The mill was completed by mid-morning of the following day.

It was… well, most people probably wouldn't call it beautiful. It was two round hunks of rock on top of each other, held together by a thick wooden rod, with a bowl-like hopper for grain on the top stone, and a wide channel all around the bottom stone for flour to spill out onto, or so Lori gathered. The finish was rough instead of smooth and shiny, even after being washed to remove all the stone dust that had been knocked off in the process of making it, and the wooden handle was the same. A little bit of the central pivot rod was sticking out of the top of the mill for some reason.

"It's for the long lever," one of the stonemasons explained to Rian. "Someone can turn this by hand easily enough, but the arm starts aching after a while. With a long lever, all they have to do is push, and one person can keep doing all the work all day, even if their arm gets tired.

Rian nodded. "Makes sense. Did you run into any problems while making it?"

"No, Lord Rian. Fastest work I've done, really. Her Bindership knows what she's doing." He bowed to Lori at this, and the other stonemason did as well. Lori waved a dismissive hand in acknowledgement.

Rian, why do you look so annoyingly happy?

"Have you used it yet?" Rian asked.

"Not yet, Lord Rian," the other stonemason said. "It's cleaned and ready though, so all we need is some vigas and someone to start turning." He hesitated, and then added, "And something to stand it on. We can move it up to one of the tables upstairs and—"

"No," Lori said, and the man stopped talking. She pointed to one of the walls. "Put it in one of the alcoves. We'll make a permanent space for it down here. I don't want us to have to risk trying to move it when a dragon comes, and if we removed the benches, there's enough room to use your walking lever."

The three men started nodding. "Makes sense," Rian said cheerfully. "That way we only have to move it once. And you can probably take care of where to stand it on?"

"Yes, yes," Lori said, waving dismissively. She turned away. "I'll create a pedestal, go get some vigas to test this with." A thought occurred to her. "Make sure it's enough vigas to make a batch of bread."

"Is this a good time to point out we don't have an oven for food?" Rian said brightly. "We could make spiral bread on skewers or flatbreads on pans, but that's it."

Lori gave him a level look.

"I'd have mentioned it sooner, but it hadn't been relevant before now," Rian smiled.

"Noted," Lori said. "Go get the vigas and inform the kitchen staff they need to prepare to turn flour into some kind of bread."

"Of course, your Bindership," Rian said. "And I will be sure to take testing whether the bread is edible very seriously, as I cannot in good conscience ask anyone else to do it, certainly not you, who might suffer if the bread were somehow unfit for human consumption—"

That was as far as Rian got before the stone beneath his feet liquefied completely, and he let out a cry of surprise as he sank into the floor, the two stonemasons moving back hastily, bumping into the walls of the alcove. Unlike with… someone, she forgot who, no one important… who Lori had sunk into the floor, she didn't keep directing the stone to pull down Rian into itself like water, merely greatly reduced the viscosity and cohesion. Lori expected Rian to sink to about his stomach and panic, though she had made sure that Rian's feet would touch stone without his head submerging. She was emphasizing her displeasure, not trying to kill him.

That was certainly her intention…

Instead, her Lord just sat there, moving his arms in circular motions as he bobbed up and down calmly after that cry. "Your lack of amusement is noted, your Bindership," he said blandly, though it was clear it was trying to repress a smile for some reason. "Consider myself chastised. May I get out of this now? The stone's oozing up my legs and I don't want to have to try to clean this off my underwear. Or the area around it, for that matter."

How was he…? Oh. His strange ability to swim. Lori had forgotten about that. She supposed it gave him the experience to not panic when suddenly submerged in fluid.

"Don't do it again," she said sternly. He would, eventually. She knew he would. But as long as it wasn't anytime soon…

"Yes, your Bindership," he said. "Can I pull myself out of this now?"

"Can you?" Lori was genuinely curious if he could.

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"Yeah, I've had my back against solid stone for a while now," Rian said. "Just need to pull my arm out…"

Lori watched, fascinated as her lord calmly pulled himself out of the liquefied stone, putting his hand on the stone floor behind him and pushing his body up as calmly as… well, as calmly as he'd pulled himself out of the river onto the end of the stone dock after he'd volunteered to look underneath the dock for her to check the support arches. Though this time he was wearing more clothes.

"Well, don't just stand there," Lori said after Rian had pulled himself out. "Get the vigas."

"Yes, your Bindership," Rian said as one of the stonemasons nervously prodded the area of stone floor Rian had come out of with a foot. It held solidly, though Lori would have to come back later and fix it, since now there was a depression in the ground surrounded by rippling bumps of stone. More stone was sticking to Rian and his clothes. "Come on Pellee, Markes, let's get moving before her Bindership gets annoyed at me again. If we hurry, I can take a bath before lunch."

