Demesne

"Ugh, I've forgotten how painful using pens could be," Rian sighed at dinner, his right hand opening and closing as if he was trying to loosen up muscles.

Lori and—she checked the rocks in her pouch, pulling out the right one on the second try—Taeclas both winced, their own hands clenching in sympathy. "I don't miss that part of school," the Deadspeaker muttered.

"At least you could heal," Lori muttered back.

"Only afterwards," Taeclas countered.

Lori grunted in non-committal acknowledgement, turning her attention back to her lord as Taeclas started muttering about Mentalists. Ugh, the Mentalists. Either they didn't have to write anything down because they could just remember everything, or their pens moved without a hand on them, writing in the grip of thought force. "Was your grip too hard? We didn't make so many notes that you'd have trouble dictating it into the notebook."

"I know that," Rian said, sounding almost offended. "No, it hurts because I wanted to get it all written down before dinner so that I wouldn't have to keep doing it after."

Mikon made a clicking sound with her tongue as she shook her head. "Give me your hand," she said.

Rian complied, his forearm pressing against Riz's torso as Mikon pulled his arm towards her and started massaging his extremity. "Oh, that's actually helping, thanks! Uh, although we're imposing on Riz…"

"I don't mind," Riz said with a smirk as she crossed her arms, pushing his arm up a little higher. On Rian's other side, Umu was giving the other two women an annoyed look as she clutched at Rian's arm tighter.

"Erzebed, restrain yourself and keep your flirting acceptable for children," Lori said, making the woman wince and uncross her arms. "Rian, we have that final alloy we'll be making after breakfast. Once it's finished, remain to take note of the results of the wire drawing."

"Yes, your Bindership," Rian said. "Uh, about how many times you expanded the demesne yesterday and the day before…?"

"Really? You're still asking?

"Yes, I'm still asking! My data is incomplete!"

The rest of breakfast was uneventful save for the fact Mikon wouldn't let go of Rian's hand, insisting she needed to continue massaging it. This led to Umu and Riz insisting they needed to feed him, to their strange enjoyment, the amusement of the other tables, and her lord's indulgent resignation.

Riz was less amused at realizing she also needed to feed Mikon, as she had both hands occupied. Despite being disgruntled, the non-officer simply sighed and did so. The weaver seemed to enjoy the experience far more than Rian did.

It said something about Rian's eating habits that even will all this, he still managed to finish eating at the same time as Lori.

As Taeclas took a moment to talk to Mikon after she finally let Rian go, Lori headed to her room to retrieve the previous day's samples so they could be drawn into wire. "Rian, get your slate."

"Yes, your Bindership! Don't start without me!"

The actual making of the dual-wisp alloy went without incident. After all the samples they had made yesterday, today's melt was almost rote. The metal shavings and white Iridescence were heated, Lori claimed, bound and anchored lightwisps and airwisps together—it had seemed the optimal combination—and then she simply waited for the metal to become molten so it could be poured.

"Well, it's still completely transparent…" Rian said as the cooled block was retrieved from the bucket of water. "And bigger than it should be too. So… I suppose this counts as a success?"

"We'll still need to have the smiths test its properties," Lori said. She looked toward the smiths attending them. "Remove a small portion now for testing and drawing. See how fine a wire you can draw from them. As to the rest of the samples…" Lori considered then shrugged. "Fold them up into as small a block as you can, storing them as they currently are is a bit inconvenient. Rian—"

"I know, I know, oversee the wire drawing and take notes."

Lori nodded, and left them to it. She had a demesne to expand, after all.

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Lori spent the following week expanding the demesne, sitting in her room and laying back in her recess in the wall as she quickly regained her efficiency and proficiency from last winter. Once she started doing so, the activity became much less mentally taxing, and she no longer ended the day feeling like a headache was threatening to erupt. Make multiple 'shells' of bindings around her demesne, link them all together to imbue them all at once, disconnect the outermost shell and use that to expand the demesne outwards…

It wasn't all sitting around, of course. As she had learned during the winter, she could only stay in one position, comfortable and cushioned as it was, for so long, and she was spending far more time expanding her demesne now. Lori found herself leaving her wall recess, wearing the tsinelas that Rian had promised her—the footwear was quite comfortable once she got used to the feeling of dried reeds on her bare feet—and pacing back and forth to get blood flowing back into her legs and alleviate the restless energy that filled her as she did. The activity actually helped her concentration, as it gave her body something to do, keeping her mind from becoming distracted. Well, more distracted, anyway.

As the week progressed, Lori found herself spending less and less time in her little wall recess, if only to be able to recline in different positions. She even found that she could read a little when she was just imbuing the shells of bindings around her demesne, although the subject couldn't be very intensive. That meant she was limited to browsing the almanac, since the primers were all more complicated and more frustrating, which tended to pull her attention back to what she was reading. Probably for the best. She was finding the primers on Deadspeaking, Mentalism and Horotracting were annoyingly unhelpful. Try as she might to follow the preliminary perception exercises written in the introductory chapters, she still couldn't perceive the life, vertices or thoughts that they said she should be able to after doing them!

