough; we are not drinking it. One silver now, one on delivery. If it's caked, I send it back with your name on the sack and a boy who isn't as kind as me."
"Ha," the man said, gruff. He tipped a sack. The powder ran fine and alive. "It bites the nose. That's good," he added. They shook hands. The sack went onto Jory's sled with a clumsy grace.
Second: the ironmonger, for an iron kettle and paddles, and to pick up the hand‑crank fan Ryan had ordered three days ago, a thing whose simplicity he loved: a cylinder with blades, a shaft and a crank, a little gear to keep the spin steady. Murdock ran his heavy hand along the blades' edges and grunted his approval. "You got that fashioned right," he said. "It won't whine if you don't treat it like a saw."
"We'll bolt it to the brick," Ryan said. "Run a short shaft to the flue. It breathes in one direction only. We teach the apprentices to be kind to it. If they're not, I'll have them crank it until their wrists understand."
The ironmonger named a price that was only a little insulting. Murdock turned his head. Ryan met the man's eyes and said the number he'd been willing to pay. They ended in the middle. "You pay on time, I'll make a second fan cheaper," the man said. "Because you'll need two when the first one's out of grease."
"We'll keep it greased," Ryan said.
They walked to the potters for jars — thick, with lips that took cork and a glaze that wouldn't peel. The potter's woman had a practised eye. "Beer jars?" she asked. "Or for gods' tears?" Her mouth held a private joke.
"For soap," Ryan said, honest. "Soft brew. We'll stamp the day and the batch and keep it out of the sun. If your glaze flakes, I'll bring it back and the whole lane will know your name."
Her quick laugh told him she respected the courage. "We don't flake," she said. "But I like your threat." She brought out jars that were honest work — no frills, a neat line where hand met wheel. Sariel wrote the count and a deposit for the corks: small things, but corks are the kind of small thing that ruins a system if you forget them.
They cut through the market's broad lane to the butchers. Men turned lumps of animal heat into lines of trade. The tallow boy met them by a rear gate with the tub Ryan had inspected. "You'll pay for the tub if you split it with heat," the boy said. "My mam will box me if I bring it back warped."
"I'll line it with water and keep the boil below stubborn," Ryan said. "If I split it, Murdock will forge a stronger one and you'll be up on the deal. Don't tell your mam I said that."
The boy laughed like a boy who had put a knife into meat and liked that it answered. He took Ryan's coin and ran.
On the way back they stopped where the dyers' ash pile sat under a lean‑to. Ryan crouched and pinched. The ash rubbed fine and grey and left a ghost of streak on his fingers. He looked for charcoal lumps and found few. He loaded three sacks himself — he liked the feel of ash that would become something — and he marked them with copper tags. He showed the dyer the stamp: twin notches, today's mark, the hour.
"You're taking our good ash," the dyer said. "That costs a loaf."
"You'll get soap for your wrists," Ryan said. "Fairer trade than coin."
The dyer stared a second, then nodded as if he had to work not to smile in public.
Back at the lane, Sariel stood at the gate with a little function that made men's foolishness less likely: she recorded every sack into her ledger, then punched the copper tag twice, once in the public ledger margin, once on the tag itself. The porter from the Temple Quarter — the man who had lent his presence to lesser but necessary facts — had been called; he watched with an even, tired gravity.
"Hour‑mark noted. Pattern noted. I've signed the margin," the porter said, a witness to facts without romance.
Ryan liked that sentence. He liked that it made a shape around chaos.
He took a breath. They had ash, lime, tallow, iron, jars, fan, brick. They had people who would move, not only watch. They had rules. That was a day's wealth.
He looked once at the sky, the way he looked sometimes at the black window in the Space House. He did not pray. He did not open a door he didn't have the right to open. He went inside the half‑built room and picked up a shovel.
02:15 p.m. — The Hidden Room (The Making)
The room had become a real place under their hands. Brick made a ring around a wide iron kettle; the hand crank fan sat on its base, shaft aligned to the flue so the whole thing would breathe in the direction they demanded. The flue rose with the simple dignity of good pipe; the twin filter pots sat like stern judges on its crown. The clay‑lined trough glowed soft. The lye barrel stood on a low lip, stones overlaid with straw in its false bottom, a bung over a pan so the first runnings wouldn't waste.
