Demesne

Lori stayed away from River's Fork for the next few days, her only contact being verbal reports conveyed by Rian. Shanalore had finally managed to take control of the supplies and she, Rian and Yllian had done a quick inventory, then compared it to the projected food consumption now that the population of the demesne had increased by a factor of five. There had been a column of numbers that she'd glanced over and then added up to double check—no Taniar Demesne-born was going to be intimidated by something as simple as an inventory count—to confirm the numbers were correct. According to their simple calculations, the food the demesne currently had—not counting any more they added in the time before winter finally set in—the food could be stretched halfway into spring. Notably, the food the new arrivals had brought wouldn't have lasted as long given the amount of meat, something called 'marching rations', and grain that they had been rationing to each family, never mind that some families were bigger than others.

Rian and Yllian had both reached the conclusion that at some point, whoever had been doing the planning had decided to provide rations to last the expedition through winter and only winter, possibly thinking they would live off the land before then… somehow. The two lords were also in agreement that this was likely the result of idiocy rather than malice, possibly from someone taking the letter too literally. In this instance, Lori was inclined to agree. It sounded far too similar to her mothers stories of similar mistaken allocations happening at the Banking Authority.

With Rian away from her demesne so often overseeing… her other demesne… and Lori waiting for enough raw material to be excavated so she could start building shelters, Lori spent her time making beads. The recent dragon had caused them to use the massive beads she had made to protect River's Fork's dragon shelter, and the Coldhold would also need a couple to operate its steam jet driver when it made its way towards Covehold Demesne. While they already had enough beads to cover Rian's deal with the Emborin merchant house, given it would be the last opportunity to trade for the year, Lori decided to produce more beads to make as much of a profit as she could. And there were also the beads that would be needed in River's Fork…

Lori spent the next few days amalgamating beads on the edge of her demesne, working on the head-sized beads first because she would need to carefully watch them as they formed so the beads—at what point did it become silly to keep calling them beads?—would not exceed the dimensions of the oversized bead receptacles made to take them. Once Lori had made ten—more than there had been before the dragon, but a surplus never hurt—she switched to producing the large beads needed for trading and day-to-day use with their bound tools.

The latter was important. The carpenters were working on producing bowls, cups and bath buckets by the boatload—literally, Rian went to River's Fork with a boat full of woodwork—and using the bound tools they had in ways that Lori was sure she'd seen apprentices get yelled at for doing, with many bound tools that spun having been tied down to one workbench or another to be used as a lathe to turn bowls and cups. Nothing had been broken yet, but Lori was prepared to yell at people when it finally happened. But until then, her carpenters went through most of a cup's worth of beads per day. Shanalorre went through considerably more.

So far, Lori's checks of the binding she had left in River's Fork had not found any interference or alterations to her bindings, though how accurate that was she wasn't certain. However, according to Shanalorre the beads were still being consumed at a rate similar to that of the first day, so that seemed promising. That still meant that beads had to be delivered to Shanalorre every day lest the beads run out, and while the fact the binding was anchored to a bound tool core would keep it from dissipating should that possibility occur, it might cause the Whisperers now residing in River's Fork to take an interest.

Despite Rian's asking, she had not yet authorized allowing any of the new arrivals to settle in Lori's demesne, both because reports had them being very unruly, and because there wasn't much room to put them. Yes, they could be housed in the shelter, and there were still a couple of houses open that she was told were currently being used to store firewood because the alternative was letting them stay empty and therefore a tempting location for someone to use it as a place to do disgustingly organic things with each other, but that still meant they couldn't house more than one or two families. If she was going to do that, it might as well be for someone with useful skills, and so far Rian hadn't reported anyone notable, and there was already that other Deadspeaker… whatsisname and his sister… to prepare for, although since there were only two of them it would probably best to put them in the shelter along with the few in the demesne with no immediate family.

It was steady, near-mindless work that was actually relaxing after the past few days of rapidly trying to develop and iterate upon the lightning jig. Just claim and bind shards of the Iridescence, then keep imbuing them as they formed beads, until the beads grew so big they raised themselves off the surface of the metal contact she was imbuing them through. Pour the beads into a sack, then start laying out more shards of Iridescence so she could do it all again.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Unfortunately, the more beads she made, the more people seemed to find excuses to use them.

