Demesne Patron EX SS 15 - A Lord's Day (Patreon)

I woke up cold, my feet still feeling chill under my blanket. The fire had of course gone out in the night.

It was a terrible way to wake up, but it encouraged me not to linger in bed despite me inclinations. Still, I couldn't help letting out a groan as I got to my feet, and took the two layers of socks off my hands to check for frostbite. The fact they started to inform me how much they hated me as I exposed them to more the cold was a good sign, but I still checked to make sure they hadn't gone black in the night.

Thankfully, they weren't. I sat up and instantly regretted the decision as my blanket and winter robe shifted off me, letting the cold air in. Already starting to shudder, I rearrange the blanket and padded garment, pulling the latter on as quickly as I could. Originally I'd gone to bed wearing it, until Umu had warned me not to do that because flattened the padding and let the cold in. So now I used it in its intended purpose as a supplementary blanket.

Sufficiently padded, I took off the furs wrapped around my ankles, pulling off my socks and checking my toes. No black. Oh, good. I wasn't sure if Shana could heal frostbite, even if our demesne still had an agreement in place. She liked me well enough—probably—but she'd been learning 'how to Dungeon Binder' from Lori, and Lori took a very transactional view to interactions between demesne. Polite and respectful, as between theoretical equals, but transactional, and I didn't really have much to transact with.

Still alive, still whole, now fully awake and able to feel the cold around me, I hurriedly put my boots back on and got up, shuffling towards me fireplace. Thankfully, a quick but careful poke of the ashes found some embers. Picking them up with a twig, I put the coal in a bed of wood shavings, and carefully tended it until the shaving caught fire. Soon there was a fire again, and I sighed in relief. It was finally warm enough that I could take off my blanket, winter robe, and one of the two shirts I was already wearing as I stood in front of the fire, turning in place to warm my front and back. Ah, so warm…

Once the little fire was spent, I gathered up the embers and banked them in ashes so that I'd have something to light the fire again tonight. Taking my bath bucket with my towel, soap and scrubbing stone, I headed out to take a bath. Outside of my house, the snow-lined tunnel certainly looked cold and the constant cool breeze for the bindings Lori had put in place to circulate air and keep people from asphyxiating sent chills up my neck.

This early, there weren't a lot of people out yet. Most were still asleep, probably tucked into nice warm beds, or sleeping in the alcoves of the second level despite Lori's disapproval. She clearly didn't disapprove enough to take steps though, and as long as no one played any music at night, her apathy that could be mistaken for tolerance would continue. Though I wasn't looking forward to explaining the logic to who was sleeping in the alcoves. Still, I was their lord, so it would fall to me explain to her that parents take any opportunity to get the children out of the house to be alone…

Yeah, I wasn't looking forward to that conversation. Or the teasing I was going to get from everyone about it.

This early, the baths only had a few people in them. It would be more crowded later, though most of the people then technically wouldn't be bathing, just enjoying the warmth that permeated the long building from the central basin full of warm water. I stripped quickly, folding my clothes and stacking them in a spot in the middle of the rows of shelves. People either put their clothes near the door, since it was the closest to the door coming in, or near the entrance to the actual bathing area, so they could get dressed quickly after they finished. In the middle, you usually had enough elbow room to dress without being rushed unless it was very crowded.

"Good morning, everyone," I greeted as I entered the bathing area proper, letting my voice carry as I smiled. Very important to smile. It was human nature to smile back at someone who smiled at you. There wasn't a lot of people inside, since most were probably still in bed, being warm and conserving energy. Still, a few people were early risers from habit and years. There was Rafel and Royin soaking in the tubs, farmers who'd been waking before the sun for years and weren't about to stop now, Dormin the hunter and part-time tanner scrubbing himself, Faul the head woodcutter in another tub getting ready to head out and get more wood, and Artelego the blacksmith, who was sitting on the ground with his back to the tubs and his bucket on his lap, head rolling slack as he snored.

"Mornin', Lord Rian," Rafel greeted, followed by most other in the baths. Artelego said something unintelligible, turned his head the other way, and kept on sleeping. While they were more used to the cold than I was, that just meant they took every opportunity to get warm. "Join us?"

"Thanks," I nodded, sitting down in front of the basin on one of the little stools there. "Just let me get scrubbed up." There wasn't a lot of oil to clean off, so I was able to make do with scrubbing myself with water and my rock. Lightly scraping the edge of the rough stone on my skin wasn't the most pleasant feeling in the world, but it got me clean with a minimum of soap.

