After installing the mounts for Shanalorre's shelves for when the carpenters finished building them, it was back to River's Fork after breakfast. Handing Yllian his rock—she'd carved his name on it so he'd know it was his, although it probably wasn't visible to him because of the glow—Lori then went back to the mine to continue excavating the dragon shelter. The stone masons were absent at the moment, since right now they would only get in the way as she excavated, and they had already finished with the food storage area.

Lori was moving a batch of stone outside when she heard the disturbance from the mine entrance. Riz's voice was being calm but firm, and an annoyingly familiar voice was being loud and angry.

"—will know what has happened to my niece!" the angry voice said as Lori approached the mine, the softened stone rolling and undulating in ahead of her and slightly to the side, the staff pressed against it so she could maintain her connection. "Where is she?"

"I've been telling you, she'd back in Lorian," Riz said. "Where else would she be? Now you know, so stop trying to bother the Great Binder."

Lori finally finished pushing the stone out of the mine, pushing it outside to the new stockpile she had started outside the mine's entrance.

"And I'm supposed to believe that?"

Setting the stone in place, she turned to head back into the mine and return to work.

"Well, if you're not going to believe anything I say, then there's no point talking to you further, is there?"

Before she left to go back home in a few days, she'd probably need to reform the stone to be properly thick and defensive— no, wait, she should probably enclose the water wheel so that nothing could fall on it. Perhaps find a way to keep dragonborn abominations from getting into the mine through the vent…

"I'm not here to talk to you, I'm here to talk to her! You! Where is my niece, woman?"

She continued on with her work, fantasizing about how easy this would be if she had a connection to the demesne's core—

"Don't ignore me, you glittering—!"

––––––––––––––––––

Lori hated eating in River's Fork's dining hall. The tables and benches were all slightly unstable, and she couldn't tell if it was because of the way they were made or because the ground was uneven. It was nothing like her nice solid table back home and her nice solid bench. The dining hall was cold and drafty, and if she didn't have a binding of firewisps around her it would have been far more irritating. In addition, the bread was slightly charred and smaller than the one they served at home, and the soup was a bit bland.

"There you are!"

This was not the end of the annoyances.

Lori turned to look from her food at the exclamation approaching her from behind her as Riz and Rian stood up from the bench across from her. She heard the bench at the table behind her scrape slightly before it sudden fell over, likely having caught something on the ground. One hand wrapped around her staff as she stood up, remembering how random attacks on Dungeon Binders were dangerously common in this demesne and why had she agreed to this again, ah, right, she had needed a healer.

It was annoying that she could finally recognize Shanalorre's uncle's face. Still, he clearly wasn't as annoying as Landoor, because she only knew his face and not his name. The volunteers who had accompanied them from her demesne stepped into his path, keeping him from getting any closer to Lori as people looked up from their meals.

"Where's my niece?-!" he demanded. He raised his hand and pointed dramatically, but Lori just stepped forward and wrapped her fist around his finger, clenching tightly to trap it in place. Using the leverage to twist his wrist palm up, she pulled his finger back so that it pointed down. "Argh!"

"I feel that a reminder is in order that I am not Binder Shanalorre," Lori said, her grip on his extremity forcing him to keep his arm outstretched. "I am not weak and inexperienced and lax with discipline. I will not suffer being addressed in that manner. Or at all, for that matter. If you have something to say, say it to Rian or—" she wanted to reach for her belt pouch and check her rock, but the one she did that with was currently holding a finger, and trying to reach with her other hand would be awkward, "—Yllian, and if it's in any way relevant they will inform me." Oh, she hoped she'd gotten that name right. People could be so unreasonable about their names being remembered correctly.

She shifted her grip, pulling his finger back even further as he let out a pained cry and tried to twist his arm sideways to a more comfortable position, and failed. "Now, you have my attention. Think very carefully about what you wish to say now that you have it, or I will break your knee, and it will be several days before Shanalorre returns to be able to heal it." She did not release his finger. "Well? What do you have to say?"

He glared at her, his teeth bared and gritted together as his other hand kept opening and clenching into a fist, though that was probably because of her grip on his finger. "Where is my niece?" he finally managed to say.

"In my demesne, obviously. Where else would she be?"

