Weekly Digest 32 - (#99 - #101) (Patreon)

Blood, Wire and Water

It was lunch and Rian still wasn't back.

Lori grimaced as she made her move on the sunk board impatiently, trying to ignore the smell of the stew her opponent was eating. Without Rian, the three weren't sitting so closely together anymore. In fact, Umu and Riz were literally sitting at opposite ends of the table.

Fortunately, no one thought this meant they could just sit next to them. The relative silence around Lori was kept.

…

Maybe she needed a smaller table? Come to think of it, a table meant for twelve only being used by five people was a bit excessive. Not to mention the benches. Maybe she should just start eating in her room… or just make a personal nook for herself. She'd always wanted one of those, why hadn't she made one yet?

Oh, right. No books, so she'd have nothing to read besides stone tablets, inventory lists and reports. Yes, best not to torture herself with a private nook without books to read.

Lori repressed a sigh as Mikon finished making her move, and replied with her own. While she was hardly hungry, the smells of the food were getting to her. How had she never noticed how good the food smelled?

She had never been more glad to see Rian walk into the Dungeon.

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After a quick and filling meal—"I really have to worry about how you'd feed yourself if I wasn't here."—it was her turn to ride on the boat named after her and head back to where she'd done her experiments a few days ago.

To her surprise, the little protective dome was still there, though now covered by a much thicker layer of Iridescence. The ropeweed she'd cut were also starting to grow small shoots, though it was unlikely they'd be back to the same height as before any time soon.

"So, what are we going to do today, your Bindership?" Rian said after she'd sent another flood scare off any beasts nearby—thankfully there didn't seem to be any—and beached the boat.

"A brief experiment," Lori said, putting her padded box on the same finger of stone as last time. She looked over the contents, double checking everything, and nodded. "Or test, rather." She drew out the brass syringe, and couldn't help smirking a little at the look of combined disgust and wariness Rian made. "Rian, it's not going to spontaneously leap at you and try to draw your blood."

"That's just what it wants you to think," he said grimly, somehow able to keep a perfectly straight face at the absurd statement. "Just you wait. As soon as your guard is down, it will turn against you and poke!"

It was clear her lord had some sort of disturbed and irrational fear of syringes.

"Grow up," she told him sternly as she continued to unpack the box. Bowls and a length of gold not quite narrow enough to be wire that she'd compressed and pulled using rocks and earthwisps to get it the right length.

"You're telling me to grow up…?" Rian said, sounding incredulous. Had he not heard himself just now, talking about syringes like they were alive and murderous?

Best to just show him an example of what a proper grown up should act like.

"All right," Lori said as the syringe finished boiling. "Pay attention. Today I'll be testing if fresh blood can imbue waterwisps through a conductive connection." She held up the gold for emphasis. "This is gold, whose conductive properties are exceeded only by platin. I'll be using this as a 'best case' conductive material in the test. "

Rian made a note. "So, we're working with waterwisps again? How is this going to work?"

"As simply as possible," Lori said as she waited for the syringe to cool enough to not burn her on contact. "I will take two glass bowls, fill it with water not taken from the confines of my demesne, place the gold so that one end is submerged in each bowl, put blood on one, claim, bind and imbue the water in that bowl, then attempt to connect to the water in the other using the gold."

Technically, she knew it could be done. Claimed wisps could be used to claim similar adjacent unclaimed wisps. Whisperers could use conductive metals to claim, bind and imbue wisps not directly in contact with their bodies. If the blood, or at least the waterwisps with affinity for her in the blood, could be used to act as her body, theoretically it could also claim, bind and imbue through a conductive metal.

However, this fell under the purview of 'something she'd never done before', because she had been cautioned not to do it when she'd been taught. It had just been something too dangerous to do in principle and therefore the logical extensions of it had been unnecessary. However, circumstances had changed now…

She handed Rian the bowls. "Go get water so you don't need to see me draw blood."

It didn't help. Rian still flinched and started twitching when he saw the syringe. Thankfully, he didn't drop the bowls. Lori flattered the top of the dome to lay the bowls on, put in the gold to connect the two, and then added the blood.

Lori then sat down inside her demesne, and began to process of claiming, binding and imbuing the bloody water. Then the real test began.

At first, she tried to do it the way she would have if she'd been holding her staff: taking in magic into herself, then sending it coursing through her veins to align it with water before letting that magic conduct through the wire under her hand, wrapped aound her staff, and into the waterwisps she wanted to bind and imbue. This initially ended in failure, as the magic reached the water wisps and just… stopped, being taken in and imbuing the wisps without passing through the gold to the other bowl.

