Weekly Digest 51 - (#162 - #164) (Patreon)

The Mill Stone

After breakfast, and reluctantly putting away the almanac in her room so that it wouldn't be damaged by the rigors of a day's work, Lori met with the pair of stonemasons who would be needing her assistance in making the mill stone so it would be done sooner as the rest of the threshing was being finished. Rian did the talking, introducing them to her—why did he do that? He knew she didn't care nor would she remember—in one of the alcoves on the second level of the Dungeon as she inspected the stone they had apparently chosen for this. From what the almanac said, the stone for the something like this needed to be one that was sufficiently hard so that she wouldn't end up eating sand with her bread, which was something the almanac warned of for demesnes that didn't have a Deadspeaker who knew how to fix teeth.

There has also been a note reminding Whisperers that, no, they shouldn't use earthwisps and mass from the teeth of dead beasts to repair your own teeth without proper training and experience. It was followed by a list of very painful-sounding complications from attempting to do so, ending with 'and you'd still need to see a Deadspeaker anyway'. As Lori didn't want to have to deal with a Deadspeaker, and she wasn't sure if Shanalorre's savant-healing extended to teeth and repairs thereof, she decided to do her best to make sure it wasn't necessary.

They began once Lori had satisfied herself as to the suitability of the rock. She softened the stone and reduced its viscosity as she could, making sure to keep it solid so that there weren't any bubbles to weaken their structure, then reshaped them to be reasonably round and thick. Round was much easier to make then flat. All she had to do was reshape the stone to be taller than it was wide, alter the viscosity, and then released her hold of the structure without releasing the binding. This made the stone ooze out more or less evenly in all direction on the flat ground. She did this twice, and ended up with two round stones a little over half a pace wide and half a hand thick at the edges, and somewhat thicker in the middle.

After that, the stonemasons took over as she sat nearby, keeping the stone soft by reducing its cohesion, at least near the surface of the material. It wasn't a binding she had a lot of practice in, as she had never worked anywhere there was any call for it, but she knew the theory, and more importantly she knew the practice thanks to the flow diagram in the almanac refreshing her memory. Lori had to maintain the binding, adjusting it as needed to account for what the stonemasons were doing and having the binding's effect extend deeper into the stone as they removed material from it.

If she had merely bound the entire material and then walked away—which was the kind of lazy thinking a Whisperer who'd never done this sort of work would conceive—then the entire stone would have reduced structural integrity. This method allowed for a softer, more malleable outer surface that could be worked while having the rest of the material retained the structural integrity to not be damaged. She had read about the process in an old biography about how the walls of Dungeon Binder Lamses Dungeon, Dendilys, had been decorated with finely detailed artistic works using this method, the flow diagram included in the almanac was much better than what she would have come up with to do it. In the privacy of her own head, she had to admit her initially conceived method of doing it would probably have resulted in a hard rock with a coating of stony sludge.

Thankfully, she wasn't bored. Watching the two stone masons work was fascinating. The two used an assortment three different and a wooden, round-headed hammer to shape the stone with a speed that Lori would have called rushed had she not been used to how fast a skilled worker at their craft could get something done. Well, after the first few hammer strokes revealed the altered consistency of the stone and they managed to adjust, anyway. As the men who had picked the stone, they had known and expected it to be much harder, but once they had adjusted to its altered properties from Lori's biding, they worked quickly.

Lori was almost jealous at how quickly they flattened the respective stones there were working on, using only changing angles of their chisels and a straight-edged metal rule to measure. She knew better than trying to replicate it with her whispering. It seemed almost easy and casual the way they did it, so it was probably a skill the two masons had worked for years to master. Soon, the two stones were level except for a fist-wide, thumb-thick upraised area in the middle of one that was match by an almost equal depression in the middle of the other, and Lori adjusted her binding as the two men stacked the stone on top of each other. The two pieces almost stacked perfectly, and after a little readjustment they soon fit smoothly.

