The Order for Removing the Shutters

The outer houses' windows let in more wind than glass ever kept out. Doran offered to lend boards, and in exchange demanded union heating priority. Serena told them to start by pulling the shutters off the mansion's empty guest rooms. Kasian, carriage keys in hand, asked whose house would collapse first.

On the morning of the sixth day, three kinds of wood were piled in front of the union warehouse.

Sixteen dry oak boards, nine oiled pine boards, twenty two scrap boards swollen at the edges from water damage. Doran scraped a fingernail across the grain, twice. The dry boards would go to the communal sleeping room's windows, the oiled ones to Bern's house and the widow's house below the north gate, and the scrap wood could be split and used as flooring supports.

The problem was that once all of it went out, the union's twenty one households would have nothing left but scrap wood.

"We do the repairs and we're the ones who end up cold."

Doran drove a nail into the distribution chart in front of Serena. It marked the house that would collapse first.

"We'll lend out the boards and the oil. In exchange, tonight the union households move up one rank in the heat distribution."

"We'll pay the usage fee for the boards and the repair wages," Serena said. "The heat ranking gets set by the house's condition."

"Money can burn in spring for all I care. What we need today is heat."

"If you take that priority, the non union houses fall behind."

"Do the non union people know how to fix a roof?"

Once the words were out, Doran shut his mouth. It was the same habit from yesterday's public hearing, when he'd tried to speak for the union apprentice. He'd calculated that having the skill meant the right to decide belonged to him too.

Mari set a sack of cloth down outside the warehouse door.

"Do hands that know how to fix a house also know how to boil soup?"

"That's a different job."

"Exactly, so don't talk about other people's work like it doesn't exist. If only the union houses get heated tonight, then the union can boil its own soup tonight too."

Doran thought she was threatening him, then looked inside the sack and swallowed his words. It held old bed curtains and thick tablecloths taken from the mansion. Stuffed into window gaps and hung under doors, they could save a board.

"If you hand those out, what about the mansion workers' quarters?"

"Our quarters' share is already set aside. What I brought is what was left over."

"Who decided what was left over?"

"The people who use it did. The head housekeeper, both laundry teams, the kitchen night shift. I didn't wait for the auditor's orders."

Mari held out an itemized list. For each piece of cloth it noted the original room, the house using it now, and the date it would be returned. Not a single item had been given away for free. Even the number of washings and the mending wages were attached.

"Do the same with your boards too, union head Doran. Except don't buy the heat ranking with them."

Doran scraped the dry oak twice, meaning to argue. The grain ran straight. His own terms were crooked.

"The rental fee is a quarter of the wood's value. It gets returned in the same size after the spring thaw. If a nail splits a board while pulling it out, the repaired house and the union split the cost evenly."

Serena asked, "And the repair labor?"

"At union wages. Apprentices log their names and hours separately too."

"And if a non union assistant helps?"

Doran's jaw tightened.

"After one hour of safety training, they get assistant wages. They don't go up on the roof."

Mari said,

"Log the name of whoever spends that hour teaching, too."

"Log that as well and the ledger will weigh more than the boards."

"If the ledger's heavy, just log wages for whoever carries it."

Doran tried not to laugh and snorted through his nose instead. He crossed out the priority demand with two lines and wrote in new terms: rental fee, return deadline, training hours.

The problem that remained was the mansion.

The unused west guest rooms had twelve full pairs of shutters fitted, oiled oak kept ready in case a noble guest arrived. The two servants wouldn't move when ordered to unscrew them.

"These are royal sealed assets," the old butler said. "Take them off and the window frames will warp, the wallpaper inside will get wet."

Doran pressed a finger against the rotted part under the window frame.

"Wallpaper can be reglued even after it gets wet. Fingers at Bern's house can't be reattached once they fall off."

The butler glared at him.

"How many boards did your union warehouse put in?"

It was a precise question. Doran didn't answer with sixteen.

"Sixteen out of twenty five sound boards. All nine of the oiled ones. The twenty two scrap boards go for flooring supports."

"So you're saying strip the mansion entirely too?"

"No. Starting with the unused rooms. Rooms where people sleep stay as they are."

Doran didn't count the mansion's people as a single block. Two of the servant quarters' windows were actually short on shutters. They decided to remove ten pairs from ten empty guest rooms, sending eight pairs to outlying at risk households and two pairs to the mansion workers' communal sleeping room.

Serena brought a list of silverware to use as collateral. Six remaining silver food covers and four wide trays. Items that, melted down, could become the deposit on spring's coal contract.

"The value will drop," the butler said.

"Keep the shape," Doran said, checking the edge of a tray. "Fit it into a wooden frame without drilling holes and use it as a reflector behind the hearth. Two for the communal sleeping rooms, one for Bern's house, one for the widow's house at the north gate. The covers can weigh down the wind boards under the doors."

"You're using silver as a weight?"

"Even gold is just weight in front of the wind."

Doran had the loss in auction value logged separately in the repair ledger. He didn't pretend a debt disappeared just because it had been put to use in daily life. The butler never signed in the end, but he left his name as witness to the condition of the items.

