Weekly Digest 133 - (#419 - #421) (Patreon)

Sweet Talk

"And the demesne is officially five taums in diameter." Rian announced at breakfast the next morning.

Lori nodded, a bland look on her face. "Wonderful. And how much more surface area does that add?"

Rian paused, then sighed. "Wait a moment, I need to write this down," he said, grabbing his bone tablet and burnt stick. "Let's see, three and a bit…"

Lori waited patiently as Rian hunched over his tablet, muttering to himself.

"All right!" he declared. "We started with roughly twelve and a half square taums of surface area. With the demesne's growth, we now have an additional seven square taums of surface area. Well, roughly that much. That's not counting hills and things."

"I'm surprised you didn't have the answer ready to hand, " Lori commented as she ate breakfast. "Isn't this a number going up? You're fond of keeping track of those, are you not?"

"Normally, yes," Rian admitted. "But I hate having to calculate circles. Please never make me do spheres. My brain will melt and leak out of my ears."

"Noted."

"I mean it. If you ever ask me to calculate anything beyond a sphere's diameter, you will get absolutely nothing. I'm warning you now so you're not surprised if it happens." Her lord paused. "If we ever need anything like that, we can probably bother Lidzuga. He's an alknowlege boy, he probably knows the formulas for it."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Then if the calculations are urgent enough, we either send the Coldhold to Covehold Demesne to hire a computer, or try to reconstruct the principles of spherical geometry from first principles."

"I know a computer," Taeclas—it said so on her head cloth— volunteered. "I could give you directions to where to find him! Tirdon's very good with numbers, he do all sorts of sums."

Rian held out a hand as if presenting the Deadspeaker's idea. "There we go."

"Also noted."

"Good morning, you—"

"No, no, I don't think that counts as her talking to you," Rian hastily interjected.

"It doesn't?" When Rian shook his head, Taeclas let out a sad sigh.

The woman was very strange. But then, the sort of insanity that resulted in someone naming plants likely resulted on more than one cognitive aberration.

And speaking of which…

"Taeclas—"

"Good morning, your Bindership!"

"Yes, yes, good morning to you too," Lori sighed, waving her hand dismissively.

"Wait, how come she gets a good morning and I don’t?"

She stared at Rian and the indignant expression on his face. "Are you serious?"

"No, I'm Rian. And I've been your lord for a year, I've greeted you good morning plenty of times, and you've never greeted me 'good morning'! And I was fine with it, you were like that with everyone, but now Tae merits a 'good morning'? Why don't I get one?"

Lori didn't know if she wanted to sigh or roll her eyes. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like she could do both.

…

But she tried anyway, sighing as she rolled her eyes.

…

No, no, that felt wrong somehow, she shouldn't do that again. It wasn't nearly as cathartic or feel as emphatic as either one individually. 

So she just sighed again. Ah, much better. She could feel her weariness and exasperation passing through the breath she let go. "Good morning, Rian," she said flatly. "Now be quiet." She turned back toward Taeclas. "How is the sweetgrass progressing? How long before it can be harvested?"

"Honey is doing great, your Bindership!" Taeclass declared cheerfully. "She's rooted properly and growing again now. I've already taken some cuttings, and Sweety, Sugar, Treacle, Syrup, Candy, Tasty, Pastry, Dessert, Meli, and Vov are growing nicely!"

…

Oh, glittering rainbows, the woman had named more of them!

On the other side of Umu from Taeclas, Rian had a hand over his mouth with his head turned away slightly, while the woman's own wife had an exasperated but affectionate expression on her face again. Lori shook her head, deciding to ignore it and press on with her inquiry.

…

She really should just press on— "Why Vov?" she asked, even as she scolded herself for asking.

"I ran out names, so Vov it was."

"H-how about 'Cake'?" Rian suggested through his hand.

"Cakes aren't very sweet, though? They're like dried bricks with bits of fruit in them?"

"Then I have nothing. The only other sweet thing I can think of is lead, and you shouldn't eat lead."

