Demesne

Depressingly, Lori realized she had to reduce the intensity of her nice, cooling breeze, because the wind was making the wall she was trying to raise buckle and bend. Wrapping herself in firewisps to draw off the heat just wasn't the same, somehow.

Still, it was predictable progress, once she'd measured out a pace on the handle of her stone-leveling tool and fixed the dimensions of her foundation. She'd dragged more stone up and raised what felt like the longest wall she'd ever made… twice. It had taken two days, intermittently using a weight on a cord to make sure the walls were straight and therefore distributing their weight straight down properly. Measuring the internal dimensions to lay out the internal walls that would divide the houses took the next day, using small bumps of stone to mark where the walls would be, and led to the annoying, predictable but somehow unexpected revelation that her measurements hadn't accounted for the thickness of the internal walls. So she basically had nine and one-fourth houses instead of ten.

Lori decided to properly build the last incomplete house in the row later.

With the walls marked, she spent the next day and a half knocking down doors and windows, putting in arches at the top to take the weight of the stone wall above. It was shorter than Rian's five paces—a little under four—mostly because she didn't have that much stone, and having walls that high seemed pointless. She'd have more when she excavated, but she wanted to use that to put more mass between the Dungeon and any dragons passing overhead.

Only when she had doors and windows to pass through did she start putting up the internal walls that divided the long structure into individual houses, since she'd no longer have to worry about trapping herself in a box. That took another two days.

When she was done, she proceeded to level the floors inside, cutting channels of water to find the level, then moving around the stone until the floor was more or less flat. It was sweaty work since the stone walls got hot very quickly, especially without a roof to give her shade, and she brought up a wind again to cool herself off after the walls were done. It wasn't as refreshing, since the wind had to pass through doors and windows, but it was better than nothing.

When she finally finished the last house on the end, adding more wall and foundation to make it the same dimensions as the others, she'd let out a sigh of relief and stopped working to have an early bath.

"Congratulations on the new houses," Rian said as she sat down for lunch. "Does this mean I can have them start planning how to put the roofs in now?"

"Yes," Lori said, freshly bathed and in her first clean set of clothes since she'd started building. Ah, her nice, cool Dungeon! "They should be able to handle all that now, right?"

"Hopefully, though we might have to call you to embed the wooden components into the stone for added stability," Rian said.

"As long as it's not tomorrow," Lori said.

"No need to worry, they'll probably need this afternoon and tomorrow to plan how they're going to do it," Rian said.

"I thought they already knew how to put on roofs?" Lori said.

"They do," Rian said. "Which is why they plan, so they can do it efficiently and safely."

Lori considered that, and shrugged. "Well, not my problem," she said as people started coming in for lunch. It was beast meat today, since the new hunting party had been productive again. "Is the food ready yet?"

Rian stood up and briefly looked towards the kitchen, then sat down. "Almost, I think," he said. "Just a little longer. So, now that the houses are done, what are you doing the rest of the afternoon?"

"Nothing," Lori said with happy finality.

Rian chuckled. "So you're going to live the dream of not needing to work for a living, just sleeping the day away in your cave?"

"Dungeon," she corrected.

Rian rolled his eyes. "Lori's Dungeon?" he said, sounding amused for some reason.

"Obviously," Lori said.

"Well, at least you're sticking to the naming scheme," Rian said. "If you're not doing anything else this afternoon–"

"I just said I had plans," Lori said flatly.

"—could you look over this idea I have for water distribution?" Rian continued as if she hadn't said anything. "So you have something to do while you're lying around doing nothing?" He held up a piece of wood.

Lori sighed at the impertinence of some people but reluctantly took the wood. She frowned. "What am I looking at?"

"Something to bring water up to the area around the houses you just built," Rian said. "I figure it'll help with the third bathhouse, since it's too far from the river for you to use underground pipes, and it'll make maintaining the agricultural field easier, since bringing water down is a lot easier than carrying it up from the river."

And then the drawing, slightly smudged, fell into place.

"This is an aqueduct," Lori said flatly. "You want me to build a twenty-pace tall aqueduct?"

"It doesn't have to be that tall," Rian said, not even denying that was, in fact, what he was proposing. "It's just that a tall aqueduct would be the most efficient structure to carry the water–"

"No," she said.

"You're going to have to bring water up there anyway for the bathhouse, why not like this?" Rian pressed. "This way you also provide easily accessed water for drinking, washing, and irrigating the fields."

"I am not building a twenty-pace tall aqueduct," Lori said firmly.

"What about a string of three-pace ones?" Rian wheedled.

"I'm having lunch," Lori declared. "Then I'm going to my room–"

"Lori's Room," Rian said brightly.

