Weekly Digest 102 - (#323 - #325) (Patreon)

Distillation and Damage Assessment

The rain had stopped when they opened the mine doors again after breakfast the next day, replaced by the punishing summer heat. The heat was made worse by the sudden humidity in the air, which somehow combined to distill the worst parts of being wet and being hot.

Lori wanted to just stay in the mine with a binding of waterwisps in front of the entrance to keep out the moisture in the air, but unfortunately there was work to be done. While it wasn't as bad as the puddles of water caught in rocks and the many new craters, the river water had a mildly bitter taste of caustic fluid. She didn't know how long that would last, so for the foreseeable future River's Fork would need to distill its water before drinking.

While everyone went out to assess the damage, start clearing out the debris—she told Yllian to put all the stone debris together into piles in case she needed building material—Lori began working on something to purify the water. The barrels they'd left out in the rain, as well as what remained in the mine, would be able to provide them with drinking water, but those would be expended soon.

The work was suffering since she had to do it under the bare sun next to the river. The humidity and heat were strong, and even with a binding of waterwisps, airwisps and firewisps anchored to her warm skin to try to keep her comfortable, it wasn't. Oh, the waterwisps were mostly able to keep the humidity off her, but she couldn't put them in certain places like her face because of the moisture in her eyes, so her face was feeling a little humid. And while the airwisps gave her a nice private breeze over her skin, even under her shirt and trousers, that didn't change the fact the sun was hot. Even a binding of firewisp to keep the heat from the sun from reaching her wasn't very helpful when everything around her was hot.

Still, the bindings around her made the terrible heat manageable, and her hat kept the sunlight off her eyes as she worked. She kept the device simple, a pace-high stone pillar—well, pile of rocks fused together with the sides shaved down—that rose from the ground and connected to the bedrock by means of using earthwisps to solidify everything under it. On opposite sides of the stone pillar were stone spouts and at the top of the pillar was a bowl-like funnel to pour water into. She'd have made it shorter, but the barrels for the water needed to be able to fit under the water spout. The other spout was lover and closer to the ground, and would be were the substances dissolved into the water would come out.

Lori had several of the rock debris carried over to the stone pillar so she could fuse the material together into a stepping stone to stand on top of when pouring water into the funnel.

The binding she anchored to the internal piping leading from the funnel to the spouts was the same binding she had placed on the sink. She had been tempted to remove the firewisps since given the pillar's position the sun would be providing a lot of heat, but the thermal conductivity of the stone was uncertain, so she in the end she made no alterations.

Thankfully, pouring in a bucket of water into the funnel resulted in water that had only the bitterness of distilled water, and not the more intense bitterness of a more caustic solution. The white powder that came out of the other spout was caught in a little stone container that she shaped, because the wooden bucket that she'd originally been catching the powder with had started getting distressingly hot.

Lori was in the middle of attaching a gutted wisplight to the pillar to try and make the water distillation pillar into a bound tool when she heard a sound. It was the sound of fast, rushing water, moving so quickly it almost whistled. She looked up, turning her gaze upriver, and there she saw a small, fast-moving boat. It was moving faster than the current, and though she knew it would have oars, none of them were in use. Standing nearby, Riz started waving, and people on the boat waved back.

Oh good, her way home was finally back.

She turned away and went back to working on the distillation device. She just had to mount the gutted wisplight, perhaps add a binding of lightwisps to act as an indicator that it was imbued and active, and her responsibilities would be met. Then she could finally leave and go home.

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Despite finishing the new water distillation bound tool, Lori didn't get to go back home right away.

As much as she glared at Rian, she supposed it was part of her lord's responsibilities to assess the damage to River's Fork's infrastructure. And if he was going to be assessing things, she might as well find out about it herself.

Ugh, she'd better get back home today!

"The damage to people's houses has been minimal," Yllian reported as the three of them walked through the rain-soaked ground under River Fork's dome. As usual, there were new holes in the dome of intertwined branches and leaves, and Lori could see a long branch that seemed to be hanging from a thread and ready to fall as someone climbed up the dome with a saw hanging from their belt. "The worst is some window shutters being lost and a little water damage because water got inside. The roof of the dining hall was damaged by a falling branch though, and the dome sustained the usual damage. Fortunately, the trees are managing to hold, so the dome is still structurally sound. Some of us will probably spend the night in the mine, but I already have people moving things back to their homes. Though the ground outside the dome is covered in pockmarks from whatever it was the dragon was doing. The Great Binder mentioned exploding metal."