"No eating lead," Lori declared. Then she shook her head. No. not more losing her flow of thought. "How long before the sweetgrass is read to harvest?"

"Oh, it won't be ready for a while your Bindership, even with Deadspeaking," Taeclas declared cheerfully. "You can't just grow sweetgrass and then harvest like grains, it needs to mature and gather sugar inside it. Even with meanings to accelerate the processes, you still need time or else the poor dears will start hurting themselves. Though I think that with some balancing the meaning we're using on the fruit trees right now will work for them. Sweetgrass is meant to be grown warm, so they should be more tolerant of heat than the fruit trees."

It would take that long? "It would take that long?"

"Oh, yes," Taeclas continued cheerfully. "And we wouldn't get much per stalk of sweetgrass. Maybe only a fifty grains worth of sugar and meli per pressed stalk." She titled her head. "Though that might be enough to make meli bread on holidays? But even when we have the sweetgrass to harvest, I don't think we have the means of actually refining it into sugar and meli? We don't have any sort of press to squeeze out the sweetgrass juice or boiling vats to reduce that juice."

Lori stared at her. Then she slowly turned that flat gaze towards Rian.

"What are you looking me like that for? I didn't know we needed all that either," he said.

She continued staring at him for a moment, then turned back to Taeclas. "So, we will not be able to harvest sugar from the sweetgrass for another year?" she said.

"At the soonest," the Deadspeaker confirmed. "Though it will probably be longer than that. Even when the dears I'm raising now are fully grown, that's still not going to be a lot of sweetgrass juice. To be able to provide enough sweetgrass juice so that everyone here—and in River's Fork, I suppose—can have a bun of meli brown bread for every holiday and holinight of the year, I'm going to need to grow much more sweetgrass. And to do that, I need to raise more cuttings and have more space to grow them."

Lori considered. "Then we will set aside the topic for now and revisit it at a later date. Preferably after we have reconfigured the arrangement of our crops for optimum efficient application of Deadspeaking."

"We should probably rotate them too," Rian said. “The soil is still pretty fresh, but best to start getting into the habit now.”

Lori blinked, turning towards him. "What?"

"Rotating our crops," he said. "In fact, we should probably clear a bit more land so that we enough field space for three or even four crops to rotate."

No, the response still made no sense to Lori. "Rian, what does it matter which direction the crops are facing on the fields?"

Rian stared at her. "I thought you used to work in city farms?"

"Yes? What does that have to do with anything?"

There was silence for a moment. “All right, I’m going to try to explain this as simply as I can,” Rian said. “You know that we have to fertilize soil, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“Right. Well, while dried waste helps, it doesn’t replenish everything that crops draw from the soil…”

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By the end of breakfast, Lori knew a bit more about farming because of Rian and Taeclas’ explanations—which were surprisingly easy to understand—and finally understood why the crops on city farms regularly changed places. It unfortunately meant she foresaw vegetables in her future, which… wasn’t appetizing to think about. Maybe she could order the ones cooking to slice them up very small and put them to the side where they were easily avoided, or maybe not put them in at all…

The farmers and Rian—and now Taeclas, she supposed—had obvious been preparing for this for some time, though. There were crops in her dungeon farm that were being grown so that when harvested they’d have enough seeds to sow them outside in their fields. She’d seen them when she’d been down at the third level, but while many had seemed familiar to her, she hadn’t thought to consider what they were for and had simply assumed they were meant to become food at some point.

Which, to be fair, was accurate. All those crops were technically edible, it was just that it was unlikely they would be eating them, at least directly. Two of their crops, nonconseeds and tressflowers, were being grown so they could press it into oil for soap and tools, and machinery lubricant. So, no eating.