While the exterior was a bit rough—from her experience with carpentry, perfectly smooth surfaces were the very last thing you applied to a work, literally why it was called a 'finish'—the stones were beginning to look like they were a single piece cut in half. It was hard to tell if it was a purely aesthetic step—it certainly made the whole thing look more pleasing—or something that needed to be done to make a later step or a function of the tool more efficient. Lori had seen a lot of that in carpentry, things that had been done that had seemed excessive or pointless that were later shown to be very necessary, and would have been inefficient or inconvenient to add at that point. Well, they were the stonemasons. Until she'd observed then enough to at least be able to reasonably internalize their construction logic, she'd keep her mouth shut and focus on the Whispering aspects of the project.

The two worked so fast that Lori had to shift her seat several times already to keep both stones in view, so that she could see where they were working and anticipate where she had to alter the binding. One was carving out a channel inside the rim of their stone, while the other was making his stone a bit smaller, removing material from the edges. Thankfully, they soon learned to be mindful of not positioning themselves to block her line of sight, though she still had to move in any case when the work in question needed their complete focus or could only be access from such a position. Well, she was used to that too, at least the situation was far better than it would have been had she merely been a Whisperer and not a Dungeon Binder, or else she'd need to keep touching both stones to be constantly in contact with the binding. At best she'd have been touching metal contact points connected to whatever work surface the stones were one. At least this way she could move anywhere she needed to without having to worry about someone getting entangled with her contact wire. At worse, she wouldn't have had a mobile contact wire, and be stuck in one spot, trying to see….

None of them spoke, all of them concentrating on their work, and Lori was personally proud she was able to keep up with the two craftsmen. Neither had to obviously change their pace to adapt to her not being able to adjust her binding quickly enough, and the stone didn't break or fracture in any way that wasn't intended. Speaking would have been difficult anyway, since between the hammers, the threshing going on elsewhere in the second level, and the work being done by the carpenters—they seemed to be in the midst of producing a lot of shutters for the windows of the houses above—the alcove was full of the sounds of productive activity. While the individual sounds were different, the din they caused was, if not exactly comforting—her times employed in workshops had been full of labor, exacting requirements, the need for speed without losing exactness, and she always felt like she wasn't paid enough beads for her work—at least familiar.

Then the call for lunch came in the form of Rian, she waited for the two craftsmen to finish what they were doing and put away their tools before reaching out with her will to deactivate the binding. It was standard workshop procedure that the wizard was always the last to take their hands off whatever was being worked on, though it was a bit more literal in the workshops. After all, a binding being removed before it was safe could be disastrous, while it was usually always safe to stop using your tools on something. Unless that tool happened to be tongs holding hot metal, but that was just be facetious.

Lori rose and headed up to the dining hall as they began putting away their tools, both to get out of their way and because she was hungry. But then, she always was after she came from the workshop. Ignorant people joked that all wizards did was breathe deeply and touch things, but that was like saying all accountants did was sit and write numbers down. Concentrating was tiring work, which was something those uneducated jokesters never seemed to understand, and concentrating to respond to the actions of other people was wearing. Compared to that, just willing stone walls to get runny and moving them out of the third level was simple. The only moves she had to account for her own, and she could fall into an efficient rhythm. It would take many, many more millstones before she could reach that state, and so she was tired.

So when Lori sat down at her usual bench, it was to a heavy, tired sigh despite the fact that technically she'd been sitting for most of the morning, closing her eyes as she leaned forward on her elbows.

"Difficult morning?" Rian said.

"It was a difficult morning fixing your glaring oversight, yes," Lori said, maintaining her pose.

"Wow, you went straight for that. You're really tired."

"Such great skill at observation. How long did it take to you realize the women sitting next to you have been flirting with you?"

"Do you want me to get you two bowls of stew for lunch instead of just one?"

That question finally made Lori open her eyes and stare blearily at her lord across the table from her. "What?"

"A second bowl," he said. "You obviously need the energy if you're this tired. You went straight to the table instead of going up to get your sunk board." Next to Riz, Mikon looked disappointed. "Or the almanac, for that matter. If you're too tired for either, you're too tired, end of sentence."