Rian nodded. "Caustic metal explodes with contact with water and vitriolic substances," he said. Lori should have been surprised, but wasn't. Her lord was knowledgeable about the strangest things. "The size of the explosions depend on what kind and how much, but from the looks of it, whatever exploding dragon scales were being dropped weren't enclosed, which probably limited the damage their blasts caused." He sighed. "Our poor crops, though. A number of them were damaged, and we can confirm that Shana's—"

"Binder Shanalorre's," Lori corrected, walking between the two of them.

"—Binder Shanalorre's healing meaning doesn't work on plants," Rian continued seamlessly at the correction, "so we couldn't just patch them up again. We tried, but it wouldn't work. Not really surprising, but since even she hadn't ever tried it before, I thought maybe there'd be a chance. The farmers are all working frantically, trying to bind stems together, graft stems to intact roots, or replant the tops of the crops to see if they take root, but it's not looking likely."

He turned to Lori, his face grim instead of set in its usual smile. "This is going to be a bigger problem as time goes on and we set up larger fields. We could potentially lose up to a quarter of the crops we had in our fields, though since we expanded our fields this spring, what we'd have left would still enough to sustain us. However, if it had been worse… well, we'd definitely feel it harder."

Lori glared at him. "You want to recruit more Deadspeakers when you go to Covehold than what we had discussed."

"If we had someone other than Shanalorre, we'd have avoided most of our food problems," Rian pointed out. "Come on. You know that if I recruited only one they'd end up very overworked. Them having one or two people to help them with work would go a long way towards giving them time to rest and keeping them satisfied."

"Three. Three more Deadspeakers," she said flatly.

"One or two," Rian corrected meekly. "It's not unreasonable. You've seen our fields. How long do you think it would take a single person to go over it, just putting damaged crops back together before they died? Without having the advantages of a Dungeon Binder." Rian made a theatrical sweeping gesture, as if trying to encompass everything around them. "Think of what we could do now if we had one or two experienced Deadspeakers. Repairs to the dome and houses, healing the crops so we don't lose any food, and withoutrunning them ragged since two could work in alternating shifts."

She gave him a flat, unamused look.

"And moving on and changing the subject!" Rian said cheerfully. "How are your terrace and crops? The trees with the meanings on them? How many of them survived?"

"We were lucky there," Yllian said as the direction they were walking changed. "While the kindling trees were damaged, it wasn't anything they wouldn't grow back anyway, and the fruit trees lost a little off the top, and the fruits on them went unharvested while we were in the shelter, but they managed to make it through the dragon untouched again."

Rian blinked. "That's… very fortunate. So they're fine? All of them?"

"Yes, though it's still not a lot."

"Every little bit helps," Rian said, sounding distracted as he frowned at the crops outside of the dome. There were some bare patches at the edges were people had dug up some of the crops to bring them to the mine. Some people were already planting the crops back in place, and with the contrast the amount of crops they managed to bring into the mine were rather underwhelming. "Did anything burn down?"

Yllian shook his head. "No, though we found scorching in several places." That would be from relatively small amounts of caustic metal getting hot and igniting on contact with water rather than exploding. "Compared to previous dragons, this one seems to have caused relatively little damage that can't be fixed, unlike the ones that came before. There don't even seem to be any dragonborn abominations."

"Let's not get overconfident, but it does seem that way, doesn't it?" Rian said. "Still, the water's probably going to be tainted for a while so pass water through the bound tool her Bindership made before drink. I'll come by tomorrow with more beads for it." He glanced at her when he said this, and Lori nodded. Yllian already had the little sack of beads that she'd brought with her in case of emergencies. "Are there any injuries? Does Binder Shanalorre need to make a visit?"

"No, no one was injured. The worst that happened are a few stubbed feet and aching bottoms from slipping."

"Hmm… perhaps Binder Shanalorre should come, just to make sure. Those kinds of falling accidents sometimes results in injuries that go unnoticed. Besides, with the work to come, best to make sure that everyone is as fit as possible. Sometimes back aches don't just go away, after all. What do you say, your Bindership?"

"If she needs to heal anyone, she can do it from where she is now," Lori said. "No need to have her go anywhere."

"I suppose, but she's petitioned for permission for some of the children to visit their parents. You know how she accompanies them when that happens. If she's going to be coming here anyway, she might as well see to the healing too, right?"