It was an informative discussion she was sure to remember in future—much more memorable than boring, unimportant things like names and faces—as she headed up to her room to collect her bead-making equipment. Her leather sacks for holding bead, the funnel to make pouring them into the sack easier that had used to be a bucket made of bone before she had repurposed it, her bead-making table, her table’s trestles—no wait, she didn’t need to bring those, or her stool either—and her copper tweezers.  She was also bringing a bone tablet, as she needed a place to anchor bindings before she amalgamated them into beads.

The load was one she was used to carrying down from her room, and no one barred her way as she headed towards the docks to lay the everything down on the boat she would be using. Even with the modifications, there was plenty of room still for all the equipment, and they hadn’t even needed to disassemble the strange three-plank chair.

“Ah, there you are, your bindership,” Rian said cheerfully. “I wasn’t able to ask you to do this last night, since they were still being finished. Could you cover this in rock?” From the curves of the hook-like arrangement of wood, she was reasonably certain that the implement had been Deadspoken rather than shaped with manual woodworking.

Lori wanted to sigh and complain that this was something that Rian should have informed her of yesterday… but she’d been tired from expanding the demesne yesterday, and would likely have put off the need to do say anyway. “You should have informed me about these yesterday,” she complained as she accepted the two wooden anchors

“You were tired from expanding the demesne yesterday,” Rian said. “I didn’t want to bother you then.”

“So you’re bothering me now?”

“Yup!” was the cheerful reply.

All right, she’d give him that.

“Don’t we already have an anchor for the boat? I distinctly remember making one for each of the boats we have.”

“Yes, but given you’d want this boat relatively stationary, I thought two anchors would be better. You wouldn’t want to accidentally drift into the demesne and have all the Iridescence you’ve gathered disappear, do you?”

She supposed that was a valid concern when it came to working on a moving platform. “Fine,” she said. “Come with me, I’m not carrying it back by myself.”

Rian followed her, carrying the wooden anchor, to the stone stockpile, which was still huge now. If she hollowed it out, she’d have decent-sized house, and still have enough stone to do it two or three times more. Well, the last house would need to be built manually on her part, but still. Softening some stone from the pile, Lori covered the curving arms and the main shaft of the anchor in stone to protect it from the water, and added a large mass of stone to where the two met so that part of the anchor would sink first as well as insuring that the anchor would sink.

The resulting weight was heavy enough that Lori took hold of one of the anchor’s curving arms and helped Rian carry the anchor back to the boat. The stone dug into her hand, but between the two of them it was easier to haul about. Once they returned, Rian set about securing a rope to the anchor, while Lori began claiming and binding the darkwisps beneath her clothes. Drawing them out as she imbued them, she anchored the stream of opaque blackness to the pieces of bone on top of the poles on the corners and sides of the boat.

As she anchored the binding of darkwisps, the blackness spread between the poles, until there was a black ceiling above her. It had no sheen, reflecting nothing, a pure blackness of the sort only to be found in a completely sealed room. The binding was completely immaterial, and didn’t stir as Lori passed her hand through it, although the binding moved as the posts it was anchored to swayed with the movement of the boat. The air passed through it easily, and water would as well, she knew. It completely blocked out light, however, which would greatly cut down the heat coming from the sun…

…when it was higher up.

…

She might have to adjust the binding when she got to her location. 

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A Very Strange Place

All right, Lori was willing to admit that the strange three-plank chair was actually fairly comfortable.

Sitting on the chair, she was able to lean back comfortably, and the texturing on the seat meant that she didn't slip off. The breeze from the boat moving so fast blew on her more consistently from her higher vantage, although that meant she had to remove her hat lest it blow off, but that was fine.

Yes, it was nice to not have to sit in water any time someone used a ladle to splash water on themselves. And she wouldn't have a mildly sore sore posterior from just sitting on the floor of the boat. The darkwisp binding above her serving as a roof—a sunshade?—was effective enough, although Lori spent the trip upriver adding firewisps to it to delete heat—the less heat she had to deal with, the better—as well as imbuing the binding so that she wouldn't have to worry about it as she worked.