"And why is she there? Before, she always accompanied you, but now she suddenly decides to stay away from her home?"

"...she decided it was important that she see to the comfort and well-being of the children whose parents sent them to live there for their safety, and so requested to stay so that she could see to it that they adjust to their new circumstances," Lori said flatly. "The children from here who would now be living away from their parents and might need reassurance? I believe she also didn't want to leave her cousin unattended."

He continued to make angry faces at her. "What assurance do we have that our Binder will remain safe in your demesne, then?"

Lori stared at him, something she'd only felt once before filling her. "What's your name?"

The man actually looked offended she had asked. "You know who I am, woma—ARGH!"

Lori turned towards Rian as she bent the finger back even further. "Rian, what is this absolute idiot's name?"

"His name's Lasponin, your Bindership," Rian said with a cheerful smile. Lori vaguely recognized it as the one for when he was being deliberately annoying.

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The feeling attached to the name. Lori nodded, turning back to her captive, who'd tried to kick her in her moment's inattention and found his legs were coming up short. He'd continue to unless he was willing to endure more pain by bending his arm to get closer. "Congratulations, Lasponin. You've just declared yourself so stupid I need to remember your name to keep you away from anything vital and important." The man managed to sputter indignantly while still pained by the pressure on his finger. "To answer your question, since you are obviously not smart enough to deduce the answer yourself, there is no assurance that Shanalorre will be safe. The only reason she still lives is because she can heal. Once I have managed to deduce how to utilize Deadspeaking and do the same, I will have no further need of her, and will be able to finalize her submission and surrender by taking this demesne's core."

He gaped at her, then yelled out, "Did you fools all hear that?-! She said it herself! She intends to kill her! She's no different from Grem!"

Lori stared at him again. "Yllian," she said over her shoulder.

"Yes, Great Binder." Oh good, she had gotten his name right.

"Have you told Shanalorre's aunt how she made the proposal to surrender this demesne to me?"

"…yes, Great Binder."

Lori nodded, then turned back towards the absolute idiot. "I think your marriage is suffering problems, Lasponin," she said, "if your wife neglected to inform you of that relevant detail. However, for your edification, Binder Shanalorre slit her wrist with a knife as part of her offer to surrender this demesne to me." Lori shook her head. "I still don't understand why she did that. Her life is worth more than all of yours, so why be willing to lose it?"

"Perhaps," Rian said blandly, his voice stripped of the annoying cheer of before, "she was following the precedent set by her predecessors?"

Lori snorted disdainfully. "Precedent," she said, the word dripping with scorn. She took a deep breath, then shrugged. "Well, regardless of the reason, she was already willing to lose her life simply to have her core vacant for me to claim, simply so that I would have a reason to take care of all of you people. She lives only because I need a healer. When I have no need of her in that capacity anymore, I will take her up on her original offer." She tilted her head. "Well, perhaps that counts as some sort of assurance, after all."

"Probably not, your Bindership," Rian said. "He doesn't look very assured."

"Yes, well, he's an idiot. Obviously, these matters are above his capabilities to comprehend."

"Liar! That… she wouldn't—"

Lori had no problem with bending her arm without losing her grip on his finger so she could get close enough to give him a resounding kick in the shin. "Never doubt my word again," she snapped as he cried out in pain from his leg, then cried out again as his change in posture to take pressure off his legs caused him to put more pressure on the finger in her grip. "An idiot like you isn't worth lying to. Why bother, when the truth is clearly enough to baffle your limited faculties?"

A thought occurred to her, and she frowned. "How did you ever manage to become a doctor? I know it's not Deadspeaking, but doesn't it at least require functional thought?" Shaking her head, Lori shoved him away—by his finger, for one last burst of pain—and picked up her staff as he recovered himself, hefting it in her hands.

"Your Bindership, if you don't finish your food soon, it will grow cold and congeal," Rian said. "And you still have more digging to do on the dragon shelter, remember?"

Lori considered his words as she eyed the idiotic malcontent. Finally, she said, "Get out of my sight so I can eat and get back to work, or I will beat you to instill the discipline that Shanalorre clearly failed to."