"The excavation is moving, but it's… well, slow," Rian reported. "Definitely slower than you, although I can't really tell if it's because they're not yet used to the binding you're having them use or you slightly overestimated the amount of magic they could utlize. Binder Shanalorre asked if she should give them some of the beads you send to help accelerate the work."

"No," Lori said immediately. "If they're not drawing in enough magic, then they're either not breathing in deeply enough, their technique is flawed, or both. And why would they need to get used to a binding? It's a binding. You form it and you use it. Either way, it is a problem of execution on their part, and probably bad habits as well. So no, she is not to give them any beads. They are already equipped with everything they need to do the work without any, and they should get used to not having any to work with."

"But there are beads for them to work with," Rian pointed out.

"Not if I say there aren't."

"…fair enough, I suppose," Rian said. "Although this might mean it will take longer for them to properly excavate the dragon shelter and get the raw materials for the shelter."

Lori shrugged. "Then they will be at fault for taking so long. At worse, if their progress is too far behind, I'll need to make the shelter out of bound ice and they will need to keep it imbued all through the winter."

"I'm sure that will be a memorable experience for everybody," Rian said, actually looking slightly amused by the notion. Then he sighed. "So… the Coldhold should be coming back with the second batch of salt either tomorrow or the day after. Once the ship is unloaded, I'm hoping we can leave for Covehold Demesne a day or two later and be back inside of two weeks."

"That sounds reasonable," Lori nodded as she stirred her stew, trying to get tuber, meat and grain in just the right proportions for a spoonful.

"I was hoping to bring one of the Whisperers with us."

The spoon stilled. "Why?" she said pointedly.

"First, for repairs," Rian said. "I've always been worried that if we ran into something or a dillian or something took a bite of the ice and damaged the hull we'd have no way of fixing it. Since you couldn't be risked to come with us, there'd never been a way to try and deal with it, but now we have wizards and other Whisperers. Secondly… I'm worried of what could happen if we draw the attention of Covehold's Dungeon Binder."

Lori gave him a flat look. "What."

"Look, we're bringing beads into their demesne, and the knowledge of the existence of the beads has had a few months to propagate," Rian said. "Even if the Emborin merchant house did keep their mouths shut, and even if the fact we come in on a ship made of ice only makes us a curiosity, when we arrive and beads start circulating to all those who use bound tools again, someone is likely to report that to someone who brings it to their Dungeon Binder's attention eventually. If they deactivate the binding in the water jet driver, we wouldn't have any way to get the thing moving again."

"And your well-considered idea is to have a wizard know about my bound tools?" Lori said coldly.

Rian shrugged. "I'm just considering measures for something that might be a possible problem when we go there. All it would take is Covehold Demesne's Dungeon Binder being interested enough in us to look our way and decide to deactivate the steam jet driver to keep us from leaving, and then forgetting to reverse it or something. We'd be stuck until I can find a Whisperer willing to try and fix it anyway, and that's if their Dungeon Binder doesn't realize that you actually made the driver yourself and they decide to just seize the whole ship to find out how it works."

"If the Dungeon Binder of Covehold tries to do that, I'm declaring war," Lori said coldly.

"How would you find out? We'd never be able to come back to tell you," her lord pointed out.

…

"If matters escalate to that extent, having a Whisperer with you would be inconsequential," Lori finally said. "You will simply have to risk it."

"And if the Dungeon Binder does deactivate the binding in the steam jet driver and is so inconsiderate as to not activate it again… do I have your permission to hire someone to activate it again so we can get home?"

Lori rolled her eyes. "Yes, in the unlikely event that happens, you may hire someone so they can activate the steam jet driver's binding again."

Rian nodded. "Well, let's hope this conversation isn't foreshadowing some kind of future complication where we have to do exactly that."

"Rian, this is real life, not some kind of stage play. We don't have foreshadowing or contrived appearances by coincidentally passing Dungeon Binders to resolve the plot."

"Of course not. We'd be much better as some kind of long-form novel series. If we were a stage play, it would be one of those that are unrecognizable from the source material because there isn't enough time to properly depict everything."

Lori shuddered. "Please don't remind me."

"Sorry."