I Built This City Chapter 45: Chapter 45

Read chapter 45 of I Built This City by ThePudding on NovelPedia.

Carpenter Ellen Breath fogged in the air as Ellen waited, her cloak wrapped tightly around her. They’d run out of pre-bought ones, but Hunter’s pelts were good enough that they made a serviceable cloak. It was plenty warm enough, but harder to draw tight at the hood, and much more difficult to clean and dry after a sustained downpour. In the relatively dry, irregular snowfall of winter the fur cloaks were much more valuable than in the autumn. Pauley stood beside her and looked over the hastily-constructed town. In truth, they only had one and a half functional buildings, but Ellen was proud of what they’d done… and thus far the large mill owner hadn’t said anything about them. He was only watching as no less than five other Ellens were hard at work attempting to make the smithy and smelter more functional. Mason and Apprentice were restoring the smelter, keeping a small and gentle heat going with a fire inside while Mason did minor repairs to the lining. Smith was still organizing the tools, and Hunter was fitting some of the hides on the roof while Merchant watched, ready to catch should another unfortunate fall occur. “Impressive job on the longhouse,” Pauley finally said, giving a grudging nod of appreciation. “I can see it still needs a little work in the spring, but I imagine it’s pretty comfortable right now. And whatever you have cooking in there smells good.” “No idea what it is tonight,” Ellen admitted. She took a sniff, but in the cold it was hard to get a clear idea of what was cooking. Potatoes, herbs, and some kind of meat… she did have a clue, after all. “Rabbit stew I think. Healer does the cooking nowadays. I think Village is better, but I’m pretty sure she cheated and took a Skill Enhancer.” Pauley shook his head and trudged further forward, aiming for the pile of firewood under the small roof that Ellen had thrown together. He cursed and jerked back as a ginger cat bolted out from behind it, then darted around the corner of the crumbling half-wall to vanish into a bolt hole. “Sorry about that,” Ellen apologized. “A lot of cats around. They sneak into the house when they can. We let a few in now and then… keeps the rodents under control.” The man scratched at his beard, huffing another breath as he tried to keep warm and look everything over. “This firewood isn’t going to be ready for a while. And are you sure you want to get a smithy up and running? I hear there’s an iron mine nearby, but uh…” He stared. “I was going to say something about manpower, but maybe that’s not what you’re missing.” “None of us know how to mine,” Merchant admitted, raising her voice to be heard more clearly. “But we don’t need much. We’ll figure something out. Maybe we can import some ingots from Justeen or something until we get the mine operational.” “Now hold on a minute,” Pauley protested. “Look… I get that this is tempting, but you have to be careful. Running a mine is a lot of work, and dangerous sometimes. Not only that, but the waste it makes will make our life downriver pretty nasty if you don’t take care of it.” Hunter peeked over the edge of the half-finished roof. “He’s right, I remember hearing something about that. Also hi, Pauley! Thanks for taking care of things when I died, I’m sure it was a mess.” Pauley stared for a moment, then grumbled, “Sure, no problem.” Ellen watched him shiver as Hunter got back to work, and she patted the man’s arm… then tucked her hand back into her cloak. She wasn’t working like the others right now, and it was too cold to keep her hands outside her cloak. “We’ve gotten used to it, but I’m sure it’s strange to someone who isn’t… me.” Ellen chuckled softly. “We’ll be careful, I seem to remember hearing something like what Hunter said, too. So it was probably said before we split. We all know it then.” Looking back at her, Pauley nodded, then ran his gaze across the five other Ellens working. “I heard about it, but wasn’t sure what to believe until now. Does it hurt? Do you have any strange