A quick rinse later, and I was able to slip into the tub with the other men. "Ah, so warm," I sighed, closing my eyes and leaning back. For a while I just sat there, letting the heat soak in. Being completely warm felt so good…

Eventually though, I had to sigh and open my eyes. "All right, I'm ready. How are we doing?"

It was, thankfully, just the usual business. The limited crops in the third level were growing, and the tubers were starting to be harvested and replanted, so we'd have something new to add to the soup soon. They weren't going to run out of wood any time soon, thankfully, and they had enough snow pads for everyone who needed them.

I had to earn my keep, after all.

––––––––––––––––––

"Rian, I need you to tell the blacksmiths and carpenters I need molds," Lori said at breakfast with absolutely no context whatsoever.

"Uh, molds for what, exactly?" I asked as I sat down opposite her, resisting the urge to keep looking towards the kitchen. It wasn't my turn to get food today.

"Beads," she said.

I blinked, turning my full attention towards her. "Why do you need molds for beads?" I had a guess, but it was always a good idea to get more information out of Lori.

"So they'll all be a uniform size, obviously," she said. Most people would have thought that she was annoyed at having to explain herself—and sometimes she was—but she just had the misfortune of having a face that defaulted to 'annoyed' when it was at rest. I wondered how many otherwise amiable contacts she'd inadvertently driven away because of that. It was sad to think of.

"That sounds like a way to get a burst mold," I mused, tapping my fingers down on the table. There was a flicker of magenta out of the corner of my eye, and I turned to welcome Riz with a smile.

She smiled back, sitting hip to hip next to me, one hand resting lightly on my thigh under the table, one of her fingers making lazy circles as rubbed her ankle against mine. "Rian," she greeted, her lips lightly touching my cheek. I kept my hands above the table but moved my ankle to rub against hers. Across from us, Lori didn't even roll her eyes. Apparently now that some measure of affection and acknowledgement was happening and she no longer had any reason to make snide remarks about how idiotically oblivious I was, she no longer saw any reason to comment.

"Which is why I'm having the blacksmiths make it," Lori said, unaware of what was happening. "I need wooden molds that clamp together, with a metal contact point on one half of the molds. When the beads crystalize to fill the molds, they'll touch the metal contact point and start seeping until they no longer make contact, at which point they should be of a standard size."

Even with Riz being distracting, it only took me a few moments to imagine what Lori described. Sometimes I wondered what that said about me. Did I have an active imagination? Or did I just think like her? "Oh! That's clever. Sounds a bit inefficient though, if you're actually intending for there to be seepage."

Lori waved her hand like she was sweeping something away. My concerns, in this instance. "It can't be helped. The process is still experimental, but it should allow me to produce multiple beads at the same time."

"Shouldn't we try it on a small scale first, then? Small mold with wires stuck into it, that sort of thing?" A thought occurred to me as I remembered what I'd seen of Lori making beads. "Actually, does it really need to be a mold? Beads naturally form spheres, so you don't need to shape them. Why not just make a box with a metal-lined lid? Once the beads inside are big enough to touch the metal, it should work the way you want. Or just make them and use seepage to shrink them down to a uniform size?"

She made a face of distaste. "I suppose…" she said reluctantly.

"If it's waste you're annoyed with, why not wire the contact point to something?" I suggested as Riz leaned against me. "Like a water heater, or the stoves in the kitchen?"

The expression of distaste lessened. "I will consider it," she said. "Do you have anything to report?"

I launched into a summary of how the demesne was currently doing. There was no need to mention the disagreements that had become fights, the disagreements, who'd been caught trying to steal honey, who had been using the Um without doing their part in the cleaning as they were supposed to, and who'd been making a fuss about owning land again. It wasn't anything new, and was mostly a sign of people being stuck with little to do with time on their hands. I was fairly sure someone was going to try to make booze from the tubers after they were harvested, and I'd need to keep them from poisoning themselves or anyone else.

Maybe I could pass it off as looking for way we could make our antiseptic.

At least it was warm.

––––––––––––––––––

The day that followed was a typical one. While Lori went to work on making the small-scale test version of what she had in mind instead of going straight to building it, I went around the demesne, talking to people, keeping spirits up and finding out if anyone needed anything. Beyond that, there wasn't much actual work to do. Only a little ropeweed fiber was left to make thread with, and now that the emergency was over, the carpenters were back to making small repairs to buckets and benches. Small things done slowly and leisurely because there was no pressing urgency. Some of the carpenters and smiths were idly speculating one what Lori would ask them to do next, and discussing how to build a bigger sled with spaces prepared for air jets.