Lori grunted. "I'll consider it."

For some reason, Rian and Yllian both looked at each other, the two of them looking amused for some reason.

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Welcome Home

After making sure that the large wispbeads—reduced and unused—were secured back in the third alcove, and doing one last check on the water distillation bound tool—it was functioning properly, and there was already a small pile of some sort of white powder in the catch bucket—Lori was able to settle down onto Lori's Boatwith Riz, Rian, and the other people who had come with her to River's Fork. Rian had come by himself, supposedly so that the boat wouldn't be as crowded with everyone it had to carry.

It was a bit of a tight fit. Made of deadspoken wood, Lori's Boat was their first, oldest and smallest boat. They'd mostly stopped using it after they had built the two ice boats, since without a Deadspeaker it couldn't be effectively repaired, even with their carpenters on hand. While they'd started tapping some trees for resin and boiling bone and hide for glue, none of their carpenters had any true experience with building boats, and specifically experience in making boats water-proof.

And so Lori's Boat was placed into storage, only taken out at times like this when the other two boats were unavailable because they were disassembled or currently sunk in the river.

"So," Rian asked cheerfully as they made their way upriver against the current, the driver pushing on despite the river being slightly swollen from the rains that the dragon had brought with it, "did you all have a good time at River's Fork?"

"No," Lori said flatly, glaring at him as she tried to adjust the bindings around her body to cool her better in the face of the summer sunlight. "It was hot, taking a bath was nerve-wracking and uncomfortable, the noise was constant, the food was bland, and there was nothing to do."

"Isn't that on you for not building a bath?"

Lori reached for one of the ladles lying in the bottom of the boat, swept it through the river water they were churning up, and with a flick of her wrist sent the water flying at Rian's face. Riz, sitting next to him, had moved to avoid the worst of the splash, though a little of it still sprayed her arm.

"Ah, thank you for the cool, refreshing water, your Bindership," Rian said after he finished sputtering the no-doubt bitter water from his mouth. "Definitely the best way to deal with the summer heat." He gave her a bright smile. "Can you do that again? There's a spot on my head that didn't get any water."

Riz turned her head away and started coughing, for some reason.

Lori stared at him, then stared at the ladle in her hand.

Then immediately started scooping up water and pouring it over her head.

Ah! So cool! So what if it was a little caustic? She just had to make sure none got in her eyes, and maybe had Shanalorre heal her when she got back.

"Uh, Lori? Please don't pour so much water on yourself, the boat is going to fill!"

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Having to gather the water at the bottom of the boat and throw it back over the side was forth the cool, even if sitting on a puddle of water was a bit uncomfortable.

With nothing better to do, Lori watched the trees pass by. There seemed to be fewer signs of damage on the trees growing along the river, though the growths of ropeweed on the backs had a shredded, mutilated appearance. Occasionally there were small patches that looked burned, and there were occasional gaps among the growths. Here and there were branches that hung broken and limp by a small shred, or had fallen entirely, the freshness of the leaves betraying how recently it had happened.

Beyond the borders of River's Fork Demesne, the damage was far more extensive.

Lori stared at a tree that appeared to have caught on fire, and it wasn't the only one.

"Yeah, I saw a lot of those on the way here," Rian said, following her gaze. "I think that whatever caustic metal the dragon was dropping on us managed to ignite in the vicinity of Iridescence that had been covered enough to not be washed off by the rain, or maybe some landed on water that had just dissolved colors, the kind that still glittering like there's oil on top of it. Caustic metal, water, Iridescence…" Rian shrugged. "I almost wish I could have seen what happens when you combine the three together."

"A more violent eruption, clearly," Lori said. She had to admit, a part of her was curious to see the combination as well… for purely intellectual and academic reasons, of course. Everyone knew combining Iridescence and heat, much less open flame, was a supremely terrible idea. The resulting reactions, while no doubt energetic, were unpredictable, and therefore unreliable and dangerous. So of course it was a common development in novels and plays when events were portrayed beyond the edge of a demesne for any reason. "Was anything like that found near the settlement?"

"No, not that I noticed," Rian said. "The damage back home is far less dramatic."

Lori nodded. "Does it appear that reconstruction will cause a significant delay in the planned Covehold expedition?"

