Demesne

Lolilyuri listened as Rian listed the things they were running low on, referring to the various random objects with writing on them piled on the table. His recitation was punctuated by people standing up and justifying why they needed them. Metal; copper, tin, iron, steel. People had brought the tools of their trades, but not all of them. Some had been too specialized and heavy, but now that they were planning to set up, they'd need them, and the smith needed metal to make those tools, as well as others. Cloth; for clothing, for utility, for raw materials. Medicines: the doctors were doing their best, but without some more medicines, they had people who were likely to undergo protracted suffering. The doctors also said they were materially unprepared for a likely sudden influx of childbirths in the future, making many people shuffle nervously.

She'd also need more glass if she wanted to figure out how to bind wisps to tools, since she'd lost some of her glassware when it had been pulled in to make the Dungeon's core. Just because she never studied it in school didn't mean she didn't know some of its principles. She should be able to work out the others. Until she figured out how to imbue magic from the core directly to a binding to make it run perpetually, bound tools would have to do aaannnndddd now that she thought of it, there seemed like something in the basics of bound tools that would let her do that now that she thought of it…

Yes, she was going to need glass. And metal. And possibly a glassworker who could teach her how to make her own glass…

The meeting progressed, and at one point people transitioned from mentioning what they needed to what they wanted. Others wanted glass too for their windows, nevermind some didn't have roofs yet. Some of the farmers, having been able to judge the soil and climate, wanted certain crops to plant, since they felt it would work for their demesne. Someone suggested cloudbloom, so they could harvest their own cloth. Lori wondered if the one who made the suggestion actually knew how to do it. Others suggested sweetwood stalks, and Lori could already smell the distilled spirits that would make.

Rian seemed intent on just writing down this progressively longer wish list. He really was soft, wasn't he? It was when someone mentioned steamarms for hunting beasts that Lori decided to intervene.

"You realize we would have to pay for all this with money, right?" Lori said ruthlessly, making the buzz of excitement from the suggestion of hunting down beasts die down. "You know, money? Those round things they use at shops? Physical representations of wealth and power?"

There was a murmur of disappointed dreams slamming hard into terrible reality.

"For that matter, we just got here," Lori said. "Are you all so eager to go back the other way? Because someone is going to have to, to buy all this. Without me or any other wizard to keep them a little safe."

That caused more murmurs of concern. They'd traveled a long way. The last demesne settlement that they had passed had been seven days behind them before they'd found this spot and decided to finally stop moving, mostly because the rains had turned their progress to a muddy crawl. Covehold had been two months before that, as the blue moon turned.

"Someone needs to go," Rian said.

"They won't have money to buy any of this with, the journey both ways would kill them, and given the lack of roads getting here, how would they even find this place again?" Lori said.

"It's not that hard," Rian said. "Just go the way we've already gone, except backwards." He said it like it was so simple and obvious.

"Do you remember which way we've gone?" Lori asked.

Rian opened his mouth, then paused. Slowly, his mouth closed.

"That's what I thought," Lori said.

"Um…" someone in the crowd said. The two of them turned their attention to the raised hand rising up from the crowd.

"Yes?" Rian said. "Stand up so we can all see you, please."

A nervous young man about Lori's age– which meant he could have been anywhere from fifteen to forty– stood up, pushing back his shaggy pink hair from his face. "Um, my name is Cassan, your lordship, your Bindership," he said. "I joined this expedition in Covehold?"

"Yes, I know," Rian said, smiling pleasantly. This seemed to make the man even more nervous.

"Um, you see, I have some knowledge of astrology and I've been keeping charts…" he said, fumbling with a notebook he'd been holding, waving it around as if anyone knew what it contained or cared. "And based on my records, I believe we're no more than 75 taums away from Covehold Demesne. A hundred at the most. If… if you would like, I could provide you a heading to travel towards Covehold." Wait, really? What in rainbows was an astrologer of all people doing here?

"What is an astrologer doing here?" Lori demanded.

"I'm n-not really an astrologer, just an amateur," Cassan said nervously. Peering intently at him, Lori saw he was very thin and lacking muscle. In fact, he was noticeably slimmer than most of the men around him, including some whom she was inclined to call boys rather than men. "But I know the principles, and I have my own telescope and compass."

"Oh yes, that was yours, wasn't it?" Rian said. "Thanks for lending us that, it helped to know we weren't going towards Covehold."

"You couldn't navigate using the sun?" Lori muttered. "It goes the same way every day…"

"Well, this solves how we're getting back to Covehold, and back here after leaving Covehold," Rian said cheerfully.

"Again, I have to ask, what is an astrologer doing here?" Lori said. "I mean, look at you."

Cassan coughed. "In truth, I was hired as Whisperer Elceena's assistant, your Bindership," he said. "You see, she was actually–"

"Stop," Lori said, raising her hand. "Don't want to know, don't care." Ha! So she HAD been a noble.

"You should have that cough seen to, it might be something serious," Rian said, looking concerned.

"Why did she hire you?" Lori asked.