However, when she thought to physically bind what waterwisps from her blood that she could to the gold, that worked much better. While the magic still partially diffused directly to the waterwisps, some were able to trickle though the gold into the next bowl.

"Rian, make a note," she said, and Rian dutifully grabbed his plank and charred wood. "Conduction works, but requires the blood to be directly on the gold, or other metal being used, I assume."

"Well…" Rian mused, "that… makes sense? I mean, if we go with the premise that that blood is 'your body', then of course it needs to be touching the gold. Unless you can stick your hand in water, then use that contact to reach through a wire you're not touching to claim another bit of water the wire is touching…"

"A good point," Lori said with a nod, reaching for the syringe. "Perhaps we should test what happens when the blood is directly on the gold."

"Boil it first, it's been lying out in the air!" Rian cried shrilly.

A quick boil later—dustlife was potentially dangerous unless one was a Deadspeaker, in which case you laughed at its feeble attempts to dictate terms to you—and there was a new drop of blood applied directly onto the gold. That was more fruitful, and once Lori had properly bound the waterwisps to stay cohesive and bound to the gold, submerging the blood in water allowed it to both claim and imbue the water and reach through the wire into the other bowl.

"I suppose the trick is not letting the magic pass through a 'non-body' wisp before it reaches the gold," Rian mused, making a note. "If it does, it just gets sucked up… what now? Are you going to test if you can use blood to control other kinds of wisps?"

That… was a thought that hadn't occurred to her. after all, using the metal as a conductor, it allowed for contact with substances besides water… She closed her eyes and tried to reach for the blood, tried to identify other wisps…

She shook her head. "Unfortunately, a drop of blood contains too little of anything besides waterwisps to be useful, and it seems exposure outside of the vein has allowed the other wisps to disperse. While it might be possible with more blood… it would likely need to be specially prepared or directly claimed and imbued while in the vein." She gave her lord a flat look. "I'm reluctant to try right now, as I doubt that would be a safe amount of blood to lose."

Rian nodded. "Yeah, that sounds smart. And probably explains why you were still discouraged from doing this with your blood in school, even if we've proven it's relatively safe. The amount you'd need to be able to do more than just water might be too dangerous. Still, this is good news! We've found a way to turn off the waterjet!"

Lori blinked. "What?"

"You've been imbuing the water directly by adding your blood to it, right?" Rian said. "With this, you can keep your blood separate from the water in a gold container, and we can just connect to it the water jet with a wire aaaandyou're shaking your head no, why won't this work?"

"That will only work when I am actively imbuing through the blood and from there through the wire," Lori said. "The waterjet doesn't need a constant imbuement of magic, it can hold all the magic it needs already. Separating the blood from the waterjet would not affect the waterjet's output, only my ability to imbue it or alter the binding while absent."

Rian slumped. "Oh…" He sighed. "And it was looking so good too…"

"I don't doubt such a thing is possible," Lori said. "That's how bound tools work, after all, with a bead mounted as a power source and a controllable connection using conductive metal to activate when and how strongly the tool draws magic to perform its function." She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "In fact, I see no reason why I can't use this principle to use blood to replace beads in a bound tool, as long as I'm paying attention to the tool in question…"

"So, we can possibly use bounds tools without using up money, which is good since you haven't worked out how to make money yet," Rian said blandly, "except we have no bound tools, and you don't know how to make them yet either, and even if you did, you don't have the supplies of it."

"Succinctly accurate," Lori said.

"So, while it's useful, it's not useful now," Rian sighed.

"Don't be a fool," Lori said. "More than you are already, I mean. Why would I want to test this if there wasn't a use for it? Scholarly curiosity?"

"I'd love to hear the reason, it would be nice news," Rian said.

"This means I can redesign the water jet to be more efficient," Lori said. "It also means that I have a means of powering a small cold storage device on the planned boat that doesn't require adding my blood it water to create ice, which I agree is disgusting to consider when it will be used to store food."

Rian suddenly stood very, very straight. "Lori…" he said, his eyes wide, and just the slightest bit… unhinged. "I know how we can build our boat. I know how we can make it as big as we need. I know how we can get it the shape we need. I know how we can integrate the water jets. And I know how we can do it when we have absolutely no experience with shipbuilding."

Lori raised an eyebrow. "Do you now?" she said.

Rian nodded, his gaze distant, as if seeing something only he could. "Lori… ice floats."

"Yes, Rian, ice floats, because it's lighter than water of the same volume." Her tone was one for talking to annoying children and classmates who needed to get to the point before she walked away.