The new room smelled like work. Wood warmed into coal. Fat skin sang faint when a man's hand lifted a lid. Lime breathed heat into water and said it in a sharp hiss. A dozen little things that weren't magic but almost felt like it.
Ryan posted the rules by the door and read them aloud because rules have more weight when a voice carries them into the room's corners:
Eye‑wash pail on the left; clean water changed each morning. In eyes: water only, and lots of it.
Vinegar jug on the right; for skin splashes, not eyes.
Gloves. Aprons. No bare feet. No hemp cuffs to sop lye.
Lids on the lye barrel. Lye above waist. Dippers hung, not thrown.
No horseplay. If it touches your eyes or skin, shout and move—others help first, blame later.
Children forbidden. Apprentices only with a second person present.
The crank turns slow and even. No spinning to show off.
Murdock snorted softly. "You talk like a sergeant," he said. "Good. I like not burying boys."
They set the lye leach in motion. Marn's sacks of ash went into the barrel like a soft riverbank; Ryan tamped them gently and levelled them so water would pass through wood evenly, not make a channel, not run like a fool.
"Hot water," he said. Jory brought buckets, careful not to slop them onto the floor; the lip would catch it but old habits save trouble. Ryan poured. The first pass ran clear with a ghost of air in it. He poured it back over. The second run took colour: a pale tea brown, a smell like wet hearth.
He caught the lye in a glazed tub and set an egg in it — a fresh egg from the potter woman's coop, still with a feather on the shell like a punctuation mark. The egg sank slow and then floated, barely, the top showing a circle the size of a coin.
"Strong enough," he said. "We'll strengthen what we can. The rest is causticising."
He carried the tub to the clay trough. Slaking lime is a thing a man should see once to understand that rock can hold a sun. The powder took water and hissed — a dry animal given a drink and angry at the kindness. Heat rose. The slurry thickened. They stood back for a beat because the sound commanded respect. Then it settled to a bright milk.
"Stir," Ryan said to the apprentice with the paddle. "Slow. It will spit if you go too quick." The boy worked with a concentration that Ryan liked; he didn't want boys who looked at the door more than the work.
They mixed the potash lye into the slaked lime slurry and stirred. It felt less like a recipe than a way of listening: the way the paddle met resistance, the way the milkiness changed.
"Let it sit," Ryan said. "The lime grabs the carbonate. The KOH rides the water. We let the lime settle. We ladle the clear liquor. That's our bite."
He bent to a side dish of demonstration: the feather test — a curiosity he'd read about that he didn't trust but would show once because an old world has its ways. He dropped a single hair‑thin piece into the leach runnings; it softened and frayed. He showed the apprentice. "Some folk use this," he said. "We won't make a habit. It lies sometimes. The egg doesn't lie much."
He filtered the clear KOH liquor through linen because clay and ash like to hide in corners. He covered the tub to keep stupid flies out. He set it aside like a man tucking a tool up safe.
On the other side of the room, the tallow rendering had begun. They went with wet rendering to save the lane from a stink that would win them no friends. They chopped the tallow into inch cubes with a butcher's knife that had made other kinds of work; then they simmered it with water and a crushed pinch of salt to help it separate. As the water warmed, fat turned to pools that shone like clean oil. Scum rose. They skimmed with a ladle and wiped the scum onto a plate and threw it to the side because Ryan knew the cost of being precious: save what matters, not every thing that can burn.
He kept the heat even because he had learned, in coding and in fire, that things go wrong fastest when you slam a system too hard. The hand crank fan turned slow and obedient, flue warm and filters breathing. Murdock put his palm near the flue mouth and nodded. "It pulls," he said. "Good."
Ryan took a moment to test his own procedure against his own weakness. He leaned too near the kettle, felt a lick of hot fat and a drop landed on his wrist and leapt off. He did not flinch
Ryan spent 3 days in total to do it right — Day 1 make the first batch, Day 2 rest and test, Day 3 share and standardize.