The modifications to the seating also had an effect on the seating arrangements. The plank and beams that had been placed to act as support for the trestles were high enough to be usable as low benches, and Riz's friends were using it as such. While the planks were low, forcing knees up at stomach level, the former militiawomen seemed to find the seating reasonably comfortable.

Riz herself operated the steam jet driver, which had been replaced by the driver from Lori's Boat Two, with its integrated reverse setting. It was the sort of driver she was more familiar with, and given that they would need to go ashore to retrieve the jar full of iridescence that she and Rian had left beyond the demesne's boundary yesterday, the reverse setting was necessary to help them maneuver away from shore more effectively.

Lori's eyes were drawn to the familiar tree next to where she'd set up her ice shed back in the spring, and a part of her was expecting them to slow down to land next to it as they had done before. However, what had become a familiar, Iridescence-covered landscape was gone, and there were only the browns and greens and silver whites of exposed vegetation, rocks and ground. The shed itself was long gone, no doubt melting back into water and rejoining the river after she'd stopped imbuing its binding to maintain it.

They traveled a bit farther after that. The added stretch of river allowed Lori to appreciate how much more her demesne had grown over the summer. While she'd gone to River's Fork Demesne and back since she'd started expanding, she wasn't really familiar with the landmarks denoting the edge of the demesne in that direction. Yes, she had a general familiarity with the twists and turns of the river along the route that allowed her to judge how much further it was to the… to her other demesne, but she'd be hard-pressed to remember specific landmarks at the boundary, usually because she was too busy suddenly suffering from the sudden heat. She knew that tree very well, however, and seeing how much more clear land beyond it they had to pass by helped put all of Rian's numbers into context for her.

Eventually, they reached the new edge of her demesne, a sharp line marking the border of what she ruled and the wild lands full of beasts covered in deadly colors. In fact, there were some of said wild beasts at the river at the moment. Lori watched them warily. Shaped like fat teardrops with stubby-looking tails, they rose up more than twice her height. Their long necks supported a round head with a wide, triangular mouth, and unlike most beasts, they stood as if upright, their hind legs straight and long beneath them. Their bodies glittered with Iridescence of course, obscuring what their natural colors were.

The beasts were drinking, some bending down to lap at the water while others stood straight, head as high as they would go, keeping watch for predators. They had noticed the boat and a few of the beasts blinked at them curiously, their eyes intent on the boat. Lori wondered if that was simply natural instinct to keep watch on moving objects, or whether they'd learned to be wary of the boat.

Behind her, she heard Riz grunt. "Glittering waddlers."

"Is there a problem, Erzebed?" Lori said.

"The waddlers are close to where we buried the jar, Great Binder. I don't think it's safe to try and get it right now."

Ah. "How long does it usually take for these things to move on?"

"They won't move until all of the beasts in the flock have had a chance to drink, and we don't know how long that will be. Could be a few moments, could be half an hour from now."

"Could we make them leave?" Lori asked.

Riz hesitated. "You'll have to be the one to try, Great Binder. It would be too dangerous for us to try to force them off. You're never supposed to go up against a beast the same size as you alone. The bigger it is, the more people you need to deal with it safely." The not-an-officer gestured. "We'd also need the right equipment, like beast spears and shields, not these little stickers." Lori assumed that meant the bundle spears with their steel points elevated above what little water was sloshing around the bottom of the boat. "I wouldn't want to deal with their claws without something to but in front of me."

Lori blinked, taking a second look at the waddlers. "I don't see any claws."

"No, you don't. They're a nasty surprise hiding under the feathers, which are actually very thick."

She stared at the beasts. "They must be cooking under those colors," she said. Then she blinked, and turned to give Riz a pointed look. "You've been carrying those same spears when you accompanied me to the edge of the demesne before…" Lori said, giving her a pointed look.

"Because if a big beast showed up that could be dangerous to you the idea was to buy time while you ran into the demesne, not try and make the beast go anywhere," Riz said. "Trying to get those waddlers to move means holding our ground, which we can't really do with these things."