"Ice floats… and you can make it! Shape it, like you do rock! Keep it cold no matter how hot it gets!"

Lori blinked. Her eyes widened.

And suddenly she could see what Rian could.

She'd had always thought Rian was too theatrical in his speech and manner. This time, however, she thought it completely appropriate as he yelled out what they had both realized, pointing dramatically into the air, "We can build a boat out of ice!"

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Ice Boats and Housewarming

"It doesn't need to be completely ice! We make a wooden skeleton that the ice can wrap around for structural integrity!"

"What about impacts? Damage?"

"Wooden boards mounted on the outside! It doesn't matter if they crack as long as they protect the ide underneath!"

"People will slip."

"Rocks or boards for decking! The ice can be underneath, they never need to touch it."

"It will be cold."

"Then we insulate the insides and build fires! It doesn't matter how hot they make the inside of the boat, the ice won't melt since your magic will be keeping it together!"

Lori resolutely tried to keep herself from becoming enthusiastic about this insane idea as they rode Lori's Boat back to the center of Lori's demesne, but it was becoming very hard when Rian kept countering her objections, sometimes even as she managed to think of an answer for herself. Indeed, the more it sat on her mind, the plausible, convenient and easy it sounded…

There had to be some horrible downside. Besides the obvious, that is. After all, there was probably some very good reason why boats aren't all made of ice with wooden planking over it! Maintenance, for example. Why, it would take a whole team of Whisperers taking shifts at all hours to keep the thing from melting! Or a prohibitively expensive amount of wisp beads!

Not that they were going to use wisp beads… and they didn't need a team of whisperers, since the plan as Rian had been babbling about it would only need her blood mixed into the ice to constantly imbue a binding that would keep the water of the ice frozen solid and unmelting…

No! Don't get drawn in by the colorbrained idea! Downsides! There had to be downsides! Or else more people would be doing this! And she would definitely have remembered boats made of ice bound to stay solid against heat!

"Talk to the carpenters about this," she said. "Surely it's detrimental for wood to be soaked in water or ice like that for long periods of time."

"It won't matter, the ice will—"

"Find out!" she snapped. "And calm down. Valid idea or not, you're too excited to think about this rationally. Sit down, make some drawings about how it will be done, show it to the carpenters and other men who know about things like the sorts of load wood can take, and then get back to me. I don't want to hear about this until the houses are finished and people have started living in them, is that understood?"

Rian sighed, as if this was some great difficulty for him. "Yes, your bindership," he said.

Good.

"Good," Lori said, nodding decisively. "The idea is not without merit—I'm still talking—but it's best we don't come to obsess over the idea. Do something constructive first, like find out how deep the river is or if there are any rapids to overcome."

"Oh, I found out about that as soon as we met with the River's Fork people," Rian said. "They came up by the river from the sea, since they got lucky and found a hidden bay. The only reason they didn't claim the bay itself was that it was too visible from the ocean if they'd made a demesne there, and they wanted time to grow first. And since they didn't have a Whisperer at the time, a more reliable source of fresh water. From what I heard, we could go all the way down to the sea, and then turn and head for Covehold."

"Well, then, design a better way to steer," she said, exasperated. "Somehow I doubt a rudder like that," she gestured at the wooden board with a handle Rian was holding, "would be able to properly control a larger boat."

He sighed again. "Yes, your Bindership." A beat. "Can I pick the name of the boat, this time? It's not like you can just call it 'Lori's Boat'. Then we'd have two, and that would be confusing!"

"I'll consider it," Lori said.

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The next day, at breakfast, Lori looked blearily at Rian, shook her head as if that would help, slapped her cheek gently to make sure she was awake, then gave him a bland look. "Repeat that, so I know I heard you correctly."

"The houses were finished yesterday," Rian said cheerfully. "So people are planning to spend today moving their things from the second shelter, and apparently it's traditional to have a party and invite all your neighbors when you first move into a new house. It's supposed to be good luck. Though I think there's an element of celebrating the fact that this means you'll get started on turning the second shelter into an… um…"

"I get the idea," Lori said. On either side of Rian, Umu, Mikon and Riz were studiously not meeting anyone's gaze.

"People are really looking forward to it?" Rian said, looking mildly embarrassed. The three next to him all reluctantly nodded, seeming equally embarrassed. "We might have to impose a time limit, lest people just stay in there all day."

"Have you handled the details of the cleaning duties for it yet?" Lori said.