The man shuffled. "She wanted a secretary to dictate her memoirs to. She was convinced she would found a great demesne and wished to chronicle her rise to power." He sighed. "Then she died."

"So… she probably hasn't paid you, has she?" Lori said.

"No, Binder Lori," Cassan said, looking very tired and pitiful.

"Well, at least you're not dead," she said. "That already makes you better off than her." A beat. "You can sit down now." He sat.

Rian nodded. "With him leading us to Covehold and back, we'll be able to bring back the materials we need."

"Again, with what money?" Lori said. "It's not like everyone is suddenly just going to give you their life savings to go shopping with. Besides, things are expensive in Covehold! You all remember what it was like."

There were grim nods at that, as people probably remembered their own experiences with getting gouged for beads.

"Someone still needs to go," Rian said. "What we need is in Covehold. Maybe we can find a way to pay for it there too. After all, if there's so much money going around, then maybe we'll have a chance to get some for ourselves."

Lori sighed. "Well, then, who's going on this poverty mission? You?"

"Well… if no one else can go," Rian said, basically guarantying no one else could go.

"I volunteer to go with Lord Rian!" a feminine voice in the crowd cried.

"He won't go alone! I'll go with him!" another voice cried at the same time.

Lolilyuri sighed as the predictable reaction from Rian's admirers occurred. Umu and Mikon's family members looked tired, but did not object as the two young women volunteered to travel with a man.

"Um… anyone else?" Rian asked. "Any other volunteers to go?"

There was much shuffling and averted gazes.

"Bring the idiot along," Lori said.

"Um, you'll have to be more specific," Rian said.

"The delusional one who seems to think you can build a new world without Dungeon Binders," Lori said.

"That's abuse of power!" the semi-familiar voice of the idiot in question said.

"So you'll happily leave in protest, then?" Lori said.

"Um… well…"

"Great, be seeing you, so long and thanks for probably very little," Lori said.

"In that case, I demand my barrel back!"

"Rian, give the man back his booze barrel that you confiscated," Lori said.

"It's full of seel guts we were planning to use as fertilizer," Rian said.

"Then bring that along with you to sell, and he can have the barrel back afterwards," Lori said. "You probably can't sell it in Covehold, but maybe one of the other demesnes not as close to water will buy it for fertilizer."

"Oh, good idea," Rian said. "And if we increase our seeling, we might even be able to sell the skins and furs. It'll get us money, hopefully. Maybe it'll be enough money to buy everything we need. And if not, then I'm sure we'll find some other way to get the money."

"If you rob the bank, maybe," Lori said, then paused. "Are you planning to rob the bank?"

"Of course not!" Rian said, looking offended. "I'm not a criminal!"

"Well, if you do, don't link yourself to us," Lori said. The crowd all nodded solemnly.

"I'm not robbing the bank!"

Lori resigned herself to disavowing Rian if he ended up robbing the bank.

––––––––––––––––––

Beyond the material shortages, there were other matters.

"Here are the demesnes laws," Lori said, showing the reverse side of the tablet she'd been drawing on. "I've put in the basics by order of importance. More will be added as needed."

Rian took the stone tablet. "No murder, no stealing, no molesting children, no rape, no… loud music an hour after sundown?… no trespassing on other people's houses without invitation, no… public urination? All punishable by flogging, exile and execution… why does the loud music one call for immediate execution? That seems a bit much."

"The matter will be reexamined when we finally have music worth listening to," Lori said.

"Um… we should vote on it…?" Rian said.

"No," Lori said. "If you have to vote on a law against murder and rape, I don't want you in my demesne. Get out."

There were a lot of nods at this.

"Still… public urination…" Rian said. "It's a bit…"

"Next matter!" Lori called. "Come on, let's get more things done before lunch!"

"Excuse me, Lord Rian," someone called from the crowd. A man Lori recognized as one of the men who owned the saws they used at the sawpit rose. "My name's Vargel. I'd like to ask about land. How are we dividing up the land?"

"Currently, we aren't." Lori said. "For one, we don't have the entire demesne mapped and measured yet. Secondly, priority is given to facilities for foods and, if this colorbrained scheme works, on any resource plants like cloudblooms or sweetwood. However, I promise a method for distributing land amongst everyone will be forthcoming. It'll come a week after I think up a way to charge taxes."

There were cries of protest.

"Look, I can already see you all wanting to claim huge swathes of MY demesne just so you can feel rich," Lori said. "Most of you don't even have wooden roofs yet, much less wooden beds, why are you bothering with land? This isn't the old continent. There's no point owning a lot of land because at the end of the day, it's you who'll have to work it. Or do you think you can pay people to do all the work on those lands for you?"

"Oh, so you can own land but we decent people can't?" someone hidden in the crowd snapped.

The crowd parted, and the one who'd spoken out found themselves revealed, a square-faced woman who had once been plump but had clearly lost a lot of weight recently, her dark green hair in a braid over one shoulder. She was clutching tightly to her skirts, and glancing around at her neighbors with the betrayed look of a coward who finds others won't hide them.