Well, Lori supposed that made sense. She looked towards the so-called waddlers. While they didn't look dangerous—honestly, they looked like large eggs standing upright—they were still dangerous bigger than she was, and if Riz said it had claws, then it had claws. The fact she couldn't see the claws meant no one would be able to adequately react to them. Actually, since they were hidden, one couldn't even be able to say what was a safe distance.

"We'll stay inside the demesne and wait for a few moments to see if they leave," Lori declared. "I have things I need to prepare anyway. If they're still there by the time I'm done…" Lori shrugged. "I'll move them."

Riz nodded. "Are we staying on the water or landing."

Lori opened her mouth to order the latter, then paused. "Let's try the two anchors," she said instead. "Best to see if they work as intended, since we have time." If there was one thing she'd learned in her time as a Dungeon Binder, it was that even sound ideas didn't always work right the first time. Adjustment were always needed. "I'll leave you to it."

"Yes, Great Binder," Riz said.

Lori sat back and started preparing the starter binding for the beads she'd be amalgamating as Riz and her friends tried to get the anchors to work, although she did notice that they simply dropped the anchors over the side, requiring Riz stay at the driver controls to keep maneuvering the boat away from the shore. It made the Dungeon Binder sigh, but she simply went back to her preparations. Airwisps, lightwisps, firewisps, and most importantly darkwisps were gathered around her as she reached out through her connection to her demesne's core, the wisps claimed, bound and added to the mass of wisps anchored to her bone tablet. It was probably excessive, but as this would be the first time she'd be making beads on a boat, there was a possibility of failure and she wanted a surplus of raw material—as much as wisps could be considered material—to be able to make up for it. Of course, the limiting factor would be crystals of Iridescence…

The bindings needed a certain level of imbuement so that they wouldn't be completely consumed by the Iridescence, and Lori spent a few moments filling the deactivated binding so that it would reach that level. Fortunately at that point Riz and her friends recalled that the two anchors needed to be some distance from each other and were trying to throw them as far as possible in different directions. That allowed them to manage things, and once the anchors were secured, it was all a matter of adjusting the ropes so that there suspended where they wanted to be.

Fortunately, the waddlers had left in the midst of all this, the flock making their way back into the woods. Whether it was because they'd all managed to drink their fill or had been disturbed by the former militiawomen trying to figure out how to deploy the anchors, Lori couldn’t say, although she’d have understood if it was the latter. Regardless, that meant it was safe to try and recover the jar of iridescence that Rian had buried yesterday when he’d come out to the edge to measure the demesne’s expansion.

That meant finally crossing the border of the demesne and beyond to the outside. This time, Lori actually remembered to brace herself, and indeed there was a sudden increase in the temperature around her, turning from comfortably warm and humid to very uncomfortably hot and humid. Thanks to her sunshade of darkwisps and the firewisps anchored to it, the heat was much less extreme than it usually was when she’d had to leave the confines of her demesne this summer. Yes, it was still hot, but not so much that she wanted to throw herself in the river or immediately regretted convincing herself she had to exit her demesne. This was merely uncomfortably warm.

She didn’t have that long to appreciate the effectiveness of her sunshade as the boat approached land that the waddlers had vacated. Lori could still hear them as they… well, waddled… between the trees, calling out to each other loudly, their juveniles in the center of the group’s formation. Two of Riz’s friends followed the not-an-officer ashore, spears in hand, to keep watch as Riz kicked a spot on the ground as clear of Iridescence as she could before starting to dig with a nearby rock and her bare hands. In a few moments, she had unearthed a sealed jar, which they carefully brought back to the boat. One of the women still aboard took it with some reluctance, but there were no exposed crystals on the outside, only a glittering rainbow hue.

“Don’t let that get wet,” Lori snapped just as the woman was about to put it down. “If that gets washed, it becomes useless.” While Lori had been gathering up the water on the bottom of the boat that had gathered every time someone had splashed themselves with the ladle to cool off, there was still some water there, and it might be enough to adversely affect the iridescence in the jar.

