Rian stared at her. "Uh, forgive me if I sound stupid, but didn't we already go to the edge of the demesne yesterday?"

"Yes," Lori said. "Now I'm saying we're doing it again. I need to see the results of my test."

"What, already? Why didn't you tell me yesterday, then?" Rian said, then sighed. "Fine, fine, I'll have your boat—"

"Lori's Boat."

"That's what I said. Your boat," Rian said, voice and face flat. "I don't see why you have to talk in the third person."

For a moment, the two stared at each other.

"As your jokes go, it's even less funny than they usually are," she finally said.

"You're a very tough audience, your Bindership," Rian said. "Anyway, I'll have your boat ready after breakfast." He looked to the side. "Riz, are you busy?"

"I'll go see who else is free to grab a spear," Riz said.

"You're the best," Rian sighed, turning back to Lori and missing the expression on the northerner woman's face, as well as the expressions of the two weavers. "The new cookpots are progressing well, and it's not putting too much of a dent into our fuel reserves. Fortunately the forge is only needed for the gold and if the copper gets too hard. In fact, we should have the first pot ready soon. I suggest issuing it to the outside dining hall. It'll reduce the amount of fuel they need, since it's also using braziers to keep the inside warm enough to eat in comfortably."

Lori considered that. "How much fuel is that using? Is it significant?"

"I think it's manageable," Rian said. "Even with the outdoor lights, walking up the rise through the snow at night is a bit dangerous, especially for pregnant women. Getting to the outside dining hall is still a bit of a walk, but it's shorter, so many of them have been eating there, especially for dinner." Rian shrugged. "In hindsight, it's probably something we should have thought of before it got cold, maybe given it more efficient heating. At least the lights you installed mean they can keep the windows shuttered all the time."

Lori nodded. "Very well. Inform me when it becomes unmanageable."

Rian stared at her for a moment. "Yes, your Bindership."

"Anything else?"

Rian actually seemed to think about it. "If you'd be willing, the Coldhold needs better heating before I want to risk sending people out on it to get salt in this season. And maybe a way to signal them to come back because a dragon is coming? Like, make the lights change color? At the very least, it'll give them a slightly better chance of surviving if they know to try to head back home."

Lori titled her head, considering that. "Perhaps tomorrow, if we have time. It's not all that urgent, after all. Bound ice should insulate the majority of the insides of the Coldhold. In those circumstances, a brazier would be sufficient, if you had a means of expelling the smoke."

"Yes, but people have to work outside to pour sea water into the evaporator," Rian said. "And using buckets in those circumstances invariably means spilled buckets."

Lori nodded. "Ah. A point. Though it seems to me the solution is not better heating but better means of getting water into the evaporator." She hums and tilts her head in thought for a moment. "Devise such a solution and get back to me." She continued eating her breakfast.

Across from her, Rian continued staring for a moment. "Yes, your Bindership," he said eventually. "Um, that's all I guess. Unless you want to hear about disciplinary issues?"

"Has anyone been hurting the children?" Lori asked, not looking up.

"No."

"Then I don't care. You seem to have it in hand, keep doing so."

Really, Rian should know better by now.

––––––––––––––––––

Lori knelt down, examining the stone marker that she had placed on the very edge of her demesne the day before. Cautiously, even though she could see the difference, she carefully extended her bare hand over the marker towards the second marker she had placed yesterday. The tip of her extended hand didn't start feeling cold until her elbow had gone past the edge-marker. Former edge-marker. The edge of her demesne had moved.

It had worked. Expanding her demesne had WORKED!

…

Er, not that she ever doubted it, of course. But still, it was good she had some kind of baseline to compare this with. She took her staff with its rule marks and measured out the new gap. It… wasn't very far, admittedly. It was a bit difficult to make out exactly how large the growth was, since trying to measure her forearm and hand using her staff was a bit awkward, but… forty-three, forty-four yustri? Best be a bit on the generous side, call it forty-four. Not quite half a pace.

It was… well, it was growth. On the face of it, her demesne growing half a pace—not quite a full pace in overall diameter—was only a small fraction of its overall size. However, it was also an expansion of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands—she couldn't be bothered to try to do the exact math at the moment—of cubic paces in volume. Measuring the growth in three dimensions instead of just one…

Lori shook her head. She could calculate the numbers on the way back. She bound the earthwisps in her old marker, making the bottom where it touched the ground flow, and moved it to the new edge of her demesne, moving it until its outward face was was once more on the very edge just short of the taint of the Iridescence. The other marker she had made still stood outside her demesne, two and a half paces or so away.

"All right," she said. "We're done here. Let's head back."

As she sat down on Lori's Boat, taking care to prop her staff on her shoulder and keep one hand on it, Lori began to run the numbers. They weren't promising. She generally needed a slate and soapstone if she wanted to do large math, and a counting rack was highly preferred, but the numbers she was looking at were simple enough she didn't need them. Her demesne had grown by less than half a pace yesterday… half a pace in radius, less than a pace in diameter. Her demesne was—had been—four taums wide. Covehold was ten taums wide. If she wanted to reach that size, then at her current rate…

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She'd need to expand the demesne every day by at least the same rate for somewhere between ten and twenty years. Trying to narrow down that number didn't matter, because the fact that she'd even need to calculate beyond 'ten years' was… was…

Ten years was just slightly under half of her life. Well over half of the part she could clearly remember. The thought that she'd have to… every day… for longer than that…

To expand her demesne to even just equal Covehold Demesne in size, she would need to commit every day of the rest of her life.

The rest of her life.

For a long time, Lori just stared at nothing, not really seeing anything. Her gaze was pointed straight ahead, past Riz and the random person she'd brought along, both sitting with spears at the front of the boat. No particular feature of the landscape really drew her eye, it was just that her head was pointed that way because of how she was sitting.