Lori waved a dismissive hand. "Fine, fine. Go ahead." A second bowl of stew sounded… temptingright now, actually.

"Take a rest while you wait, then," Rian said, and what had he thought she'd been doing. "There's nothing to report anyway, and the most urgent stuff, how far along the millstone is, is something you'd know better than I would."

Lori frowned. Did she know that? The stones had changed substantially over the morning, but she couldn't exactly say how complete it was… "Find out how complete the millstone actually is," Lori said. "It seems to be progressing well, but I want to know how much progress was actually made, and if it can be finished by tonight."

Rian, thankfully, just nodded instead of making some quip. "Yes, your Bindership," he said. "I'll be back with the report and your food. In the meantime, just rest."

Lori gave him an annoyed look, but leaned on her elbows again and closed her eyes. Just closed her eyes and let the sounds of the dining hall wash over her…

Having two bowls of stew did, in fact, help her mood and her tiredness. The report that the millstone would probably be done by tomorrow morning was slightly less helpful for her state of mind.

"Pellee and Markes say that's already very good time, thanks to you," Rian answered her impatient scowl. "A lot of time would otherwise have gone to shaping the stone and getting rid of excess, but you saved them a lot of time with that, and what you're doing to the stone is letting them go even faster. They say they can do it by today, but the millstone would be very crude, and aggravating to operate, and would cost us later in wasted flour."

"Fine, fine," Lori said, eating quickly. She swallowed. "Tell them to make the best millstone they can so we only have to do this once."

"No changes to what they're doing, then," Rian said cheerfully. "Apparently some of the things they'll be making carving into the stones are a catch rim and a built-in hopper to make grinding a lot of flour easier." Oh, was that what that thing was? Now that Rian said it, she could see it in the work that had been done. "The carpenters have already finished the wooden rods for the dowel and the handle, I'll bring it to you after lunch so you three can start fitting it in. They say it might be better if you fit it with Whispering."

"Rods?"

"The things have turn around something, and the person doing the turning needs something to hold," Rian shrugged.

Lori nodded, tucking that away for later.

"I should probably tell you this is unlikely to be the only millstone you might need to make," Rian continued. Her gaze on him sharpened. "When the demesne gets bigger, or at least when we have a bigger harvest, we might need to make a millstone that's connected to a waterwheel, for proper mass production."

"Why can't we simply connect the one we're making now to the one powering the lathe?" Lori demanded.

"We could… but it's frankly not necessary yet." Rian shrugged. "Someone would need to operate it, but with the right setup they'd be able to do it by themselves all day, and while connecting the millstone to a water wheel is relatively simple, we'd need to keep spray from the water part of the wheel from getting on the floor, which in the case of the downstairs water wheel means either raising up a wall between the wheel and the millstone to prevent spray, or using a really long axle. Both would take a lot of time to build. At this though, point there's nothing bad about a manually-operated millstone. And you did say we couldn't have the harvest celebration until the millstone was done…"

Lori rolled her eyes and went back to eating.

When she finished her lunch, she didn't linger, heading back down to the temporary stonemason alcove after using the latrine. The two stonemasons were already back, and she almost felt like she was late… but pushed that thought away. Instead, she sat back on her bench as she checked the bindings on the stones, then activated them, softening the surface layers again. "You may begin," she said, sitting down for the next shift of work.

The millstone took shape over the afternoon, and by the time they stone for dinner, both halves were looking more distinct and different. The stone that would serve as the base had channel all around it now, as well as a spout, presumably for the flour to flow down to a container. The other half had a large bowl-shaped indentation on one side, with a hole at the bottom, which by the illustration in the almanac was where the vigas or any other grain would be loaded for milling. There was also a central hole through both stones, into which the rod that Rian had mentioned rested, acting as the pivot point for the stones.

It was nice working with professional craftsmen who knew what they were doing. It looked like they actually would finish tomorrow. It seemed Rian would have his holiday soon after all.