…

The world had become a very strange place ever since she’d become a Dungeon Binder, Lori reflected. Regularly talking to people, deliberately doing unpaid work, and now she didn’t want Iridescence to be washed away with water as a sane person should…

…

Probably best not to think about it.

Taking the jar, Lori carefully pulled off the stopper. Inside, she could make out the glittering, crystalline shapes of Iridescence. Rian had apparently not simply buried the jar but had also filled it with Iridescence he’d collected the day before, which had continued to crystallize.

The sight of it still made Lori shudder as she carefully stopped the jar shut again and resisted the urge to wash her hands, and the jar for good measure. She needed the Iridescence. She needed the Iridescence. She needed the Iridescence…

If she said it enough times, perhaps she’d stop shuddering at the thought.

“All right,” she said as Riz climbed back onto the boat, “take us out into the middle of the river and set the anchors. Don’t let us drift back into the demesne.”

“Yes, Great Binder.”

As Riz got returned to the rear of the boat where she could operate the steam jet driver, the other former militiawomen used the butts of their spears to pushed Lori’s Boat Three away from the shore. Soon, they were back out further into the water, away from the reach of beasts. This time, there was no problem as the anchors were set apart from each other—they had dropped one anchor and Riz had moved the boat some distance away before the other anchor was dropped as well, which was a much more certain way of doing it than trying to throw the anchors—and the ropes secured to keep the boat more or less in place, or at least not as risk of drifting back towards her demesne.

Lori set the trestles onto the places meant for them and laid down her bead-making table. It was time to get to work.

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Boat Shed Bead Making

Once Lori had gotten used to the placement of her bead-making table—with both the table and her chair slotted into place she couldn't just push off from the work surface—it wasn't all that different from when she'd made beads in her ice shed.

…

No, that was a lie, there were significant differences. Thanks to the open sides of the boat, she had significantly more air circulation, such that she didn't have to really place any airwisps to keep herself cool. The sunshade and the firewisps deleting heat anchored to it was quite sufficient for cooling.

However, it was also noisier. There was the sound of the river splashing against the sides of the boat, the occasional cries of beasts, bugsong coming from either shore of the river—the two of which were no longer muffled by a thick layer of bound ice—and most annoying of all… Riz and her friends talking. Previously, there had also been a thicker layer of bound ice between herself and their chatter, but no more. And since her chair was in the relative center of the boat, it didn't matter where they sat, they physically couldn't be any further from her.

To their credit, the bugsong was actually louder than they were, so it wasn't worth it to tell them to be quiet. Lori just made a binding of airwisps over her hears to muffle the noise, then moved on to work. Bead-making itself wasn't any different, although she had to be careful of where she placed the jar of Iridescence. She couldn't put it on the floor or the water would get at it, and she'd overlooked putting some kind of side table. Fortunately, the boat was stable enough that Lori was able to place the jar on the lateral plank that her chair was slotted into, which did the job for now. Still, she'd need to have Rian inform the carpenters she needed something to keep her material out of the water. even just a box would do.

However, once she accounted for that, making beads was simply a familiar, repetitive process. Remove a piece of the imbued binding from the bone tablet she'd anchored it to, anchor it to the bone inlaid into the side of one of the trenches in her bead-making table, start imbuing the binding through the metal contact under her foot that was connected the metal plate on the table, add a piece of Iridescence from the jar—held in her copper tweezers because why touch the colors directly—directly to the binding, and as the crystal started trapping the wisps, start the process that would amalgamate the Iridescence and binding together into a wispbead.

Repeat until the tray was full of growing beads. Once they had all grown enough that their own shape lifted them up and off the contact plate on the table, Lori poured the finished beads into the catch trough, and had Riz and her friends start scooping up the beads into the large leather sacks they'd also brought along when while she made more beads. It wasn't like they were doing anything else, after all. Despite sighs and groaning, they all worked quickly and efficiently and managed not to bump the table as Lori went back to work making more beads.

