Cassian Carried the Heaviest Tile Box on the Roof

Cassian was on the roof holding the heaviest box of tiles. While he swapped out three of them himself, the north gate supply cart waited for the order to depart. Under the roof, the rain had stopped. Outside the gate, two cartloads of firewood were half a day late.

On the morning of the twenty third day, the water stain on the nursery ceiling had spread wider.

The night rain had stopped, but water pooled in the roof valley had begun seeping into the walls. Doran brought two guild members who had finished the south gate shutter work, along with one nonguild apprentice. Today's order was stripping the wet tiles, checking the rotted supports, laying temporary tarps, and replacing with dry tiles.

Before work began, Cassian had to check the supply board. Two cartloads of firewood for the north gate, one box of medicine for the infirmary, a handoff sled for the quarry application, and the outer ring's food distribution. As a former war supply officer, he alone could see the departure order and the escort numbers all at once.

Orsen had left change conditions marked with question marks beside four lines. When north gate mud rose above half a boot. When the infirmary's fever medicine dropped below one hour's supply. When the quarry handoff driver ran past noon. When outer ring households preparing rations needed to evacuate.

"When the scout comes back, please reset the order."

Cassian answered as he pulled on his gloves.

"The existing order stands. Medicine, firewood, sled, food."

"If the mud gets deep, the medicine cart falls behind first."

"Report it when that happens."

"What if the regent is on the roof?"

Cassian glanced toward the ladder.

"I'll be down within the hour."

That promise was never written into any shift roster. All Orsen had left was a procedure that waited for Cassian's return, not a time.

But the moment they lifted the first tile, the rotted support underneath was exposed.

"This has to be finished today."

Doran pressed a finger into the wet grain of the wood.

"We'll put up a temporary tarp and push it to the day shift. The support needs to be remeasured and cut fresh."

"If it rains again, the nursery wall comes down."

"That's what the tarp is for."

"It'll tear in the wind."

Cassian tightened his gloves and set his foot on the ladder.

Doran blocked him.

"You're not assigned to this work."

"It's my house and I know the risk."

"The supply board is your assignment too."

"The departure sheet is already written."

"The change approval line is still blank."

The north gate road shifted by the hour with the thaw mud. Whether the firewood cart or the medicine cart went first had to change based on field reports. Cassian tried to hand the board over to his supply deputy, Orsen.

"Carry out the existing order."

Orsen asked.

"If the firewood cart gets stuck on the north gate slope, where do we reroute the medicine cart?"

"Keep the west road closed. Detour through the quarry."

"That overlaps with the quarry handoff sled."

Cassian looked up at the roof. A guild member lifted the rotted support to show him, and water dripped down again.

"I'll come down and check it myself."

He climbed the ladder.

Serena was inside the nursery recording the water paths and the labor hours. When she heard Cassian had gone up to the roof, she didn't chase after him right away. First she checked the assignment line on the supply board. There was no listed substitute approver under Cassian's name.

"Mr. Orsen, how many decisions are pending right now?"

"Four. Firewood cart order, medicine escort, quarry handoff timing, outer ring food ration amount."

"What's the range you're authorized to approve?"

"Only carrying out the existing order. Any change needs the regent's signature."

Serena couldn't sign in Cassian's place. After her conflict of interest disclosure, her own unilateral approvals were restricted too.

"Log the cost of each delay and apply the field halt criteria first."

Orsen didn't send off the firewood cart. It would wait until the scout returned from the north gate slope. Medicine was the priority candidate since the infirmary's stock had only an hour left. The quarry sled needed to be handed off before noon because of the application deadline. Food had a full day's leeway.

Up on the roof, Cassian held the heaviest box of tiles. While a guild member measured the width of the support, he kept the box from sliding. His body was actually useful up there. Less water dripped through, too.

The tile box had four handles meant for two people to carry. Cassian said the roof was too narrow and took the lower two handles alone. When the apprentice tried to support the upper end, Cassian sent him back down, saying there was no room to stand.

"I just have to hold it while the support gets measured."

Doran fitted the new support in place, then pulled it back out.

"It's an inch short. We have to cut it again at the workshop."

"Patch it with the leftover boards."

"If we patch wet grain, it'll split with the next rain."

Cassian kept holding the box and waited. The one hour promise ended the instant one support turned out too short. No one had ordered him to keep holding it, but since he didn't put it down, everyone else moved as if his weight there was a given.

Meanwhile, decisions kept piling up on the supply board below.

Doran spoke from the edge of the roof.

"Put the box down."

"Just until the support goes in."

"You've been saying that for an hour."

"I'm saving the need for one more pair of hands."

"No. You're using a regent as a tile support."

Cassian's face hardened.

"If I step away, a guild member steps in. That's one more paid worker needed."

"How many people are standing around waiting because you stepped out of supply command?"

Doran pointed downward. Orsen, two drivers, three soldiers, the quarry handoff worker, four firewood cart hands. All of them were standing in front of the supply board, waiting on the next order.

"Because of the one pair of hands you saved on the roof, eleven pairs of hands down there have stopped."

Cassian didn't let go of the box.

"I gave Orsen an order."