She'd still have to make sure he didn't find any further excuses to ask her for more holidays. They still had a Dungeon farm to get started on building.

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The Milling Process

The mill was completed by mid-morning of the following day.

It was… well, most people probably wouldn't call it beautiful. It was two round hunks of rock on top of each other, held together by a thick wooden rod, with a bowl-like hopper for grain on to top stone, and a wide channel all around the bottom stone for flour to spill out onto, or so Lori gathered. The finish was rough instead of smooth and shiny, even after being washed to remove all the stone dust that had been knocked off in the process of making it, and the wooden handle was the same. A little bit of the central pivot rod was sticking out of the top of the mill for some reason.

"It's for the long lever," one of the stonemasons explained to Rian said. "Someone can turn this by hand easily enough, but the arm starts aching after a while. With this, all they have to do is push, and one person can keep doing all the work all day, even if their arm gets tired.

Rian nodded. "Makes sense. Did you run into any problems while making it?"

"No, Lord Rian. Fastest work I've done, really. Her Bindership knows what she's doing." He bowed to Lori at this, and the other stonemason did as well. Lori waved a dismissive hand in acknowledgement.

Rian, why do you look so annoyingly happy?

"Have you used it yet?" Rian asked.

"Not yet, Lord Rian," the other stonemason said. "It's cleaned and ready though, so all we need is some vigas and someone to start turning." He hesitated, and then added, "And something to stand it on. We can move it up to one of the tables upstairs and—"

"No," Lori said, and the man stopped taking. She pointed to one of the walls. "Put it in one of the alcoves. We'll make a permanent space for it down here. I don't want us to have to risk trying to move it when a dragon comes, and if we removed the benches, there's enough room to use your walking lever."

The three men started nodding. "Makes sense," Rian said cheerfully. "That way we only have to move it once. And you can probably take care of where to stand it on?"

"Yes, yes," Lori said, waving dismissively. She turned away. "I'll create a pedestal, go get some vigas to test this with." A thought occurred to her. "Make sure it's enough vigas to make a batch of bread."

"Is this a good time to point out we don't have an oven for food?" Rian said brightly. "We could make spiral bread on skewers or flatbreads on pans, but that's it."

Lori gave him a level look.

"I'd have mentioned it sooner, but it hadn't been relevant before now," Rian smiled.

"Noted," Lori said. "Go get the vigas and inform the kitchen staff they need to prepare to turn flour into some kindof bread."

"Of course, your Bindership," Rian said. "And I will be sure to take testing whether the bread is edible very seriously, as I cannot in good conscience ask anyone to do it, certainly not you, who might suffer if the bread were somehow unfit for human consumption—"

That was as far as Rian got before the stone beneath his feet liquefied completely, and he let out a cry of surprise as he sank into the floor, the two stonemasons moving back hastily, bumping into the walls of the alcove. Unlike with… someone, she forgot who, no one important… who Lori had sunk into the floor, she didn't keep directing the stone to pull down Rian into itself like water, merely greatly reduced the viscosity and cohesion. Lori expected Rian to sink to about his stomach and panic, though she had made sure that Rian’s feet would touch stone without his head submerging. She was emphasizing her displeasure, not trying to kill him.

That was certainly her intention…

Instead, her Lord just sat there, moving his arms in circular motions as he bobbed up and down calmly after that cry. "Your lack of amusement is noted, your Bindership," he said blandly, though it was clear it was trying to repress a smile for some reason. "Consider myself chastised. May I get out of this now? The stone's oozing up my legs and I don't want to have to try to clean this off my underwear. Or the area around it, for that matter."

How was he…? Oh. His strange ability to swim. Lori had forgotten about that. She supposed it gave him the experience to not panic when suddenly submerged in fluid.

"Don't do it again," she said sternly. He would, eventually. She knew he would. But as long as it wasn't anytime soon…

"Yes, your Bindership," he said. "Can I pull myself out of this now?"

"Can you?" Lori was genuinely curious if he could.

