Demesne 326 - Leaving For Covehold, Again (Patreon)

The ten days of a week passed by faster than she thought. In that time, work had progressed and returned both of her demesnes back to the state they were in before the dragon's arrival, which was the point that Lori felt everything had recovered and was back to normal. Not everything, of course. While the attempt was made, they lacked the skilled hands to save all the crops that were damaged by the dragon's passing. Most of the damaged crops died, though some seemed to persist even with broken stalks. Those, the farmers were laboriously identifying and trying to support with sticks so they wouldn't be overshadowed by the other crops around them as the plants grew.

It was long, difficult and borderline futile work, but if there was a chance…

Still, Lori had—very reluctantly—given Rian the authorization to recruit two Deadspeakers, one for Lori’s demesne and one for River's Fork, and their families, provided the families were small. This meant she’d have to actually start building a bath house in the latter demesne, since that was part of the facilities Rian would be promising to the recruits. With her capability to now make rudimentary bound tools, such a facility wouldn’t be as taxing and frustrating to maintain for her as it would have once, but constructing the facility in question would still be something only she could do.

Lori gloomily considered the work she'd have in front of her as she sat back on her new chair, listening to the louder-than-usual din of the dining hall as people loudly bade farewell to the people who would be accompanying Rian to Covehold Demesne on this trading trip. Really, shouldn’t they have done that last night? They'd had… well, it hadn't been a holiday. People had done a full day’s work, which had involved fully loading the Coldhold with all the trade goods they could spare. The Coldhold’s cargo containers were filled with seel furs, what beast hides could be spared, bags upon bags of wispbeads in hide sacks that had been stitched together just enough to not have any of the contents fall out, and the very large wispbeads that were meant to imbue the boat’s new massive steam jet driver.

The boat had also been loaded with provisions. While the plan, as before, was that they'd catch, clean and cook food on the way, the boat was still carrying food in the event of emergencies or scarce hunting. As such, jars of happyfruit and pink lady slices sitting in brine had been carried aboard, along with jars of smoked and cured meat, and little bricks of something called biscuit that looked like a waste of good flour. There'd also been a barrel of mikans and golden buds, which would probably be eaten first since it was th most likely to be bruised and ruined by Iridescence growth.

After all the work, a holiday-like mood had fallen over the dining hall. Instead of the usual stew and bread for dinner last night, they'd had roasted beast meat, and along with the usual bread, everyone had gotten a little fruit pulp-filled bun that was slightly green from the honey syrup that it had been dipped in. The food had been delicious, and everyone had been the kind of noisy they usually been for a holiday.

Lori had distinctly remembered Rian eating his fruit bun fastidiously, touching it only with his fingertips, which had been amusing to watch.

Now was the morning they were supposed to leave. With all the cargo already loaded onto the boat the night before, theoretically that meant that al Rian and the ones going with him—the boat’s ‘crew’—needed to do would be to get on the Coldhold and sail away—was it still called sailing if the boat did not, in fact, have a sail?—after they finished breakfast, what with everything but putting their personal effects onto the boat already done. But no, people were lingering over breakfast, and then afterwards there would no doubt be a crowding saying goodbye—shouldn’t they have done that the night before?— but in practice blocking the way to the docks enough to slow down the men going on board with their things. It would no doubt delay the boat’s leaving to midmorning, possibly even late morning just before lunch. She was recognizing the pattern, even if she didn’t understand why.

"I know that look," Rian said. He looked a little sleepy, as if he hadn't had much sleep the night before. He probably hadn't. "We haven't even been delayed yet. Don't aggravate yourself by pre-emptively being annoyed about something that hasn't happened yet. Perhaps everything will go smoothly and there won't be any delays."

Lori snorted loudly.

"Well, think of it this way. It's a sign everyone heading to Covehold has a reason to come back instead of running off with the profits."

…

Well, it was still annoying.

"I realize that's probably not much comfort, since you have to build a bath house in this heat—" Rian cut off as Lori made a sound in her throat like a prolonged groan. "You don't have to. Just let them and their families live here, and we'll bring one over to River's Fork when work needs to be done."

