Demesne

Since it seemed she'd be needing new bound tool cores—at the very least, Lori's Boat Two needed a driver to propel it—Lori began making the preparations to make them as soon as she got back home. She had Rian inform the smiths what she needed made, and then checked the amount of copper they had in her treasure room. They still had copper bar stock, but it was probably time to continue mining in River's Fork. She'd have Rian set that up.

Actually, given that mining will be indoor work in a dungeon-like environment… did that mean they could have had people mining all summer and they'd have actually wanted to? With the ventilation bound tool built into the mine's dragon shelter portion, all she'd need to do was add a binding of firewisps to cool the air to deal with any heat from all the people working there…

"Rian, start looking for people we can afford to spare or aren't doing anything," Lori ordered her lord at dinner. Whathersname…—Lori checked her rock—Taeclas had returned to Lori's demesne that afternoon, and reported that all the meanings had been adjusted and activated, so they would have new fruit in a few days. "We need people to go and work the mine in River's Fork."

"Wow, you actually remembered without me reminding you. Is this you finally coming into your Mentalism? Will you be able to remember everyone's names without writing them on rocks soon?"

"Wait, that's what that's for?" Taeclas said.

"If you remembered, why didn't you say anything?"

"I figured you'd want to prioritize the sawmill? You always preferred doing only one project at a time instead of spreading ourselves too thin."

"Does that mean we don't have anyone to spare?"

"I'll ask and see who's willing. The conditions are better now, I think? They can stay in the dragon shelter instead of having to bunk in people's homes, which should be more comfortable… well, aside from cleaning the shelter latrine, but they can just not use that one. Though I think the bottom of the mine is still flooded? You might need to do something about that, since… well, that's where most of the mining will be happening? Or should I just give people buckets?"

"Do we have enough buckets to give them?"

"If not, we could always make more. You can never have too many buckets, especially since we'll need something to carry out the ore anyway."

Lori frowned. "What happened to what we used before?"

"I have no idea. It's just always a safe bet to assume you need more buckets." Rian tilted his head. "And probably a hand cart of some sort. And maybe some kind of rope and pulley to help with moving the hand carts up and down the tunnel…"

"Yes, yes, and several other things too, I'm sure. How long will it take you to get the mine operational again?" Lori interrupted.

Rian hummed thoughtfully. "A week, maybe? Though I'm pretty sure I can find more people willing to work in the mine if you let me have a bound tool that blows air around."

Lori frowned. "Why? The mine already has adequate ventilation."

"It's to… actually, just trust me that I need it to be able to recruit more people willing to mine," Rian said. "And maybe one or two of the new wisplights from Covehold? The mine is dark, after all."

"So, the list of inventory needed to reactivate the mine is several buckets, a hand cart, rope, pulleys, a bound tool, and two wisplights. This seems far more than what it took last time."

"Well, given the depth we'll be having people mine at now, I don't think candles and oil lamps is going to be safe anymore. Besides, last time you weren't the one running the mining operation, our demesne was just providing the labor force. Also, back then the mine wasn't also a well-built, Binder Lori-approved dragon shelter, so we need to be more careful about what we do in it. Wouldn't want to leave rocks in front of the food storage, after all."

Ah, right. The mine was also the demesne's food storage now, wasn't it. "Fine, fine. See to it. I expect it to be ready in a week, as you promised."

"I'd like it officially stated I didn't actually promise that. I said 'a week, maybe'."

"Just get it done, Rian."

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Lori had more than enough time to extract white Iridescence from the cracked bead to grind down to a fine powder as the smiths hammered copper from ingots to sheets. Fortunately, they didn't have to draw it out into wire, since they had plenty of the ones that Rian bought from Covehold. It was boring work, grinding the white Iridescence finer and finer, but there was no one else she could entrust it too. More importantly, there was no one else she'd allow to use her mortar and pestle!

The wisplights for the mine were set aside, as well as a small jar of beads to fuel them.

Once the smiths sent word that the sheet copper was ready, Lori came down to supervise the crafting of the bound tool cores, providing heat where needed as the smiths made little copper capsules that were carefully filled with white Iridescence powder before being tamped down to compress the contents and remove any space to shift before the capsule was sealed and a wire was secured to the outside. The smiths had managed to adjust their tooling to make the capsules slightly smaller than last time, meaning they were able to make a bit more bound tool cores than before.

Some of the wire bought from Covehold Demesne was heated and hardened to make bead receptacles for the bound tool cores.

With the bound tool cores made, she was able to get a start on building bound tools she could add to the poles that were cooling the trees in River's Fork. Bone to act as a hard casing around the core of copper and white Iridescence—it had to be protected from idiots throwing rocks and whatever nonsense the people there could come up with—and then she'd need to put the bead receptacle on a length of wire so that beads could be put in without a ladder.