"Yeah, I've had my back against solid stone for a while now," Rian said. "Just need to pull my arm out…"

Lori watched, fascinated as her lord calmly pulled himself out of the liquefied stone, putting his hand on the stone floor behind him and pushing his body up as calmly as… well, as calmly as he'd pulled himself out of the river onto the end of the stone dock after he'd volunteered to look underneath the dock for her to check the support arches. Though this time he was wearing more clothes.

"Well, don't just stand there," Lori said after Rian had pulled himself out. "Get the vigas."

"Yes, your Bindership," Rian said as one of the stonemasons nervously prodded the area of stone floor Rian had come out of with a foot. It held solidly, though Lori would have to come back later and fix it, since now there was a depression in the ground surrounded by rippling bumps of stone. More stone sticking to Rian and his clothes. "Come on Pellee, Markes, let's get moving before her Bindership gets annoyed at me again. If we hurry, I can take a bath before lunch."

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The actual testing, once Lori had placed a stone cube to rest the mill on in the alcove and contoured the top of the cube so that the mill rested in its own little outline so it wouldn't move from side to side, was slightly anticlimactic. Rian, still wearing stone-encrusted clothes—the stone was slowly breaking up into shards and dust—came down with a wooden bowl full of vigas and a who looked vaguely familiar. Had he gotten anotheradmirer?

“You remember Tamas,” Rian introduced. No, she didn’t, though now that he said it, the name did tickle something… Eh, probably not important if she couldn’t remember it. “He’s a miller by trade, and actually the one who reminded me we need a gristmill. He’s volunteered to be in charge of this milling, in addition to any other work he might need to do.” The man in question nodded, then hastily included the movement into a bow. “All right, let’s see how it works. I assume it works, since Pellee and Markes know wht they’re doing, but always best to make sure.”

The miller lifted up the top millstone to inspect the inner surface of the grist mill, running a finger over the pattern that had been chiseled into both halves before nodding in acknowledgment at the two stonemasons, who nodded back, seemingly satisfied that the craftsman who’d be using the tool they made confirmed it was of quality. The miller set the top millstone back into place before grabbing the wooden handle and giving the whole thing a few turns to see how well it moved. In Lori’s opinion, it needed a few ball bearings to make it turn smoother, but the stonemasons had seemed satisfied with how it had moved when they had tested it, so perhaps it was supposedto be like that?

Lori watched as the miller poured some of the vigas into the bowl-like hopper on the top millstone, then grasped the handle and began to turn. There was a sound like two rocks rubbing pebbles between them—which, given how he gristmill seemed to work, was probably exactly what was happening—and the vigas in the hopper shifted and sank down to the bottom of the indentation.

Eventually, a pale, sandy powder started to emerge from between the two millstones, settling on the bottom of the channel around the edge. It was pale brown, and looked courser than the flour that Lori had seen in River’s Fork, when she had been drafted by Binder Shanalorre’s aunt to help with preparing breakfast. This looked lumpy, and there were little shards of what she realized where vigas shell mixed in.

“Is it supposed to be that consistency?” she asked Rian.

“I… think so?” he said, looking towards the miller, who was adding more vigas to the hopper. “Tamas?”

“It’s just the first grind, lord Rian,” the man said, not stopping in turning the handle. “That’s perfectly normal. You can get it finer by passing it through more times, but it’s not really needed unless you were going to use the flour for something other than bread. A time or two is all you need to get all the lumps out, and then you can use it for bread.”

Lori stared at the flour that was continuing to steadily accrue on the millstone’s channel. “How long would it take to make enough flour so that everyone in the demesne could have a serving of bread?”

“The whole day, your Bindership,” the miller said immediately. “With a millstone this size, and maybe someone to take turns with, we can grind about thirty sengrains a day. Forty on a good day.”

Only forty sengrains a day? No, thirty… “Doesn’t that mean we need more gristmills?” How many people could you feed with hat much, exactly?

“You can feed four people with just one sengrain of floor, your Bindership,” the miller said. His arm still hadn’t stopped turning the handle, and the wooden bowl now lay empty, the contents of the mill’s hopper steadily depleting.