"No, everything seems to be manageable. Despite the damage the dragon did to our crops and some of our less robust outdoor infrastructure, the lack of any dragonborn abominations actually means we have less to worry about, so reconstruction will probably finish in the next few days. Nearly all the roofs are intact this time, and the one that was damaged was the tannery hut." Oh. That was a pleasant surprise. "Do you think you can get the Coldholdout of the river today so we can do the final test run of the new driver down to the ocean, or do you want to rest and just put it off until tomorrow? Either is good for the crew. Our salt stores are getting low, but we'll be able to hold out for a few more days."

Lori considered that. The idea of spending a day just resting after the whole ordeal was tempting. She could have a proper bath, change into clean clothes, use a latrine that had actually been emptied out and wasn't reeking, lie down on an actual bedroll instead of bare stone…

Well, she could do all that after she brought the Coldhold up. "I can rest after I bring the Coldhold up," she said. "Do we still have water in the reservoir?"

"I… think so? You blocked off the reservoir, remember?"

Oh, yes, she had. "Ah. thank you for reminding me."

She'd need to reconnect it to the water hub shed so they could refill the reservoir from the river… wait, she'd need put in a new distillation stage first. While the reservoir had a binding for distillation, she had placed it after the reservoir. She needed to put one between the water hub shed and the reservoir, or maybe even before the river and the water hub shed. Lori didn’t want whatever caustic substance was dissolved into the river getting into her reservoir. The white powder of the caustic substance would need to be isolated. It might be useful, and at the very least, best to keep it from just falling back into the river and need to be distilled out of the water again.

And once that was done, she'd have to reconnect the reservoir to the baths… and then make sure the baths are operational, so that she wouldn't have people taking baths in her Dungeon anymore… and had she put the lights in second level back to normal…?

A thought occurred to her, and she turned to Rian. "Did you find any dragon scales?"

For some reason, Rian shuddered. "No, and I think we should be glad for that. Imagine if the dragon had dropped a caustic metal scale of the sizes we've found before? Or worse, it had changed something on the ground into caustic metal."

Ah. There was the reason. Yes, Lori wanted to shudder as well as she imagined that. If such a thing were left in the middle of her infrastructure… caustic metal reacted with water, and with the way everyone was sweating… "Still… nothing at all?"

"Not even a little," Rian reiterated. "Though to be fair, we haven't really looked that far. I can definitely say that we found nothing in or around the village, or near any of the outbuildings. We might find something if we go further out, but that's something we can do after all the repairs."

Lori nodded thoughtfully. She'd probably need to repair her bead-making shed upriver. Given it was made of ice, the explosions of caustic metal had no doubt damaged it extensively, not to mention it probably collapsed since she hadn't maintained it all week.

On either side, trees and hills passed, and every so often, a burned tree stood in the middle of charred ground.

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The moment she crossed the border of her demesne, Lori immediately felt better. The pounding, unrelenting heat of the sun above her softened, becoming a pleasant warmth. Her skin stopped feeling overheated, and for the first time in days she actually felt something close to comfortable. She became aware of the wisps around her, connected to her through her core, as if they were a part of her body.

Through her core, she claimed the waterwisps still on the bottom of the boat, carefully drawing them together into a viscous ball that she threw over the side into the river. Ah… Cool as it was, sitting on a puddle wasn't all that comfortable.

Now that she knew they had crossed into her demesne, she was glad to see no more burned trees. There were fallen and broken branches, but those didn't matter. It was merely damage to undeveloped and irrelevant areas, after all.

Soon they were coming to the docks, and as she looked over her demesne, she saw the roofs were intact. That was a first for them. Many of the wooden roofs had been blackened however, and people were inspecting them, no doubt to assess if they needed to be replaced. More were carrying things out of the dungeon, and…

"Rian, why are people carrying beds and tables from my dungeon?" Lori asked flatly.

"We had a lot of time after we finished carrying in the essentials, so I had people move in what they could," Rian said. "Didn't take that long, really. We were even able to get the shelves from the bath houses. Probably didn't need to, but at the time it was a reasonable precaution."

"Is that why it took you so long to signal me to seal my Dungeon?"

"No, that was because I was waiting for the boat to come back. We actually got everything in well before that."

They approached the dock, where people had begun to gather. Lori recognized Umu and Mikon, and Shanalorre was there for some reason, as well as some other people. As Rian awkwardly maneuvered the boat next to the dock, Riz threw the boat's rope to one of those on the dock, who tied it to the post there.

As people nearer to the dock began to climb out, assisted by the people waiting there, Lori exchanged nods with Shanalorre. "Binder Shanalorre."