When the shards of Iridescence in the jar were depleted, it was time to head back. All of her sacks were full, ready to run all of her bound tools. The next time she did this she'd have to make some large beads as well, but those take up far more preparation, and she'd been busy expanding the demesne yesterday. Actually, she wouldn't even need to retrieve the thing herself. After all, if Rian was already going to be heading to the edge of the demesne…

She might as well add an errand to that trip.

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When they returned, lunch had apparently just started, since there was still a fairly long line of people getting food from the kitchen and only a few people were already eating. Even taking a brief moment to have Riz and her friends carry the beads up to her room along with her bead-making table, and then having a quick bath in her room once Lori had dismissed them and shut the door—despite the sunshade, it had been warm enough make Lori sweat, and she didn't want to be smelling herself as she ate—the food was still wonderfully hot when she came down.

It seemed that Riz had forgone taking a bath, which was why she was seated a full space away from Mikon, who was sitting next to Rian. Apparently the woman's affections drew the line at Riz still being absolutely damp with sweat.

“So!” Rian said cheerfully, “how was the boat shed?”

“It’s adequate for its purposes, although I’m will be needing equipment,” Lori said. “A means of keeping the Iridescence above the water at the bottom of the boat, for one thing.”

“Should you really be saying that?” Rian pointed at… uh, Tac-something, crazy Deadspeaker who named plants—seated on the other side of Umu. “Taeclas is smart, aren’t you worried she’ll be able to reason out how you make beads?” Ah, yes, that was her name.

Lori considered that, then turned towards the Deadspeaker. “Taeclas.”

“Good morning, your Bindership!”

She nodded. “I’m not greeting you back, because if I did, Rian would sulk.”

“Aw… Rian, why do you have to be sulky?-!”

“She never greets me back when I wish her good morning, and I’ve been doing it for a year! It’s a perfectly good reason to be sulky!”

“Well, I suppose that’s fair… oh! What if we both start greeting her good morning at the same time?”

“No, that wouldn’t work, she’d need to talk to you, and that doesn’t happen every day.”

“Oh, right…”

“Taeclas,” Lori repeated.

“Good morning, your Bindership!”

“You said that already.”

“Ah, right. Sorry, force of habit. What is it, your Bindership?”

“Don’t try to figure out how I make beads. That’s an order.”

Rian, why are you laughing like that?

“Rian, why are you laughing like that?” she said, giving her lord a flat look.

She had to wait a few moments for his laughter to die down. “Y-you know,” he finally managed to say, “most people would assume they were being mocked i-if someone suddenly breaks into laughter.”

“You’ve made it clear that you’d be pointing at me while laughing if you were mocking me,” Lori reminded him.

For some reason he stared at her, then sighed. “You can’t remember a single a single carpenter’s name that corresponds to a face, but that thing I said last year you remember.”

“I don’t see how that is relevant to this conversation. And you still haven’t answered my question.”

"Right, the question. I wasn't mocking you, I was simply expressing my delight at what a wonderful demesne I live in."

"This is a wonderful demesne?" Lori said flatly.

"Of course. Every day, I wonder what's going to happen. That's a lot of wondering. Clearly the demesne is full of wonder."

Lori rolled her eyes. Useless thespian. She turned back to Taeclas. "Taeclas, I gave you an order."

Taeclas was still staring at her. "Uh…"

Rian leaned towards her. "Psst. She's waiting for you to acknowledge you've received and understood the order."

"Ah! Uh, understood, your Bindership. I… promise not to try to figure out how you make beads."

Lori nodded. "Good. If you disobey and try to make your own beads, it will be immediately obvious, and I will kill you for treason."

Both Taeclas and her wife straightened up at that, the latter clutching the Deadspeaker's arm tightly.

"In her defense," Rian said, "she's basically protecting her secrets by trusting you. You really can't blame her for being very annoyed if you betray her trust."