Lori did the conversion in her head. A sengrain of water was one yudrop… so a quarter of that…

She nodded to herself. Put in that context, a sengrain feeding four people seemed about right, and milling forty sengrains a day…

“Is there any way to increase the output?” Lori asked.

The miller glanced at Lori, then shrugged. “If I pushed it, I can perhaps make fifty, but I’d need two people to change shifts with so we can keep up the pace. Though your Bindership, a quarter sengrain per person a day is the calculation for if they’re eating nothing but bread. If we just add it as part of the meals we have now, we’d need only half a much, maybe a little less. But the easier way to make more grin is to have a bigger millstone, though it will take more people to operate it.”

Lori considered that. “As a miller, do you think you can supply all the flour the demesne needs with what we have now?”

“As long as bread’s not the only thing we’re eating, very easily your Bindership.”

Lori nodded. “Rian, start arranging for your little harvest celebration. You may hold it when we have enough flour to let everyone have… oh, four servings of bread. The rest will be prioritized for planting the winter crop and the Dungeon Farm, with any left over to be eaten over the winter.”

“Yes, your Bindership!” Rian said with a wide smile that was probably only half-feigned for theatrics

Lori managed to maintain her dignity and not walk with a happy bounce in her step. Bread! She could finally eat bread in her own demesne! Ah, bread with stew… bread with roasted tail meat…! And it was going to be a holiday, so there WOULD be roasted tail meat!

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Warm and Cold

The day after the harvest celebration, the taste of bread that had been salted with what Rian and those who had gone with him had managed to gather from the ocean, soaked in roasted tail meat fat, and dipped in stew still lingered on Lori’s tongue. She was bemusedly surprised to find that breakfast included little chunks of stale bread floating in her stew, growing soggy and mushy.

“Why do we have stale bread?” she asked.

“It happens,” Rian said. “Some people were too full to eat their portion, or just didn’t feel like it. Although I think this is more a case of the kitchen crew making some extra in case some people wanted more, and there being not as many of that as they had thought there would be. It’s not like the bread went to waste. We’re eating it right now.”

Lori grunted, acknowledging the point. “The fact there’s any waste at all of a limited resource—”

“Again, we’re eating it, so it hasn’t been wasted,” Rian interrupted. “It’s merely been… delayed, so as to achieve a new form of delicious.”

“It’s soggy bread disintegrating in my stew,” Lori said.

“Well, they’re working with what they have,” Rian shrugged. “And it serves a purpose. It thickens the stew into a sauce consistency, so it’s different from how we usually have it, and is basically the best way to use it right now. We haven’t gotten any eggs from the chokers we’re keeping yet, and if you want to reuse old bread properly, you need egg.”

Umu and Mikon looked at him sideways as Lori wondered how he knew that. “How do you know that?”

“Why wouldn’t I know that? It’s hardly a secret.”

“You know about cooking but you don’t know how to do your own laundry?” Lori said blandly as Mikon and Umu nodded, agreeing with the question.

“I like knowing how to make the things I like to eat,” Rian shrugged, then glanced sideways at Umu. “And I’ve been asking you to teach me how to do my own laundry.”

“I’m busy,” Umu said, looking like she was trying one of Mikon’s smiles and… well, clearly only trying. “How did even manage to get stone on the inside of your trousers?”

“I displeased her Bindership with one joke too many, and she made her displeasure known,” Rian said.

The three women glanced at her.

“Oh, don’t look so afraid, he’s more useful alive than dead,” she said. “So I’m not replacing him with Mikon any time soon.”

Rian blinked. “Wait, Mikon’s my replacement?”

“Only if I have no other choice,” Lori said offhandedly. She titled her head thoughtfully. “Or you leave again. Or you die. Or if I just need a lady for some reason.”

Rian looked between Lori and Mikon. “Are you… threatening her with becoming a lady? Or me? It could go either way.”

