Weekly Digest 50 - (#159 - #161) (Patreon)

Report On A Journey To Covehold

"All right," Lori said in Rian's house after breakfast. She sat on the little wooden stool, her new almanac on her lap. "You've had time. Report."

"Are you sure you don't want us to do this somewhere else?" Rian said. "The benches in the alcoves in the second level would be a lot more comfortable. Sitting on that stool is probably going to hurt after a while." He was seated on his bed, his bedroll folded under him as a cushion.

She rolled her eyes. "They're still threshing there. It's loud." It really was. The sound of the wooden threshing tools striking the stalks and the stone floor beneath was surprisingly resonant. Rian's house was much quieter, and thankfully didn't have the smell that sometimes wafted out of her mothers' room after a night when she struggled to go to sleep before the imbuement on the binding blocking off her hearing ran out. She supposed the flirting hadn't gone that far yet. "Now, report."

Rian shrugged, but made himself more comfortable on his bedroll cushion. "All right. Before I start, what do you want me to skip? I doubt the details of what we had for dinner and the hunting situation is anything you carry about…"

"It isn't," Lori confirmed.

"Day to day morale?"

"I don't care."

"Problems with the prisoners?"

"Unless you tell me you had to kill them before reaching Covehold—"

"—you don't care. Okay… potential resources and ways to make money we identified on the way?"

"Of course. Get started."

He rolled his eyes for some reason. "Right… all right… well, first I'm here to report that Grem, Naineb, and Rann were all successfully exiled to Covehold. We also didn't lose any buckets along the way, and the letter to the Golden Sweetwood Company was sent and we didn't have to pay for it. No one was hurt, no one was robbed, we were able to sell all the cargo we brought for that purpose, and all in all, I'd call the trip a success."

Lori frowned. "Who?"

"The people we exiled for attacking you," Rian said.

"Oh. Next time, don't bother with the names, you know I don't care."

"Noted. All right, removing the bits that happened during the trip, it takes about two, three days to reach the ocean at the Coldhold's maximum speed with the amount of people and cargo we had at the time, though it takes longer to get back since we're fighting against the current. So regularly sending people to get salt for the demesne is easily viable. Most of the land on either side of the river below River's Fork is hills and rocks, which explains why they settled where they did, but I think it's worth it to cut and bring back the ropeweed growing on the banks if we can be sure there aren't any beasts around."

Lori nodded. "I'll leave that to you. Continue."

Rian nodded. "The river opens out to a protected bay, it's actually a pretty good location. A lot of seels and fursh in the water, as well as lots of different sea weed, which might be good for something. Maybe there's something in your almanac, but they're a potential resource. The bay though…" Rian shook his head. "I'm kind of surprised the Golden Sweetwood people didn't settle there instead. It's a good location, and it would let them control the mouth of the river. The next batch of them might set up a demesne there next year."

"Rian, no one would want to build a demesne next to the ocean," Lori said dismissively. "You only get half the surface land area when the demesne expands. Covehold is necessary, but now that it's there, no one needs to do the same thing again."

Rian stared at her. "Lori… all the goods from the old world, all the beads, all the peoplepass through Covehold, and they charge customs duties, taxes and fees for everything. That alone makes them richer than any five demesnes on this continent, but they're the main supplier of salt on the continent because they're on the ocean. Salt can used to preserve meat without any additional magic, meaning that EVERYONE who can't access the ocean to make their own salt, or use Whispering to preserve their food with cold like we have, will need to buy from them to preserve their food long-term. That alone gives them a hold over every other demesne around them, even without everything else they control. Maybe what you said is true in the old continent, but this is the new continent. The next person who decides to set up a demesne on the shore is going to become as powerful as Covehold."

Lori stared at him.

"Maybe that kind of logic about demesne placement worked in the old world, where everyone was moving outward to the sea," Rian continued, "but here, everyone is moving from the sea inwards. And as long as advanced, processed goods need to come from the old continent, and as long as Covehold is the only demesne next to the sea, they have an economic advantage. The only reason that not one has set up another spot is because most of the coastline near Covehold is rocky cliff that isn't immediately accessible from ocean or land. The bay at the mouth of the river is different, and the person who sets up a demesne there can directly compete with Covehold. At the very least, they'll restrict our access to the sea, even if it's just a fee to pass through."

Lori kept staring at him. Eventually, she took a deep breath. "A matter for later," she eventually said. "Continue your report."