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The actual testing, once Lori had placed a stone cube to rest the grist mill on in the alcove and contoured the top of the cube so that the mill rested in its own little outline so it wouldn't move from side to side, was slightly anticlimactic. Rian, still wearing stone-encrusted clothes—the stone was slowly breaking up into shards and dust—came down with a wooden bowl full of vigas and a man who looked vaguely familiar. Had he gotten another admirer?

"You remember Tamas," Rian introduced. No, she didn't, though now that he said it, the name did tickle something… Eh, probably not important if she couldn't remember it. "He's a miller by trade, and actually the one who reminded me we need a gristmill. He's volunteered to be in charge of this milling, in addition to any other work he might need to do." The man in question nodded, then hastily converted the movement into a bow. "All right, let's see how it works. I assume it works, since Pellee and Markes know what they're doing, but always best to make sure."

The miller lifted up the top millstone to inspect the inner surface of the grist mill, running a finger over the pattern that had been chiseled into both halves before nodding in acknowledgment at the two stonemasons, who nodded back, seemingly satisfied that the craftsman who'd be using the tool they made confirmed it was of quality. The miller set the top millstone back into place before grabbing the wooden handle and giving the whole thing a few turns to see how well it moved. In Lori's opinion, it needed a few ball bearings to make it turn smoother, but the stonemasons had seemed satisfied with how it had moved when they had tested it, so perhaps it was supposed to be like that?

Lori watched as the miller poured some of the vigas into the bowl-like hopper on the top millstone, then grasped the handle and began to turn. There was a sound like two rocks rubbing pebbles between them—which, given how the gristmill seemed to work, was probably exactly what was happening—and the vigas in the hopper shifted and sank down to the bottom of the indentation.

Eventually, a pale, sandy powder started to emerge from between the two millstones, settling on the bottom of the channel around the edge. It was pale brown, and looked coarser than the flour that Lori had seen in River's Fork, when she had been drafted by Binder Shanalorre's aunt to help with preparing breakfast. This looked lumpy, and there were little shards of what she realized were vigas shell mixed in.

"Is it supposed to be that consistency?" she asked Rian.

"I… think so?" he said, looking towards the miller, who was adding more vigas to the hopper. "Tamas?"

"It's just the first grind, Lord Rian," the man said, not stopping in turning the handle. "That's perfectly normal. You can get it finer by passing it through more times, but it's not really needed unless you were going to use the flour for something other than bread. A time or two is all you need to get all the lumps out, and then you can use it for baking."

Lori stared at the flour that was continuing to steadily accrue on the millstone's channel. "How long would it take to make enough flour so that everyone in the demesne could have a serving of bread?"

"The whole day, your Bindership," the miller said immediately. "With a millstone this size, and maybe someone to take turns with, we can grind about thirty sengrains a day. Forty on a good day."

Only forty sengrains a day? No, thirty… "Doesn't that mean we need more gristmills?" How many people could you feed with that much, exactly?

"You can feed four people with just one sengrain of flour, your Bindership," the miller said. His arm still hadn't stopped turning the handle, and the wooden bowl now lay empty, the contents of the mill's hopper steadily depleting.

Lori did the conversion in her head. A sengrain of water was one chiyudrop… so a quarter of that…

She nodded to herself. Put in that context, a sengrain feeding four people seemed about right, and milling forty sengrains a day…

"Is there any way to increase the output?" Lori asked.

The miller glanced at Lori, then shrugged. "If I pushed it, I can perhaps make fifty, but I'd need two people to change shifts with so we can keep up the pace. Though your Bindership, a quarter sengrain per person a day is the calculation for if they're eating nothing but bread. If we just add it as part of the meals we have now, we'd need only half a much, maybe a little less. But the easier way to make more flour is to have a bigger millstone, though it will take more people to operate it."

Lori considered that. "As a miller, do you think you can supply all the flour the demesne needs with what we have now?"

"As long as bread's not the only thing we're eating, very easily your Bindership."

Lori nodded. "Rian, start arranging for your little harvest celebration. You may hold it when we have enough flour to let everyone have… oh, four servings of bread. The rest will be prioritized for planting the winter crop and the Dungeon Farm, with any left over to be eaten over the winter."

"Yes, your Bindership!" Rian said with a wide smile that was probably only half-feigned for theatrics

Lori managed to maintain her dignity and not walk with a happy bounce in her step. Bread! She could finally eat bread in her own demesne! Ah, bread with stew… bread with roasted tail meat…! And it was going to be a holiday, so there WOULD be roasted tail meat!