Lori had another spoonful of stew. He was right, it was a little thicker, and the traces of soggy bread wasn’t as distracting as she had initially thought. “Rian, stop being silly and eat. You’re making a farm for me today, remember?”

“I’ll point out that I have no idea how to build a farm inside a dungeon,” Rian said. “I don’t even know how to build one outside of one.”

“It’s not that hard,” Lori said. “The biggest issue is providing drainage so that the roots of any crops don’t get waterlogged and start rotting. Beyond that, it’s a matter of maintaining a proper temperature and providing the right kind of light so that the crops will grow, both of which I have extensive experience with.”

“That… sounds about right, but how do you know?”

Lori held up the almanac.

“Oh right, silly me.”

“Yes, but you’re still useful anyway,” Lori agreed. “The almanac was helpful in informing me as to the importance of drainage, so the third level’s floor will have to be prepared by men with tools to break apart the rock while I soften it for them to make it easier.” That hadn’t been in the book, but it included an illustration of the increasingly fine layers of rock that needed to be under the topsoil so that the water could drain properly. Lori already had the idea to have all that water drain into a cistern so it could be used to water the plants again, since all that water had to go somewhere, and she needed it to not flood her Dungeon. “Once the matter of preparing the ground so that it won’t flood and therefore rot has been dealt with, it can be treated like any other crop, except we don’t have to worry about dragons destroying it, or chokers and bugs devouring it, provided we manage to keep the latter out of my Dungeon.”

“There… isn’t a lot of space in the Dungeon just yet,” Rian said skeptically. “At best, the grain we harvest will make for a decent seed crop, but we won’t be feeding everyone in the demesne with it any time soon. And that’s if we manage to get it to grow properly it at all.”

“We can continue to expand,” Lori said, waving her hand dismissively. “There is more potential space underground than there is across the entire surface of my demesne. It will take time, but it should be doable, and it will all be constantly protected from the coming of a dragon.”

“Until we get three islandshells dropped on us at the same spot,” Rian said.

Lori waved her hand again. “Yes, but you can say that about anything.”

“I suppose so…” He sighed. “Well, I still want to prioritize surface planting. Right now, we have more cleared space above ground than in the dungeon, and if we can plant it all with a winter crop, we’ll actually be able to eat bread regularly when we harvest it. And we’ll need to find more soil to bring down to the dungeon anyway, and I’d rather we do that afterwe’ve planted above ground. The compost pit isn’t ready to be used for fertilizer yet, but we need to get started on a new one…” By the end, Rian seemed to be talking to himself more than her, frowning down and moving his fingers in the air as if he were drawing or writing something only he could see. “We still have the tools we used to dig out the dungeon originally… somewhere… and if not that we’re at the point the smiths can make new ones…”

“As I said, I leave organizing it to you,” Lori said. “I will be digging.”

Rian trailed off, frowning thoughtfully. “It’s not a lot of time,” he said. “I don’t know how much of the above-ground planting we’ll be able to finish before winter, so there’s a good chance we’ll have to delay work on the Dungeon’s farm until the cold starts.” He hesitated. “Uh, are you planning to heat the Dungeon with magic over the winter, or are we going to have to start setting up braziers and stuff inside? Because otherwise keeping any crops in the Dungeon alive will be difficult.”

Lori gave him a flat look. “Of course, I’ll be heating the Dungeon. I live here, after all, why would I want to be cold?”

For some reason, Rian, Umu and Mikon all gave her the same look. “Why haven’t you started yet?” Rian said.

Lori rolled her eyes. “Because it’s not cold yet.”

“Lori, it is freezing out there in the morning,” Rian said. “I mean, it’s not winter cold, but it’s certainly a message that it’s coming.”

“It’s not that bad,” Riz said. “It’s a nice, average summer, and it warms up more when the sun is out.” She paused to think a moment. “So, yes, I suppose it’s probably a little cold for you southerners.”

Lori frowned. “What are you all talking about? It’s not cold.”