"And we won't tell Yoshka you asked about if her cousin was safe before you even bothered to find out if she was alive," Rian said with that cheerfulness that was specifically for being annoying. "Though you should really do something about this blatant favoritism of yours. You're going to make your daughter sad if she ever finds out you clearly like Shana more than you do her."

There were some chuckles at Rian's words as Lasponin somehow still managed an indignant glare at Lori. "I'll have you know that I was a doctor in the militia."

"Lord Yllian, would this level of discipline pass muster in the militia?" Rian said loudly, his voice still filled with that annoying cheerfulness. "Especially for a doctor?"

"It would not, Lord Rian."

"Ah, I see. Hypothetically speaking, if the doctor were still in the militia, how would such a glaring lapse be corrected?"

"Well, officially, his superior officer would call him up and tell him exactly how much of an embarrassment to the militia he is. Normally, an officer would be expected to avoid colorful language, but in such an instance, colorful language would be inevitable to illustrate exactly how deep in the shit pit he is. After this reprimand, he'd receive his punishment, which could start from typical labor so he stays out of trouble, but could go all the way up to beatings, lashings, canings, crucifixion…"

"Isn't that last one execution by a slow death from asphyxiation?"

"Not if you get him down before he dies."

"Ah. Good point. And unofficially?"

"That's only if he survives the beatings from everyone who takes offense at his behavior and don't want the officers to think they just stood by and did nothing."

"Ah. Well, fortunately, for the doctor, he's a civilian now and doesn't have a superior officer… well, save for his wife, anyway. Still, by that reasoning, I suppose everyone should just get back to their food and let her deal with him." There was a pause. Lori hadn't taken her eyes of Lasponin. "Out of curiosity, was she ever in the militia?"

"Oh, course. They met there."

"Ah. Well, I'm sure she'll remember that the standards of militia discipline shouldn't apply here."

"…if you say so, Lord Rian."

Had this been a story, Lori would have contemptuously turned her back on Lasponin and gone on with her meal, confident he was cowed as he stared ineffectually at her back to show how weak he was. That even if he clearly desired to attack her from behind, he was too much of a coward to go through with it without complete surprise on his side, and he'd scurry away before there was a scene transition or something.

Lori, because she wasn't a fool, didn't do this. Instead, she reversed her staff so that the thick metal butt was pointed up, one hand holding the staff near the middle and the other gripping the staff lower down, near what would usually be its head. In this configuration, it was nothing so much as a very long, mace-headed club.

Still glaring at her, he hastily fled, abandoning the dining hall entirely to retreat out among the houses.

"Las, that's not the way back to your house!" someone in the crowd yelled out, and there was some more scattered laughter.

Lori lowered her staff, orienting it the right way around. In the table next to her, the volunteers all finally sat down. Glancing around at the scant few other tables, many of whom were still staring at her, she finally spotted Shanalorre's aunt, whose frown smoothed as she saw Lori looking at her. The Dungeon Binder turned to look over everyone again. Many were also still watching her, their expressions harder to make out, but none were smiling.

She claimed some airwisps, binding them to raise the volume of her voice slightly so that she would be heard. "In case you missed the specifics," she said, "Binder Shanalorre did not remain in my primary demesne because of some nefarious plot on my part to kill her, because I wouldn't need such a thing if that were my intention. She stayed behind to make sure your children are safe, properly supplied, and could adjust to living and sleeping in a place without you." She snorted. If their roles were reversed, she wouldn't have wasted her time doing such things on the behalf of these ingrates. Shanalorre is a far better Dungeon Binder than they deserved.

Not that she'd say that out loud.

Rian clapped his hands twice, cupping them so they made deeper sound. "All right, everyone, show's over," he said. "Let's all get back to our food and try not to think of the fact that your little Dungeon Binder nearly committed suicide to keep you all from dying of starvation because some of you were stealing your own food like greedy bugs. Don't think about it and just eat. Sahil, why don't you complain this isn't enough food, that will liven everything up."

Lori sat down, picked up her spoon, and went back to eating. She grimaced as the food entered her mouth. It had gotten cold, and already the feeling was gritty as things congealed. Sighing, she rubbed her hands together until they felt intensely warm, and claimed the firewisps that the friction had generated to reheat her bowl.