Demesne 93 - Subcontracting To Experts (Patreon)

At about mid-morning at a demesne some call Lorian, the day after its numbers had been temporarily reduced, a scream of frustration rose over the land. It was a scream of anger and rage, of a desire to impart endless suffering, of someone badly in need of new socks. Truthfully, it wasn't that loud, and barely registered with most people close enough to hear it.

Lori might have felt like punctuating that scream with some sort of explosion, but between several emphatic lessons about how random, unprepared explosions were A BAD IDEA, and any 'safe' explosion likely to not be as cathartic as wanted, she settled for letting out another scream. And then a third.

Afterwards, she had to sit and drink water to ease her throat, because screaming into the air with the force of all your hate and anger at an uncooperative world, while slightly relieving, hurts. She glared at the object of her ire.

It was, quite literally, a pile of rocks. Oh, it had been shaped by her Whispering and whatever tools she'd been able to find—a branch, a bone, a conveniently-sized jar used for rations that she'd have to bring back to the kitchen so it didn't get lost, another rock with a flat plane from being hewn by her water cutter—but it was still clearly a pile of rocks.

The idea was simple enough: a water-powered mechanism that would use water with her blood mixed in as a source of physical movement. With her blood, she could keep the water imbued from a distance almost indefinitely, or until doing so finally allowed her to learn the theretofore unknown limitations of how long doing this lasted. The waterwisps would be bound to move, in the process moving the paddles of a water wheel, which would be transferred to a propeller fan, which would be placed so as to blow large volumes of air into River's Fork's extant mine ventilation arrangement.

Yesterday, she had given Rian the sketch for such a fan for the carpenters to build, now with measurements. Some of the measurements were general rather than specific, like the thickness and length of the axle the fan blades would be mounted to, and she had informed Rian he was to make clear that she was to be informed if the carpenters needed anything done to make construction of the piece faster. Hopefully someone was working on it at that very moment.

She, for her part, had been trying to build a model for how it was all supposed to work. While she had made sketches on flat sheets of rock, in the style of the diagrams she had seen while working in carpentry workshops and smithies—she was certain what she had made, while probably not industry standard, was probably good enough to understand, since that was the purpose of the format—finding the one that actually worked was essential, as she would need to build it onsite at River's Fork.

The simplest way to build it, which she had already tried, was to build a water wheel, then attach the propeller fan directly to the axle. The small model made of stone had immediately shown problems that her more promising initial models of stone and bone had not. A wheel that spun quickly enough to turn the propeller at sufficient speed to create enough air movement was… well, was unlikely to be driven by the water she would be using, or at least unlikely to be driven with enough torque to turn the fan. It was obviously some sort of gears or ropes would need to be involved to make the fan turn at an adequate rate.

She had tried to make small mockups using the materials at hand but…

Well, she'd started screaming.

It wasn't long before Rian stepped into the clearing next to the bone pit, looking in bemusement at her stone water troughs, stone axles (not perfectly round since she'd had to roll them out by hand, with a wooden stick or two inside to keep them from breaking), stone wheels with stone paddles to catch the flowing water in the stone troughs, and a few attempts at stone gears. "Not going well?" he said.

"How nice to know your eyes and ears are perfectly functional," Lori said, glaring at her last attempt at a gear, which had cracked in half. Either it had been too thin or there had been an unfortunate seam. Just as well. The protruding pegs to catch the other gear Lori had made weren't straight or even anyway, and the stone peg it had been mounted with wasn't centered, which had probably contributed to it breaking.

"Ah," Rian nodded. "I'll just go tell everyone you're all right and need a bit more extra isolation than normal, than come back to help you. Incidentally, the carpenters want a permanent, roofed workshop so they can stop worrying about the lathe and other tools. They figured you asking them to build something was as good a time as any to bring it up."

Lori sighed. "Fine, fine. They'll have to put on their own roof, and I won't be able to start on it until I finish this."

"I think they understand that. I'll tell them you'll get to it…eventually," Rian nodded. He turned to go.