I'd listened to stories of people needing to work and pushing on even during snowstorms because they needed to make rent, or reach a quota, or because they were out of food and couldn't hunt because of local laws.

I'm glad we don't have that here.

Fortunately, we'd prepared fairly well for winter, and the fact the second level was big enough for the children to be loud and play some games. I don't know if Lori intended it this way, but the relatively wide open areas of the second level—the regularly placed support pillars notwithstanding—giving the children a space to play even during the winter was very good for everyone's morale. Adults always enjoyed seeing children play, provided they didn't look deeply enough to see the occasional brief flashes of malice.

Or maybe like me, they saw and just didn't do anything.

I suppose I was properly an adult now. I didn't do anything either.

Still, watching Karina set the little altercation straight and order the boy and the girl who'd been unnecessarily rough while playing to sit and calm down, I didn't think I needed to… or was that just me turning my back on responsibility and foisting responsibility off on someone convenient, even though they had no reason to?

I was truly an adult now. I didn't even feel disgusted with myself. I could probably justify it as teaching her valuable skills when she became an adult.

Ah, there was the disgust.

At the end of the day, after dinner and helping the men and women who kept them all fed clear the tables and sweep the floor—more and more people were helping with it now, I was glad to see—it was time for me to go home after a brief stop at the baths to wash my face. I'd looked for Umu, Mikon and Riz after I'd finished helping sweep the dining hall, but it seemed like they'd left before me.

The door to my house being ajar, and the light of a flickering fire in addition to the glowing stone that Lori had given me warned me where they were though. It was rare that we could just spend time together in 'my' alcove on the second level during the day, and anyway, they knew I didn't like being too affectionate in public. I could feel the lump in my throat as I got closer to my house as I tried to stomp down on the eagerness. Still, I couldn't deny the eagerness was there…

Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door and stepped inside, quickly closing the door behind me and moving the latch to shut it. "I'm here," I said, then paused. "Mikon, what are you doing?"

The pink-haired weaver glanced up from what she was doing to give him a warm smile. "Just laying out the bedrolls, Rian."

I nodded. "Ah. And… whose bedrolls are these?"

"Why, ours of course," she said, arranging the four bedrolls on his bed so that they went over the edge a little. "We've talked about it and decided we're all going to stay here with you from now on."

"Don't argue, Rian," Riz said as she stood up from building up the blaze in the fireplace. "We're getting into midwinter, and you're still shivering in your winter robe while you're in the dungeon. If we leave you alone, you'll wake up with frostbite one morning."

I winced as I took of my winter robe and moved to the fire next to her. "I'm handling it well enough…" I muttered as I warmed myself at the fireplace. Ah, so warm…

"But I can share my blanket with you this way, Rian," Umu said as she finished folding the last of the latest batch of my laundry. "Won't that be warmer?"

"Especially if you add my blanket and Riz's blanket too," Mikon said as she straightened up from the bed. There were now two pairs of pillows at the head, and I could easily tell which one was mine. It was the one that wasn't as thick. Mikon sat down at the very thick-looking pile of four bedrolls now layered on top of each other and smiled sideways at me with a wink. "Especially with all four of us together under the blanket."

Umu turned a small glare towards the other weaver, but she quickly smoothed her face, turning back in my direction as she clearly tried to put the Mikon out of her mind. The blonde weaver walked towards me and wrapped her arms around one of mine with an easy familiarity that was no longer hesitant. The heat around my arm was equally familiar now, and I'm almost sure I didn't blush anymore at how her chest pressed against me while she leaned up to kiss me on the cheek. "Or just me," she suggested.

Riz, for her part, glanced back towards the pink-haired weaver, a familiar conflicted look on her face. The fact the Mikon flirted with her almost as much as she flirted with me—and was usually more physical about it—was clearly no longer being ignored by the once-militiawoman, but she still didn’t seem to know what to really do about it. Though I suppose that was probably hypocritical on my part.

Still, she reached for my hand, moving confidently to gently tug me towards the bed, where Mikon was waiting the blankets and bedrolls ready to be pulled up from the foot of the bed. "Come on. At least this way you don't have to walk us home. Now when we're done, we could just go straight to sleep."

Why was that part the most tempting? Not having three beautiful women declaring they'll be living in my house from now on—well, more so that they already were—but that I didn't have to walk out into the cold to see them home anymore?

Still, I couldn't find it in me to try to argue. And when I woke up the next day, I woke up warm.