"Only to follow the existing order. The road changed and you never gave him the authority to change it."

"Military supply needs a single line of command."

"If that line of command is standing on a roof, the line is broken."

What Doran said wasn't admiration meant to take Serena's side. His own guild had once stopped moving because of a monopoly on skilled hands. That was why he recognized it so precisely.

"Heroic labor is fast. But it leaves empty the work only you're supposed to be doing."

Cassian remembered the moments during the war when he'd lifted broken carts himself to clear the road. If he stayed at command, his men got hurt. If he ran to the field, reports came late. Back then, he could erase a late report from the victory numbers. Now the public board didn't erase anything.

Below, a bell rang twice. The signal to halt the medicine cart's departure.

Orsen shouted.

"The infirmary's stock is down to half an hour! We need approval for a change!"

Cassian tried to hand the tile box off to a guild member. The moment his hands left it, the box tilted. The apprentice tried to catch it and slipped.

Doran shoved a wedge in first.

"Don't let go all at once. If it falls during a handoff, that's not a handoff."

Cassian caught his breath and lowered the box onto the wedge. He didn't take his hands off until two guild members had gripped both handles.

"Please switch with me."

The words he'd learned during the repairs in chapter sixteen came out again.

Doran didn't praise him for it.

"Get down. I'm in charge here."

Cassian came down the ladder. Wet dirt clung to his gloves and his right hand trembled slightly. Serena didn't take his hand to tend to it. She opened the supply board.

"Four pending decisions, current delay one hour."

Cassian sent the medicine cart first. Before the north gate scout returned, the firewood cart would split off and move separately to the quarry fork. The application handoff sled was small enough to pass first along the road where snow still remained. Food distribution was pushed to the afternoon, and the receiving households were notified of the time change.

The order took three sentences, but the delay didn't disappear. The medicine arrived an hour later than scheduled. The two firewood carts came half a day late, forcing the common hall to use one bundle of its reserve early. The quarry driver received extra waiting wages.

Two households waiting for outer ring food distribution never received notice of the time change. Sana, the receiving household verifier, came all the way to the north gate herself to protest.

"You can delay it. You can't leave people standing in front of an empty storehouse."

Orsen said.

"The notice approval was also tied to the regent's signature."

Cassian started to say the notice was a minor thing, then stopped. In the two households that had waited, no one had been free to watch the children, so one person from each had missed a shift. The empty line on the supply board had spread into caregiving hours again.

He added the two hours of household waiting and the two missed shifts to the loss column as well.

Cassian was about to write only "north gate mud" in the column for cause of supply delay, but he stopped his pen.

"Supply commander took on roof work directly, creating a gap in change approval."

He attached his own name to it.

Doran came down from the roof in the afternoon. The tarp and two new supports had gone in, and the full tile replacement was left for the next day.

"You didn't finish," Cassian said.

"I finished today's scope. Stopping the rain, two rotted supports, next assignee named."

"If I'd stayed the whole time, we'd have gotten to the tiles."

"Then supply would have been even later."

Cassian had no answer for that.

Serena didn't record the supply gap as a character flaw belonging to Cassian alone. It was also a design problem, with change authority tied to one single person. She held an open meeting on how much to delegate to Orsen.

Doran spoke first.

"For a closed road and medicine stock under half an hour, the deputy should be able to change the order himself."

Cassian objected.

"Swapping firewood and medicine changes the barrier's output too."

"That's exactly why you write the conditions in numbers. Not by whatever's in your head."

Serena divided supply change authority into three tiers. For medicine stock under one hour, road closures, or injuries, the deputy could change immediately and log it afterward. For swapping the order between firewood and a day's food supply, the change required checking with the driver and the receiving household first. For military redeployment, joint approval was needed from Cassian and a resident verifier.

"It has to keep running even when I'm not there," Cassian finally said.

Doran answered.

"That's exactly what makes it less dangerous for you to go up on a roof."

"That's not permission to go up again."

"I know. This isn't about the nail. It's about the support."

Cassian signed the deputy authority chart. Orsen also wrote down the range he'd accept and the conditions under which he'd refuse. Sana took on the role of resident verifier, but her authority was limited to confirming whether receiving households had been notified, not to turning a supply decision into approval.

Noah watched the roof tarp from the small workshop window. Even after hearing that Cassian had fixed it himself, he didn't offer praise.

"Why was the firewood late?"

Cassian didn't turn it into a story about the roof.

"I left the supply board empty."

"And next time?"

"Orsen changes things within the conditions, and I only join in on decisions about military deployment."

"Who does the roof?"

"Doran and the guild."

Noah didn't write that answer down on his observation chart. Doran's name was already on the repair assignment sheet for his own room.

Toward evening, the dripping on the roof stopped. The infirmary's medicine arrived late, and the firewood reserve was down one bundle.

Tile dirt still clung to Cassian's gloves. On the supply board, the one pair of hands he'd saved on the roof was written down alongside the eleven pairs of hands that had stopped below.

The next day, Doran wrote his own name and two apprentices' names at the top of the roof shift roster. Cassian's name wasn't on it.

Instead, in the column for confirming north gate supply changes, Orsen's name and Cassian's name were written in the same size.