"I'm the Dungeon Binder," Lolilyuri said with the confidence of someone who could kill everyone around her. "I don't need to own the land. The land is already mine. I just let you all use it because I literally do not have the time or inclination to do everything that can and needs to be done with that land. When I say we're not distributing land yet, it's not because I care that some selfish colorbrained idiot is going to try to claim everything he sees. What do I care? It's not like he can keep the land from me. I can have the land itself kill him. No, this delay in distribution is purely for your own benefit."

"How?" the woman demanded belligerently.

"Because when idiots start fighting over it, I'll have to deal with you, and given how little I care, I might just exile everyone involved to the Iridescence," Lori said and she drew in a familiar breath of magic. Her staff stood in a hole in the ground she'd made. She gently tapped it, and her will traveled along the wire wrapping and into the ground below, into the willing, eager earthwisps.

The woman yelped as the packed earth under her seat trembled a moment, before she and her chair sank into the suddenly flowing, water-like dirt and stone. People around her yelped, stumbling back as she tried to grab onto them, grab onto the chairs around her. With another breath and binding of will, the area of liquid consistency spread, the chairs around her started to sink into the ground as well. She tried to claw at the dirt, but it parted as easily as wet clay and fine sand.

"Lori!" Rian exclaimed, standing and facing her so fast his seat fell back. "Stop it!"

Lori considered, then stood, taking her staff in hand. She walked towards the struggling woman, and the crowd parted before her. Dramatically, Lori raised her staff and slammed the butt into the ground as magic was carried through the wire and imbued into the earth.

The woman and all the chairs that had sunk in with her were suddenly expelled as the ground stopped having the pseudo-fluidity of water. The chairs clattered on the once-more hard-packed earth as the woman found herself on solid ground once more, her dress and limbs stained with dust and odd patches of hardened, cracking stone.

Stone flowed up from the ground and around the bottom of her staff, and when Lori raised it next, a stone spear was pulled out of the ground with it. She slammed the spearhead down, and the woman let out a cry as the tip snapped off next to her head.

"So," Lori continued as if nothing dramatic had happened. "We're going to delay the distribution so that we can figure out a way to evenly allocate land for everyone that will result in the least need for me to deal with problems. That means mapping out the demesne, figuring out how much land we have to work with, cutting out the parts that will be held communally like the baths and water sources and where we'll be planting the wild vegetables we'll be cultivating for winter. Yes, it's pretty unsatisfactory. If it helps, I don't want things to be communally owned. I want you all to own your own land, farm your own crops or whatever, sell each other things and pay each other with money so I can tax you all. But we haven't even survived our first winter yet, much less managed our first harvest, and if each family tries to claim land and survive on their own without everyone else, you're all going to die because I'm going to strip the land bare for food to feed myself. So, why don't we hold off the talk about distributing land until we're actually in a position to grow, and people actually need the land to prosper as opposed to just wanting the land because they're greedy."

Lori didn't wait for an answer, turning away to go back to her seat next to Rian, who was watching her warily. She sat and he stepped away to check on the woman, who was pushing herself off the ground. He picked her up, picked up one of the fallen chairs and set it down behind her, then quickly began resetting all the other chairs.

Finally, as people stood around uncertainly– some had run out of the dining hall and were watching warily from outside– Rian turned, and only then resumed his seat.

"That was uncalled for," he said, not looking at her.

"I agree, she should have just kept her mouth shut," Lori said.

"I wasn't talking about Missus Naineb," Rian said, giving her a reproachful look.

"Well, I was," Lori said. "Any other things we need to talk about or can I go back to figuring out how to make lavatories?"

Rian pursed his lips disapprovingly. "This isn't over," he said, but he turned back to the crowd. "Does anyone else have anything to bring up?"

There was silence.

Finally, a hesitant hand was raised.

"Yes?" Rian said, nodding at the brave soul as Lori tried to get her heart rate under control.

"Um, Gunvi, your lordship, your Bindership," the man said. "I worked as a potter before coming here, and yesterday I was checking along the river and found clay…"

Slowly, as Gunvi the potter explained how he'd found clay and wanted to set up a claypit and kiln, as Lori let the adrenaline break down and she recovered from her rage-high, people began to cautiously sit back down on the chairs. When the potter finished his explanation and sat down, there was a pregnant pause as Lori and Rian looked at one another.

"What?" Lori said. "Man wants to set up a kiln and make pots, I have no objections. Less for me to need to make."

"Well, that's great then," Rian said, trying to sound cheerful. "Get started as soon as you can Gunvi. I look forward to seeing what you can make with clay. And if you need a bigger kiln, just let us know, I'm sure Binder Lori will be happy to help you make a bigger one. Who's next?"

The next hand rose with less hesitance. It was the younger of the settlement's two doctors. "Your lordship, your Bindership," he said. "The conditions of the shelters you made are no longer conducive to the health of the community's ill…"

As the young doctor requested a new building above ground be set up for those still ill, one with more air and warmth and less smoke, people slowly began to relax.

Lori, however, met the eyes of the woman with the braid… and smiled serenely when the woman flinched.