Demesne

On consideration, Lori decided that they would place the shelter in Shanalorre's fourth proposed site, where it would be most convenient to construct. While not as central or convenient for reaching current work sites as the other proposals, all that mattered to her was how easy it was to build. Its occupants getting to work or wherever else was not her problem. Or at least, only getting to her work was the only problem she cared about.

The orientation of the site in question mildly annoyed her—the marked plot was not parallel to any of the major walkways being packed down by constant foot traffic, nor were any of its edges facing either the dome, the center, the river, or the dining hall, and was of a mind to fix that until Shanalorre explained that it had been positioned so that the most common prevailing wind in the winter would be striking the back of the structure and not the entrance.

Placated with a good reason for the orientation, Lori left it alone, instead moving on to preparations. The topsoil of the site would be excavated to a depth of forty yustri before she set down the foundation, both for stability and to preserve the soil for use. Rian tried to call it four stri, but Lori put her foot down on such silliness. No one actually used stri as a unit of measure for anything.

"That's a lot of soil," Rian commented about the marked site as the brat walked past, no longer carrying a seel but with some seel blood on a big wet stain on her dress where she had tried to wash it away. "Is that going to be for new farming terraces, or are we setting it aside for the dragon shelter's own farm?"

"It's a bit early to be planning that," Lori said, although to be honest she hadn't really given the matter any thought. Though now that she was considering the matter, it seemed imprudent to build a dungeon without having the core inside it to protect it. "Expand the dragon shelter first, attempt further additions to it later."

Once the site was decided upon—Rian had estimated it would take two days at most, although that was once actual work began and depending on how many people would be doing the work—Lori led the way to the dragon shelter to assess how much the main passageway could be expanded. The doors were currently wide open, the white Iridescence-alloyed copper no longer so gleaming as they had once been. The doors together were two paces wide, which was more than wide enough for two people side by side if they were each carrying something large, or three if they weren't. While this made bringing in barrels of water, removing latrine waste, and hauling out the mining tailings easier, in the event of a dragon it would make getting people inside very difficult.

Inside, the passageway narrowed slightly due to the piping along the wall that brought fresh air in from outside, and when a dragon came it would be even narrower since there would be little planters along the passageway full of what crops that could be transplanted from their fields to preserve them from the dragon. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be done for the fruit trees outside the dome, but luckily those had managed to survive through the previous dragons so far. Perhaps the new wizards present could add measures to ensure they would not need to rely on luck.

The passage would definitely need to be expanded, and that meant more reinforcements and supports to keep the ceiling from collapsing, more ventilation, more lighting…

"We will need to expand the passageway to three paces," Lori declared. "With the passageway's current close confines, given the number of additional settlers, it is almost certain that in the event of evacuation to the dragon shelter there will be an altercation that will obstruct the way."

"It doesn't necessarily have to be someone's fault," Rian argued. "Sometimes accidents happen. It's not like someone wants to start a fight in the middle of a life and death—actually, let's move on." He held his rock with the lightwisps anchored to it in one hand. The gesture wasn't actually needed, since Lori had a binding of lightwisps anchored to her staff that shone with a bright light, but apparently he felt that was insufficient, or simply too diffuse. "We're going to need a way to keep people from pissing on every random wall they find when they're in here, since there will be so many people all the latrines being occupied at the same time will be inevitable."

Lori twitched at the words, and gave her lord a disgusted look.

He noticed and looked vaguely apologetic as he shrugged. "Sorry, but these are the problems that will need to be dealt with. These are all new people, and they still don't know how we do things and what is and isn't allowed."

"Didn't you inform them I have a law against public urination?" Lori said, frowning.

"Yes, and I have a feeling we're going to need to perform the beatings the law specifies," Rian said. "And is now a good time to ask how applicable they are to children?"

That made Lori stopped in the middle of the passageway, and it took Rian a couple of steps before he realized she had done so.

"Your Bindership?" he said.

"Why would we need to apply that law towards children?" she said.

"Because children are among the most common public urinators in a demesne, second only to male former militia," Shanalorre said. "Preventing them from breaking the law in Lorian Demesne was only possible because I was always in their company. I am told that Yllian did not need to apply the law to any of the children because the public examples he made of others breaking the law was able to discourage them. With these new arrivals, the law will inevitably be broken by adults and children both who have not yet seen the examples."

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"And while I know you like to indulge the children, letting them flout one of the few laws you have in place is going to set a terrible prece—example," Rian added. "As your lord who takes care of 'dealing with people' matters, I have to say that laws that aren't applied equally to everyone are laws that breed resentment. Not to mention that the children will grow up thinking that they don't need to follow your laws because they didn't need to when they were younger. If nothing else, some sort of punishment that you'd be willing to inflict on children needs to be amended into that law."