Rian frowned at her, but nodded. "From the bay, once we got out to the ocean, it took us most of a week to get from there to Covehold, though we were slowed down from not knowing exactly how far the demesne was and how we needed to be careful to keep the Coldhold from capsizing from the waves. The outriggers were a good design idea, but we need a deeper keel and more weight on the keel. Though maybe that was just because it's close to winter, maybe the water will be milder when it's warm. "

"So, we'll need to redesign the boat again." Lori managed not to groan. She thought they were done altering that boat!

Rian sighed. "Yeah… but if it's just from here to the ocean for salt, what we have now is fine. Though we might need to think about where we put the Coldhold when a dragon comes. We can't just leave it out, and it's been a significant enough investment of time and work that we need to protect it. "

"I'll work on it tomorrow," Lori said. "Even if I feel a dragon coming right now, we have time."

Rian nodded. "Good, that's good… all right, so in addition to being able to travel to Covehold safer, a move seaworthy ship will also let us take advantage of our access to the ocean beyond salt. While there's a lot of potential food in the bay, there's a lot more outside. Bigger fursh, small dillians, sea bugs, larger graspers and squid… it's food everywhere, and what we don't eat, we can sell to Covehold or just trade to River's Fork. But food really sells in Covehold and, a lot of it gets resold to the other demesne around it."

Next to him was the plank of wood he wrote notes on. Rian held it out to Lori. "Here's a list of all our expenses, and there's a legend of how much beads were worth. But there was a daily docking fee for Covehold's docks. Just cheap enough to be affordable but expensive enough for you to need a steady income to afford it."

Lori took the plank and blinked. Instead of being written in charcoal, Rian had carvedthe list of expenses into the wood. She supposed he had worried the information might be lost. The handwriting was… well, well, it was terrible, but she supposed he couldn’t safely hold a knife or whatever he'd used to write this the way he would normally hold a writing implement.

She still frowned as she read though the numbers, and winced as she saw how much her boots and glass had cost. The rest of all the other items they'd brought back were also listed—Rian had used a strange shorthand, but she supposed that made sense to reduce how much carving he needed to do to list all this down—as well as how much they'd been able to sell their cargo for.

"You sold salt?" she said. It was on the top of the list of sold things.

Rian shrugged. "It's not like we couldn't just make more on the way back. Though the deep-sea water might be why it came out a little green, the batch we sold didn't look like that. It really helped pay for the berthing fees, and let me buy more of what we needed. With the whole river and ocean for us to get from, with a little work we could start turning a profit next year. "

"So, we'll have people regularly leaving the demesne and spending large amounts of time out in the Iridescence," Lori said.

"They'll pass through River's Fork before they get here, and if we managed to keep a good relationship with Shana—"

"Binder Shanalorre," Lori corrected. Honestly, he was supposed to be the one who remembered names, why did he keep forgetting this one.

"Right, her. If we can maintain a good agreement, she can heal them of any injuries and damage they might accrue out there. We might be able to pay for healing with salt, they'll want it to preserve their meat and for tanning their own skins and furs."

Lori considered it, then sighed. "We already have an agreement she'd heal us in exchange for hiring mine workers."

"True. Maybe we can negotiate an addendum that they'll heal us over the winter in exchange for salt to preserve their food?" Rian suggested. "Winter means people might get sick, and since we don't have much in the way of medicines… well, we know where a Deadspeaker is, we might as well stay on her good side."

Lori frowned, considering that, then reluctantly nodded. "All right, arrange it. I suppose it's a good contingency until I can learn Deadspeaking."

Rian paused. "Yes, exactly," he said. "Anyway, the list also has how much things were selling for when we were there, though I think that might shift depending on the season."

Lori looked at the plank again. "I can barely understand what any of this means."

Rian sighed. "Yeah, I know, I'll write it out properly later. But right now, our best means of income is probably food we catch from the ocean, skins, salt, and ropeweed fabric. With the whole river to get resources from, we can harvest far more ropeweed than we need for ourselves." Another pause. "They also don't call it ropeweed, but I figure you don't care what their term for it when we have our own?"

"You figure correctly," she acknowledged.

"So, if we're going to trade with Covehold for what we can't make for ourselves, we'll need to establish production facilities, storage facilities, processing facilities…" Rian began to list. "Of course, these are secondary to the demesne's needs to survive, but if we plan to have a lot of surplus for something we're going to be making for ourselves anyway…"

"The salt will be simple," Lori said. "We simply need an efficient means of pouring seawater into an evaporator and storing the resulting salt. The fabric though… " Lori shrugged. "I'll leave the details of scaling up production of that to you… after you set up the Dungeon farm."