"I've made it known that it will be on a 'you use it, you'll help clean it' basis," Rian said. "People seemed agreeable to the arrangement, so I doubt we'll lack for users, and therefore cleaners. Especially since we'll be keeping records of who goes in. I think we might have to ask the medics to take charge of the place. They're used to writing, they can handle any… accidents of over-excitement, and they'd probably be used to most of the human body to be able to act rationally in the event of some sort of accident or something."

Lori sighed. "I'll handle that tomorrow. What you were you saying about a party?"

"Ah, people are petitioning to have an outdoor party, similar to what we had during the holiday," Rian said. "They also want to move the tables and benches in front of the new houses for the duration so they have someplace to put the food, as well as go out and hunt beast meat for it, then serve it roasted. They've even volunteered to hunt some big seels for it themselves." He got a bemused look on his face. "They actually asked Karina for permission to do that, and she said she was fine with it as long as they got your permission and she can join in. I think she really wants to bring down one of the big seels by herself. She has not-that-subtly been asking if she could get a spear."

"Is she likely to use it on someone?" Lori said.

"No, she's not that kind of girl. I think she's just realized merely pointy sticks might not go through adult seels very well."

"Then she can get a spear so she can she join in."

"I… don't think we have one in her size."

Lori rolled her eyes. "Then I'll make a spearhead, and someone can help her put it on her backup seeling rod, it should probably be cured enough." She thought about it. "Riz, you do it."

"Me, Great Binder?" the woman said, surprised at being talked to. At least she didn't stutter nervously this time.

"I assume you know how to put a head on a spear, having been militia?" Lori said.

"Yes, Great Binder…?"

"Good. Help Karina with that, she needs experience killing the big ones," Lori frowned. "Keep her from drowning. And if your mothers make a big deal of why you're not helping move, tell them you're on seel duty and I said so."

"I have… yes, Great Binder," Riz said before Lori had to hear unwanted details about her family life.

"And they may have their party," Lori said. "But there will be no more parties, or excuses to have them, for the next month. Storm month, not blue month. If they want to celebrate anything, they do it at meal times, as long as it doesn't interfere with work."

"No partying for the next 36 days, got it," Rian said, nodding.

"Thirty-seven," Lori said.

"You're rounding up? That's cruel."

"Do we have enough food for winter?"

"No partying for the next month, storm month, got it."

Lori nodded. "Now, where's breakfast?"

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Calling it a 'party' was adequate but lacking. They called it a housewarming. She supposed warmth was an important consideration where they came from.  Apparently, northern custom—or at least the custom of the demesne they were from, she'd forgotten the name as irrelevant—was that a new home must have all doors and windows opened and for as many people as possible to come inside and see as much of it as possible. This was meant to allow people's good luck, warmth and happiness to be shared by the new home so that it would be better able to shelter the family who would now be living there. Wizards of any stripe are said to bring extra blessings when they warmed a house with their presence: Whisperers would let the home be warmer in cold times, Deadspeakers would prevent anyone from becoming sick, Horotracts would allow the house to always fit the family inside it, and Mentalists would allow anyone who lived there to always remember the way home (from the tavern, was the unsaid rider). The food was meant to be a repayment for things visitors shared with the new home, so that they would not be lessened by bestowing their gifts.

Obscure tradition said a Dungeon Binder visiting meant that a wizard would be born to those in the house. It did not specify if they granted all the other blessings as well. A cynical part of Lori wondered how intimately the Dungeon Binders of old that had started this tradition had come to know the house's residents.

Still, she went inside and toured the various houses. While she'd build the walls and floor, and had come in when the doors and initial beams for the roof had been fitted so that the stone would flow and hold them in place, that had been very early in the process.

The variety of ways the insides had changed were therefore very surprising. There were folding tables, folding bunks, elevated sleeping areas along the walls, second floors (in one case even a third floor, though you could only crawl there instead of standing), ladder-like stairs, and at least two rooftop decks. Not all in the same house, but the number of interesting, if mechanically simple, ways wood been arranged to provide more space for more people to live in made the apartment she had shared with her mothers seem even more cramped in comparison.

While she was watched, no one had talked to her, for which she was glad. And all right, the food was pretty good. She might have to ask the kitchen staff—well, ask Rian to ask the kitchen staff—if they could grill the meat instead of stew it sometimes, just for variety.

Still, Lori supposed this was a significant turning point. While there would still be construction work—she didn't doubt that the people who were felled trees, the sawyers who cut the wood, and other Lori said needed to be compensated for the additional work they had to do because these houses had needed more than roofs and doors to be built were carefully taking note of elements in the houses that they wanted for their own—this meant that a substantial amount of manpower had just been made available for other work.