"… we'll discuss it later," Lori said. "Right now, let's focus on this matter."

Without waiting for an answer, she kept walking, and they were forced to follow. It was a nicely symbolic physical metaphor.

The main shelter proper was merely a single large room, without the niches she had built in her own Dungeon. There was a kitchen area in one corner for preparing food, a wash basin in another corner that used bindings to continually recover the wash water for reuse, and a doorway that led to a crude bathing area. Water fell to the floor, it was pulled by a binding to a pipe, the water was distilled at the pipe, sent up as vapor, and condensed at the other end. She'd also used this room to store water in the form of ice, but if they had a reservoir that would be unnecessary.

"Have the Horotracts assess how much space there is to expand, then have the Whisperers begin excavating outwards until they can expand all rooms by four paces in that direction, or they reach four paces from the outside surface of the hill, whichever comes first," Lori said. "Make sure they know what copper ore in the rock looks likes so they can separate it for refinement, but the priority is the excavation."

"That's after expanding the mine passageway, right?" Rian said, and Lori nodded. "Understood. Although how are we going to support the roof of the passage? And this excavation, for that matter?" He patted the far wall Lori had indicated as the direction of expansion. "We don't know if those Whispers know how to safely excavate a mine like this, so I'm not sure they'll know to leave supports or the need for beams to hold the ceiling up."

"I will inform them," Shanalorre said. She titled her head. "It might be best to have them sleep and live in the expanded portions of the dragon shelter while they work. This will instill them with sufficient motivation to conduct the work in a manner that will not cause the ceiling to collapse."

Rian stared at Shanalorre with his mouth hanging open, no doubt impressed at her well-thought-out and logical suggestion. Lori nodded to show her own approval. "Excellent idea. This will also motivate them to maintain the bindings in the dragon shelter to keep themselves comfortable. See to it."

"Isn't that really unsafe?" Rian said.

"Only if they insist on doing it incorrectly and dangerously," Lori said. "If they excavate the stone properly, they will be perfectly safe."

"…perhaps if you left written instructions as to how they're supposed to excavate safely?" Rian said. "You know, since they're probably woefully ignorant of the Binder Lori-approved method of doing so? After all, you don't want to be the kind of person who hires someone and expects them to do something they've never been trained in without telling them how to do it, do you? Those people are the worst."

For an endless moment, Lori was torn between her desire to be exactly that kind of person and her raging, burning loathing of being in that kind of person's power. Loathing won, and she sighed. "I'll draft some directions for them to follow," she said resignedly.

"I'm sure they'll appreciate knowing the safest way to do what's being asked of them," Rian said.

––––––––––––––––––

When they finally emerged from the mine, Lori saw the Coldhold coming from downstream, the visible portions of it full of children, although there were a couple of adults as well—that is, adults who were not part of the boat's normal group of operators. The adults seemed occupied with pulling the children back from the boat's railings, likely worried they'll fall in.

Rian raised a hand to shade his eyes as he peered at the boat. "I don't think those two are any of the wizards we've met," he said, causing Lori to halt and shuffled backwards to put Rian between her and the boat. "Shana—"

"Binder Shanalorre," Shanalorre corrected.

"—Binder Shanalorre, do you recognize either of them? Also, why are you holding the back of my shirt, your Bindership?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Rian."

"Oh, you're using me as a human shield again. A little warning next time, if you'd done that when we were moving downhill I might have fallen and pulled you with me."

"…noted."

"Neither of them are wizards," Shanalorre said. "All wizards are remaining at the edge as I ordered. This is the last batch of children, although there seems to be some amount of material left behind. I believe they are tents and personal effects."

"We should probably have them build a dock on that side of the river," Rian said thoughtfully. "Make it safer to cross the river for them. The other river is a bit more turbulent than ours, so even though it has a place to ford we don't really go to the other side a lot. If we did, hunting the beasts there would be easier. With the number of people we're going to have, we'll finally be able to spare a dozen to go hunting beasts and bring back meat that way."

"Arrange it with Yllian," Lori said. "Or you could have—" Her hand reached down to her belt pouch out of habit, and she looked down in confusion as her fingers touched an unfamiliar shape. Grumbling, she pulled off the bead pouch from her belt and awkwardly opened it, then felt around inside for the right rock. "—Lidzuga put something together."

"Weren't we going to have him do maintenance on all the leather in the demesne?" Rian said.

"That too."

"Isn't that a lot of work…?"

Lori shrugged indifferently. "He needs to earn his days off."

"…weren't you going to let him and his sister move to Lorian, though?"

"They haven't moved yet."

Rian sighed for some reason.

Lori began to head down to the docks, where she could see a group of children were standing around. Best she meet her new responsibilities.