The rest of her life.

While she had gone to school, both the basic education that taught her to read, write and count, and the more advanced education where she had learned to wield her Whispering, it hadn't really been... voluntary. She could vividly remember her logical, reasoned and… and… and bratty tantrum as she refused to go to basic, her sullen attitude as she had been removed from the familiarity of basic to be placed in a different institution after the standard breathing exercise had revealed her affinity for magic, if not exactly what kind yet. It had taken… time… for her to learn to appreciate her ability, to seize it for the great and wonderful power it was, to embrace and actively seek out what her school was teaching her. It had taken more time to finish this education, to be acknowledged, certified, and registered as a Whisperer, one of the powerful, who shaped the very world with their breath and their soul, binding it to their will.

The rest of her life.

And all that time, all that forced education, all that learning she had eventually sought out… was still far less than the time she would need to devote, freely and of her own will for there was no power in her demesne but herself that could force her to do so, to expanding her demesne every day for… for… for…

…the rest of her life.

Lori closed her eyes at the enormity, the utter finality of that statement.

All around her, she felt the wisps.

All of them.

She just sat there with her eyes closed, feeling the rocking, swaying movements of the boat she rode. She felt the water beneath then, felt what moisture had managed to seep into the immensely dense substance of the boat she was sitting on. The wind in the air, filling a massive half-sphere full of light and heat and little sparks of lightning. The earth beneath it all, another half sphere, pierced through with water and darkness. And inside her, that well of endless power through her connection to her core, as much power as her she needed…

… until the day she died.

Lori took a deep breath, feeling the magic fill her lungs, a drop compared to the deep, bottomless well within her. She opened her eyes, and found they were just moving past the cliff face of the hill her Dungeon was built beneath. Her Dungeon, inside of which lay her core, the physical thing that was her connection to her demesne, that thing that would someday connect the core to her…. her…

She closed her eyes again, took another deep breath, let it out.

Lori's Boat began to slide into place next to the stone dock. She sat, waiting for the boat to settle as Riz leapt onto the dock, taking the rope and tying it around the wooden post on the dock that it was supposed to go around. She waited until the other militia followed suit, until Rian adjusted the water jet and set the stream of water to loop so that the boat would stay in place. Only when Rian was off the boat did she stand, a little uncertainly, and stepped over the side as Rian knelt down to hold the sides of the boat so that it wouldn't drift away from the dock when she moved.

"Did you get what you need?" Rian asked as he stood up, letting go of the boat.

Lori blinked and glanced at him, then nodded. "Yes," she said simply.

"You… don't seem happy. Were the results bad?"

Lori fell silent again, pressing her lips tightly together. Eventually, she said, "Yes. They were substandard. Improvements and efficiencies need to be made and implemented."

Rian chuckled. "Don't they always. What do you need me to do?"

Lori frowned and turned to Rian. "Tomorrow," she said, "I need to go back to the edge of the demesne."

Rian tilted his head and nodded. "I'll make arrangements. Will this be a regular thing from now on?"

"We'll see."

Rian nodded. "I'll make a lot of arrangements then."

Lori nodded. Then she turned and headed towards her dungeon.

She had a demesne to expand again, and she needed to do so more efficiently than she did yesterday. Had her biographies and histories mentioned anything about demesne growth rates? She tried to recall, but nothing came to mind, no vague half-remembered numbers of how many taums an ancient demesne grew over how long. That was… somewhat mixed. With nothing to compare her growth to, she had no idea how optimally her demesne was growing. On the other hand, with no other demesne to really compete against, only the possible demesne of the future… any growth at all was only beneficial.

After all, to be a Dungeon Binder was to be one for life. There was no way to remove a person from the role without killing them, and some well-prepared Binders who dabbled in self-Deadspeaking had managed to go beyond that. If she was going to be like this for all of her days from now on… then what was another thing she had to do for the same length of time because of it? She had to eat for the rest of her life, breathe for the rest of her life, and now expand her demesne for the rest of her life.

She had chosen this for herself. She would do it. And once she learned to do it better…

Lori walked towards her room, plowing through the snow before she entered the entryway leading into her dungeon. To either side, the illustrations copied from the almanac shone on the walls, and would have provided subtle illumination if she hadn't bound more lightwisps to the ceiling. Past the illustrations, past the side corridor leading to the smithy, past the open doors that could be barricaded in the event of a dragon. She rounded past the stone wall that separated her core from the rest of the dungeon, and walked up the stairs, moving aside the rock that barred the way to her room and putting it back behind.

Entering her chambers, she closed the door behind her and sat down heavily on her bed, staring at the floor. Then she took a deep breath and spread out her bedroll. Lori put her pillow at her back so she could lean back against the wall her bed abutted against, and tested if she could comfortably just collapse back against it if she suddenly collapsed. Fairly comfortable, but her pillow was too short to support her back and her head at the same time, else she'd strike her head on the stone, and keeping the pillow pressed to the stone with her head without some kind of back support was… uncomfortable.

Actually… there was no reason to do this sitting up, was there? Lori tried lying down, then shook her head. No, no, if she lay down, especially with her eyes closed to concentrate and block off sensory distractions, there was a good chance she might accidentally fall asleep in the middle of what she was doing. As long as the wisps she was handling didn't have a binding that had to be actively controlled to be safe, like having rock roll and flow, there was no danger, but it would be annoying if she fell asleep in the middle of this…

In the end, Lori wedged herself into the corner where two walls met, her bedroll folded under her, her blanket and winter robe stuffed in to the space behind her back for support and her pillow behind her head. She leaned back, letting her legs splay gracelessly in front of her so that they were less likely to go numb from being bent, and closed her eyes.

For the second time, Lori began expanding her demesne.