"Oh, grow up, Rian," Lori said as she finished using her syringe to extract blood. Some distance away, Rian was twitching, averting his eyes and shuddering far too energetically to be simple theatrics, especially since it was just the two of them. He really didn't like the sight of her syringe being used.

"You grow up," he returned rather childishly.

"Surely you can conceive of a wittier reply," she said as she reversed the flow of the syringe, filling the hastily-cleaned metal vial with fresh blood. She had been lazy over the winter, neglecting to imbue the bindings she'd placed on the boat through the blood she had left in the vials. It had been easier, after all, to simply imbue it through her connection to her core, and she'd been so busy all winter… so of course the blood had lost its affinity with her—or was it her affinity with the blood?—requiring she put in new blood. They'd probably have to make this sort of maintenance a regular occurrence.

"We probably have to make this sort of maintenance a regular occurrence," she said distractedly as she sealed the vial close before putting the piece of plank back into place in front of it and moving the ice around it to bury the vial again.

"If it were me, I'd suggest doing it once a blue month, but we probably can't afford to spend that much time on it," Rian sort of agreed. "Do you think it would survive two red moons without something breaking?"

"It lasted three seasons, even if it was inactive through one of them," Lori said as she stood up. That was the last vial, so she wouldn't have to put up with Rian's childishness anymore. She'd still need to make the lightwisp bindings, but that could wait until after they came back and the Coldhold started going downriver to the sea for salt. Losing sight in her eye, even if it was only briefly now, was a disorienting experience she'd rather avoid. "So that should probably be a reasonable maintenance schedule. Inform all parties that need to know that we will be heading for River's Fork tomorrow. You have the rest of today to arrange matters and get the necessary supplies loaded onto the Coldhold."

"Can we push it back to the day after?" Rian asked. "The supplies are one thing, but volunteers for possibly fighting in River's Fork are another matter."

"You've had five days."

"I was busy making sure our ride wouldn't sink and take us with it. I'll need at least a day to dedicate to finding people willing and able to potentially fight without being worse than useless," he countered. "The only people we have with any sort of proper fighting experience are from River's Fork, and might be a bit reluctant to engage in violence. At best, I might be able to find people willing to come along provided we're not the aggressors and are just there to help the local militia deal with any unrest from the announcement. And even then, they'll be reluctant."

"They're militia. Fighting is what they do."

For some reason, Rian winced. "Please never say that in front of any of them. That's part of the thoughtlessness they left their demesne to get way from. Militia are people too, and people generally don't want to fight. Sometimes they need to, but they don't like it. And no one wants to have to fight people they know, which is who the people in Rivers' Fork are." He sighed. "Consider it a 'dealing with people' matter and let me handle it. Please?"

Lori scowled, but… well, explained that way, she supposed he had a point. "Fine then. I needed to do a test to see if I can enhance the water jet's effectiveness anyway."

Rian perked up, looking cheered. "I'll go grab my pla—"

"No."

He stiffened in the middle of turning around, one foot dangling in the air. "N-no?" he said.

"No," she repeated. "You said you needed a day to convince volunteers. So you will obviously not have any time to take notes for me. Go do that instead and have our contingent ready."

"C-can't I do both?" Rian asked pitiably, finally remembering to put his foot down.

"If you could, you would obviously have been able to both inspect the Coldhold and find suitable volunteers," Lori said, and he winced. "I gave you the time you asked for, so put it to use. Get moving."

He sighed. "Yes, your Bindership."

––––––––––––––––––

After Lori had cleaned her syringe, made sure the needle was clear—it wouldn't do to have some sort of obstruction inside it, especially one that may rot—and put the instrument away in her room, she began building the components she needed for her test. New bones were showing up in the bone pit now since they'd started hunting again, and she made sure to pick the ones that already looked like they'd been boiled for bone glue by the carpenters.

She was amused to note all the skulls had been set aside, possibly to make sure they weren't used for anything else, and made a note to check the state of the demesne's shovels, as well as to collect the teeth and claws later.