"I am not trusting them, I am ordering them," Lori said, turning a glare at her lord. Really, how was that hard to understand?

"Ah, sorry your Bindership. My mistake." He turned towards Taeclas but with a hand gesturing towards Lori for some reason.

Taeclas looked thoughtful, nodding slowly, one hand patting her wife's own gently. "All right… all right, I understand that." She looked towards Binder Lori again. "Don't worry, Binder Lori. I won't disappoint you."

Lori gave her a flat look. "We'll see."

Taeclas smiled,  bright and confident. "Don't worry, you will! Just you watch, I'll be the best at not trying to figure out how you make beads!"

"How would you even measure that?" Rian said, sounding thoughtful. "Because if we're going by there being anything to figure out at all, you've already made progress in figuring out how to make beads compared to someone who doesn't know there's anything to figure out…"

"Rian."

"Yes your Bindership?"

"Stop with that line of reasoning. It's pointless and very silly."

Rian sighed. "Fine. But I'm not wrong! What were we…?? Oh, right! You were saying you needed something for Lori's Shed Boat?"

"I need something to keep the Iridescence out of the water at the bottom of the boat." Lori paused. Then she sighed. "Rian."

"Yes, your Bindership?"

"Why are you calling the boat that?"

"Because at this point the boat is distinct enough to deserve a unique name, not just a number."

"What happened to you liking numbers that go up?"

"That has nothing to do with this."

Lori sighed. "Rian, stop bringing up this matter. It has grown tedious and is pointless."

Rian opened his mouth, looking stubborn, but sighed. "Yes, your Bindership."

“Good. Now, see to it that the carpenters build some sort of receptacle that I can place the Iridescence in to keep it elevated above the water.” She made a vague gesture to her right at about stomach level. “Something that I can easily access from the chair. It need not be too large. Simply large enough to fir the Iridescence jar, a bone tablet and my tweezers without any of them to be put on top of each other.” She realized too late Rian couldn’t see where her hand was.

Rian hummed thoughtfully. “That might be a little difficult. Something that tall would be moving a lot from the motions of the boat, and the jar at least is likely to fall over and into the water. Putting up side around it like a box would prevent that, but they’d be too high for you to be comfortable. How about something lower down, a box at about knee level? If it’s right next to your chair, it should be accessible without having to move and we can enclose it so nothing falls out when the boat is rocking.”

Lori waved her hand to the side a knee-level, considering the alternative. “Slightly higher. Lap level. Something immobile.”

He nodded. “It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out how to make something that suits your needs. Maybe some kind of box with legs that fit between the planks so it locks in place.“

Taeclas sighed. “More woodworking in my future…”

“Sorry, Tae.”

“It’s fine, its fine. At least you’re not telling me to hurry. Ugh, if they want it done right, they shouldn’t rush me…”

Rian reached out to pat her on the shoulder. “There, there. You’re in a safe place now. No free market pushing competition on you to do better, and you have a monopoly on Deadspeaking for the entire demesne.”

“Don’t tell her that, she’ll get lazy,” Taeclas’s wife said, sounding fond as she did so.

“It’s not my fault I life growing vegetables more than playing with tree corpses!”

Well… that was a way of referring to wood that Lori had never heard before. “By the way Rian, I need you to go to the edge of the demesne tomorrow morning.”

Rian blinked. “Uh, sure. What for?”

“I need you to retrieve some beads for me.”

“Retrie—oh. Yes. I guess you wouldn’t have been able to make those on the boat. All right. Where should I look?”

“Along the river at the edge of the demesne.” Lori paused to consider. “Well, near there. I’ll make a pit or some other containment and mark it with lightwisps.”

“That would be very helpful, thank you”

Lori nodded. “Now, anything I should be aware of this afternoon?”

“Well, the smiths need your assistance to provide heat for metalworking since it’s still a bit too hot to fire the forge in the smithy safely, since they have some tools they need to repair…”