"Yeah, that's probably a good set of priorities," Rian said. "With how little we actually managed to harvest, any additional food will be important." He sighed. "We might have to find a way to buy grain from River's Fork. They lost some during the dragon that killed their old Binder, but they still have a lot since they originally needed to feed a much larger population. They have surplus and we'll need that surplus."

Lori scowled.

"I can literally feel your dislike of the idea from here," Rian said. "Think about it as practice for trading with Covehold. If we don't have enough surplus to trade for food from River's Fork, then we don’t have enough surplus to trade for resources in Covehold, where the value of our goods will be relatively lower because we won't be the only one providing it."

"I'm familiar with supply and demand," Lori retorted. "I grew up in Taniar. I just don't like it."

"Given that I'll be doing all the talking to other people to set this up and get it going, I'm inclined not to like it either," Rian said dryly. "But if we want to thrive, it's necessary. We're relatively isolated and have room to expand out here, but what about next year? The year after that? When the Golden Sweetwood Company comes, people will know about this place, simply from watching where they're going. I think you'll want to be in a dominant position when that happens and not have to worry about being hemmed in by other demesne. And if we continue with your stance about not recruiting other wizards—"

"No wizards," she snapped.

"—yes, that, well, it means we'll be working with a significant handicap. Even one Deadspeaker would let us increase grain yields and not have to worry about disease and injury."

"Only until I learn how to use Deadspeaking," Lori said.

Rian was silent.

"Is that all?" she said.

Rian sighed. "Well, while I didn't recruit, I kept an ear out for people who were amenable to moving to a different demesne, and it looks like there are a lot. There's also talk about Covehold actively encouraging people to move to other demesnes. So when you do decide to start recruiting, I don't think we'll have trouble finding skilled workers who have their own tools, though if we're doing it on the Coldhold we'll only be able to bring in people in small batches."

Lori nodded. "Noted. What else?"

Rian hesitated, frowning. "I… think that's everything immediate. I mean, you probably don't want to hear about every rumor and thing I heard about while I was there…"

"No, I don't," Lori nodded. "Very well, then that will be all. Inform me immediately about anything that might have slipped your mind."

"Yes, your Bindership…" Rian said. "Ah, have you read the section I told you about yet?"

Lori sighed at his impatience. "Yes, yes, I'll read it now," she said, holding up her almanac to show him.

Really, he could be so impatient sometimes…

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Images Bound In Light

"Lori, it's lunch time."

Lori jerked up from the page she was reading, staring at Rian standing at the doorway to her room. "How did you get up here?" she demanded.

He pointed back the way he'd come. "You forgot to seal the hallway," he said. "I think you shouldn't read that during the day, it's very distracting. I mean, I understand, it's probably full of interesting and useful things, but… uh, I'll shut up now." Ah, he finally noticed her glare.

"I'll be down momentarily," she said.

"Lori, I know what it's like to read new books too, I know that means you're skipping lunch and not coming down for dinner," Rian said.

She glared at him.

"If you're not going to eat lunch, just tell me so I can eat? I have a farm to get organized for you, and I'd rather not do it on an empty stomach."

Lori exhaled loudly—it wasn't a sigh, those let out exasperation, not make more—and would have slapped the book shut until she remembered it was her only book. "Ugh, fine. I'll eat."

"Thank you for doing me this great favor," Rian said, voice flat. "Your Bindership's generosity is boundless. Shall we?"

This time she sighed, but closed the almanac around her finger and got off the bed. "Move," she said irritably, and Rian moved back from the door, leading the way down to the dining hall. Lori followed after him still annoyed but reluctantly conceding that she was hungry after all.

There were only two bowls waiting at the table. The three were already eating, and Riz made room for Rian to sit down between her and Umu. Lori just put down ther book next to her on the bench and grabbed one of the bowls and started to eat. It was a bit lukewarm for her, but a quick binding of firewisps fixed that. Rian seemed to have no problem eating it as it was.

Lori found she was very hungry, and she concentrated on eating until her bowl was half-empty. At that point, the food had become mostly tasteless from oversaturation, and she had to take a moment's break to drink. There were two cups on the table, and she grabbed one and filled it with water from the jug.

"Oh good, I can drink now," Rian muttered, grabbing the other cup.