The sound from her throat went from a groan to a growl.

"Well, if you insist on minimizing your risk, then you have no choice but to build the bath house," her lord said with annoying sensibleness. "It's not just for them, it's—"

"Yes, yes, it's a long term investment and will make the people who live in River's Fork materially dependent on us for their luxuries, I know how monopolies work," Lori said, waving a hand dismissively. "I know I need to do it, I just don't like it."

"You'll manage somehow. You always do. And if you can't, both Deadspeakers can live here in Lorian until you do."

Lori twitched.

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The boat’s departure was delayed.

One would think that standing under the hot summer sun with no shade would have people cutting things short, but no, people seemed willing to sweat as if they'd just dumped a bucket of water on themselves to have long-delaying goodbyes. Normally Lori wouldn't have minded, except she'd gone aboard the Coldhold to do a last moment check on the bound tools and bindings, double-checking her list of things she needed to maintain.

The lightwisps in the interior of the boat, for example, had been replaced with a couple of wisplight bound tools that also served to circulate air, something Rian had begged her for. She'd also made a simple bound tool stove, to reduce the use of fires aboard the boat for cooking, though Rian had orders that make sure it was used properly. Along with the stove was a bound tool coldbox to let them store meat for longer, and the evaporator for collecting salt and proving drinking water had been replaced with bound tools as well.

Then there were the special cargo boxes. Raised up on blocks of ice, the special cargo boxes where shrouded on all sides by darkwisps to keep out Iridescence and kept inside a bigger locked box so that nothing could be put in or taken out of the boxes when between demesnes, lest someone's errant hand introduce Iridescence to the space within. They had only the one, which contained some of their hides to see if there would be a difference in quality. That one, she'd need to maintain herself, and she made sure it was on her list, along with the hull.

She really didn't want to forget to keep the hull imbued.

One thing she no longer needed to keep imbued herself, at least, was the water jet driver that propelled the boat. Once, the driver had been a large block composed of several different pieces of wood that had been carved out and fitted so that when placed together they formed tubes through which water flowed. This was because there was a simple binding of waterwisps that made water flow anchored to one of the blocks, and it kept flowing at all times because the boat was meant for someone beside her to operate it. Through an arrangement of sliding wooden blocks, the flow of the water was controlled so that the Coldhold could move forward at different speeds, stay in place, or move in reverse.

However, this meant that the binding of waterwisps that made the water flow and gave propulsion to the boat had to be heavily imbued so that it would never, ever run out, lest the binding dissolve. It was something she had needed to do daily, even when the boat wasn't being used, because… well, she was more likely to remember to imbue the binding than to activate or deactivate it.

All that had changed when she'd found the means to create a rudimentary but reliable bound tool.

Using the… cores, for lack of a better term, of white Iridescence tightly packed in a waterproof metal container, she'd been able to make bound tool drivers for all the boats in her demesne.

The first steam jet driver had been mounted on Lori's Boat as a proof of concept prototype to test its effectiveness and assess how much imbuement it needed in beads. The corrections learned from that were applied to the bound tool steam jet driver that she built and mounted onto the Lori's Ice Boat. The corrections and notes for improvements from that were applied to make the far, far larger bound tool driver that was then installed onto the Coldhold.

Doing so had required moving the Coldhold onto land and first removing the arrangement of wooden blocks they'd been using. Then they had installed the long, thick tube of bone along the center line of the boat, securing it with wooden braces to anchor it to the wooden frame of the boat before putting the ice that served as the boat's hull back in place.

The driver bound tool wasn't complicated. It was actually quite simple. Bindings of waterwisps where anchored to the long tube, which had openings in the front and back of the boat to let water pass through. When the waterwisps were imbued from the large wispbead, they made water move though the tube, and therefore propelled the boat in the opposite direction.

