Demesne

Lolilyuri retired back to Lori's Boat, keeping it anchored but pushing it into the water so as not to damage it when she climbed on. She sat next to the water jet and began imbuing more magic into it for the trip back. Her raincoat's hood had been draped on the end of an oar and the oar held in front of her while she leaned back on the hem, using that as an improvised shade. Her staff lay across her knee, the ash catch of her coalcharm pointed down to keep the boat from accidentally catching fire. It sufficed, and there was enough wind that she didn't feel hot. So she just sat there, imbued, and thought.

She closed her eyes and felt for her demesne. It was there, in the back of her mind, an awareness of distant wisps like a part of herself. She traced the feeling, of the long stream of waterwisps that was the river, the enormous half sphere of earthwisps that was the land, the complementing half-sphere of airwisps that was the sky above. She was even aware, to some degree, of the waterwisps on the waterjet, which had come from her demesne and had been imbued there, maintaining her claim. Now that her business was done here, she really wanted to get back and return to properly building things. She still needed to expand her dungeon for the next time a dragon appeared, get proper shelters up for all her new people– hopefully no one broke any laws while she was gone– get food stores ready for winter…

Lori wanted to go home.

She just sat there, falling into the state of mindlessness she'd perfected while working many, many, many wisp-imbuing jobs to pay for school and school supplies, and the occasional silence bribe when she'd been caught clubbing people for reference books in the library. Breathing in magic, passing it through her, imbuing. Over and over and over as the world and the light changed around her…

"Lori, are you asleep or are you ignoring me?"

Lori blinked, her imbuing tapering off as she turned towards the voice. Rian was standing next to the boat, which had been pulled closer to shore, looking a little tired. "Are you done?" she said.

"Mostly," he sighed. "I think one of us has to stay here to keep making arrangements while you ferry the first group back to Lorian, and then come back."

Lori stiffened. "Come back?" she said.

"Well, yeah," Rian said. "It's not like you can put some kind of switch on the water jet to make it shut off, right?" He frowned. "Can you? Because otherwise the thing would be on all night and we'd have to row back upriver. So you'll need to come back with the boat when we pick up the rest of them…"

Rian cut off, staring at her. "Are you all right?" he said.

"Of course I am," Lori said, expertly hiding her feelings about needing to leave her demesne again just for some stupid, pointless people.

Rian gave her an intent look. "How about I tell them we'll come back in seven days?" he said. "Since you probably have lots of responsibilities and things to build, and will need time to recover from the trip."

"I have no objections to that," Lori said, expertly hiding her relief. "But why seven days? Why not just a week?"

"Long enough to rest, short enough to feel reasonable," Rian said. "And it gives you time to recover from this little misadventure. We won't be able to bring too many people with us anyway, since right now the barge–"

"Lori's Boat," Lori corrected graciously.

Rian rolled his eyes. "The egotistical boat will be full of supplies and isn't very stable. This way I can have our carpenters make a stabilizer outrigger, and on the next trip we'll go with less people so we can carry more passengers. I made sure to tell them they can't bring any furniture and any big, heavy things, but I have a feeling they'll try to get them on anyway, so tomorrow we'll be going back with a formerly-injured child and his mother, get them back with us since they don't have a lot of stuff."

Lori made an apathetic sound. "Noted. Is that all?"

"It's also almost time for dinner," Rian said. "Shana said she'd be sending us food for tonight's dinner, then tomorrow we need to start helping with the work around the demesne or leave."

"Shanalorre," Lori corrected. "Grem will be coming with us tomorrow. Binder Shanalorre exiled him from River's Fork and passed him to us."

"What are you going to do with him, then?" Rian asked.

"Keep him away from this place, of course. That was the agreement," Lori said.

"And… anything else?" Rian sounded like he was probing for something.

"Why would there be?" Lori tilted her head.

"He did try to kill a child. That’s against at least two of your laws," Rian pointed out.

"It wasn't one of my children," Lori shrugged. "Besides, he's still acting director of the Golden Sweetwood Company. If we want their next group of settlers to come to my demesne, we need him to direct them there instead of here." She waved her hand vaguely around at River's Fork.

"You can't be serious," Rian said flatly.

"As you yourself said, I'm always serious," Lori said.

"He tried to kill a child!" Rian, to his credit, said this in a hiss, obviously not wanting to draw attention.

"Given the circumstances, it's unlikely to be the precedent for future child murder," Lori said. "So the children of my demesne are probably not in danger."

"Why are you making excuses for him? He tried to manipulate you," Rian reminded her, as if she needed it. "Lied to you. Use you to murder someone. Doesn't that at least make you mad? Peeved? Annoyed? Mildly insulted at thinking he could use you for his own ends?"

"Of course." Obviously.

"So why are you just letting him get away with it?" Rian said, sounding exasperated. "You've looked more annoyed at Landoor being stupid than Grem trying to use and manipulate you. You were angrier about Missus Naineb challenging your authority in public. Why aren't you angrier? He tried to use you to hurt someone."

Lori was silent.

"Lori?" Rian pressed.

What could she say? That she'd been thinking of doing exactly as Grem has been suggesting? To kill the Binder and take this place for herself? That she'd been actively looking for who the Binder might be and had planned to kill them as soon as she saw an opportunity?

There was a thud as Rian threw his boots on board, and the boat rocked as he scrambled in after them. Lori blinked in confusion as Rian, the bottom of his trousers wet with river water, sat down in front of her, causing the boat to list from their combined weight.