Lori felt a strange, vague twinge at that which reminded her vividly of her mothers. She ignored it. "Rian, I need paper," she said.

"For the pinhole?" he said.

"For the pinhole," she confirmed.

"I'll have the carpenters shave off a sheet of wood from a plank," he said. "That should be thin enough to work, and less light will leak through compared to paper."

Lori blinked. That… was actually a good idea. "Good," Lori said.

"We can probably hang a piece of wood on a rope to have something to bind the image to," Rian continued. "And you can use magic to block out the light around it so only the light from the pinhole passes through. Someone should be in there to make sure that the page we want to copy is properly centered and we'll need a really bright light so that the image is clear—"

"All right, all right, you've clearly put a lot of thought into this," Lori interrupted irritably.

"I strive to anticipate your needs," Rian said, smiling cheerfully.

"Just how much of this book did you read?"

"I only looked over it," Rian admitted. "I needed to get it packed for travel, after all. No, I asked a couple of Whisperers in a drinking hole about it and about what parts they recommended. One of them even had his own copy and showed me."

"… were you recruiting them?" Lori said, glaring at him.

"You said not to, so I didn't," Rian said. "But I figured they'd know some good tricks we could try, and they did."

Lori kept glaring at him. The annoying thing was, he was probably telling the truth. And if he wasn't…

If he wasn't…

Well, she'd deal with killing him when it came to it.

Lori broke off her glare and continued eating. "Get the carpenters on that shaving. We'll use the walls of the Dungeon."

Rian glanced at the walls. "I'll find a spot no one is using to keep score of their lima games."

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The shaving of wood was ready soon after lunch. It was ready so fast Lori suspected Rian had already had it made and had simply been waiting for her to ask for something like it. The shaving was small, about the size of her open hand, and almost literally paper thin. It felt strangely delicate in her hands, and when Rian suggested she make a bone frame around the edges so they'd have something more secure to hold it by, she immediately had him go and retrieve some bone to do just that.

He came back with a bucket of several long bones that, from their wet look, had recently been washed by being thrown into the river, one end on each broken open, revealing the marrow was gone. Thankfully, they were clean of any rot or remains.

"I just realized that we'll need something to hold the frame and the sheet steady," Rian said. "Otherwise someone is going to have to hold it up, and it don't want that to be me, especially since I don't know how long this might take. Besides, having some kind of stand or something to hold it in place would be more reliable."

…

Riz wouldn't have thought of that.

"Excellent," Lori nodded. "Now go wash your hands while I heat the rot off the bones so I don’t get sick while handling it."

"Yes, your Bindership," Rian said, putting down the bucket.

By the time he came back—again wiping his hands on his trousers—Lori had heated the bones enough to be reasonably sure it wasn't going to make her sick, and the lack of smell after she was done indicated Rian had picked well and there was no more hidden meat or marrow to decay. She reduced the bones back to body temperature and picked up one bone of them, a shoulder blade that was nice and thick, and began to bind the earthwisps in the bone so she could shape it.

She built the frame, squeezing the shaving between two bone squares and fusing the squares together where they touched. The resulting frame was… well, it worked, it was light and rigid, and it didn't deform the shaved wood sheet, which was all they needed…

The frame was mounted on a stand, also made from earthwisp-shaped bone, a simple tripod that she could fuse the bone frame to. The hole on the frame was made using the finest, narrowest needle from her sewing kit, pierced through with Rian's confident, steady hand. That done, they mounted it onto the tripod, and Rian adjusted the frame so that it was parallel to the wall they would be using to test this. The wall wasn't perfectly flat, but it was flat enough, and this was just a test to see if they could make what was described in the almanac work.

"All right, what now?" Rian asked.

Lori referred again to the almanac in her hands just to be sure, then nodded. "Now one side of the pinhole needs to be completely dark and contain the surface I'll be binding the lightwisps on, while the other side needs to contain what I'll be copying, and has to be brightly lit. It's advised that the former be at least large enough for me to be in, so I can see what I'm binding. There's a warning that what I will be copying with be upside-down and inverted, so this should only be used for images where the orientation doesn't matter."

"The Whisperer I spoke said that darkwisps are enough and that you don't need an actual room," Rian said. "They also use this for surveying, apparently."

Lori blinked, frowning. "Surveying? What's the point of using this for surveying?" Confirmation she could just use darkwisps to block out light was helpful, and she reached out across her Dungeon to start binding the darkwisps available.