Which reminded her, she'd probably need a ladder to set these things in place.

She also made the new steam jet driver for Lori's Boat Two, which Rian had towed back to Lori's demesne when she'd picked up Taeclas. That required four bound tool cores, as well as a good amount of bone. Most of her time was occupied with fusing the bone together into a cylinder that was to her satisfaction. Once that was done—doing so took half a day, since she had to make sure there were no voids from the fusion that would have weakened the structure— Lori embedded the bound tool cores into the tube, making sure to keep the wires leading to the cores separate.

The cylinder was mounted onto a wooden shaft with bone and pegs. Once, they'd used charring, oil and wax to waterproof the wood so that it wouldn't decay, but as they had a Deadspeaker now, whatshername…—Lori checked the rocks in her pouch—Taeclas was tasked with altering the outer layer of the wood to seal it against water. It took more time than Lori had expected, even with Shanalorre assisting with imbuing.

"Well, she did say she was slow when it came to the carpentry-related parts of Deadspeaking," Rian said as they'd watched the woman sitting on the ground on a cloth, with the wooden shaft and bone cylinder with her eyes half closed. "Next time, we'll know to give her whatever we need her to work on sooner."

"Next time, we're having whatever it is taken downriver to River's Fork for… what's his name…"

"Lidzuga," Rian supplied.

"Yes, him. We'll have him do it. It can't be much longer than this."

"Be nice. Until you manage to learn how to do Deadspeaking and can do this yourself, you really don't have any grounds to judge how long she's taking. How's that progressing, by the way?"

"Just get it to me when she's done, Rian!"

When Taeclas finally finished with the shaft, Lori was able to hand the shaft to the carpenters and smiths, who put together the bound tool's control lever. Springs and subtle little bumps in the wood gave the lever distinct stopping points so that the operator would be able to set it by feel. With the bound tool's mechanisms finally completed, Lori was able to anchor waterwisps and firewisps to the inside of the bone tube. It consisted of four distinct ring-shaped bindings, each one anchored to a different bound tool core to keep the binding from dissipating when not imbued.

When it was done, Lori had a fully functional steam jet driver bound tool with three forward speeds and a reverse setting that could be installed onto Lori's Boat Two.

Installing the steam jet driver was done in River's Fork. In Lori's Boat, the various drivers that Lori had made and mounted onto the boat had needed to be secured to a wooden mounting point that had been clamped with various pegs and wedges to the wood at the rear of the boat. This had been done to minimize damage to the wood, as they'd had no way to really repair the wooden hull. However, as they had Deadspeakers now, the steam jet driver for Lori's Boat Two could be mounted directly onto the back of the boat.

The carpenters had prepared a mount for the stream jet driver, which was mounted onto the back of the boat with wooden wedges that were driven into holes chiseled out of the boat's rear panel. Once the mounting point was secured, whatshisname…—Lori checked the rocks in her pouch—Lidzuga fused all the wood together, sealing the joins. It was, Lori was told, a more structurally secure bond than simply pressing the flat side of the mounting point. Something about the wedges adding crossgrained connections, which was less likely to sheer. Lori had only vaguely understood the explanation, but if the craftsmen who knew their business said so, who was she to doubt them?

While Lidzuga and the carpenter who'd come along to chisel out and secure the bound tool—Deil, from the embroidery on the cloth on the man's head—were installing the mounting point, Lori installed the bound tool cores to the cooling poles. Unfortunately, they did not have a freestanding ladder in River's Fork, so one had to be improvised by lashing two ladders together with rope and several people holding the ladders to keep it stable below.

It was a bit of an awkward climb, but the ladders were stable enough, so Lori was able to mount each of the bound tool cores and anchor the binding to the white Iridescence, with the wire to the bead receptacle trailing down the bowl. She also added firewisps to the binding, both because they had to act as the wisps that anchored directly to the white Iridescence, and because it let her destroy heat, lowering the temperature of the air that the poles blasted out to the leaves of the trees around them and increasing the cooling they provided. By the time she finished, Deil and Lidzuga had finished mounting the steam jet driver onto Lori's Boat Two.

It was a well-satisfied Lori who rode on the new boat on the return trip to her demesne upriver, with Rian operating the steam jet driver bound tool behind her.

"So…" Rian said, looking down at the boat, "is there any way at all I can get you to change the name of this boat?"

"Why? It's a perfect name."

"It's boring! You just slapped a number on it and called it a day!"

"It's a small boat, Rian, it doesn't need some kind of memorable name."

He still kept trying to convince her to change her boat's perfectly sensible name all the way home.