Demesne

Thirty-five of the forty-six children—according to Shanalorre—that were among the new settlers were waiting in a group near the docks outside the dome. A handful were either very tall or could barely be counted as children anymore, and looked either very put upon or full of worry. However, no matter their age they all had thick, oily-looking hair, and their clothes looked worn and stained. There were a handful of adults among them, each of them surrounded by children with similar hair colors and armed with a spear. While the children were looking around curiously and either pointing up at the dome or the Coldhold, the adults looked like they expected to be attacked.

Lori drew attention as she strode towards them, and while 'suspicious' was easy enough to identify—it was one of the few expressions that had no need to be exaggerated by its theatrical counterpart—curiosity took a while to parse. Fortunately, it was one she'd been exposed to often because of the children in her demesne, so she was able to identify it soon after. Most of those looks were directed towards the shorter Dungeon Binder walking at her side, which Lori was most definitely not irritated about. No, not at all.

Yllian was among them, speaking to a man who was so bland Lori already couldn't recall what he looked like, and she was currently looking directly at him. The lord turned at their approach, gesturing towards them to the man he'd been speaking to, and the man glanced over Lori to settle her gaze on Shanalorre. He glanced at Yllian, who nodded, then pointed at Lori and said a few more words. This time the man looked at her, and his face shifted into what was probably caution.

The not-Rian lord bowed as they drew close. "Great Binder," he said. "Binder Shanalorre." The words seemed to unnerve the man next to him, who imitated the bow awkwardly, even as he glanced around worriedly at the children. Lori gave him a curt nod of acknowledgement.

Shanalorre glanced at her, and waited until it became obvious that nod would be her only reply. "Lord Yllian," she said, making a show—and it was a show, since it was increasingly clear that Shanalorre relied on her ability to perceive everything in her demesne more than Lori did, as well as having a better memory for keeping track of people through it—of looking over the children before them. "Is this all of them?"

"There is one more group of children waiting at the ford, Binder Shanalorre, as well as the ones who volunteered to act as caretakers and the supplies needed for them," Yllian exposited as the brat walked past, a seel that was bleeding profusely and still twitching a little slung over her shoulder, leaving a trail of blood behind her.

"Supplies?" Lori prompted.

"Tents, bedrolls, clothes and a few personal effects, Great Binder," Yllian said, looking after the brat worriedly.

"No offense to our new arrivals, but how much of these personal effects consists of soap?" Rian asked.

"None that I am aware of, Lord Rian."

Rian nodded, turning to—no, making a show of turning towards Lori. "With your permission, your Bindership, I'll have someone start distributing the soap rations we brought along. I think the children will appreciate having a warm bath and not having hair stiff enough to be a helmet on its own."

Almost a third of the children and at least one of the adults reached up to touch their hair at the words, followed almost immediately by scratching. Lori thought she actually saw a bug fly out of one boy's scalp. She repressed a shudder, and decided to keep her distance from the disgusting brats until they'd all been reacquainted with the wonders of personal hygiene.

Fortunately, she was able to leave that to other people. As Rian sent some of Riz's friends to get the soap—possibly on some kind of wheel barrow, Lori wasn't sure how much there would be—Shanalorre saw to leading the children and adults to the bath house and explaining the protocol for its use. Lori, for her part, checked over the bindings she had placed on the stone pipe that supplied the bath house with water, and found them on the edge of dissipating, the magic imbuing the wisps likely to be consumed in the next little while. If she hadn't checked them when she had, Lori would likely have needed to reform the binding, which while not all that complicated was a chore she'd rather not have needed to do. From the muffled shrieking she was hearing, the children were enjoying the novelty of warm water. At least it was noise that was supposed to be noisy and not noise pretending to be music.

However, this was troubling. If this was the state of this particular binding, the others she'd left had probably either dissipated or were on the verge of doing so. The water disposal for the bath was still working—she could see the plume of mist being energetically ejected towards the fruit trees, which she had spent a while adjusting so that by the time it reached them the water was condensing and the mist wouldn't block the sunlight—but she had to get to it soon before its own imbuement was consumed.

Ugh, this is one of the things she hated about needing to do things outside of her demesne: she had to physically go from binding to binding to imbue them. It was so inconvenient! She'd have to sit there for the next little while to heavily imbue the bath house's binding, and while she could interrupt it to see about imbuing the mist plume binding, Lori would need to come back to the bathhouse if she wanted to give it enough imbuement to last beyond just the day. However, there were also the other bindings she had left in the demesne to replace the bound tools she had removed, and those would also require either imbuement or replacement, depending on whether their imbuement had been consumed yet. And it wasn't like there was any way she could imbue them all simultane—

Lori blinked. Oh, right.

It took her a few moments to recall, before she reached through her skin to claim lightwisps out of the air, forming it into the most simple binding of lightwisps possible: one that emitted light. Lori anchored one part of the lightwisp binding to the stone pipe, pulling some of the firewisps used for the bath house's binding through the stone so it could directly anchor to the lightwisps, combining them into one. Getting to her feet, the lightwisps began trailing a line of light behind her as she imbued the now-unified binding while she walked towards the mist plume, sending magic into the binding even as she claimed and bound more lightwisps around her to add to the line of light she left in her wake.

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She didn't even bother testing how much imbuement remained in the binding, simply kneeling down so she could anchor the line of lightwisps to the waterwisps of the binding, adding it to the binding she held. Lori drew magic from her core through her connection, sending it to where she had anchored the lightwisps to her skin. The bindings she'd connected the lightwisps to shared in the magic, the imbuement equalizing across all the wisps that were part of the binding.