"To make images of the terrain that they can bring back," Rian said. "We said they also tried this as a way of making records of contracts, but it didn't work since the binding needed to be regularly renewed, and making bound tools to preserve the image like they do in the old continent was expensive."

"That's probably an understatement," Lori said as she began moving the darkwisps towards her location. They moved instantly, not bound by limits of mass, moving where there was nothing opaque blocking the way. "Having bound images made in the old continent was expensive. Here, it must be exorbitant."

"Probably," Rian said as what seemed like a cloud of darkness began streaming from the side corridor with the treasure rooms, the water reservoir and, once she had extinguished the lightwisps there, the third level. Her lord stared at the moving darkness in fascination. He reached towards it curiously, then hesitated. "Um, is it all right that I touch it? I just… want to see what it's like?"

Lori raised an eyebrow at her lord, a small, amused smile on her face. "Go ahead," she said. "You won't feel anything, though. Darkwisps and darkness have no mass or substance, only volume. It is space absent light."

"Huh…" Rian said, waving a hand into the blackness. He spun his hand around, and seemed fascinated when it didn't alter or deform. "You're right. It just feels like normal air. If I closed my eyes, I wouldn't even know it was there. I'd have thought it would be a little colder…"

"Only in intense sunlight where lightwisps and firewisps are mixed," Lori said. "Even then, it's of little help. The substance occupying its volume would be the air already present, and that air would still be hot."

Rian shook his head. Why was he smiling like that? "That's so… strange. I mean, why is there a wisp for the absence of light? It's not because of some kind of symmetry. I mean, there aren't any coldwisps or vacuumwisps for places where there aren't any firewisps or things with solid mass, right?"

Lori shrugged. "That's just how Whispering works. Trying to find reasons 'why' is a task for philosophers: a waste of time and beads, and only done by people who are not qualified to do anything else. However, it is not true that darkwisps are defined only by the absence of light. They have other properties. Like glass, they act as an insulator against magic. No Whispering, Horotracting, Deadspeaking and especially Mentalism can pass through a volume of darkwisps without expending imbuement to overcome the darkwisp's own imbuement, unless they had a dedicate channel through the darkwisps like a wire or some other substance that their wisps, life, thoughts or vistas can move through. It's what I use to protect my Dungeon against dragons."

Rian frowned. "Wait, it acts like glass?" he said, eyes suddenly intent. "Like, can it do everything glass can do? Can it protect against the Iridescence?"

Lori was ready for this. Everyone always asked this. "To a limited degree," she said. She held up her arm, wrapping some darkwisps around it. "If I cover my arm like this when I leave the demesne, the darkwisps will insulate me against the colors. However, this covering is irrelevant, as my arm is still not completely covered. The colors would come in from the wrists and the elbow." Lori pulled the Darkwisps all around herself, shrouding herself completely. "To completely protect myself, I would need to completely cover myself. However, I'm sure you can see the problem with this approach."

Rian frowned, looking up and down at her. "I don't see—" He blinked. "Ah. You can't cover your eyes, or else you can't see where you're going. That's a way for the Iridescence to get in."

Lori nodded. "That can be mitigated by glass, but even then, such a binding requires constant imbuement, for the Iridescence would be constantly bearing upon it from all directions. A Whisperer would only be able to keep imbuing it for so long, and would be unable to form any sort of binding as they did so. The darkwisps would insulate them from all other wisps in their environment, and if they used a wire as a channel, it would be a way for the Iridescence to circumvent the darkwisps, rendering all this effort moot."

Lori braced herself for some sort of bright idea, some 'what about?', 'did you think about?', 'have you considered?', as if Whisperers having been thinking of the uses, applications and limitations of their own magic for centuries.

"Well, that's unfortunate," Rian sighed. "But at least I learned something new. And it sounds like this could really help us with our cargo!"

Lori blinked. What? "What?"

"Our cargo!" Rian said cheerfully. "If we pack our cargo with darkwisps, then Iridescence can't grow on it, right? At least, as long as its all completely covered. Even if it won't last for the whole trip, it'll mean we don't have to expose our cargo to water damage or wear from the holes the Iridescence pokes into things. That means we'll have, say, skins with fewer holes poked through that need to be repaired by Deadspeaking, which means we can sell it for a bit more."

Lori stared at him. "That… wouldn't work," she said. "Even if I fill, say, a jar with darkwisps, the contents will still be making contact with the sides of the jar, which will channel the Iridescence through. It will be admittedly slower transmission than if it were out in the open air, but it will still happen."

