Some applicants were rejected, which annoyed Lori, because it took more time to establish they were being coerced by their parents because one had gotten the other pregnant.

"Your application is denied," Lori said. "Come back when you actually want to do this and not just because your parents say you should. You—" this to the nervous-looking young woman, "—are required to apprentice yourself in preparation for the birth of your child. Next!"

Not everyone took her decisions well. However, Rian was there and by implication so was Riz, and Riz had friends that were willing to help her. In this instance, it was to keep back some angry parents.

"So he just gets her pregnant and that's it?-!" one such parent demanded angrily. "He has to do right by her!"

"If he wanted to do right by her, then he would have asked to marry her without any of you forcing him," Lori said irritably. She glanced at the young man in question. He looked lost and overwhelmed, meaning he was feeling very lost and overwhelmed if Lori could tell. "If they want to get married, they can re-apply provided they can prove no coercion on anyone's parts."

"He should at least have to help take care of the child!" another parent said.

"If he were inclined to do so, he would probably volunteer to do that anyway," Lori said. "If he wasn't, would you really want such a useless, bloodsucking slug married to your daughter? If you just want to satisfy your own anger, just drag him into a corner and beat him. As long as you don't kill him, it's fine. However, I will regard that as grounds for coercion should he be party to another application in future. And what are you two still doing sitting there? I said 'next'!"

Eventually the combative older people were made to sit down and the applicants moved on, though Lori noticed Rian seated them away from their still-irate parents.

Then there were the two applicants who were clearly too young. The two children looked about the brat's age, and clearly infatuated with each other, holding hands earnestly in a way that Lori would have thought overdone if they didn't seem absolutely genuine about it. Thankfully it didn't seem like the issue of pregnancy or anything of the sort. They had simply spotted the lack of any sort of listed age restriction in Lori's marriage laws—something she was now actually reconsidering— and had applied to Rian.

They actually did reasonably well in their interview, with the young boy proudly informing her he was a seel hunter, a farmer, a woodcutter and a sweeper. The girl was the same, but had exchanged woodcutter and sweeper for spinster and apprentice weaver and knitter.

That had thankfully given Lori an excuse. "I'm afraid that as you are still on your apprenticeship, I cannot yet grant your application," Lori said, and actually winced at their crestfallen looks. "However, I am willing to keep your application prepared and ready to be officially granted. You can sign it here and now, and in— that is, when you're both sixteen or one of you have officially finished your apprenticeship in your trade, whichever comes first, you can come back to me and I will officially declare you married. And if you change your mind before then, then that's fine."

The two children brightened at that. "Do we say the marriage oath too?" the girl asked excitedly.

"You can say it, but it doesn't mean you're married," Lori said. "If you want, we can make it a promise that you'll one day be married."

"Really, Wiz Lori?" the boy asked, equally excited.

"Yes, really."

Only one of them knew how to write, and not very well, so some time was taken up with the girl helping the boy write his name in awkward, jagged script that barely fit on the tablet, the girl standing behind the boy and holding the stylus with him as they both tried to remember how his name was spelled. Then Lori asked them if they 'someday wish to marry' and so on and so forth, with both children answering earnestly, making them probably the third most excited applicants of that day when Lori told them that their promise to get married had been recorded and would be revisited in the future when it was due.

The two happily walked away hand in hand, their peers teasing and congratulating them equally, pronouncing them 'almost married'.

"If they don't grow out of it, they are going to be a very happy couple," Rian muttered.

Lori had to agree as she set the paired tablets aside to be stored for the future. If it was not simply childish infatuation that would fade away as they go older… well, it was official agreement, after all. "I wish them luck. Next!"

It was very fortunate that they had started almost immediately after breakfast, save for the brief time it took her to desiccate the latrines. Still, with only twelve sets of applicants, even with the people who had difficulty writing their names, they managed to finish before lunch. Thankfully, the parents who had been pressuring their children to marry kept their dissatisfaction to themselves. By the time Lori came back from putting her copies of the records aside—and wondering where she would be putting them and any like them in the future—the food was ready, and her usual table seated only those it usually did.

The dining hall had a celebratory air, which Lori supposed was only natural since the kitchen had made roasted meat and honey bread. The honey bread had a light green tinge to it, and was sticky to the touch, but absolutely delicious. Lori wished there was more honey, but she sternly reminded herself it was being saved as an emergency supply.