Nodding in satisfaction, Lori looked around as she considered the next binding that needed to be imbued, Riz and her friend trailing silently behind her…

"Your Bindership, I have to ask… are those things going to mutilate or kill anyone who passes through them?" Rian asked, looking at the thread-like lightwisps that Lori had trailed behind her as she'd tended to the other bindings the demesne had needed. Most were along the ground, forming lines that were simply pale in the daylight, but there were those that hung in the air like particularly brilliant washing lines. "They don't have lightning running through them or have irresponsible levels of heat do they…?"

"Why would you think that, Rian?" Lori said.

"I'm remembering that time we had a holiday inside the Dungeon last winter, when you made bindings for roasting that were full of darkwisps…"

"No, the only harm that will come to anyone will be from me when I hear of it. They're just there to connect all the demesne's bindings together so I can imbue them easier."

"Ah, I see. May I ask why you didn't do this before?"

"No, you may not."

"… as you say, your Bindership. We've finally finished getting the children bathed, so now we're taking them to where they'll be sleeping. I get the feeling that their chaperones don't fully understand what the sleeping arrangements are going to be. While I know you'd rather have nothing to do with people—"

"If you know that why are you bothering me?"

"—but I thought you'd want to be able to make the decision of putting the fear of you into them, since otherwise Shanalorre would be the one putting the fear of Dungeon Binders into them as she corrects their misapprehensions, and they might end up fearing her more than you—"

"Where are they?" Lori demanded, walking towards the bath house.

"That way," Rian said, pointing somewhere else.

Sensibly, they were at the previously unoccupied houses. The ones that were being used for storage had been moved so that the remaining empty ones would be close together. While the buildings should be in reasonably good shape, the interiors had not yet been cleaned, because that was something that the people who would be living in them could do themselves…

…who were children.

…

Lori might have missed considering something important at some point.

They arrived in the midst of Shanalorre saying, "—ay it again. While I appreciate your position, this house is intended to house the children, not families. That you have many children is irrelevant. Six children and one adult have been assigned, and we will not be removing one of those children so you can invite your wife to reside. If you wish, your wife may take your place as chaperone if the thought of her sleeping in a tent is so disagreeable."

The man she was speaking to frowned and opened his mouth to retort, but Yllian placed a hand on his shoulder, drawing the man's gaze towards the lord. The two men stared at each other for a moment before the man looked away, looking dissatisfied. "I'll take you up on that, great—"

Yllian's hand, still on the man's shoulder, suddenly squeezed.

"—ah! I mean, thank you, Great Binder."

Shanalorre nodded. "Very well. Yllian, see to the matter, I would like the exchange to occur before lunch so we do not have another mouth to feed. We have still not yet received the expedition's rations."

Lori frowned at that. "Why not?"

Everyone finally looked towards her, standing at the edge of the crowd, and Shanalorre bowed towards her in acknowledgement. "Great Binder," she greeted. "Given that the majority of the new arrivals are still at the edge, it seemed inefficient to take custody of the food supplies and then send them their necessary rations every day. Secondly, the rations are under the care of Horotracts Madsmif and Tafit to prevent their aging, and the wizards are currently limited to the edge of the demesne."

Lori frowned, but nodded. "Very well. Now, what is taking so long? I thought you had already assigned people to the unoccupied houses, Binder Shanalorre."

"Expected difficulties have arisen," Shanalorre said, "and have been dealt with."

Lori turned her gaze towards the man in Yllian's grip. "I see." She swept her gaze over the other adults present. For some reason, many of them were looking at the line of lightwisps she was trailing, or flicking to look around at all the other lightwisps she'd already left in her wake. "And would anyone else wish to have their wife change places with them?" she said as she claimed and bound airwisps in front of her mouth, forming a particular binding.

A man with a head of pale orange hair said, "But there's room in the—"

Lori's voice was like a roar of thunder as it passed through the binding she had made. "I do not care." Children and adults and flinched back, many of the former clapping their hands over their ears. She continued, meeting the eyes of the man who had spoken. "I do not care what your arguments are. I do not care what you think could be done instead. I do not care how things can be made more convenient for you. You are not 'guests' here, to be treated politely and your obnoxiousness excused because you are merely visiting. No, you live here now, and that means you will abide by my laws and submit to the chosen authorities."

She deactivated the binding, and waited a moment to give people time to adjust. "Binder Shanalorre has made arrangements," she said, her voice now only pitched to carry. "Those arrangements will not be changed due to your whining. If you insist on wasting your breath, that is all you will achieve." She activated the binding again, adjusting it to only raise her volume slightly. "Does anyone wish to do so?"

Silence. Admittedly, that could be because everyone's ears were still ringing, but as she had said, she didn't care. Nodding, she deactivated the binding and turned to Shanalorre, who had stood stoically while she had spoken. "Get all the children to their assigned housing. Deal with any problems as you see fit."

Shanalorre bowed again. "As you command, my Great Binder." She turned to those in front of her and began to point. "Aran, Sola, Sesar, Vov, Yhepery, and Ruiji, as I said, the six of you are assigned to sleep in this house. Your tota will be joining you once your tyatya has returned to the edge to fetch her. Yheshika, Kina, Kanda, Velden, Ralna and Toleen, you'll all sleep in this house…"