"Ah," Rian said, suddenly grinning widely. "But what if you cover the WHOLE jar, inside and out?"

"Then there would still be where the jar was in contact with the ground," Lori said.

"But what if the jar was resting on was something that insulated against Iridescence?" Rian said. "Like glass? Or ice?"

Lori blinked and suddenly stopped, staring at nothing.

"Could it work?" Rian said excitedly.

It could work. It could actually work… If it did, it meant… it meant…

It meant they could transport water and Iridescence perishable goods. Books. Paper. Food that was something other than stew in a jar.

"We will need to experiment," Lori said calmly. "Later. For now, we are already in the middle of something."

Rian blinked, then looked at the frame of bone as if he'd forgotten it was there. He actually looked embarrassed. "You're right, you're right. Sorry for getting distracted. We need to get this done first." He shook his head. "What do you need me to do now…?"

Once they were both focused again, creating the pinhole imager, as the almanac had called it, was relatively simple and quick. Lori bound the darkwisps to define a 'room', with the frame and the pinhole along one 'wall. The 'room' had only darkwisps for walls, allowing light to pass through within the 'room's' confines, but not letting any in or out except through the little pinhole. At that point, the imager was basically done, with only a few adjustments to be made for a better image.

Rian stood in front of lit side of the pinhole, holding up the almanac to the hole. His eyes were closed because all around the frame of the pinhole was a ring-shaped binding of lightwisps that cast a brilliant radiance on him and what he was holding. This, according to the almanac, was useful for a brighter image, though it also warned that adjustments needed to be made, lest the image be too bright and rendered useless. Lori, standing inside the dark side of the pinhole imager, observed the spray of light the pinhole was casting on the wall and willed the ring of light to slowly grow dimmer. The image on the wall slowly began to resolve, forming shapes and colors…

Eventually, a slightly warped image was on the wall. The cover of the book, upside-down and inverted as if it was a reflection in a mirror. It was moving, shifting as Rian adjusted his grip or moved a little to maintain his balance as he stood there patiently. The image was faint, as Lori had needed to reduce the amount of light the binding emitted so she could make out the fine details. Slowly, carefully, she bound the lightwisps streaming through the pinhole and carefully applied a variant of the binding she used to see better in the dark, as recommended by the almanac. The image on the wall grew brighter, more defined despite the contours of the wall preventing it from being perfect.

"Hand me the tablet and turn to the first image we need to copy," Lori said, her voice passing though the darkwisps to Rian. It was, as she had said, only empty air after all.

The image of the book's cover disappeared, and Lori found herself staring at her Dungeon's dining hall, if all the tables and benches hung from the ceiling. The image was clear enough, if a bit fuzzy at the edges, and things that were farther were dark, as if in deep shadow. Then the image shifted again to upside-down parts of Rian. "Here!" he said, and she stuck out her hand, feeling a flat tablet made from bone carefully placed on it. The image shifted again as Rian carefully opened the book to the first image, then held it up.

"Turn it upside down," Lori ordered. "Now closer. Closer. Closer! Wait, not that close!" The image resolved, and she adjust both bindings of lightwisps again. She held up the bone tablet, putting it in the path of the light from the pinhole. She positioned it so that the image took up most of the board and adjused the bindings again until the image was to her satisfaction. Well, almost. "Stop moving!" she told Rian. "You're off center, move back— that's too much! Good, stay there and move it up—no, the other way! There! Stay there!"

"My arms are starting to ache," Rian sighed.

"Hold a little longer!" Honestly, it was only holding up a book. It wasn't even that heavy. She was the one doing all the work. She held up the tablet again, held perfectly still, then claimed and bound the lightwisps in immediate contact with the tablet's surface. Carefully, she moved the tablet as she imbued the binding, making it glow brighter. She nodded in satisfaction as she stared at the image of the line drawing from the almanac, reproduced larger on the glowing surface of the tablet. "Done. You can relax now."

A loud sigh, almost a moan of relief followed, the image projected on the wall changing as Rian lowered his arms. Really, it wasn't that long or that heavy. "Did it work?" he asked.

"It worked," Lori said, carefully parting the darkwisps so they wouldn't abrade on the lightwisps on the tablet. "The image has been reproduced."

Rian looked at the image on the tablet with relief. Then he blinked and his eyes widened. He stared down at the almanac in his hands. With a tone of mounting dread, he asked. "How many images are we copying?"