"Rian."

He stopped, and looked back.

She was still staring in annoyance at her pile of stone scrap. "Inform the carpenters and smiths I need to speak to people who can make gears and know the construction of water wheels. And I might need axles. Also inform the ropers and… whoever we have making leather that I might need something to act as drive belts to transfer power to a water wheel."

"Really?" Rian said, surprised. "That's a lot of people. You sure you want to deal with that many?"

"There are things I can't build," Lori said, then added, "Not yet, at least. And I will admit making things perfectly round is difficult. Best to have people with the right tools making them." Her experience with wheels aside, trying to make proper stone gears would require her to make the tools for it first. Best to check if someone else had those tools already."

"And the ventilation equipment will be one of them?" Rian asked.

"And the ventilation equipment will be one of them," Lori confirmed. "Inform them I will meet with them after lunch."

"That soon?" Rian said. "Well, I suppose this is a rush job. If you don't finish this soon, you'll have to go back to River's Fork and lose a day filling that thing you build with more magic."

Lori grimaced at the reminder. "Yes, unfortunately."

Rian nodded. "All right, I'll find the right people," he said.

Lori gave a sharp nod, still staring at the broken gears.

Eventually, she sighed, got up, and went to her room. She had copies to make.

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Lolilyuri was not nervous. She was merely annoyed at the prospect of having to talk to people.

Rian had been as good as his word, and had gathered together a list of people, all already seated at one of the now-vacant tables after she came down to retrieve the stone tablets she had prepared over the rest of the morning.

There were a lot of them. Some she recognized vaguely from back when she'd been responsible for replacing the broken wheels on the water wagons. They'd been there to fit them into the axles. Not carpenters, what was the term… cartwrights.

Rian intercepted her before she reached the table and wordlessly handed her his writing plank. She glanced at it, wondering what he wanted, then blinked. There was a sketch of a rough square, with eight circles each on the long side. Each circle had a name and profession written next to it. A little off to the side, there was a flattened shape labeled 'Dungeon entrance'. She glanced towards the actual entrance, then towards the table of waiting people. There were four people on each side of the table. She even recognized one of them: Tackir, still covered with some specks of sawdust he hadn't been able to brush off. One of the circles was named 'Tackir – Carpenter'…

She glanced up, but Rian was already walking towards the table ahead of her. Frowning, she glanced down at the stone tablets she was carrying. She'd only made six…

Well, she supposed some people would have to share.

She walked to the table carefully, despite binding the earthwisps in the tablet to strengthen them against breaking. She wasn't sure they'd be proof against hitting the ground. It was still stone, after all. The people at her destination watched her approach, some hesitantly getting to their feet, which prompted overs to do the same. As Lori's hands were too full to wave at them to sit down, she just sighed internally as she headed for the head of the table that faced the Dungeon's entrance. A bench had been dragged there from one of the nearby tables, making an unfortunate right-angled shape that jutted out on one side.

Lori sat at the impromptu head of the table after laying down her burden, holding up Rian's wooden blank so she could see it at all times. "Sit, all of you," she sat, and they all sat, some after making nervous bows. Rian was putting wooden cups full of what appeared to be water next to people, starting with Lori. Why? Just… why? "I have had Lord Rian gather you all here because I need something built that I lack the experience and tools to build myself, and he has assessed that you possess the skills needed to do so." She pushed the stack of stone tablets with the copies of her design diagram forward. "Unfortunately, I was not told how many would be here, so there isn't enough for everyone. Make do."

The rust-haired man to her right, who according to Rian's plank was a blacksmith named 'Wyte', gingerly pulled the stone tablets towards him, took one and passed it down, keeping the last one for himself. Soon they had been passed around and Rian had finished giving everyone water, moving to stand beside her.

There was a brief silence as the assembled artisans perused her diagram.