"Yes, that's what I said," she said, tilting her head and giving him a look. That was strange, even for him. "Then I'm doing nothing until dinner, then I'm sleeping, then tomorrow, I'm going back to excavating my Dungeon. I still don't have a new reservoir ready. If a dragon appeared, we'd have to use the old one."

Rian got a thoughtful look on his face. "What if," he said, "The Dungeon reservoir provided the water for the aqueduct that would bring water up to the third bath house? That way, when a dragon comes, all we need to do is seal off the outlets, and this way we'd keep the water in the reservoir from going bad due to stagnation…"

"We don't even have a reservoir yet," she said, rolling her eyes in exasperation.

"Then it's a design feature we should think of now, right?" Rian said brightly. "While we're in the pre-planning stage?"

"Just go get the food," Lori said flatly.

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Lori's afternoon was not as relaxing as she'd intended it to be.

Rian had left the piece of wood with her, and with nothing better to do but to either lie down on her bed—which was hard and stiff on her—or sit in her own private pool of water in her bathroom, shaped using earthwisps—which eventually started feeling silly—she eventually had to decide between considering the proposal drawn on the wood or once more try to perform the basics of any of the other three forms of magic.

She went with the less frustrating choice.

It was actually a decent solution, one that required an application of wisps in only one place, to get the water to the top of the aqueduct. From there, it would naturally start to flow down, and the various spouts on the side of the aqueduct would let it fall down to basins, which it would circulate to remain clean, before eventually flowing to a runoff channel directly under the aqueduct that would bring the water back to the river.

That last wouldn't do. Some of the random notes around the drawing had things like 'clean latrines?' on them, implying that Rian was considering using the runoff to wash the latrines. The same runoff they were going to send back to the river. They got their drinking water there, was he insane? Besides, River's Fork was downriver. She didn't want to have to put up with accusations from Binder Shanalorre that they were deliberately tainting the water going down there.

Clearly the runoff would have to be passed through some sort of filtering medium, like clay or sand…

Actually, why keep it in the demesne when they could just dump it outside, away from the river? Though that would be an extremely long…

Lori twitched and cut off that line of thinking.

All right, she grudgingly had to admit the idea had merit, but the proposed aqueduct was too high! It would take more stone than she'd used so far in all her building projects just to build the support columns to keep it stable, never mind the actual aqueduct itself! No, it would be much more sensible to make a stone pillar in the river where water could be drawn up, then used columns of compressed dirt instead of stone for the columns on land. For the actual aqueduct channels, they could use planks of wood coated with stone to waterproof it…

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Lori barely managed to keep herself from throwing the piece of wood at Rian when he approached their table for dinner.

"I hate you so much," she said, glaring at him. "You ruined my afternoon."

"Sorry," Rian said with a wide smile that said he wasn't sorry at all. He had another piece of wood under his arm, and was carrying a small sack that seemed full of something solid. Lori eyed that wood warily. If it had anything written on it, she was just going to set it on fire…

"What's that?" she pointed at the wood accusingly. "It's not another color-brained idea, is it?"

"Hmm?" Rian 'hmm'-ed. "Oh no, this is something I asked one of the carpenters to make. I think we might have a boredom problem soon, and I wanted to head it off before people started playing music and risking a flogging."

Despite herself, Lori glared at the piece of wood curiously. "What is it, then?"

"A game board, basically," Rian said. "You can play this on the ground too, but this is neater."

It wasn't like the gameboards Lori had seen before. There was no flat board with semi-circles denoting demesnes, no lines marking out grids. Instead, recessed bowls had been carved out on the arm-long length of wood, seven pairs all along its length, with larger bowls on either ends. Definitely not for playing chatrang or lima or even pincer, which was the extent of the games played on boards that she knew of.

"What kind of game can you play with this?" she asked skeptically.

"It's something I used to play when I was younger," Rian said, turning the sack and dumping out a pile of small, smooth river stones.

Some sort of noble children's game, then? Well, that would certainly explain why she'd never heard of it before, or even recognized the board. She watched as he started putting the stones in the paired bowls.

"Are you asking me to play?" she said.

"Oh no, not at all," Rian said as he put down the stones. Whatever this game was, color didn't seem to matter, since he was mixing stones of different colors together. "I know you don't want to stay down here after dinner any longer than you absolutely need to."

Oh. Well… good!

"Oh. Well… good!" Lori said. "Why are you setting it up, then?"

"Well, I'm hoping someone gets curious and asks to play," he said, still putting down stones. "If they don't, I'm going to have to randomly ask people, and that's just going to be embarrassing."