"All of the ones about edible food and useful plants, of course," Lori said.

Rian groaned.

Why was he complaining so much? He only had to hold up the book. She was the one who was doing the real work.

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The Importance Of Milling

Lori allowed herself to be swayed by Rian's argument to not make copies of every illustration in the book right then, as it would be a waste of time. He argued that they should focus on the illustrations of edible plants that were still in season, as otherwise there was no point. She supposed he had a point about that. And she'd need to be the one making the tablets for it, since the lightwisps would need to be bound to something else with wisps, and trying to bind it to airwisps wrapped around an object was inefficient when it came to imbuement. So perhaps he had a point in not doing all the illustrations.

He also suggested just putting the images on the walls of her Dungeon, or at least on the walls of the outside entryway, as both a decoration and a way for people to be able to quickly refer to them. They spent the next day doing that, moving the tripod with the frame on it and the darkwisps along the entryway corridor, binding the images to the stone walls. They weren't her flattest walls, but they were even enough, so the illustrations weren't so warped they couldn't be used for identification.

"Be sure to explain what those are for to people, all right?" Lori said, inspecting the almanac for damage as Rian put away the frame for later. The pages were surprisingly thick and sturdy, and the glue on the spine didn't seem like it would come off any time soon. She wondered how long it would last?

"Yes, your Bindership," Rian said.

"Now that we're done, go and get the farm on the third level started," Lori said.

"I can start talking to people and begin organizing it, but we'll have to wait for the threshing to be finished, which should be soon," Rian said. "Probably in a day or two. Then we can start on it after we have the holiday celebrating the end of the harvest."

Loi gave him a displeased look. "Another one? We'll never get anything done at this rate."

"I'll point out those rest days were your idea," Rian said. "Yes, Riz told me about those rest days you declared while I was gone. So you can't blame those on me, I wasn't even here. You have no one to blame but yourself for those. And anyway, celebrating the end of the harvest is traditional. You've seen how much work goes into it compared to the normal day-to-day work. People deserve a nice holiday after all that."

"Maybe it's traditional in other demesne, but in mine—" Lori began.

"Besides, we need to test that the grain is good to eat," Rian interrupted. "That's usually done by grinding it up into flour and making bread."

Lori paused.

"And since we have salt now, and know about plants that can be used to add flavor, the bread is going to be much tastier than what we had in River's Fork. And I'm sure we can do some things with the meat and fat we have to make the bread even better…"

Lori turned and gave him a level look.

"Or we could just act like it's a normal day like any other and just work and work and work," Rian sighed. "Yes, we should save all that bread for later, when we're too hungry and cold to enjoy it—"

"All right, all right, you can have a holiday," Lori interrupted. "But the bread better be good!"

"Your generosity is boundless, your Bindership," Rian said. "Truly, you're too good to us."

"Only because we don't have taxes yet," Lori said.

"Your thinly veiled threat of economic suffering is dully noted. May we actually have the beads for you to think it's a good idea to do it."

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The threshing was finished a day later. Lori spent that time assisting the stonemasons in making mill stones so they could make flour, when Rian had rather embarrassedly informed her at breakfast that they didn't have anything to make flour with.

"The grist mill to make flour was left at River's Fork because it was too heavy to move easily," Riz explained for Rian. "We were planning to go back for it once we found… well, here, but with everything that's happened…" She sighed. "Technically, it's commonly owned by the Golden Sweetwood Company, so we have as much right to it as the people still living there, but…" She looked away, seemingly embarrassed.

"But last time it was brought up, it got unpleasant and messy," Rian continued for her. "And people were getting heated on the subject, so I had them set the matter aside. We didn't have any grain yet then, and I always thought the plan was for us to make out own grist mill, since we came here without one…"

"I think that was less of a plan and simply the circumstances we left Covehold with," Lori said. "I was certainly never informed we needed such a thing." She paused. "You want me to make one, don't you?"

"If we don't have one, it'll take forever to mill down enough flour to make bread," Rian said. "We could use a mortar and pestle, but that takes longer, doesn't grind as much, and is much more work intensive. A mill stone is the better option."

She gave him a very flat look. "Rian, you seem to be under the misapprehension that I'll do anything for bread."

Rian shrugged. "It's a very necessary piece of equipment for the demesne. Vigas needs to be ground down into flour before we can really eat it. Otherwise the only other option is to boil it into a kind of tasteless porridge. Having once made the terrible mistake of trying such a porridge, I can confidently tell you there's a reason why humanity invented bread."