"Binder Lolilyuri."

"Did anyone die?"

"No. Nothing arose that endangered anyone or required my intervention. Was anyone hurt?"

"If they were, it was self-inflicted, but no one died. Tend to it later when you escort the children to see their parents."

Shanalorre nodded. "Understood, Great Binder. When will that be?"

"Rian will be bringing more wispbeads to Yllian tomorrow. See who wants to go and arrange the matter with Rian."

"We might have to make more than one trip, I'm not sure all the children can fit in the boat," Rian said. "Uh, can we talk about this later at lunch? It's hot out here."

The two Dungeon Binders looked at each other and both nodded. "We'll speak of this later during lunch," Lori agreed.

"Understood. Welcome home, Great Binder."

Lori nodded, finally getting up and stepping off the boat onto the dock.

Yes. She was home.

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Fixing Home

Over the next few days, Lori had to work to restore what she could of her demesne back to how it was before the dragon's passing.

She started with recovering the Coldhold from where it had been encased. It took up most of the afternoon of the day she arrived, since she had move the stone container with the boat close to the dock before carefully raising up it up, and then opening the block slowly so that the Coldhold would float in the water. At that point, Rian and several other men waiting nearby on Lori's Boat pulled themselves aboard to keep the larger boat from drifting downriver and maneuver it properly into the dock.

The next day, Lori worked on restoring her Dungeon—and by extension the town’s—water supply as the Coldhold was checked over and Rian delivered the wispbeads, Shanalorre and children to River's Fork. This was more complicated than the distillation bindings she'd for River's Fork. Her demesne had far greater water requirements, and they would need to distill far more water than a bucket at a time. However, the distillation process required turning water to vapor, and if a large enough amount of water changed state like that, the technical term for it was 'an explosion'. Therefore, she'd need to take care with the bindings she made.

First, Lori reinforced the stone pipe that drew water from the river and filled the water hub shed with earthwisps. Then she altered the binding that drew water from the river and propelled it up a pipe to turn water into vapor and added a binding to condense the vapor back into water so that it would fall into the water hub shed's receptacle. When all three bindings were active, it created the appearance that the pipe was working normally, simply drawing up water from the river.

Lori then began working on trying to increase the pipe's flow rate to something approaching what was normal for it, slowly increasing the rate the bindings of waterwisps turned the river water into vapor and condensed it again. She made sure the whole length of stone pipe was reinforced, lest it suddenly explode from the pressure the vapor was exerting on it, even adding more stone to the pipe to make it thicker and thus increasing the total reinforcement provided by the binding of earthwisps. Because of the way the bindings were arranged, with the directionality in the binding that turned water to vapor preventing that vapor from flowing back out to the river, most of the pressure was trying to escape out the end with the binding that condensed vapor to water.

In the end, she was able to attain a flow rate that she was satisfied with, and the resulting water was sufficiently distilled. Still, Lori decided to pile on more stone around the stone intake pipe to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic rupture, even if the pipe and the store around it would be reinforced by earthwisps. Best to prevent any potential accidents.

It was only at the last moment, before she was going to start all the bindings that would being the process of sending distilled water from the water hub shed to her dungeon's reservoir that she thought to check the water remaining in the sheds receptacle. She immediately spat out the caustic tasting water.

Cleaning out the water hub shed of caustic water so that it wouldn't infect her reservoir took a while. Still, it was a good test of the distiller as she made it provide her with clean water for cleaning out the surfaces of the water hub shed of caustic residue. Only once she was sure that no more caustic residue remained did she reconnect the pipe between the waterhub shed and the reservoir, and then the pipes between the reservoir and everywhere else.

Lori was about reactivate the binding that would bring water from the water hub shed to the reservoir when a thought occurred to her.

She closed up the water hub shed, making sure the binding of lightningwisps that kept out bugs was in place before she made her way to her Dungeon and towards the reservoir at the back, following the pipe in the stone she'd made a long time ago. The door that blocked the way to it was closed and still secured by the raised stone on the floor that kept looked in place. Lori intercepted the pipe towards the reservoir, pinching it shut and diverting it up towards her as she knelt down and made a bowl-like depression on the floor.

Reaching through her connection to the water hub shed, she briefly activated the binding that sent water through the pipe to the dungeon's reservoir. Lori followed the water through her awareness, deactivating the binding as the water reached her diversion and flowed up to the depression she had made.