The complicated part had been the controls for the driver bound tool. It had four cores in total, each controlling a separate bindings of waterwisps, as well as the binding of earthwisps on the tub that acted to reinforce its structure to both prevent wear and as a preventative measure to keep the tube from cracking under the pressure of the water. One of the bindings propelled water so that the boat would go backwards, so that the boat would be better able to maneuver in and out of dock, while the other three propelled it forward, with each additional binding activated increasing the boat's forward speed.

The smiths had needed to make a special lever that routed imbuement from the wispbead to all the bindings, but doing so had been well within their skills. It has been simple enough to design, but had required proper metal bearings and springs at the contacts to ensure the flow of imbuement through the metal. It would have been quire unfortunate if the bound tool had stopped working because of a loose connection. Fortunately, white Iridescence-alloyed copper had the durability and elasticity to work in this capacity, at least as far as their tests had shown.

All in all, she'd finished her inspection with an updated list and feeling satisfied that the boat was as it should be… and now she couldn't leave as the dock was crowded by people who weren't moving.

It was all very irritating.

Still, at least her inspection hadn't turned up any problems that had managed to spontaneously manifest since yesterday's inspection and all the new improvements to the Coldhold functioning as intended.

She glared over everyone's heads at Rian, who was being crowded by Umu, Mikon and Riz. Really, they’d had breakfast together! They’d probably spent the night before… well, doing whatever they did in Rian’s house together! They’d known this was coming for a week! Shouldn’t the goodbyes be over already?

Lori didn’t notice Shanalorre until the younger Dungeon Binder had interspersed herself with the group and was drawing Rian’s attention to… oh. Rian met Lori’s eyes and actually looked embarrassed, as well as mildly exasperated. She, for part, gave Shanalorre a nod of thanks and her lord a flat look to convey her dissatisfaction.

He visibly sighed as he turned towards the three women, who all turned to look towards where Lori was standing on the boat, her arms crossed impatiently.

It took a few moments for Rian to get the crowd to part enough for Lori to be able to pass through, and that finally seemed to be the signal for people to stop delaying and end the overly long goodbyes. Slowly, people began separating and getting off the dock as Rian led the way to the Coldhold. People were crying. Why were they crying? The men would come back. Rian was with them, and they'd all already comeback from one such trip like this before.

"Cottsy, put the driver in reverse!" she heard Rian direct from where he was handing the tiller. "Everyone else, grab an oar, let's get turned around quicker! The sooner we leave, the faster we can come back home!"

Lori heard their affirmatives as the four of other men on the boat grabbed long wooden oars, each one trailing a rope that secured it to a post. With awkward looking movements of men who'd practiced just enough to know what they were doing but not actually done it enough for the movement to feel comfortable, they started trying to maneuver the boat to turn. She watched from on top of the flood wall, ignoring the people around her as they cried and waved and wasted all sorts of time.

Once the Coldhold was oriented so that it was pointing downriver, Rian looked towards them and waved. "We'll be back soon!" he called, his voice carrying audibly over the water. "Hopefully we can bring back something nice. Don't make trouble for her Bindership while I'm gone, all right?"

That seemed to make people laugh for some reason, even as they started waving back, and the men who had been at oars hung them from brackets built into the boat to do the same. The boat began to move downriver, clearly having activated the driver again even as all the men stopped working and waved to those on shore.

It took a while for the boat to move sufficiently downstream for people to finally stop waving back. With the slow awkwardness of a crowd with no more to do, the families who'd congregated at the docks began to drift off, obviously wanting to finally get out of the sun.

Sighing, Lori turned to Riz, who was still waiting next to her. Mikon and Umu had gone, presumably back down to the second level of the dungeon to their looms. The woman who was most definitely not an officer, and technically not a temporary Rian because she wouldn't be doing what Rian normally did. "Erzebed," she said.

"Yes, Great Binder?"

"We'll be going down to River's Fork to begin construction on the new baths there either tomorrow or the day after. Arrange for someone to come with us to help you guard, will you? Then after lunch we're going upriver"

"Yes, Great Binder."

Stupid recruitment promises.

Still, she supposed it could be worse. At least she wasn't having to promise land. That was just nonsense.