"Lori, talk to me," he said. "Why aren't you angrier at Grem for trying to use you?"

"I am angry at him," she said.

"If you were, you're being very strange about it," Rian said. "You're usually a lot more vindictive and petty when you're angry. You're treating Landoor worse than Grem, and he's just believed too many stories. Why?"

"I don't want to talk about it," she snapped.

"I figured," Rian said. "But I think you need to."

"What are you, my parents? I said I don't want to talk about it, so stop asking! That's an order!"

Rian was silent, for which Lori was glad. Finally, she could just tell someone to leave a matter alone and they would.

"Why are you equating me with your parents?" he said.

Lori glared at him, but she supposed that was a fair question. "You were nagging. Pressing. Trying to get me to talk when I didn't want to. Just like them."

Rian nodded. "But you didn't want them to."

"No," she nodded curtly.

"Because they wouldn't understand, they weren't you."

Lori nodded again, no longer glaring at him, but merely glaring in his general direction.

"And besides, in the past, when you'd tried to explain your reasoning, to tell them why you did what you did, they ignored what you said, ignored your perfectly reasonable arguments, and tell you how you were wrong. They'd say things like how they understood, but obviously they didn't understand because then they'd tell you what or why you did something was wrong, and you should have done something else, except what they told you was something stupid or irrational or didn't benefit you or had to do with someone else's feelings," Rian continued.

Her head jerked up, glaring at him.

"What? I had parents too, you know," he said. He was looking up at the sky, at something over her head. "You know they only do that because they want what's best for you, right? It never seems like it at the time, when they're telling you all the wrong things you did and how they'd have done something else and you can't help thinking they're saying how much better they are than you, but when you let yourself calm down, some part of you knows they just want you to not get hurt, or not get in trouble, or fall into bad habits or bad company."

He brought his gaze down, his expression…tired, for some reason. "You don't want to talk about it. Okay. I'll leave. But I think you can't properly decide what to do with Grem until you think about whatever it is you don't want to talk about and come to some sort of conclusion. It doesn't have to be a conclusion you explain to me, doesn't have to be one I agree with. But it has to be a conclusion you reach. And until you do, I don't think we should bring Grem with us, because I don't trust him, I don't want him in our demesne doing who knows what, I don't want to waste resources on him by putting him in some kind of prison, and I don't want to let him be some sort of wandering danger by letting him loose out in the Iridescence."

They sat in silence at those words. Rian waited expectantly. She said nothing.

He sighed, picked up his boots, and got to his feet.

"I would have killed her."

Rian paused and sat down again.

Lori's head was bowed, and she was staring down at her staff on her lap. "I would have killed her, if she'd been older," she said quietly. "If I'd realized who she was sooner. I was looking for her. I was looking for someone with pale hair, someone related to the doctor." She let out a bitter laugh. "It's ironic. If Grem hadn't attacked as soon as he saw her, if he'd merely confirmed she was the Binder, she might have died like he wanted. I'd have killed her myself."

"Why didn't you?"

She continued to stare at her staff. "I don't know. I suppose I was surprised. By the time I realized who she was, it was too late. We were surrounded, and it was too big a risk to attack."

She had wanted to kill this place's Binder, sight unseen. Back when they'd been an abstract, unknown person, Lolilyuri had wanted to kill them and take this place for her own.

Grem hadn't been manipulating her. Nothing he said had made her want to kill the binder of this place. That desire had been born in her own heart. He'd simply been helping her reach what she already wanted. The path he'd been leading her through was one she'd walked willingly, and only ignorance of who to kill had kept it from being a run.

Rian nodded. "Are you glad you didn’t?"

She glanced at him, but he didn't have that look of smug self-righteousness that sort of question usually came with, like of course the answer would be yes. He seemed to genuinely be asking her.

"I don't know," she said, looking down at her staff again. She still felt that frustration, the want to make this place hers… a part of her wished for another dragon, just so this place would fail as she and Grem believed…

Rian nodded again. "Correct me if I'm wrong," he began, "but it sounds like you don't want to punish Grem severely because you feel it would be somehow hypocritical, that he's being punished for something you wanted to do anyway."

Did she?

"I don't know…" Lori said, her eyes following the wire wrapping.

Rian nodded a third time. "You know what you need?" he said, his voice surprisingly gentle.

She looked up tentatively.

"You need a nice dinner and a good night's sleep," he said. "This is probably not the sort of thing you should force yourself through on an empty stomach."

As if in response to her words, her stomach twinged. She became conscious of how dry her mouth was as she swallowed.

"Come on," Rian said, a little bit of his usual enthusiasm in his voice. "Let's get this box back on land and go back for dinner."

Tentatively, Lori looked up. She nodded.

Food. Yes, food sounded good. And afterwards…

"If it helps, I think you're wrong," Rian said as he pulled at the anchor rope to tug them back closer to land.

A twinge, a feeling of betrayal. She was wrong, he said. He was telling her how she should have done it…

"I don't think you'd have had it in you to kill Shana even if she'd been older," Rian said as the bottom of the boat began to scrape on the short. "You're not like Grem. You both thought about it, but you didn't do it, and you didn't try to make anyone else do it when you found out you didn't have it in you to do it. You're a good person, and you did the right thing, even if you think you just hesitated."

Lori stared at him.

Rian grabbed his boots, leapt over the side and pulled the boat the rest of the way.