“No, it’s definitely cold,” Rian said. “I have a fire on every night now, though that’s mostly because I don’t have shutters on my windows yet. In fact, today I’m going to the plank shed and getting a few to block out my windows to keep the warm air in until the carpenters get around to making shutters for me.”

“You’re a lord, just tell them to make your shutters first!” Lori said, exasperated.

“No! I’m just one man. There are houses with children in them. I can wait.”

Loir gave him a flat stare and sighed. “Erzebed, go and tell the carpenters to fit shutters over Rian’s windows first.”

“Yes, Great Binder,” Riz said promptly.

Rian looked between the two of them. “Wait, you call her ‘Erzebed’?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I call her Erzebed? That’s her name.”

Rian blinked, tilted his head and shrugged. “All right, fair enough.” He turned to Riz. “I thought your stint being her temporary-me was over?”

“Yes, but you need shutters on your windows,” Riz said. “Families with children can sleep together and keep each other warm. You live alone.”

“And you don’t let us stay over at night,” Mikon muttered. Umu sighed heavily.

“She didn’t need to know that,” Rian muttered back.

“I certainly didn’t,” Lori agreed. “But at least you don’t need all that advice my mothers gave for convincing women to sleep with me. Now, eat and get started on my farms.”

“Yes, your Bindership,” Rian said. “So, you’re going to start heating the Dungeon now?”

“It’s warm, it doesn’t need to be heated yet,” Lori said, rolling her eyes.

Rian sighed and held out his left hand towards her. “Lori… how cold is my hand?”

She rolled her eyes again and reached out to indulge him. She grasped his hand and blinked at how cold it was. It remained cold in her grasp, not warming or adjusting to be more comfortable to her. “You’re cold. Why are you cold?”

“Because it’s cold, Lori,” Rian said. “And it’s not just me. How have you not been able to tell?”

Lori frowned, letting go of Rian, and turned towards Erzebed. “Hand,” she demanded. Her former temporary assistant dutifully held out her hand, and Lori grasped it. Cold. “Mikon.” The weaver held out her hand as well. Lori took it. Cold.

She stared at her hand. Why… Oh!

Lori leaned back, twisted and reached down to touch the floor. It was cool under her touch for a moment before becoming pleasantly warm. She focused on the stone under her hand and felt firewisps. They were directly under her hand there were fading traces of imbuement on them. She remembered hot food cooling to a pleasant temperature, her fingers not getting burned…

“Well, consider this one of your duties now,” Lori said smoothly as she sat up straight again. “You’ll need to point out to me how hot or cold it is if it seems like I might not be able to tell.”

“How are you not able to tell?” Rian asked. “That kind of lack of sensitivity is concerning.”

“It’s part of being a Dungeon Binder,” Lori said, her mind racing as she tried to find an explanation. “The temperature of the air around me is always warm.” The demesne was like a part of her body since she had made her core. And as with her core replenishing her lightningwisps when she drew it from her nerves, the demesne’s firewisps warned nearly anything she came into contact with to keep her warm, including the very air around her. Other living people, however, were voids to her awareness of wisps, and even now she couldn’t bind or imbue the wisps in their bodies… which was why their hands remained cold. “Unless I leave my demesne, in which case I’ll probably feel as cold as anyone else. So I’m never leaving my demesne again, ever.”

“That… makes sense…?” Rian said. “Well, as your lord in charge of telling you how cold it is, I’m telling you it’s cold.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll heat my Dungeon,” Lori said, waving a hand. “Cold will not be the reason why my Dungeon’s farm fails.”

“Then my work is now done,” Rian said cheerfully.

Well, she supposed it would be a good opportunity to make some new bindings. There might even be something relevant she could try out in her new almanac! That was a cheerful thought.

Lori went back to eating her breakfast, ignoring the way Umu and Mikon were enthusiastically showering Rian in affection, the latter while pressing against an awkward-looking Riz, completely heedless of who were watching. Ugh, Rian was acting more and more like one of her mothers every day. Sighing, Lori focused on her food, already going over possible arrangements of bindings in her head.