"It's not that bad with honey." Riz said. Rian turned and stared at her. "It's a lightweight food that you just add water to, and having the colors grow into it a little actually makes it softer and easier to eat once you boil it."

Rian turned to Lori. "See? It's so bad getting iridiated is actually an improvement." Riz shrugged but nodded in agreement.

"And how exactly am I supposed to build one of these mills?" Lori said.

Rian gave her a look. "While I appreciate that you like building all the things made of stone yourself, maybe this is something we should leave to our stonemasons? I mean, it would probably be faster if you shaped the stone yourself, but they've made these things before and would know the best way to make them."

Lori blinked. "I thought stonemasons built buildings and things?"

"They also shaped stone," Rian explained patiently. "And while having them do it by hand would be time consuming, if the stone they were working on was somehow softer than… well, solid rock…"

Lori began to scowl at him.

"It'll be just like assisting the potter with the kiln or the smiths with the forge," Rian said. "You just sit there and glare at what they're working on while you make your magic. You don't even have to talk to them."

Well… that sounded… tolerable. But still! "Why was one of these not made earlier?" Lori demanded. "If it was known how vital it was and that we didn’t have one, then why was no effort to make one happen sooner? Why wasn't I informed of the need?"

Rian winced, looking guilty. "That… was an oversight on my part. I accept responsibility for this mistake. There were… a variety of factors involved, but as lord, it was something I should have dealt with sooner."

Lori leveled her glare at him. "See that such an oversight doesn't happen again," she said. "After all this clamoring for a holiday, and now you tell me that we're lacking something that should have been made much earlier…?"

"I know, your Bindership," Rian said. "As I said, it's an oversight on my part. I forgot to mention it before I left. I'll do my best to set it up today so that all you need to bother yourself with is softening the stone so that it can be shaped. You don't even need to pick out the stone in question. Just make it soft and then harden it when they finish."

Lori continued to glare at him. "You wouldn't have made a mistake like this before," she said, letting her gaze sweep over the women on either side of him. Umu stiffened, while Mikon paused in the middle of considering while bowl she should move next. "Are you letting yourself get distracted?"

"I just got back, and this is an oversight that's been going on for a long time."

Lori considered that. "Fine, I will hold you responsible for this." Rian nodded. "But don't think I'm ignorant of the fact that Erzebed is equally culpable, since she should have known to tell me we needed one of these mill stones, especially since she obviously knew the demesne didn't have one."

Next to Rian, Riz flinched and Mikon reached up and draped an arm around her, squeezing her shoulder.

"Or the culpability of the one who was distracting Erzebed," Lori continued.

Mikon's hand twitched, but didn't move, simply continuing to stare at the sunk board intently.

"Your Bindership, you've already officially made this my fault," Rian said. "Can we move on to the logistics of getting one built, please?"

Lori swept her glare one more time, then nodded curtly. "Very well. Make the arrangements with the stonemasons, and I'll see if the almanac has anything I can use. And your holiday will be delayed until this is finished, for however long that might be. And it will be the last holiday we hold, understood? From then until winter, we will be concentrating on storing as much food as possible, preparing the winter crop and Dungeon farm, and all the other work to prepare for winter."

"Yes, your Bindership," Rian said. "I won't let it happen again."

"See that you don't," Lori said, then glanced at Mikon. "Well? Are you going to make a move or not?"

The pink-haired weaver hastily reached out to make her move, continuing the game she and Lori were playing.

The almanac did, in fact, include how to make a mill stone for flour. Specifically, it had a simply diagram for such a mill in one of its sections, though it was less an exact design than some general directions for making one's own. Naturally, it was easiest with Whispering, but there were also some notes on how to do it with Mentalism, such as recommending holding the stone in place with thoughts while shaping it by hand, since stability is more important when making the grinder. Well, that wouldn't be relevant to her, but it was a useful note to remember when she finally learned how to use Mentalism.

The section in question was relatively short, and she managed to finish it with her breakfast. The writings also made it clear that, yes, this was one of the things best made by a stonemason who knew what they were doing, but this section of the almanac had apparently been written for those who didn't have such skilled laborers nearby, since it still included enough diagrams for Lori to try building one herself. It wasn't unlikely. Perhaps some foolish group had set up a demesne and hadn't had a mill stone or a stonemason to make one for them?

Well, they had stonemasons, and so were fortunately not in the same terrible situation as those hypothetical idiots.