Originally they had needed that manpower for building the boat to Covehold, but with Rian's idea—

No, don't think about it!

—but now that manpower was available for other things. More hunting parties to gather food, skins and bones. More people to gather ropeweed for fibers. Actual adults who could now be assigned to hunt the bigger seels. More people available for mining. They might even be able to start working on getting wood and ropeweed from the half of the demesne on the other side of the river, which they hadn't really crossed over to before now.

Lori bit into the grilled seel, enjoying the taste of the meat and marbled fat that couldn't be cut off for the chandler. She swallowed with great relish.

But tomorrow. After all, she'd authorized this party, she might as well enjoy it!

Everyone else seemed to be thinking the same thing, as nearly everyone in the demesne was there, and—

She paused, feeling the lone void of wisps in her awareness. She frowned. Why was someone in the laundry area alone?

As it turned out, they weren't in the laundry area, but near the clay pit. It was a shallow pit, or so she was told, barely a two paces wide and that much deep. It didn't even need a ladder to get out of, though someone had tied a short rope nearby. Airwisps deadened the sound of her feet as she approached the figure sitting on the rock the potter used while turning clay, playing with a glob of wet clay lying on the ground with dirty hands.

"—wide and shallow will probably be more balanced," Rian was muttering to himself. "But would it end up being top heavy, if we put on a roof? Then it would just tip over anyway… deep, weighed keels are supposed to be better for balance… right?" his hands kept shaping they clay, making vague, awkward shapes that looked half completed as his hands tried to unskillfully sculpt ideas that his mind had already moved on from.

Lori bound the earthwisps in the clay, and Rian let out a start of surprise as all the clay he'd been handling suddenly flowed together, forming into a ball that began to flow. It tumbled into the open clay pit and splattered when it hit the bottom.

"If I have to attend this, so do you," Lori said. "This is the sort of occasion where you say something inspirational and tell people to band together because we need each other, is it not?"

Rian turned to look towards her, looking guilty for a moment. "Sorry, I just… I can't get the idea out of my head. Besides, the houses are finished and soon to be occupied."

Lori glared at him as she let the binding deadening the sound of her footsteps lapse. "Please tell me you weren't thinking of making a clay boat."

"Of course not. That would be silly," Rian said. "Though I'll confess, I did think about making the hull plating stone instead of wood."

"That would sink it," Lori pointed out.

"Not if the boat's displacement was big enough! And it would be perfect for protecting the hull from scraping if it's in shallow water—I'll shut up about it now."

"Good," Lori said. "Now, come on, my food is probably congealing."

"Yes, your Bindership," Rian chirped as he fell into step with her.

They began walking up to where the party was happening.

"How did you know I was down there, anyway?"

"You were the only one who was far away from everyone and alone," Lori said. She looked at him sideways. "Everyone else away from the party was with someone else, not willing to wait for me to get started on the renovations to the second shelter."

Rian blushed. "Um, please don't flog anyone…?"

"I can't see them, so they're not public," Lori shrugged. Rian sighed in relief.

Rian did, in fact, give a speech. It was probably inspirational. There was a lot of cheering, anyway.

Lori just sat back and ate her meat, thinking about the work she had to do tomorrow.

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Lori Builds The… Um…

When Lori came down for breakfast the next day, there was an undercurrent of eagerness in the air. Usually, most people focused on their food or conversations, but this morning, even without paying attention, she could tell that many people were glancing towards her.

"People are certainly… eager this morning," Lori commented to Rian as she reached her table. To her surprise, there was already food waiting for her, despite the kitchen seemingly still in the midst of preparations. One bowl as filled with grilled seel and beast meat that had been cut thinly, the fat on them still sizzling. The other bowl had what looked like vegetables and roots fried in fat. They look nice and soft and edible.

"Apparently, people want you to get an early start on the day," Rian said, looking torn between amusement and embarrassment. "You, uh, probably don't have to worry about this one."

Lori looked down at the food suspiciously. Well, they had clearly been grilled and fried, and none looked spat on…

Sighing, she sat down and start cutting up the food. Rian lets out a sigh.

"Hold out your hand," Lori said.

Rian blinked but did so. Lori starts putting small pieces of meat and vegtables on it.

"Ah, hot, hot!" he exclaimed, blowing on his hand. "Oh, come on, Lori!"

"Taste it first," she said.

Rian rolls his eyes, but after giving the food one last blow, pops them into his mouth and starts chewing. He swallows. "There. No weird taste or anything. Happy now? And I'm glad I washed my hands before coming here…" he muttered.

Lori peers at him, then starts eating.

It was delicious, if a bit oily. She easts slowly so she doesn't get a headache.

