"I'm never leaving my demesne again," Lori said tiredly.

She sat in her room on the Coldhold, curled up in the bed with her feet folded under her as the boat swayed, finally making its way up the river back to her demesne, its storage spaces full of the ingots of copper she had smelted. After having slept in it for the past seven days, the room felt thick and muggy, with an odor that seemed to hide from her most of the time but suddenly puffed unexpected if she sat down or moved. The room would probably need airing once she left.

Lori half-expected Rian to make a comment about how she said that every time she left as he sat on her stool just outside of the door, leaning back on the wall. Her lord sat slumped, his head lolling tiredly. Despite her orders, after all the ore had been audited—the total had come up to seven carts under the total River's Fork had claimed, which Lori had magnanimously excused as being the result of inconsistent cart loads—he'd taken the duty of staying up and watching the piles at night. He hadn't been alone, as River's Fork had begun doing the same, but her lord had been staying up late for days and despite having slept normally the night before, he didn't seem to have recovered yet.

"Good idea," he sighed. "In fact, let's not just never leave the demesne, let's never leave our beds at all. Just stay curled up where it's nice and warm."

Lori stared at him. Eventually, she said, "What about food?"

He waved a dismissive hand. "Eh, if we just stay there and sleep, then we don't need to eat as much because we're not doing anything that makes us hungry, right? Who needs to eat more than three times a week? And it will let us cut back on food stores until spring! No downsides to this whatsoever!" His head slumped lower as he cradled his face in his hands.

Lori nodded. His idea sounded very tempting… "Well, you wouldn't deserve any food then anyway," she said.

"I've just stayed up all week watching piles of rocks in the cold with some surly people who kept making snide remarks about how warm and spring-like the weather was because we were annoyed a little girl tried to be cute with us," Rian retorted. "I definitely deserve all that food, I'm just not going to eat any because it would be too much of a hassle." He sighed and finally looked up. His eyes were half-lidded, obviously tired in a way sleep hadn't rid him of. "Next time you make an agreement like this again, let's have the accounting built into it already so we don't have to do this again."

Lori raised an eyebrow. "Next time?"

"She's still the only one nearby who can provide healing, unless you learned Deadspeaking without bringing it up," Rian said. "So one way or another we'll have to do business with her when the babies start getting born."

Lori's teeth clicked shut at the reminder. "Fine. But she comes to us this time!"

"No argument there," Rian said. "It's probably not safe to bring any newborns to her." He closed his eyes and slumped forward again, and Lori couldn't stop the urge to do the same.

It had been a long week, and the week hadn't even finished yet. Rian had needed to organize a change in workers a day in, as they'd already been tired from mining and hadn't expected having to stay longer, much less working outside. It was apparently much warmer inside the mine somehow. They had sorted the ore, while others assisted her, the blacksmith Lanwei—the name was still with her after actually having to use it for the past several days—and River's Fork's own smith by crushing the ore with the mortar, pestles and whatever blunt objects and buckets they could use while the three of them used her furnaces first to separate the copper from the ore, and then cast the copper into ingots.

Lori wasn't sure how the ingots had been divided, because try as the three of them might they couldn't make the metal bricks completely uniform, but Rian had taken care of that somehow. She'd seen him conferring with that woman who'd been keeping track of the accounting for Shanalorre, and… well, she trusted that he'd gotten them their share of the copper. He was the one in charge of talking to people after all, that sounded like his area of responsibility…

She knew when they finally crossed the border back into her demesne, even without the light dusting of Iridescence on her vanishing. The air suddenly became completely comfortable instead of being too hot and too cold in patches, which actually made Lori sit up straight with relief, even if it didn't really overcome her general tiredness and apathy. She didn't move from her bed, but she did push her raincoat, winter robe and blanket off her legs and shoulders as she released the bindings around her hands and face. The firewisps from the bindings, she was amused to notice, simply began keeping her warm like all the other firewisps around her.

Sighing, she stood up and began to roll up her bedroll so she could transfer it to her room when they arrived back home. She folded her blanket, put her pillow aside and put her boots back on, wincing as she noticed more cracks on them. She'd been maintaining it with a mixture of beast fat and bugwax that Rian said was what everyone else in the demesne used on leather, but either she hadn't been doing it right or it wasn't enough. Hopefully it would last a bit longer…

She was the last person to step off the Coldhold after it docked, carrying her pack with the few changes of clothes she'd bought, now filled with used garments, as well as her staff and new wand. She wore her rain coat—thankfully its leather seemed to be faring better than her boots— with the hood up, the better to keep in her warmth. Her hat had been left in her room in the demesne. Snow was falling and she didn't want wet hair from the snow melting because of the warmth around her. Behind her, Rian followed, carrying a large sack made from her winter robe, filled with her bedroll, pillow, and blanket, the padded garment making for a large and slightly unwieldy container as they walked over the planks to the outriggers of the boat, and from there onto the stone dock. Despite how long she'd waited, there was still a crowd in front dock, though thankfully it was in the process of dispersing. Wives and children, parents and siblings were helping husbands and sons bring their packs back home.

Stolen story; please report.