"Don't you know you're supposed to eat that last?" Rian said, sounding amused as she devoured the three sticks of honey bread that was her ration.

"I know I'm 'supposed' to," she said disdainfully, "I just don't care."

Rian nodded. "Fair enough," he said, holding his utensils in one hand and… Lori blinked and watched with some bemusement as he somehow used the utensils like tongs and picked up one of his own honey bread, biting into it. "No, no too sweet, it's going to stick on my tongue if I eat it all before my soup." He put down the bread and drank from his cup, rinsing his mouth before swallowing.

Lori rolled her eyes at him as she picked up her own cup. "You could have just done that after you finished eating."

"Lori, the point of sweet stuff is to be eaten last so the sweetness lingers in your mouth afterwards. You can enjoy the lingering. If you eat it first, everything else you eat afterwards washes it out. Unless you prefer the lingering taste of the soup, in which case I withdraw what I just said."

Why would she want the aftertaste when she could have the taste? "Why would I want the aftertaste when I could have the taste?" she said as she started eating her soup, stirring in some of her small cuts of roasted meat.

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"That makes sense, I suppose," Rian said, getting started on his own soup.

Next to him, Umu, Mikon and Riz were doing the same, though for some bizarre reason the northerner woman had taken one of her sticks of honeybread and was using it to stir her soup, the green coating of honey melting away as the bread became soaked. Before it became soggy and limp, however, Riz drew it out and bit into the soup-soaked bread enthusiastically. Lori vaguely recalled her doing the same with her bread yesterday, but why with the honey bread?

"Did you just add honey to your soup?" Umu said, seemingly sharing Lori's disbelief.

"Putting honey in your soup is something you do in winter," Riz replied, looking past Rian at the weaver. "The honey gives you more energy to stay warm."

"I thought you said that's for children too young for mead?" Mikon said.

"So? No reason why they're the only ones who get to enjoy it. Besides, we don't have any mead. Not enough honey to spare to make it," Riz sighed.

"And it had better stay that way," Lori said, staring at Rian.

"It probably won't last," Rian said, "but right now everyone's morale is high enough that we shouldn't have anyone inclined to try stealing some of the grain to ferment into booze."

Lori nodded. "Good. Rian, come see me after lunch, I need you to set the water clocks."

Rian straightened, smiling. "Yes, your Bindership," he said. "I'll just have to average out the growth when the storm ends. That is, if you're going to continue with the variable?"

"Yes, though I will be increasing the intensity of the variable to see if it substantially affects the result."

"That's… not exactly correct experimental protocol."

"I'm aware, but as it is I don't have time to establish a consistent average. I need results."

"That's what they say, and then something horrible happens and someone ends up dead or disfigured or some sort of abomination from experimental and untested random Deadspeaking."

Lori rolled her eyes. "You've seen too many plays," she said, uncomfortably aware that, yes, 'I need results' was usually when the horrible things started happening. "No Deadspeaking is involved."

"No, just Whispering, which can make things explode." Rian sighed. "At least wait for the storm to finish before you start increasing the variable. Until I can measure exactly how much altering the variable increases the result, this won't result in any experimental data. The previous results were a good increase, so why not stick to it, at least for the duration? Instead of growth, try for consistency? Before the variable, the results could be relatively far from the calculated average in either direction, even if the average tended to keep growing. If this variable shows consistent results, that is already a marked improvement from how you were doing it before."

Lori considered that. Well, she supposed he had a point about altering the experimental variable again being useless if they couldn't immediately measure the changes that resulted from it. "Fine, fine," she said, waving her hand. "I suppose you have a point. Though I'm surprised. I thought you would want your precious numbers to get bigger."

"Consistent growth is guaranteed gain," Rian said. "No matter what, the numbers are going up!"

Ah. Of course. Somehow, it was still a number getting bigger.

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When Lori left her room for dinner, she was tired, though thankfully this time her head didn't throb. As per her discussion with Rian, she had claimed outward, and the concentration of wisps she had placed where the river entered her demesne had remained as it had the previous time she had done so. As for the lack of a headache, she hoped it was a sign she was getting better at expanding her demesne, developing a rhythm that let her work more efficiently. Even with the variable of strongly concentrating the wisps in a particular spot, the rest wasn't any different. She supposed it had only been a matter of time before it became sufficiently routine.

