Demesne

After helping pick the fruit, we left to go back home.

Well, no, of course not. After the children finished picking the fruit from the trees, it still needed to be carried to the food stores in the mine and the Coldhold. As Shana was back on ground level, I could stop keeping an eye on her and help with carrying the baskets of fruit, assisted by Yllian and the other adults Shana was able to gather. The children could probably have carried the baskets themselves—eventually—but Lori would probably consider that putting the children to work, and really there was far less risk of something going wrong if adults did it. The ripest ones would be eaten in the immediate future, with the rest—mostly the micans and goldenbuds—being stored for the winter.

Once the fruits were both stored and loaded into the Coldhold's cargo hold, there were still no replies to any of the mail I had delivered yesterday. Presumably people were still trying to write them. I asked Yllian to handle collecting them for me when they started coming in, and to get the list I asked Kutago to compile for things to buy in Covehold Demesne.

I had us leave before lunch. Partially it was so that we wouldn't have to eat lunch in River's Fork and thus not have to put Yllian and Shana in the position of having to justify why they fed us but didn't feed all their visitors that morning… and partially so I didn't have to be party to any argument about asking their visitors to leave and go eat their own food because the demesne's food stores couldn't afford to feed so many people.

Cowardice? No, of course not, this was delegation! Now that I finally had an underling in Yllian that I could delegate some tasks to, I was going to do so! It had nothing to do with the fact that I wanted to get back to Lorian while Lori was hopefully still working on her lightning thrower.

When we arrived, lunch was well past finished… but fortunately, I had prepared for this contingency!

"Thanks for doing this, Johzi," I said as the cooking pot full of stew that I'd asked her to set aside from lunch was put on the stove to get it hot again, with some water added in to make up for the inevitable evaporation. "I can take care of watching the stew if you need to go."

Johzi gave me a motherly smile. "That's nice of you to offer, Lord Rian, but we'll be getting started on dinner soon, so we'll need space to prepare."

I nodded. "'Get out of your kitchen', understood."

Johzi gave me a smile that was both self-conscious and satisfied as I moved to get out. The crew of the Coldhold and Riz's friends who'd accompanied us to River's Fork all sat at one of the tables closest to the kitchen, and I moved to join them, sitting down next to Riz at one end of the table and pretending to ignore what she and her friends talked about. When she was among her friends, she wasn't very affectionate beyond insisting we sit next to each other, which was probably a militia thing. That meant I only had just now while she was looking at me to talk to her before she got drawn back into the conversation. "So, did you manage to meet the friend you were looking for, Riz?" I asked.

She and her friends had kept near me and Shana without obviously guarding us or carrying their spears around. Given I was still a little unsure as to the disposition of the new arrivals, I thought it was only prudent, and given how close to an altercation things got I felt justified in the measure. And besides, there was always Shana's uncle trying to attack me from behind. However, it was a bit more relaxed than if they'd been accompanying Lori, and Riz had been hoping to run into one of her friends, a woman named Mevt.

"No, but Fran and Yhaiga were there, and they told us that Mevt was with the expedition," Riz said, smiling brightly. It wasn't a nice smile, and in fact was vaguely predatory and implied that this Mevt woman was in trouble, but it made her look very dangerous and beautiful. But that might have just been me.

"Oh, that's nice. Is there anything you need me to do?" I asked.

"No, we'll be fine, Rian," Riz said.

I nodded. "Well, don't forget that you can't make someone suffer if they're dead, and that if you want to make her suffer, the river is right there and it's not freezing." I paused. "But only do that when I'm around, she might drown otherwise."

"Oh, the river!" Riz's friend Mekari said. "That's a thought! That way we don't have to get our hands on a barrel…"

And then they were off, planning some woman's suffering. I trusted Riz enough to take it on faith the woman probably deserved it, and it probably wouldn't reach the level of stabbings, impalement, or dismemberment… although I was fairly certain that the Deadspeakers could handle matters if it reached that point.

Callous? No, of course not. The woman in question wasn't my responsibility yet, and as their lord I would of course support our brave retired militiawomen.

I let the conversation wash over me as I drank from a cup of cold water on the table and ate some of the fruit that Johzi had also set aside for us, which basically meant we were having our meal backwards. On the way here I'd been worried that Lori had been risking killing herself again by experimenting with deadly bindings inside an enclosed room, but to my relief she had been on the dock, a new weapon-like thing in her arms consisting of the blank crossbow stock she'd had the carpenters make for her yesterday afternoon. They must have finished it this morning, because Lori had been able to put a piece of bone on it—likely with Tae's help, and hopefully the woman had forgiven me for trying to push her wife beneath Lori's line of sight—for her to attach her bindings to.

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As if on cue, there was a wet-sounding explosion, and I sighed at missing possibly another stage of development. Food, heat up already!

As Lori's lord, I unfortunately couldn't just take my time enjoying my meal. Well, I could, but it would be irresponsible to do so, and given how seriously Lori took her responsibilities it seemed only right I followed her example… to a point. But that was all right, since I considered it part of my responsibilities to get Lori to rest and not kill herself by working too hard.

What was it with all the Dungeon Binders I knew trying to kill themselves? It wasn't even figurative, Shana had literally tried to kill herself, and Lori certainly went about doing some things with a marked lack of self-preservation instincts, like making bindings that could set the air on fire while in enclosed rooms!