As she expanded the demesne, managing to slightly increase the number of times she could expand the demesne in a day, the work being done continued.

"The waterwheel and saw are finally working," Rian announced triumphantly, as if he actually had anything to do with it. Actually, considering how he liked to involve himself in all of the work that was occurring, he probably had been. "We can finally split and cut the logs that we cut down when we cleared the area around the sawmill, so the sawyers are hard at work cutting the logs into planks for the sawmills roof and walls." He paused. "Well, they're trying. The rollers are being a bit awkward right now, but no one's lost any fingers yet."

He glanced sideways at—Lori had checked her rock—Taeclas. "Uh, can you reattach fingers? I don't think Shana—"

"Shanalorre," Lori corrected, cheerfully accompanied by said Dungeon Binder's little cousin declaring, "Shashalorre!"

"—Shanalorre can do dismembered… members."

"I can't," Shanalorre confirmed.

"Uh… I can and I can't…" Taeclas said hesitantly. "I mean… I did it once, managed to keep someone's fingers alive, but someone with actual medical experience and better at fleshcrafting did the actual reattachment. I theoretically know how to do it, but that was on a dead hand and a beast tail."

"Ah… well, I'll ask Lidz next time I see him, but if we had an emergency, would you be willing to try in any case?"

Taeclas winced but nodded. "Don't worry, I will. It's just… well, blood is icky. It's wet and it stains and it gets everywhere…"

"I'm sure everyone would much rather not lose a finger than having to ask you to put one back on," Rian said. "Just keeping the finger alive should be well enough. Our doctors have experience surgically reattaching fingers, so between you all people should be fine."

"Oh, thank the Binder!"

"What for? I didn't do anything."

Taeclas blushed as Rian started chuckling. "Uh, just… uh…"

"Yes?" Lori said, keeping her gaze on the Deadspeaker.

"…I'm sorry for swearing in front of the children."

"Don't worry, we already know how to glittering swear!" someone from the table behind Lori said.

"…psst, Tae," Rian hissed theatrically. "This is where you stop talking, eat, and wait for her to stop staring at you like that."

The mine in River's Fork was also progressing well. The water that had filled the bottom of the mine—before they'd put in the door and channels that diverted the rainwater away from the mine—had been emptied out the hard way, a bucket at a time. It had left a thick sludge, the result of the bathwater draining down into the flooding when the dragon shelter had been use earlier that season, which they'd scraped out with shovel. The rest that couldn't be scraped was dried by setting a fire to dry everything out.

"After that, we aired it out to get rid of the smoke and smell, and when the smell wouldn't go away, we asked Lidz if he could do something, and when he couldn't we set another fire and tried to at least make the place smell like smoke," Rian reported at the end of the week. "Thankfully the smoke had cleared by the time I left, so our men didn't have to find someplace else to sleep for the night. Tomorrow, they'll start proper mining operations, since all that clearing finally let us find the copper seam."

"I see. And that boat you were pulling behind you?"

"That's the second that Lidz finished, the one with the higher sides. He's already working on the third one, the version that has a low centerline with compartments we can fill with weights."

"Making the boat weigh more seems counterproductive to having it float," Lori said flatly.

"It's all a matter of where the weight is positioned. I had Lidz put the compartments at the lowest point of the boat so that the center of the boat is being pulled down by the weights. With the other parts of the boat being buoyed up by the water, the boat is less likely to roll, so it doesn't need to be stabilized by outriggers. Or at least, that's my hope."

"You hope?"

Rian shrugged. "Look, it's like trying to float a wooden cup. It's far more stable if you put a weight in it to keep the bottom from rising and remain the lost point."

"…why would you float a drinking cup?" Lori couldn't help asking.

"…there's very little to do around here that's not work or…" Rian glanced over her shoulder, "… board games. You do things when you're bored." He shrugged. "Look, if it doesn't work, we can just take out the rocks and add outriggers like the others."

Lori grunted noncommittally. "Fine. We'll wait on the results of Lori's Boat Four, and use the Lori's Boat Three as a test for the prototype of the next steam jet driver bound tool."

"Come on, can't we change the names? Just slapping numbers on them is boring!"

"Why are you complaining, Rian? You like watching numbers get bigger."

"That has nothing to do with this! This doesn't count!"

By the end of the week of dedicated expansion, according to Rian's measurements, the demesne had grown a total of slightly less than 170 paces in diameter. In only ten days, she had managed to expand to almost a third of what she had managed to achieve over the winter. In another week, her demesne would be five taums wide, increasing the area of her demesne by…!

…

Uh…

…

Well, she'd have Rian do the math since she'd forgotten the formulas for it, but it was no doubt a significant amount!