Someone was still waiting, of course, though it wasn't for her. Riz quickly took the sack from Rian, who let her take it gratefully as he embraced the northerner woman, shamelessly using her for warmth as she kept her balance, apparently enjoying the contact. Lori glared at the two, daring Riz to let the winter robe touch the ground. "Rian, don't linger," she said, turning and heading towards her dungeon.

"Yes, your Bindership," she heard him sigh behind her. "Sorry Riz, duty calls."

"I'll walk with you. You look like something a Deadspeaker woke up."

She heard footsteps behind her as she walked.

"I've been doing night watch the last few days."

Snow had built up on the ground, though a few paths had been shoveled clear between the main road, the baths and her Dungeon.

"Huh… not very tough, are you?"

There wasn't such a path between the dock and her Dungeon, just some disrupted snow where people had stomped through.

"I'm softer than bread dough when it comes to the cold."

Gleefully, she claimed and bound the waterwisps in the snow, taking delight in just being able to will it so and not have to use the staff or wand she was carrying.

"Cold bread dough is pretty hard though."

Lori made the snow fuse together, and from there made the ice flow to either side of where she was walking, opening a path to her Dungeon.

"Softer, then."

The ground was mud and she didn't want to ruin the soil in case they grew desperate enough to dig it up or wanted to grow ropeweed or something on it when it became warm again, so she just froze the mud to make it for all intents and purposes dry.

She didn't almost slip. Not at all.

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After lunch, the copper was unloaded and transferred to the dragonscale vault. They were piled more or less neatly next to the storage jars full of finely ground blue and green copper ore. Rian was to find someone who knew how to turn it into dye, and if there wasn't anyone, then they'd either sell it in Covehold when it was warmer, have it made into dye or ink, or just melt it into more copper. They'd didn't really have a need for pigment right then, but it was the cause of the extended suffering in River's Fork, so they had it.

Rian suspected that River's Fork did have a dyer who could turn it into pigment, otherwise there'd be little reason to want to retain any and no reason to test it for viability. Despite everything, it seemed the other demesne was still getting the better end of the deal.

Thankfully, Lori hadn't forgotten any of the bindings she'd needed to imbue while she was gone. Having to force herself to check each and every single binding in her demesne without the benefit of her reminders had been greatly exhausting, and upon checking her list she had sighed in relief at not having forgotten anything. The rest of the afternoon had been spent curled up in bed, reading her almanac in a tired fugue with none of it being retained in her memory.

Both her and Rian had still been tired even during dinner. She didn't bring down any of her game boards, not feeling in the mood, and while Rian stood up and said something loud and pointless that had people… not so much cheering as being just loud and affirmative, it didn't feel like one of Rian's usual speeches, just empty and false. No one seemed to notice, the dining hall descending once more to the usual murmur of dinner conversation, but the women around Rian clearly did.

"Are you well, Rian?" Umu asked, looking at him with concern.

"Just tired, Umu," he said. "And cold." Then he groaned.

"What is it?" Mikon asked, looking past Umu towards him.

"I don't know if I have any firewood," Rian sighed. "I have to go get some after dinner…"

Above his head, Mikon and Riz exchanged a look, and the latter nodded.

Ignorant of this, Rian shook his head. "Uh… anyway. Um, your Bindership?"

"What?" she said bluntly, not looking up from her food.

"Now that we have so much copper… could you perhaps authorize it to be used to make new pots for the kitchens? Since its winter now, having metal pots instead of what we have now will let the kitchen staff cook meals much faster and using less fuel."

Lori blinked and stared at him. "What?"

"Now that we have so much copper… could you perhaps authorize it to be used to make new pots for the kitchens? Since its winter now, having metal pots instead of what we have now will let the kitchen staff cook meals much faster and using less fuel," Rian repeated.

Lori frowned, looking towards the kitchen. "What have they been using, then?"

"Stone pots," Rian said. "You know, the ones you made on the way here? They take forever to heat up, so sometimes they still need to use the cooking ingots to heat the water."

Lori stared at him. "Tell me again tomorrow," she said. "I don't want to deal with this right now." She could already feel her legs aching as she sat down next to the forge, providing heat as the smiths shaped the metal into the pots in question…

Rian sighed. "Fine."

Next to him, Umu, Riz and Mikon all leaned back and exchanged looks behind him.

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In her room, Lori lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. Ah, so comfortable, so nothing at all like a hard plank of wood under her bedroll. All these months, and her bed still felt so comfortable…

She really needed to get rid of those names on the ceiling, it would give her more space for reminders.

Really, she wouldn't need all those reminders if she was capable of Mentalism.

…

Lori sighed. It was finally winter. Her demesne was sustaining itself and, more importantly, herself, and they were no longer constantly on the edge of starvation, thirst or other forms of resource-deficient impending death. Sure, it was cold, but a lot of time had been spent cutting and curing wood for fires. People could handle that without her.

Save for, it seemed, authorizing Rian to use their new copper to make cooking pots, there was nothing that actually needed her attention. It was time to do what she'd been putting off.

It was time to sit down and begin expanding the demesne's borders.

It was time to sit down and force herself to try and learn the other forms of magic by herself, with no teacher, no texts, and no assistance.

…

Rian was to never know how much she'd been procrastinating. She'd never hear the end of it.