"Um, your Bindership?" Tackir finally said, glancing at her in some confusion, "what exactly are we looking at? Just to be sure? Because it looks a fan and a water wheel in a trough. Though I guess this is that fan we've been working on…"

"Essentially correct," Lori said, nodding. "This is a waterwheel that is meant to directly power a fan. Its purpose is for air circulation. The waterwheel is in a trough since magic will be used to move the water."

"The place it's going to be used is far from the river," Rian said from next to her, "and setting up a system to bring water up isn't practical. So Binder Lori made a design where a small amount of water can be used to keep turning the wheel indefinitely." He was looking at the tablet laid out in front of Wyte, and could apparently decipher it well enough even at the angle he was viewing it at.

There were some sounds of understanding at the explanation as people looked at the diagram in that light.

"If that's the case, wouldn’t it be better if the wheel were bigger?" Lori checked Rian's plank. If the labeling was correct, the one who had spoken was a carpenter named Sani, an extremely tall man with sun-darkened skin and blond hair that. "According to this, the waterwheel is only a pace across. Wouldn't it be more efficient for it to be double that, your Bindership?"

"While it would," Rian said, "The parts would need to be transported on the boat, and the parts themselves need to be finished within three days. They also need to be relatively simple, since the people putting them together on the site will most likely not be carpenters. Or even have more experience than 'don't hit thumb with hammer'."

"You really shouldn't try to build something like this by yourself lord Rian," someone else said. According to the plank he was 'Sani – Carpenter'.

"I maintain that picking whichever end of a hammer to use to hit something is a matter of taste," Rian said with exaggerated loftiness. "But it's a practical matter. When the parts are all loaded onto the boat, there won't be any room for anyone else. Surely you don't expect Binder Lori to put these up herself?"

"Wouldn't be surprised," one of the men muttered, still looking thoughtfully down at the tablet he was sharing with the man next to him. He was noted on the plank as 'Jeordoj – Blacksmith'. "Her Bindership's built most of everything else…"

"Probably about time for us manly men to start helping her then," Rian said cheerfully. "The equipment here is important. Without it, the people who volunteered to go mine at River's Fork would be doing so in dangerous conditions, at risk of their air going bad. When we complete this and bring it there, they can rest at ease and not worry about that. "

The men all looked down at the designs as Lori wondered if she really needed to be there, and if perhaps she should have just handed the designs over to Rian and have him tell them to build it.

"It's simple enough, broken down like this," Sani the carpenter said. "We need to build the waterwheel, gears to get the fan up to speed, and the frame to hold all this."

"Don't bother with the frame," Lori interjected. "I'll build that with stone onsite."

"Perhaps we can test it by installing it into a stone frame here before we transport it," Rian said. "After all, we'd need to test it anyway."

"That will mean two days to build the components, and another day to see if it all fits together," Lori said.

"Two days?" Tackir exclaimed.

"I know it's not a lot of time," Rian said apologetically. "So we'll have to keep everything simple. No curves, just sticking planks to a central shaft. Her Bindership has already stated her willingness to watercut any parts that need it. "

One of them men listed as a cartwright—Kerz Cartwright—stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Well, watercutting timbers to be the right size for the lathe will be faster than waiting for the sawyers to cut it down to size. Though we'll have to set up a proper watercutting tank for it…"

"Easily done," Lori said dismissively. It was just a pool to catch the water to keep if from damaging anything else, after all.

The talk quickly became technical as the men started discussing how to build the water wheel, the need for bearings for it, and how to best build it quickly.

It was… comfortingly familiar, in a way. While some of the places she'd worked at had her staying in place to cut wood or metal, once or twice she had been employed in a workshop that had gotten an emergency order, and the Master Carpenter had called them all in so that work allocations could be discussed and reshuffled. Lori hadn't participated much, beyond acknowledging whether or not she could accommodate a particular altered workload, but she had fond memories of those meetings. Mostly because they involved her getting paid to sit down and do nothing but listen, and then later got a small bonus because of the emergency work…

She'd have to give people a bonus for this emergency work, wouldn't she? Lori signed in resignation, then leaned forward and listened to the plans being made.