Demesne

To my surprise and relief, the river was still flowing, even if there was slowly melting dragonfrost on the stone docks. As I watched, a piece of dragonfrost broke off and fell into the river, which started to bubble and spew up fog before the current washed it under the docks. The docks were cleared of dragonfrost, the waters around it bubbling with mist as ice and solidified air were disposed of. That was one thing off the list. We should be able to send a boat to retrieve Lori now, although that would have to wait until we'd cleared the rest of the village

Part of me wanted to bring up the idea of giving the settlement outside of the dungeon an official name, while at the same time wanting to avoid the obvious designation Lori was going to slap on the place.

With the docks cleared, we could move on to checking the village. Given Lori's precautions as I understood them, the dragon was unlikely to have been able to create dragonborn abominations in the village directly. Anything that came into the demesne would need to be dropped by the dragon—which is why we had a supply of planks for repairing roofs—or wander in from the edge of the demesne two and a half taums away. Unfortunately, any such abominations have had four days to travel from the edge of the demesne, so they could be anywhere at this point.

Before we did so, however, Kolinh had some people go back to the dungeon to collect our snow pads.

…

I am so glad Kolinh's a capable man.

"We'll need to change our plans, Rian," Kolinh said, interrupting my 'ugh, why didn't I think of that' self-flagellation. "We don't have enough snow pads for everyone, so the scouting party will have to be smaller. That means you stay here."

"Understood," I said immediately. "I'll get to work on getting one of our boats into the water and having someone retrieve Lori." Just for a moment, there was a brief moment of surprise on Kolinh's face as I immediately agreed to a sensible idea. What sort of idiots did you have to work with back where you came from that this always comes as a surprise to you? "Lidz, you stay here and hope you're not needed for anything. If something does happen, concentrate on keeping anyone injured alive so that we can get Shanalorre to heal them."

The Deadspeaker didn't sigh in relief, but he gave that impression as he nodded a bit too quickly. Well, it was to be expected. This wasn't the sort of thing he'd been recruited for, after all. I'll have to make it up to him—and Tae as well, I suppose—later. "I can do that."

Wearing the snow pads, which seemed to work quite well on the dragonfrost—the pads stuck in some places, but since everyone was already stepping carefully, it wasn't an issue—Kolinh and a much smaller group of militia started moving to check between the houses. I tore my gaze away from them and turned towards the ones who'd remained. Work to do, as always. "All right. You four, keep an eye out in case something manages to get past Kolinh's squad. Remember to keep an eye up on the cliff. The rest of you, we're bringing one of the boats to the dock and back into the water. Lidz, we'll need you to check the boat for damage just in case, and you'll be coming with us to River's Fork. No one there should need healing, since Shana has been reporting no one's hurt, but there might be structural damage that you'll need to deal with. In which case, have a signal for when you need her to imbue something."

Lidz nodded.

There was an awkward moment.

"I meant right now Lidz, we'll be going as soon as the boat's in the water," I said.

"Oh! Right, right, I'll get to it now then!"

What followed involved a lot of straining and carrying. From unfortunate necessity, the boats had to be stored in the third level, in one of the side tunnels Lori had made for the incomplete excavation. As the boats were not small things, and the wood they were made of was hardly light at the thicknesses they consisted of, carrying them between the planters, up the flights of stairs, and then out of the dungeon proper was painful. My fingers burned from where they had to grip the edges of Lori's Boat, as we finally set it on trestles in the cleared space outside of the entryway.

Yes, my arms and legs hurt too, but not as much as one would think. Only idiots or people carrying things with really awkward handholds carried anything with their arms bent. If you were carrying something efficiently, most of the strain was on your fingers, or wherever it was that you were hoisting your load. And unfortunately, we couldn't carry the boat on our shoulders until after we were out of the dungeon

While Lidz and three of the carpenters— Yonas, Onezto and Sani—checked over the boat, I took a moment to check the river. Warily, I stuck in the smallest finger of my left hand and shuddered as water lapped over it. The river was freezing cold, the coldest it had been all summer. Given that solidified air had been falling on it for more than a week… well, that was probably about right. Warily, I licked my wet finger. It didn't taste violently different, so it was probably drinkable, but I spat out the water anyway. We'd boil it later and check for residue, but hopefully the dragon hadn't added anything inconvenient to our drinking water.

When the inspection of the boat finished and it was declared undamaged from its storage, I was back to carrying it, this time to the dock so we could set it into the water. Installing the outrigger followed. While Lori and many others had learned how to properly balance on the boats, and we could probably stop using outriggers soon… I was fairly certain we never would, because Lori had been born an old woman at heart, and how she's used to doing it is probably going to be how we did it until the end of time.