"So…" Rian said as she ate, "and I'm only asking because a lot of people asked me to ask you… when do you think you'll get done with the… um…"

"I will finish when I finish," Lori said. She tilts her head thoughtfully. "I might need to quarry more materials from the second level. Perhaps a hallway leading towards the third level, if the stone we have left isn't enough." Between the aqueducts and basins, the houses, the retting tank, the laundry area and the latrines, she'd actually managed to use a lot of the stone, she realized.

"I have been asked to ask if making the walls out of wood would help get it done faster," Rian said.

Lori rolled her eyes as Umu and Mikon sat down on either side of Rian. "Tell them they're grown men and women, and they have other things to do," she said. "Like hunting for food. Or cutting trees. Or weaving. Or spinning. With all the people now available since the houses are finished, you can take some across the river and clear a space there, get a second saw pit started, cut more ropeweed…"

"I notice all of your suggestions are of very physically demanding work of the sort to keep people occupied," Rian said.

"Do we have any other sort around here?" Lori said. "It's not like we have much in the way of book keeping."

"Actually, I have people keeping track of the wood, food, skins and furs coming in and being used," Rian surprised her. "And I asked Mikon to keep track of how much fabric has been woven. It's mostly so we can estate how much material we're using and need in future, and so that we can be able to predict when we'll likely to run out of something but I figure it's best to not let people get into the habit of thinking thy can just help themselves to materials because no one is counting." Behind his back, Umu glared at Mikon. The latter, for some reason, didn't look very triumphant.

Lori frowned. "What are they using for recording?"

"Burnt stick and offcuts of wood," Rian said. "I take the total every day, and they wipe it all down. Not very secure, but it's the habits being formed, not the results. It encourages people to ask first and have a good reason for needing it. Thankfully, no one had to be told… much."

Lori nodded.

"The carpenters have already stacked doors outside the shelter," Rian continued. "With hinges attached. You just need to mount them and they're ready to use and I just heard what I just said."

"What interesting choice of words," Lori said blandly.

"I'm pretty sure there was no good way to phrase that," Rian said. "And if there was, it's too early in the morning for me to think of it."

Lori rolled her eyes. "Are we sure the shelter is now empty? No stragglers, no one hid anything in a hole they gouged out?"

"I checked yesterday before going to sleep," Rian said. "They only thing left are the lights you made and the wooden slides someone carved out to slip over them to dim them when people are going to sleep."

Ah. Well, at least they'd made their own solution.

"There's lots of writing on the walls, casual graffiti, lines marking areas and such," Rian continued, "but it looks like it did the day you rebuilt it."

Lori nodded, thinking as she ate. Altering the shelter would be relative simple. She'd simply have to drag in stone to make internal walls. It would actually be morestructurally stable by the time she finished, since the internal walls would be able to bear the load of the stone ceiling. The first step would probably be measuring out the total length of the shelter and then deciding to divide it into rooms.

"Tell the carpenters to stop making any new doors for the moment," Lori said absently. "We don’t want a surplus of doors."

"I'll tell them, but I'm sure a use for any extra doors can be found," Rian said. "Like giving me something to knock on to get your attention in your room. Or maybe we can use them in the third bath house. Or in some storage room…"

Lori rolled her eyes. "Well, at least tell them not to give me thirty doors or something. I doubt the shelter can fit that many rooms." Yes, definitely measurements. The shelter was only wide enough for a row of rooms maybe just long enough for someone to roll out their bedroll on, and a connecting hallway so people don't step out into the outdoors. And a hallway leading to a single entrance will let them restrict who goes in or out, and most especially keep children out, parents telling them to go in and get people be colored. There would need to be light and air circulation as well…

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After she finished her breakfast, Lori headed for the now-empty shelter, her staff in hand. She'd come back for her stone-leveling tool later.

The shelter had changed since she'd last been inside, For one thing, the stairs leading down now had wooden steps, their surface left a bit rough instead of rubbed smooth so that people wouldn't slip. They'd been put on top of the original stone steps she'd hardened, and she had to admit they felt more secure under her feet.

Past the door, the shelter was empty. There were marks on the floor and walls: scratches, scuff marks, a simplistic map of the demesne drawn with a shard of broken pottery, and lines on the floor and partway up the walls that was probably some sort of boundary demarcation. Someone was clearly trying to claim land, if only in their own minds.

Should she clean that?

Lori considered it.

No, she didn't care.