When the first shutter came off, a long trail of snow powder blew into the empty guest room. The wallpaper would get wet, and the window frame would need refitting in spring. Doran didn't hide that cost. On the same line, he also noted that not a single person's name was attached to that room.

By noon the materials were ready, but there was no cart to move them. Both union carts were out hauling firewood, and of the mansion's three large carriages, one had a broken axle. Of the remaining two, one was for moving patients, and the other was the covered carriage Kasian had reserved for military stockpiles.

In the stable, Kasian kept the key ring hidden in his hand.

"If the north road gets cut off, we'll need a way to move patients into the castle."

"One patient carriage stays," Serena said.

"One carriage can't move twenty three ward patients."

Doran pushed the carriage wheel with his foot. The iron rim was frozen, but the axle was sound.

"If you don't hand this over today, the shutters at Bern's house go up after dark. If a patient comes out of that house, which carriage do you plan to use?"

Kasian's voice dropped.

"The military carriage also carries armor and grain. If it breaks down on the outer road, the castle loses its evacuation capacity too."

"That's why we'll send a union driver with it, and load the wheel repair tools. We won't use soldiers as free labor."

Doran waited for Kasian to offer the most expensive option first. Serena didn't cut in.

Kasian glanced once at the empty stable stall and said,

"The covered carriage goes out. The two small patient sledges stay, and the large patient carriage doesn't move from in front of the ward."

"The driver?" Doran asked.

"One union driver, one of my soldiers. Both get transport wages. The soldier is pulled from tonight's night shift."

"What time does it come back?"

"Before the first bell after sundown. If it's late, leave it at Bern's house and send the people back by sledge."

Kasian handed over the military cover and the carriage key together to Doran. Only one empty iron ring was left on the key chain.

"If it breaks, the union fixes it," Doran said.

"Half comes out of the mansion's transport budget. It was a joint decision."

There was no kindness or confession in that sentence. Just a line dividing up in advance who would bear the loss.

The carriage reached Bern's house and the widow's house at the north gate before sundown. The union apprentice cut the boards to size while two non union assistants held them steady from the ground. Mari nailed the mansion cloth's return slip to the inside of the door. The silver tray pushed heat back into the room from behind the hearth, but it didn't increase the amount of charcoal.

Sana, the widow at the north gate, looked at where the shutter would go and stood blocking the door.

"Don't touch the shelf inside."

Doran tried to take the shelf down, calling it the fastest way. Nailing the support directly into the wall would save half an hour.

"And where am I supposed to put the grain sacks?" Sana asked.

"Just move them to another wall."

"Frost forms on that wall at night. You'll put up the shutter and leave, and tomorrow it's me who has to move them."

Doran set down the nail box. Knowing which house would collapse first didn't mean he knew the flow of life inside it. He explained to the apprentice a different way, attaching the support to the outer window frame instead. It took one more span of board and the work ran half an hour late.

"The extra board comes out of the union's share."

"Why?" Sana asked back. "It only came up because I asked you to protect the shelf."

"It's the cost of not asking the resident's routine before the first estimate. I'll cover it."

Doran wrote his own name in the "estimate revision" column of the public hearing copy. Only then did Sana step away from the door. She didn't thank him, and Doran didn't ask for it.

At Bern's house, a union member about to nail up the cloth nearly got his hand slapped by Mari.

"That cloth gets washed tomorrow and passed on to another house. If you put a hole in it, who's going to mend it?"

"If the wind's getting in, you nail it."

"Attach the loop ties first. The laundry team made them."

Mari didn't hang the cloth herself. She explained the direction of the loop to a young worker from the night laundry team, then let go. The first loop went on backward and the cloth dragged on the floor. Mari's hand shot out, then stopped.

"Again."

The young worker undid the loop and hung it the right way around. It took another half hour, but now there was one more pair of hands who could do the same work if Mari rested tomorrow. Doran logged not just the boards and nails on the repair chart, but the time spent teaching the cloth loops as well.

Before the temperature in Sana's house rose, a union member asked about his own house's order. Doran pointed to the eleventh line on the distribution chart.

"Right after mine."

"Everyone's going to say the union head took our share and gave it to the mansion."

"The mansion gave, and we gave too. What I owe, I'll say at tomorrow's meeting."

He didn't reverse the priority to save face. Instead he wrote down under the chart who had objected.

Doran didn't write the word finished. The window gaps had narrowed, and the temperature needed to be checked over the next two hours. If a shutter hinge sagged, the union would have to come back and fix it, and if the cloth got wet, the mansion laundry team would need to be paid to dry it.

At the top of the night distribution chart, the mansion and the union households no longer came first. It was the two communal sleeping rooms, Bern's house, the widow's house at the north gate, the mansion workers' quarters, and then the union's at risk households, in that order. Doran wrote his own house on the eleventh line.

When the carriage wheels rolled out through the castle gate, only an empty key ring was left in Kasian's hand. Not a single oiled board remained in Doran's warehouse.

Neither of them called what they'd lost a success. Instead, in the ledger, they wrote down first who would check the temperature after sundown, and the sleep neither of them would get back tomorrow.