There was also the fact that the current standard of engineering made identical reproduction impossible. As long as human hands were involved in the creation of a product, there would be margins of error—and enough of those stacking up could result in considerable differences in measurement.
This was evidenced by the current problem on our hands: The intelligence agents who’d surveyed the area, Joel de Bourgault-Ducoudray, who’d drafted the plans, and Fabio, who’d overseen the actual construction, had all used their own, ever so slightly different measuring devices.
Now, that all should have given you a pretty good idea of why there had been measurement errors in the first place. On to the next issue: Quite frankly, being fastidious about such measurements was a pain in the ass. Despite the fact that it all added up, most people would simply shrug it off, assuming it would all work out in the end. And indeed, that was exactly what the laborers had done. Rather than go to all that trouble, they had simply made the measurements with their own bodies.
Of course the final product would be off, if that was what they’d done!
Still, that wasn’t their fault, but mine. I hadn’t supplied them with the measuring devices they’d needed. Yet another example of me failing to adapt to this world’s common sense.
Ugh, god damn it. I hadn’t even considered that this would be a potential pitfall. To make matters worse, I had told Fabio that I’d leave the on-site details to him. My intention had been to provide him with a degree of flexibility, but his loyalty and diligence had caused him to personally ensure that every mistaken measurement was fixed.
Perhaps you could call this a breakdown in communication. I, as the deviser of the Chelán Hill encampment, had failed to anticipate the measuring errors that would occur. Joel de Bourgault-Ducoudray, the designer of the encampment, had assumed that the construction workers would naturally compensate for those errors, because in his experience, that was common practice. Yet Fabio, out of his loyalty to me, had attempted to ensure that the fortifications were as accurate as possible to the plans—the plans that differed from the reality on-site. Hence why the work schedule had experienced delays.
But the problems didn’t end there. You see, Joel de Bourgault-Ducoudray, who had drafted up the base design for the defenses, had a history. I’d been briefed on some of it, such as how, unwilling to be dragged into the Three Houses Coup, he’d renounced his rank of general and gone to the Gotiroir.
What I hadn’t known—and how the hell could I possibly have known?—was that Joel de Bourgault-Ducoudray had been on friendly terms with House Ramitead, whose marquess at the time had been counting on his assistance. When the former general had gone into seclusion, the marquess’s vassals had seen that as him abandoning them and their liege lord, and the survivors of the coup still held a grudge to this day.
In a stroke of cosmic mischief, it turned out that Fabio was completely unaware of this grudge. After all, he’d been nothing more than a boy at the time of the coup, and hadn’t even been from the main house’s line at that. He’d only learned about it some time after arriving at Chelán Hill, so of course he hadn’t been able to tell me about it.
Fabio’s subordinates had initially been energetic about their work; after all, it was my plan, and they felt indebted to me. However, there had been a blatant drop in their efficiency once they learned that Joel de Bourgault-Ducoudray was involved.
Say something sooner, damn it! God!
As for Deputy General Bourgault-Ducoudray himself, it seemed that he was completely oblivious about the matter. Part of me wondered whether the fact he hadn’t qualified to be considered one of the Twin Champions wasn’t just because he was a foreigner, but because of his inability to read a room too.
That still left one more problem. Fabio had apparently reported the delays via one of the messengers we dispatched to Chelán Hill at regular intervals. The thing was, we’d apparently missed each other, and the messenger was currently back in the imperial capital.
That actually wasn’t the worst possible outcome, in this regard. The worst outcome would’ve been the enemy capturing the messenger and finding out about the delays. From there, it would’ve been easy for them to figure out the weak point of our fortifications. Concerned about the risk this posed, Deflotte had brought this information to Count Palatine Vodedt straightaway. The spymaster, grasping the gravity of the situation, had immediately left to find the messenger, without even pausing to give me notice. That was why he hadn’t been present that night.
Now, as for why the messenger had missed us, it was because he wasn’t an intelligence agent, but an ordinary bureaucrat. I’d thought it would be better to send someone with the bare minimum knowledge of construction work, but evidently that had backfired. It wasn’t that he’d slacked off on the job or betrayed us—it was that we’d taken strict measures to ensure that the only people currently working in the imperial court were those who hadn’t been in the pockets of Raul and Agincarl. However, that meant we’d been left with only those stubborn enough to resist the former dukes, or those incompetent enough that the former dukes hadn’t wanted them to begin with.
And in this case, we’d ended up with an incompetent one. The bureaucrat had listened to the report, failed to notice anything was wrong, and headed back to the capital with no sense of urgency, which explained his lateness and choice of a different route. In fairness, the blunder could also be partially attributed to my inattentiveness. Though it wasn’t as if the Chancellor or Minister of Ceremony had left me performance evaluations for the imperial demesne’s bureaucrats either.
Fabio was partially at fault too for not sending multiple messengers, but I didn’t want to be too harsh on him—even Marshal Generals of France could make that mistake. I’d inform Fabio about this later via Timona, so that he wouldn’t make the same blunder again in the future.