The shelter was five wide and thirty paces long, though the fact that the roof was an arching curve meant there was more floor space than head space. Still, there was certainly enough room to for a hallway and rooms. And a tall person would even be able to lie down in the room with some space to spare, provided they were careful of the arc of the other wall. If each room was two paces wide… no, wait, remember the thickness of the walls… all right, two paces wide in total, accounting for walls… So, they'd have room for fifteen rooms—no, wait, fourteen rooms, since there's need to be space in front of the door for whoever would be watching the door for children and keeping track of those making use of the facilities so that their names would be up for cleaning the places…

Lori did some quick numbers, then softened part of the floor so she could start making marks, drawing lines on the stone to denote rooms, doors and the hallway with her staff. She'd have to close the small windows along one wall, as well as completely close up the fireplaces…

After retracing the lines on the floor to include the intended widths of the walls, Lori nodded to herself in satisfaction, and headed out to get the stone she'd need as well as see about the doors that had been made. She'd seen them on her way in, and they'd irritated her, since she'd have to find a way to fit the doors into the doorways, forcing the dimensions on her—

She stepped outside and blinked at the crowd. Many of the carpenters had their toolboxes in hand, looking eager, and while others were just standing there with an air of eager but undirected helpfulness. In front of them was Rian.

"—sure Binder Lori will tell us if she needs any sort of assistance," he was in the middle of saying. "But in the meantime, there's still lots of things that need to be done and—" He must have noticed she'd lost their attention and they were now looking at her, because he cut off and turned around, looking embarrassed and exasperated.

Lori sighed. "Rian, a word inside? Also, tell everyone if they have nothing better to do, go and help the children hunt seels or cut ropeweed." She turned and went back inside the shelter.

"You heard her, everyone!" she heard Rian. "Go do something else! We'll call you if you're needed! Come on, you all know this is the exact sort of silliness that will make her not build this and turn the shelter into something boring like a storehouse!"

Hmm, yes, she did need to do that, didn't she? At the very least, they needed better storerooms than they did now, better protected against dragons…

She stepped out again. "Rian, tell everyone if they want to be useful to move all the cured wood to the second level so that if there's a dragon tomorrow we'll have something to repair with."

"You heard her!" Rian said. "Get all the cured wood to the Dungeon's second level. Put it in the middle of the room, not in any of the alcoves, those are for people. Come on people, you wanted something to do, there it is!"

Eventually, Rian stepped into the shelter as Lori heard the people outside dispersing. She was leaning against the wall that held the door, as the curve of the other walls made doing that difficult, and she didn't want to compromise the integrity of the structure by pulling stone from the walls to make a seat. "Thank you for that," Rian said with a sigh that was almost a groan. "It was all I could do to keep people from going inside and 'helping'. Or offering to help. I know you hate that."

"People must really want to get this building made," Lori commented dryly. "They're actually willing to help build it this time instead of waiting."

"I think they think if they help, it'll be finished by tonight," Rian said, looking torn between embarrassment and amusement. "I'm almost tempted to ask you to delay so they'd calm down, but you have too much to do already… "

Lori was very tempted to do just that herself.

"I'll go get the stone," she said tiredly. "You go ask the carpenters to stop making more doors until after I'm done. And bring those doors in here."

"Yes, your Bindership," Rian said. "Permission to recruit other people to help me do it?"

"As long as they know not to irritate me," Lori allowed. Those doors hadlooked heavy.

They split up to get to work.

––––––––––––––––––

The pre-made doors were looking like a bad idea.

Given the measurements she had made for a length of the rooms and the corridor they would all connect to, the doors that had already been made where just short enough to not hit the curve of the opposite wall, but it was a near thing. She told Rian to have the carpenters cut off the corner so that it wouldn’t end up actually brushing the walls when they inevitably swelled with moisture.

Still, the work was relatively simple and easy. After removing the windows and fireplaces along one wall so that there were no gaps in the structure and completing the curve of the arc, she dragged in the stone to raise the wall that would act to separate the rooms from the corridor outside, with Rian and a volunteered Riz holding the doors up so she could make gaps in the stone. It wasn't properly mounting them, but it let her get the wall up without having to worry about structural integrity.

Once that was done, Rian had the carpenters come in the measure for the rest of the doors while Lori then started raising the walls between rooms, starting from the end furthest from the door. From the sounds when Lori stopped for dinner, the carpenters were putting a lot of effort into the job, working even through dinner. She wondered if someone had brought meals for them, or if they'd just eaten really quickly. They were still at it when she went up to go to sleep.

It took three days of work, all in all. During those three days, her breakfast was already waiting for her when she came down, meat grilled and fried things. It added another temptation to slow the work down, but she ignored it, since the aggravation of people constantly coming up to their table and asking—at least they knew to ask Rian instead of her—when the renovations would be finished were sufficient to make her want to get it over with quickly.