Warily, she dipped on finger into the water that filled the depression and tasted it, then sighed in relief as it tasted like the reservoir water normally did, with no bitter aftertaste. Then promptly spat it out, as it was still water she'd found on the floor.

She gathered the water into a ball of ice, repaired the depression in the ground and reconnected the pipe, then activated the bindings in the water hub shed. Her dungeon's baths were nearby, so she just threw the ball of ice into the basin of water there—fortunately, it was women's turn to bathe—before she headed back to the reservoir to check the water flow.

Even though there was now a waist-high wall around the wide, circular pit of the reservoir, Lori could never stop feeling worried that someone would somehow manage to urinate into their water. Or worse. She knew at this point it was an irrational fear—there was the railing, and a door that stayed locked nearly all the time—but why take the chance with the water she was going to be drinking?

The bindings of lightwisps she'd anchored at intervals down the sides of the reservoir had run out of imbuement and dissipated since she had last been there, so she claimed and bound more lightwisps so she could see down into the water. The reservoir was somewhere between half and a third full, which was vaguely concerning. Should she make the reservoir deeper? Actually… how full had the reservoir been when she'd left?

…

Uh, she hadn't checked, had she?

…

Well, uh… something to remember for next time…

Still, the flow of the water seemed to be equal to what it usually was. She could risk reconnecting her demesne's bath houses to the reservoir… once she remade and anchored the necessary bindings to the bath houses' components and remade the ice ceilings of the back of the structures.

She really needed to get around to the putting stone roofs on the back of the bath houses, but for now building it from ice was quicker, even if that ice was slightly caustic. Perhaps she'd use the stone she'd excavate from making the reservoir deeper.

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Once the supply of water to the reservoir was secured, which included the spigots for the drinking water, building the ice roofs followed. Having even one of the bath houses allowed her to tell people to stop taking baths in her dungeon. Once all of the bath houses had been repaired, Lori double-checked the draw on the reservoir, and was glad to see that the water level seemed to be increasing slowly now.

The waste water of the baths was sent to a cistern near the agricultural fields for irrigation, and what that as near full, the excess water was sent into a distiller and sent back to the baths. Well, it did once she reformed those bindings, which had run out of imbuement and dissolved. The cistern water was caustic, but it didn't seem to be causing any adverse effects on their crops, so there seemed no need to distill that. The laundry area also didn't need distilled water. The caustic water from the river did well enough for washing clothes.

Once her demesne had water again, she had time to rebuild the Lori's Ice Boat. This wasn't the first time she'd had to rebuild the boat after having to dismantle it so that it could be stored in her dungeon. The carpenters had checked over the components and had found no rot, so the frame had been reassembled. Lori had then rebuilt a hull of ice around the frame, with a drop of her blood mixed into the water so that she could imbue it beyond her demesne.

When they had begun making bound tools like wisplights and drivers for the boats, Rian had wanted her to make the hull a bound tool so that she wouldn't need to maintain it.

"If it's a bound tool, all we need to do to maintain the hull is to put a bead on it," he'd said as they'd eaten dinner. "That's one less thing you need to pay attention to, and Clowee can just add it to the maintenance she already does to the boat."

"You realize that if the imbuement on the hull runs out, the ice will become so cold not only will it freeze the river water, but anyone who touches it will likely immediately develop frostbite, if not immediately freeze to the ice," Lori had countered.

"So? The same thing will happen if you ever forget to imbue it. At least this way they'll have a way to imbue it again and make the freezing stop."

"And if it gets stolen?"

"As opposed to the bound tool steam jet driver you just mounted on it getting stolen? Where are they going to take it? River's Fork? Besides, if you're worried about it getting stolen, just put your blood on it and make your hypothetical thieves regret it. All we need to do is restrict access to wispbeads and make the intake too small to fit enough for a potential thief to reach Covehold."

Lori had grunted. "Fine, I'll consider it."

She'd become slightly more amenable to the idea when Rian had reported that the steam jet driver bound tool on Lori's Ice Boatconsumed a most of a bead just getting between her demesne and River's Fork, and needed part of a second to be able to make its way back. It had certainly helped put the amount of imbuement she'd been putting into the binding of the boat's steam jet driver into context.