…

That was probably something I was going to need to talk to Lori about, because at the moment some of our boats were as wide as they were long when they had the outriggers on. Purely with an eye to storing them, they could stand to be narrower.

Once we'd confirmed that that Lori's Boat wasn't taking on water, I went back into the dungeon, retrieved one of the steam jet drivers and mounted it onto the rear of the boat. After we'd gotten Tae to the demesne and Lidz started building us new boats, we'd made changes to Lori's Boat. The fittings we'd put in by essentially clamping them to the boat's side, such as the mount for the driver, could finally be attached more securely and permanently since we had Tae to fuse and slowly reshape the wood for us. One of the changes we'd made was that the mountings for the drivers were altered so that we could easily remove the bound tools in the event of the dragon and allow us to be able to mount any of the bound tool drivers Lori had made. That last was more of a side effect of making the same mounts for the boats we'd had at the time than something we'd deliberately set out to do, but it was convenient in this instance since it meant we didn't need to look for any specific driver to mount onto the boat.

Taking a bead from the supply that Lori had left for me—we were running low after a week, since Lori hadn't really expected us to need to use any bound tools besides the ones in the baths—I tested the driver, and nodded in satisfaction as the boat moved forward, straining at the rope securing it to the dock before I deactivated the bound tool. "All right, we're ready to go," I announced. "Get another boat out here!"

I'd fiercely debated whether I should go myself to pick up Lori, or send someone else to do it. There were good reasons for both. On the one hand, our demesne was still in a state of post-dragon emergency, and any number of things could go wrong, which as their lord I needed to take care of on Lori's behalf. On the other hand, Lori would probably appreciate seeing a friendly face, and I can talk to Yllian and inspect the demesne to find out what needs to be done to get everything back in order.

Back to the first hand though, Shana had said there were mobile meanings outside of the dragon shelter, which meant anything from undead, seals fused together, too-mobile plants, or simply clouds of disease, though I hope Shana would have said anything if that last was the case. One way or another, they had to be dealt with, and the most efficient way of doing something to them was having Shana do something.

…

It would have been really helpful if Lori hadn't ordered Shana to stop learning Deadspeaking, but maybe…

"No, I do not know how to deactivate a meaning," Shana said.

We were seated in my alcove, Shana, Tae and Lidzuga spread out on the three benches so that we could all see each other. That meant I had no way of missing the looks the two Deadspeakers exchanged. For the moment, I ignored their byplay, even if I mostly agreed with them.

"Well, that removes the easy way of dealing with those things," I sighed. Shana had at least been able to confirm that the mobile meanings she had perceived were in fact not clouds of dustlife and disease, as they were maintaining their relative positions in relation to each other, something that she said meant physical bodies. While she hadn't been able to verify whether the mobile meanings were made of wood or flesh or bone, she had been able to further identify that the mobile meanings were comprised of combinations of vital and inert life—'living' and 'dead'—which meant some of those meanings were definitely some form of undead.

"I could—" Taeclas began.

"Well!" I interrupted. "If you can't deactivate them, can you use your healing meaning on them?"

Shana gave me a confused look. "I… suppose I can do so, although it would only have an effect on the meanings that are both vital and correspond to flesh."

"But you can use your meaning on anything with life, right?" I said. "This table, for example. I mean, if you claimed and imbued it, you can use your meaning on it?" Off to the side, Lidz and Tae's eyebrows rose as they listened.

"Yes, but it would do nothing. The wood of the table is neither vital nor flesh, so it would just be a waste of imbu—ah."

It's so nice to work with people who have enough self-awareness to draw the correct conclusion from a leading question. Even nicer when they didn't give you a dirty look right afterwards.

Shana's head titled thoughtfully, then she nodded. "Yes, I suppose that would be one way to deal with these mobile meanings without violating the Great Binder's stated orders." Her face was completely blank as she stared pointedly at Tae. "Either the imbuement is consumed completely, or significant parts of the meanings are tamed into something that causes the rest of the meaning to be inoperable."

"It's not right!" Surprisingly, it was Lidz who spoke. "There's being willfully ignorant because you're small-minded and then there's this! You could be learning so much, improving your knowledge base, growing—!"

"Binder Lolilyuri does not wish me to do any of those things, and I will obey her orders," Shana said with a decent facsimile of Lori-like finality. "Please cease these attempts to have me commit treasonous acts."

Both Tae and Lidz had the same expression of confused discomfort as an uncomfortable silence fell. Well, silent in the alcove, the second level was being its usual noisy self.

"So, how imbuement-intensive is your meaning?" I asked brightly.