She didn't think there was any problem at that. Already people were glancing and looking at what Rian was doing, and the three women behind him were all standing to get a better look at the strange game board.

"So you're just going to leave it there while we're eating?" Lori said.

"Best way to get people's attention," Rian said, putting the stones in the last bowl. He hadn't put in all the stones, but he put the rest back in the sack he'd been carrying them, setting them down on the bench next to him. "I'll go get our food."

He walked away towards the kitchen to get their food, leaving Lori alone with the strange, stone-filled game board.

Her wait seemed longer and more annoying than usual as it seemed like everyone in the demesne casually walked past and back again to look at the board. The children didn't even make that much attempt as subtlety, just walking up to the table and staring at the board, and a few particularly brave ones poking at the stones in the nearest bowls. They all dispersed as Rian came back, holding a bowl in each hand.

Lori picked one and started to eat, not looking up from her bowl at all. "So, what came up today that I have to know about?"

"Well, we've got a lot of rope now," Rian said. "The Golden Sweetwood people had a roper with them, and he formed a partnership with the children who'd been making ropes using the ropeweed. They're learning from him for now, so they're technically apprentices, but it's on record that they're his partners since they know how to find and harvest the ropeweed. They're already starting to argue with the weavers for priority, since the weavers need the ropeweed for thread too. Right now, I have the ropers getting their weeds upriver and the weavers getting their weeds from downriver. So yeah, that's clearly another plant we need to start farming. I've been having them dividing the seeds for planting and for eating."

"Are we really using that much rope?" Lori asked.

"It takes a lot of work and fibers to make a good rope," Rian said. "I've also had them doing cords too, something not as thick for tying up foods for smoking and storing. So that's another industry we have. And that's just with half the demesne's resources. We still haven't really been able to get at the resources on the other side of the river yet."

"I'm not building a bridge," Lori said flatly.

"Not asking you to," Rian said. "No, I'm having the ropers make a rope long enough for us to stretch over the river so we can make a ferry that we can just pull across. Arak is taking care of that."

"Who?"

"The master roper," Rian said. "Well, technically he's a journeyman, but he's worked on big ropes before, so now he's our master roper. The others are working on cords."

Lori noted the name and let it slide away as not important. "Anything else?"

"We might need more buildings for workshops," Rian said. "The weavers are working from their homes right now, but the ropers are working around a tree, and they might need to move if we have to clear land again. I was wondering if they could move into the Dungeon's next level until we can set up someplace for them? They need someplace they can keep their tools, and space to stretch the ropes."

"The excavation isn't even finished yet," Lori said.

"Hence why I was only wondering," Rian said. He hesitated. "To be honest, we might need to hold another community meeting soon. Now that we have food more or less under control we have whole new issues we have to deal with."

Lori groaned.

"Yeah…" Rian said. He actually sounded sympathetic. "Not looking forward to it either. It's a lot for just me to deal with." He sighed. "I really wish Grem hadn't tried to kill Shana sometimes. Another lord would be so nice to have right now…"

"Find me one," Lori said. "We're not holding another meeting until you find me a new lord to help deal with this."

"The last time I recommended a lord, he basically tried to commit treason first chance he got," Rian said. "Maybe you should do it. Your last pick for lord turned out to be a wonderful, hardworking person."

"Stop flattering yourself and find me someone," Lori said. "Or else I'll have to make Karina a lord. Lady. Whatever."

Rian paused. "Why Karina?"

"She's the only one–" Lori began

"–whose name you remember," Rian interrupted her, rolling his eyes. "Why am I not surprised."

Lori gave him an annoyed look for the interruption. "Actually, I was going to say she's the only one who pays taxes."

"So, you're letting yourself be bribed," Rian said, looking amused.

"If you think you can do better than her, find me someone," Lori said as she finished her bowl of stew.

"Challenge accepted," Rian said. "Though maybe she'll be good in a few years when she's older."

"What will a few years change?" Lori said.

"She'll be older? Not a child?" Rian said.

"And that should matter… why?"

Rian opened his mouth. Paused. Closed his mouth. "Huh. You're right. Right now, I'd only suggest not raising her because I think we need someone from the Golden Sweetwood people so they'll have someone to represent them and their concerns properly…"

He lapsed into silence as he finished his stew, obviously trying to think of someone. Lori handed him her bowl for him to take back to the kitchen to wash.

When he came back, the game board was in the middle of the table in front of her.

"Oh, wipe that smirk off your face," she said as he sat back down. "I have nothing better to do and I'm bored. How do you play this game?"

"Well," Rian smirked still, reaching over and turning the game board by a quarter circle so that each side with the seven bowls faced them both, "first, you turn it this way…"