She finally ran out of stone and had to go down to the second level, pick an alcove that pointed away from the river, and start excavating at a slight downward incline so she could have more building materials at hand. Lori kept it simple, a tunnel with a curving ceiling to take the weight of the stone above, and when she'd excavated to a depth just a little over the total thickness of the walls she needed to build, she stopped and told people—well, had Rian tell people—not to throw any water down there, because it would not drain out and would flood.

By the afternoon for the third day, however, the walls were done. Each room was lit by lightwisps bound to a small hole at the top of the wall between room and corridor so that the light would illuminate both, as well as act as a small vent that would let airwisps constantly pull air from the corridor into the room. Some of the sound would leak out, but given what the place would be used for, it would at best act as a warning that the room was occupied. In the bottom corner of the corridor, she'd built a low stone tube with openings where airwisps would draw in air from the front of the shelter near the entrance, keeping the structure and rooms properly ventilated now that all the windows had been covered up.

The rest of the day was taken up by softening the stone so that the carpenters could fit in the doors—and the locks—in place and putting planks over the doors so that Lori could fill in that gap with stone. She will admit, it was helpful to have someone else—Rian, because he was taller than Riz—hold her stone-leveling tool up to serve as a backboard while she just applied softened stone to it like mortar, letting her flatten the stone easily.

By the end of the day, it was finished. The shelter whistled slightly with the sound of air coming from the vents as the corridor and rooms were lit up. the floors were still bare stone, but anything else was up to the carpenters, who'd gone back to start making low wooden beds.

"People are already asking to use it," Rian sighed Lori did a final inspection, making sure the doors swung freely, air was properly circulating, and the light was adequate. "We literally have people lined up outside holding bedrolls and pillows."

"Have there been any fights yet?" Lori asked.

"There might be soon," Rian said with a sigh.

Lori shook her head. "Do you have one of the medics ready to sit in front and manage this place yet?"

"Not yet. They're all… sort of willing, but… well, some of them want to use this place too," Rian said. His persistent state of low embarrassment since the start of the renovations peaked slightly.

"Well, you'll have to manage it until you can start assigning other people to do it properly."

"Me?!" Huh. Rian sounded shrill, and there was not a syringe in sight.

"Consider it incentive to resolve the matter quickly," Lori said blandly. "It's not that hard. Just sit in front, assign people to rooms and make sure they don't stay there the whole night. I'll even build you a water clock to keep track of time." She paused. "Tomorrow. I'll still need to calibrate it, after all…"

"Maybe we can let anarchy reign?" Rian said desperately. "Just for tonight? So that when we lay out rules for how things should be done tomorrow, people will see it as an improvement?"

"Making people suffer to make any alternative seem palatable? How cruel of you, Rian."

"Didn't you deactivate all the lights, water and hot water in the demesne once?"

"Of course not. They just ran out in my absence. Which is perfectly natural."

Rian rolled his eyes. "You realize the two of us being in here so long is going to get people thinking we're testing the facilities, right?"

"We aretesting it," Lori said, swinging a door open into the hall and shutting behind her to demonstrate, then using the simple wooden key—basically a flat, thin piece of wood that could lift the simple latch that locked the door from the other side by passing it through the gap between door and frame—to open the door.

"Not the kind of testing people will be thinking of," Rian said, looking aside and blushing.

Lori stopped, and directed a glare towards him. "Go out there and correct them," she said. "Now."

"Historically, that's never helped these kinds of rumors," Rian said, still looking aside.

"Then inform them that anyone mentioning that nonsense within my hearing will be my signal to level this entire building, now or in the future."

"Thatwill work better. I'll go tell them."

When Lori finally stepped out, her inspection done, people studiously avoided her gaze. She nodded, satisfied, then turned and softened the stone above the door and began writing with her staff.

When she was finished, the stone had a simple sign on it that read 'Um'. Lori turned as people gaze at the sign curiously. "The Um is now available for use," she said. "No children are allowed inside the Um for ANY reason. No, not even just telling someone to come out. ANY reason."

She turned and headed for dinner.

"Have fun," she heard Rian say, much too cheerfully, before his footsteps fell into step behind her.

"The 'Um'?" he said incredulously.

"Well, what would you have called it?" Lori said.

"Well, I'd have called it the… um…"

"Exactly," Lori said, letting herself smile. "Best to use the first thing that comes to mind."

Behind them, the first yelling—someone had apparently cut in line—started.