Lori formed the bone she had collected into a tube, making it as solid as possible for structural integrity. While the water jets were technically already pressure vessels, she was worried that what she intended to do would drastically increase that pressure catastrophically. Lacking in measuring instruments to determine if the materials she was using could withstand the increase of such pressure—and admittedly the training to use such instruments in any case—Lori would simply need to take a 'do it and see' approach to the matter.

Of course, for it to be a proper test, she needed to take notes… or at least, needed someone to take notes for her.

Her options for that were limited. She could take the notes herself, but that would be awkward while actively experimenting, and anyway, she was a Dungeon Binder! What was the point if she couldn't have someone else take her notes for her?

However, she didn't actually know who in her demesne could write. It was probably safe to assume the astrologer—she was sure they had an astrologer somewhere, unless he had stayed behind in Covehold when Rian had gone there—could write, but… well, Lori didn't actually know where he was. She assumed he worked somewhere, but as to what that work was…

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

That left her only one other alternative. Returning to her room to grab her own plank—it probably wasn't safe to assume he'd have his own, and besides, she'd need the notes for later anyway—she then headed out to the woods. Fortunately, she didn't have to wander around for long, since the group cutting down trees were easily visible.

A large trunk was being dragged along the ground towards the sawyers with ropes and rollers, men moving back and forth from back to front to place the rollers on the ground. Other men were digging up stumps and pulling them out of the ground to clear it for planting. A few trees stood isolated and left alone by the loggers, and Lori recognized the profile of happyfruit trees. Just the sight of them made her mouth water. She hoped they managed to harvest a lot of them this year. A small, pale-haired figure standing off to the side was identifiable as Shanalorre, a jar that was probably filled with water next to her. Lori twitched as she saw only a single wood cup…

In hindsight, she probably needed a way to be able to quickly determine Shanalorre's location. Perhaps Lori could give her a rock with a binding of lightwisps on it as well…

The other Dungeon Binder caught sight of her first, turning and giving a small bow. "Binder Lolilyuri," she acknowledged.

"Binder Shanalorre," Lori greeted. She reached into her belt pouch, moving aside some beast teeth and quarts before she found her rock. She checked it. "Where's Yllian?"

Shanalorre turned and pointed. Yllian was one of several men wielding a large saw—though not as large as the one the sawyers used to cut beams and planks—as they moved together to cut down one of the large trees that loomed up. She debated calling out to them, but they were already moving in rhythm, and she knew better than to interrupt work in progress. Best to wait for the tree to fall.

However, while she was here…

"Rian tells me you want to apprentice under the doctors and medics," Lori said.

"Yes," Shanalorre said. "I believe I should augment my healing meaning with useful support skills in addition to diagnosis, such as bone setting, and perhaps suturing in preparation for reattachment of limbs."

Lori raised an eyebrow. "Is that even within the ability of your meaning?"

"I do not know," Shanalorre said. "However, learning the skill is still useful."

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Are you making yourself too skilled and useful to conveniently kill?"

Shana tilted her head, seemingly surprised. "I had not considered that. I was merely trying to optimize the uses of my ability to heal. Within the confines of this demesne, my ability is hampered without my awareness of others' life."

"Now you know how difficult it was for me to be in your demesne," was her very flat reply.

"I apologize in retrospect for the inconvenience, and thank you for the quality of your work despite it."

The men trying to fell the tree stopped sawing, and Yllian stepped back, wiping his brow as the saw was repositioned. He turned towards Shanalorre and stopped, the smile that had been on his face vanishing as she saw Lori there, his posture straightening as his back stiffened. Lori gestured for him to come towards her, and walked towards her.

"I have need of you," she said, handing him the plank. "Rian is occupied, so you'll be taking notes for me instead."

He blinked. "Notes, Gr—your Bindership?"

"Yes, notes. Just write down what I tell you to write down and you'll be fine."

The man—Lori checked her rock—Yllian looked confused, but followed Lori as she headed back down to the river.

She'd considered doing these tests at the retting tank, which was currently unused as they waited for more ropeweed to grow, but that had only a limited amount of not very clean water. If she needed to do multiple iterations of her test, she'd need more.