In fact, she even decided to bring down the chatrang board, which made Mikon happy at least.

"So…" Rian said in a low voice as the weaver put the pieces on the board and the other two got dinner, "while you were in your room, a matter came to my attention. You remember the two who were being pressured into getting married by their parents?"

"It hasn't been a day yet, I don't forget that fast," Lori said. "And why are you talking like that?"

"I don't want people to hear," he said. Lori looked significantly at Mikon. "She doesn't count."

"Mikon doesn't count as people?" Lori smirked.

"You know what I mean!"

Lori rolled her eyes. "What about them?" she said, lowering his voice slightly. She was not going to lean towards Rian like this was a 'conspiring in a pub' scene in a play.

"Salenhalt spoke to me earlier this afternoon—"

"Who?"

Rian rolled his eyes. "The boy we're discussing."

Well, he should have just said that. "You should have just said that."

Sigh. "Anyway, he spoke to me and asked if the two of them could still apply. They talked about it and they've decided they still want to get married, even with their parents pressuring them. Apparently being called a useless, bloodsucking slug by his own Dungeon Binder is the sort of thing that makes a man think." Rian hesitated. "They also asked if they could move back into the shelter after the storm has passed, so they don't have to live with either of their parents. Since we don't really have any official rules about that, I took the liberty of authorizing that particular request."

Lori's eyebrow rose at the requests. "And what is your assessment? Do you think they're being coerced still?"

Rian shook his head. "Despite your stance on people beating other people as long as it wasn't to death, that sort of thing leads to disciplinary problems. I asked some of the boys to stay with him to keep that from happening, and they've been mostly celebrating the fact their other friends got married. At worse, he's being coerced by exposure to what happy newly married people look like." Rian shrugged. "Maybe he just decided he wants that for himself."

"And the other applicant?"

"Arranging her apprenticeship with her mother," Rian said, "who at least agrees with you that Bliss should be trained to take care of a child before she actually has one."

"So she could still be coerced," Lori pointed out.

"As I understand it, the pressure was coming from her father. Her mother agreed by not opposing it, but doesn't exactly seem to be an aggressive proponent, merely an agreeable one. She actually seems to like the boy. She let the two of them talk, after all."

Lori frowned, then sighed. Well, a quick interview and countersigning wouldn't hurt. "Very well. But only this. Any other applicants are to wait until convenient for me in the spring, or we have another ten applications, whichever comes first. Tell them to come here after dinner."

"Ah, about that," Rian said. "I'd suggest a more private venue. If nothing else, if their parents see them together with you, they might get coercive again and go against the spirit of this decision. And I think it would be better for them. They're both shy and quiet people."

"The girl is with child," Lori pointed out.

Rian shrugged. "They were shy and quiet together. The tunnel's still open, so how about my house? I think I still have some wood for the fire…"

Lori considered it and nodded. "Your house will do. And don't bother. I'll provide the heat." There was a good chance the end of his chimney was under snow by now.

Rian sighed in relief. "Thanks. My chimney's probably buried in snow at this point. Okay, that's it. Enjoy your game."

Mikon, who had been waiting patiently as they talked, smiled brightly and kissed Rian on the cheek before turning to Lori and pushing the game board between the two of them. The weaver made the first move…

In hindsight, perhaps Lori had still been too tired after expanding her demesne to play such a mentally intensive game. Mikon actually managed to beat her.

––––––––––––––––––

Still, she didn't consider herself too tired to conduct the marriage application interview again, though she did splash cold water on her face to chase off what little drowsiness was there. In Rian's room, sitting on his only chair while the two applicants sat on his bed, Lori spoke to them again as Rian stood behind them. She was forced to conclude that Rian had been right. They were shy, quiet people, and absent the crowds of the dining hall and their parents no doubt glaring a hole into the back of their heads, they were much more relaxed and willing to answer her questions with some degree of confidence.

They also held hands, which they had been too nervous to do earlier. Lori did not consider that conclusive to the sincerity of their application, but it was a point nonetheless.

Eventually she came to a conclusion, and the application was accepted. When they indicated of their acceptance to the conditions for marriage, what other people had erroneously begun referring to as the 'marriage oath', for some reason Lori was reminded of the two children earlier that day who had promised themselves to each other.

Though that could just have been the tiredness. Mikon did beat her, after all.

Then Lori went back to her room to sleep, waiting for tomorrow to come.