Now, as she shaped the hull and added her blood, she also finally mounted the sealed copper container filled with white Iridescence to the hull, near where the tiller with the steam jet driver bound tool would also be mounted. The container had been ready for some time, and had sat on her desk for a time when she could get around to it, which was now. The sealed copper container was connected by a wire to a bone tube which had a wooden stopper on it, which had been sized to hold a maximum of two beads when sealed. She secured the bone tube by fusing a bone protrusion to its side and wrapping that protrusion around the wooden frame of the boat before covering both wood and bone with ice, leaving the tube to protrude in front of the boat's driver.

She'd still be imbuing the boat through her blood, but as Rian had requested, this allowed for a degree of leeway when it came to safety. The test she had done with a block of ice of the same volume as Lori's Ice Boat had showed that a wispbead with an average diameter of twenty-five chiyustri—the largest of the standard sizes of beads, as opposed to the far, far larger non-standard wispbeads she had made to imbued River's Fork's defenses—imbued the binding of waterwisps that kept the ice solidified for approximately three quarters of a full day, as well as she could judge. She'd been asleep during the end of the first time she'd run the test, and while she'd managed to be awake when the bead was completely consumed the next two time, it had been hard to judge exact times.

Still, a close-enough estimate sufficed for her purposes. Anyone who stole the boat would need a lot of beads to get it to Covehold—or anywhere else for that matter—and since the only ones she gave wispbeads to was Rian and Yllian… Well, their problem. Even if some thief in River's Fork stole beads from the wisplights and possibly the distillation pillar, she could just destroy the boat before they got very far. Still, she didn't like how doing this gave people the illusion that trying to steal the boat to try to go somewhere was an option.

The thought of it had her still scowling in annoyance at dinner, though the scowl was mitigated as she sat down on her new chair and allowed herself to rest her weight on the backrest. Ah, so wonderful! It was high enough she was even able to rest her head on it, and everything had been shaved smooth and painted with oil. She had worked in enough carpentry workshops to be able to appreciate all the work that had gone into the seemingly simple piece of furniture.

"Long day?" Rian said, sitting across from her at the table. His hair was damp in a way that said he'd had a bath rather than just being so sweaty even his hair was inundated. The bench was empty on either side of him. As summer had progressed, the three women had had been spending longer in the bath.

"I still think this makes it more likely the boat gets stolen," Lori muttered, closing her eyes with a sigh. Oh, yes… no more having to put up with a bench!

"Oh, you put on the hull maintenance bound tool? That's great!"

She grunted. "I'm still imbuing it. It's more efficient and still haven't had time to make new beads." She'd need to do one tomorrow, rebuilding her bead-making shed and spending the day making beads.

"Of course, Great Binder. Still, a little redundancy never hurt."

Lori shrugged, opening her eyes. "I'm surprised you didn't ask for the same of the Coldhold."

"Given how big it is, we'd need one of the really big beads for it," Rian said. "No, trying to do the same with it probably isn't viable. We'd be better served trying to find a way for the carpenters to build a waterproof boat hull. If the dragon had left any sort of scale that wouldn't explode, we might have been able to do it with sheet metal, but…" He shrugged.

"Depending on the beneficence of dragons is naïve foolishness."

"I know, but a man can hope."

Lori rolled her eyes. "How was the test trip to the ocean?" she asked.

Rian grinned. "The new steam driver bound tool on the Coldhold works great. Forward, reverse, low speed, top speed… and with it replacing the big block underneath, it's not as crowded down below. Though we had to venture out a little farther from shore than usual to collect salt. I didn't want to accidentally have whatever caustic substance the dragon dropped on us mixed in with the salt."

She frowned as Lori realized what he meant. "Were you able to ensure that the salt is untainted?"

"Reasonably sure. I brought along some rendered seal fat and mixed it in among the salt we extracted. It didn't turn into soap, so there probably wasn't enough of the caustic substance in it to be significant."

Lori blinked. "Oh. Yes, that would work, wouldn't it?" Caustic pot ash and oil reacted to make soap, so whatever caustic substance in the water probably would as well. The bitter taste in the river water had been growing weaker over the past week, but it still hadn't fully gone yet, so she was still distilling their water.

"Yup. We're going to make two more trips to get both demesnes full of what salt they need before heading for Covehold, but we're on schedule to leave by the end of a week at the latest."

A smile started to curl Lori's lips in eagerness. Soon, soon, Rian and the Coldhold would be on its way, ready to sell the beads she'd been amalgamating all spring. If he could find just one buyer… her monopoly would begin.

She chose to focus on that and not that fact Rian would be gone for a least a month, leaving less competent people to deal with matters so she wouldn't have to.