It wasn't until she got to the river that she realized that Shanalorre had come with them.

"You ordered Lord Yllian to remain near me at all times," she said. "If you require him, that means that I must move to stay near him."

Ah. Right. Silly of her to not realize. "Very well. Stay back and out of the way."

Lori grabbed some of the stockpiled stone under the dock for protecting the Coldhold in the event of a dragon and used that to create a mount for her bone pipe at the end of the stone dock. One end of the pipe was submerged in the water, while the other stuck up diagonally, pointed further away from shore towards the middle of the river. Using a binding of waterwisps to pull some water up the length of the pipe, Lori anchored waterwisps to the inside of the bone pipe and bound them into a water jet binding.

"All right," she said absently as she stepped back from the water jet so she'd have a better view of what happened. "First control experiment, using a water jet binding that will remain unchanged through all subsequent experiments. Angle of inclination, force of output, and volume of water utilized will all remain unchanged in all tests."

"What was that, your Bindership?"

Lori blinked, remembering she had someone else who wasn't Rian writing for her. She huffed in annoyance, but repeated herself. "Write this down: first control experiment, using a water jet binding that will remain unchanged through all subsequent experiments. Angle of inclination, force of output, and volume of water utilized will all remain unchanged in all tests. Did you get all that?"

"I'll need you to char the end of this stick for me, your Bindership."

Lori let out a sigh and briefly wondered if she should have gotten Rian to take notes for her after all. "Give it here," she said irritably.

She waited impatiently as—she checked her rock—Yllian wrote with the freshly charred stick. "Done?" she said when he stopped writing.

"Yes, your Bindership," he said.

"Read back what you just wrote."

Yllian did so. It… sounded like what she'd said… right? Ugh, Rian would have realized he needed to write it all down!

"Commencing control experiment," she said out of habit as she activated the water jet binding. A stream of water erupted from the elevated end of the tube, which arched out over the river. Annoyingly, the wind was blowing towards them, sending spray into Lori's face for a moment before she sighed and bound the airwisps to block the wind from interfering with her test and affecting her experiments.

"Did the notes get wet?" she said, glancing at Yllian.

"No, your Bindership, your notes are unharmed."

She nodded in satisfaction. "Write this down. At current angle of inclination, the stream of water reached a height of…" she gave him her estimate of the height of the apex of the arching water, as well as her estimate of how many paces out it reached. She had him repeat the numbers to her, just to make sure. Rian would be able to review the numbers later. Maybe he'd still enjoy the numbers changing even if he didn't write them down himself.

Once she was certain the notes had been recorded accurately, she turned back towards the tube and deactivated the water jet binding, then added a new binding of waterwisps to the ones already in the tube. She placed it just inside the submerged portion of the tube, anchoring it in place by connecting it to the other waterwisp bindings, which wouldn't affect their function unless she made them too intertwined. Those waterwisps, she bound to turn water into steam.

"Beginning first experiment," she said after she'd stepped back from the bone tube, again out of habit, then shook her head a she remembered. She turned towards—she checked her rock—Yllian. "Write this down. Second test, additional variable, binding to convert water into steam to increase volume. Hypothesis, increased volume will result in increased force and therefore thrust. Read that back to me."

She waited until he finished writing and repeated what she had just said. Nodding in satisfaction, she first activated the binding that converted water into steam, then activated the water jet binding.

A plume of steam shot out of the upraised end of the bone tube, and Lori briefly realized that she hadn't actually thought this experiment through very well. Steam didn't arch down, after all.

However, the plume began to sputter as if it wasn't getting enough water. As she watched, frowning in consternation, the plume eventually disappeared soon after. What?

Cautiously, since she didn't want to have a face full of steam, Lori deactivated the bindings before approaching the bone tube. As she approached, she saw why the steam had vanished.

The end of the bone tube that had been submerged under the water was blocked by ice.

Huh.

…

Oh right, that would have happened, wouldn't it? She hadn't added firewisps, and the water wasn't all that warm to begin with…

"Yllian, write this down," she said. "First experiment failed due to unforeseen and unaccounted for variable."

This… would be a problem…