…

Anyway, while I of course participated in the conversation—that was only polite and one of the few entertainments available in Lorian—and I knew better than to rush eating hot stew, I couldn't linger over my meal. Without Shana around, I had to compile the inventory notes that she usually did, and make myself available to people in case they needed anything. There was alsothe most important of my duties, keeping Lori alive. Very important when the demesne only existed because of her, and she had the technical knowledge—and more importantly, experience—about how to build things with Whispering. With winter coming, we would no doubt be building a lot of things in River's Fork to shelter the new arrivals. While Lori didn't care about whether they lived or died now, she would when they officially became part of her demesnes.

…

Well, she'd care about them as much as she did for the people already part of her demesne, which was not at all but everyone was not cared about equally. Except possibly the children, who were not cared about a little less than everyone else, but I honestly wasn't sure how Lori would react when they started getting too old to be considered children.

And in this instance, trying to keep her alive meant helping her with her new binding for making lightning that might be used to kill people. If that meant handling the binding in question to ensure that it was sufficiently safe for her to use… well, it was probably very dangerous, but as her lord it was my duty to take these risks on her behalf to keep her safe.

Lori was still on the dock, exactly where she had been when we'd arrived, and seemed to be in the middle of making adjustments to her… weapon? Tool? Convenient mounting point? I didn't know enough about magic to know if there was some sort of technical term for this. I should probably ask. There was a dark ball-like shape near the end of the stock furthest from Lori with a long cylindrical protrusion, its non-reflective nature indicating it was darkwisps rather than paint (and the fact we didn't have black paint in the demesne). I noted with disapproval that the thing was perfectly centered along the top of the stock, and in doing so perfectly blocked her line of sight. While I understood her desire for both symmetry and perfection, she really should have realized the problem.

It was stupid things like this that reminded me so much of my sister.

"Your Bindership," I greeted from the foot of the stairs to the dock, because Lori didn't like it when people snuck up on her. I waited until she turned to glance at me before starting to walk towards her again. "Is there some sort of technical term for that… uh, wooden thing you're using for your binding?"

She gave me a flat look, but fortunately she felt in a mood to provide me with exposition. "Strictly speaking, this is only an anchoring point," she said, most of her attention on whatever work she was doing. "However, in the workshops I used to work in, something like this is commonly known as a jig, as it's used to hold and guide bindings."

I nodded. "Do you need me to take notes for anything?"

That made Lori pause, and for a brief moment she looked vaguely guilty. "Th-that won't be necessary," she said, "I will draw the flow diagram for the binding myself once I am assured of its efficacy."

"Ah. How is the efficacy, by the way? Is it accurate? How quickly can you get the lightning out? How many shots can you get out before you run out of lightning and need to make more? How easy is it to aim?" I threw every question that I thought relevant at her, both because I was genuinely curious as to the answer, and to subtly remind her in case there was something which she forgot to consider. There was usually something, even if only because people can't always think of everything.

She paused again while I made a show of checking that the Coldhold was tied up properly so it wouldn't drift off. I actually did end up untying the line and tying it back up again simply because I thought it was a bit too slack, which showed it always paid to double check. "What?" Lori said eventually.

"What?" I repeated.

"What do you mean, 'run out of lightning'?" Lori said.

"Well, I know you have this new lightning ball you've been using for lightning, but I thought that was something like a cup that you filled up with lightning before spilling it out somehow," I said. "So I thought it would empty eventually and you'd need to refill it again, and I was just wondering how many lightning bolts the ball had before you reached that point."

"That's not how the lightning ball binding works," Lori said. "I don't need to fill it with lightningwisps, it fills itself."

"Oh, that's convenient," I said. "How quickly does it fill up with lightning, though? Is there an upper limit to how much lightning it can hold? How does the lightning ball's size affect how much lightning it can hold? Would having more than one lightning ball improve the functionality of your jig?"

Lori gave a me a look that I knew quite well: I had made some kind of valid point, but she obviously didn't like it. She let out a heavy sigh, glaring down at her jig. "Capacity…" she said, sounding both very annoyed and thoughtful. "Yes, I suppose that needs to be tested…"

"Which reminds me, I should probably see about getting my hands on a sand-glass when I next go to Covehold," I mused. "Accurate time-keeping has been one of our major problems, both in experiments and when dragons pass by. What do you think?"

There was a moment as Lori adjusted to the tangent, and another moment when she gave it consideration, before she nodded. "Yes, see what you can get. You are unlikely to get a time-piece on such short notice, but a simple sand glass should be attainable, provided you can ensure it's been calibrated properly."

I nodded, adding 'sand-glasses' to my mental shopping list and repeating 'buy sand-glasses' to myself a few times so I'd remember to write it down later. "I think we should be able to use my heartbeat right now, if only for comparison," I said volunteered. "I doubt that one of the water-clocks will do, the lightning is unlikely to last that long."

Lori grunted, seemingly staring at the binding on her jig—the lightning jig?—although given there was nothing to see, she was probably doing magic things, and as far as I knew all magic things happened in your head. From the way her brow furrowed, there was something she wasn't sure about.

Then she nodded. "Very well. Get some papers, and start taking notes."

I broke into a wide smile.