It turned out the smiths were currently busy doing maintenance on the metal tools the demesne had. Lori decided it was best not to interrupt them, but she had Rian arrange for them to be free to assist her the following day.

That prompted Lori to go check that the treasure room was in order. Fortunately, all the dragon scales were still there. The anatass scale had a chunk of it removed, but that was from her wand. The pile of copper ingots was piled neatly on the ground next to the scales, arranged in a aesthetically pleasing alternating pattern. In one corner, a pile of planks that contained months of inventory records lay. Lori might have to tell Rian to transfer those onto bone tablets to make a smaller stack and so they could get the planks back. She used—had used—thin stone tablets on which she wrote with a beast-tooth stylus after softening a thin layer of the stone, but even she had to be careful with that lest she drop the tablets and break them.

With the bone tablets proving more durable and lighter—if a far more limited resource than rock—her permanent record keeping could switch to that, although… well, her time would be bound up in making the tablets and softening a bit of the surface of the bone so it can be written on. Thankfully, the writing wouldn't be all her. Rian could write, and Shanalorre had shown she could as well. The other Dungeon Binder's handwriting was actually better than his. And she remembered… ah, yes, they had an astrologer, right? She remembered something about Rian having him write things out. So that was three people to do the writing for her right there!

It was late enough in the day that she had dismissed Rian so he could… well, do Rian things. The bone tablet, she took back and inscribed the notes more permanently onto another bone tablet using a stylus, then spend the rest of the afternoon making blank bone tablets to transfer their old notes onto. It was mostly something to keep her hands occupied as she thought about what she had learned and how it might be applied to practical bound tool making.

While she'd realized that white Iridescence was most likely a component—admittedly sometime after she'd decided to put experiments on hold in favor of bead production—today had been the first time she'd had the opportunity to confirm it. It was nice to be able to confirm things and not simply have only thought experiments to base her plans on.

Her mind was already thinking of further experiments for tomorrow. Rian had proposed that they basically suspend white iridescence with a binding of firewisps anchored to it in molten copper to try to prevent the white iridescence from moving so that the binding won't become disarranged. Of course, in hindsight, it was an extreme step when they could do a similar step using earthwisps and white Iridescence being suspended in stone, or bone. It wouldn't be possible with water, unfortunately, unless one did it with dry solidified water. Done that way it would probably work, but as soon as the imbuement keeping the water solidified ran out… well, it would turn into ice that would start melting…

Which… wouldn't actually be water the white Iridescence could dissolve in at that point. Would that work? Bury some white iridescence in the ice hull of the Coldhold, anchor the binding to it, and when the imbuement ran out, theoretically the binding would be maintained long enough for someone to put a bead to some kind of metal contact and wire to imbue the binding and solidify the hull again.

They should probably test that. As long as they got all the water, they could recover the dissolved white Iridescence.

… she probably wouldn't use it on the Coldhold, though. Too easy for another Whisperer to claim the binding through the ice or the metal contact for the bead, and alter it. At least with her blood, her claim to the waterwisps through her affinity would allow her to perceive and fight such a thing. Hmm… would wisps anchored to both white Iridescence and another point that wasn't white iridescence maintain the anchor after the imbuement was used up?

The thoughts occupied her mind as she softened bone and then flattened it out on a sheet of leather on her table, then started to cut up the thin slab into smaller tablets. She only managed to do two slabs when Rian knocked on her door to announce it was time for dinner. He was smiling, and… well, it didn't make her annoyed to look at it.

The seel hanging outside her door was removed, and she handed it to Rian so that it would be added to tomorrow's breakfast. She wondered if she should start putting some sort of rack next to her door instead of a hole to hang the hooks on. Recently all the seels the brat had been leaving her had been long enough to touch the floor.

The three were already at the table, and for some reason they were all huddled together and speaking quietly, their tones urgent. Lori didn't bother to listen as she took her own seat on the bench opposite them. At least, that was the intention as she waited for Rian to come back, but the way the three kept glancing at her as she began to set up the chatrang board…

"What?" she demanded flatly as she finished putting the last pieces into place.

Riz and Umu immediately looked away, one looking over at another table, the other looking down at the grain of the wood. Mikon, however, met her eyes. "Thank you for lifting Rian's mood," she smiling in a Rian-like way.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Lori shrugged. "He's much more competent and efficient when he's smiling. Smiling for real," she amended. "That said, his enthusiasm for such things is nearly disturbing. Useful but disturbing." Still far better than his strange voting fetish, though.

"Do you think if we asked him to write things for us, it would lift his mood too?" Mikon asked. On either side of her, the other two leaned towards Lori.

"No," she said bluntly. "It's not that he's writing things down, it's what he's writing down. He's writing answers to questions he thinks are interesting to answer, as well as recording the process of attaining those answers." She titled her head. "Though I don't see why you'd need to do such a thing to lift his mood. Aren't the three of you sleeping with him?"

The three stared at her. Umu was reddening for some reason, while Riz was… well, it looked like she was trying to glare and not doing it very well. Mikon sighed as Lori heard snickering coming from the other tables around them save from behind her.

…

Wait…

She should probably have left this alone. After all, whatever they got up to had nothing to do with her. That said, the possibility of some sort of misunderstanding on their part out of ignorance… "You… know sleeping with someone is a euphemism, right?" she said as she claimed and bound the airwisps behind her to keep her words from being audible to the children. It was… well, probably futile, but she felt she had to make the attempt. "You don't actually sleep, you…" She touched the tips of her thumbs and forefingers together, making an elongated hole shape with either hand, then began to rub them together.

"Of course we know that!" Riz hissed, glaring around her as if trying to deter listeners. "What do you think we've been trying to do?"

"Glare at Umu until she goes away and willfully ignore how Mikon wants to—" Lori made circles with her fingers again and repeated rubbing them together, "the both of you."

Riz and Umu glanced at Mikon sitting between them. The other weaver shuffled away slightly, staring at the table again, while the perpetual non-officer sighed.

"Her Bindership doesn't want to know, Riz," Mikon said, still smiling and looking unperturbed.

"I don't. I really don't," Lori confirmed. Still, an almost morbid curiosity filled her. They haven't? At all? It had been two, almost three seasons! And the few times she'd visited at night to talk to Rian in private, all four had clearly intended to sleep in the same bed! Granted, the house had lacked that smell that came after her mothers… but… Had they never bothered to even suggest it?

This flow of thought was interrupted as Rian came back, now without the seel. "Hey, I'm back," he said, and the three women opposite Lori seemed to jump in place. Umu moved one way and the other two moved another, making a place in front of Lori for Rian to sit in. She let the binding of airwisps behind her disperse, and the sound changed slightly as the sounds from the children's direction finally reached her. "Ah, did I interrupt something? Were the four of you talking?"

"No, you weren't interrupting at all, Rian!"

"It wasn't anything!"

Mikon simply smiled at him. "Did you have fun today, Rian?" she said as she made the first move on the chatrang board.

He blinked at the direct question, then his smile widened. "Yeah, it was fun. Just what I needed after the past few weeks."

"I thought that was what finding reasons to fistfight people was for?" Lori said blandly as she responded to Mikon's opening.

"No, that was to tell them they're annoying. At best it's cathartic, but not actually fun. While there are people who find physical violence fun for its own sake, I'm not one of them. The aches afterward remind why it's such a bad idea."

"You've done it several times."

"Yes, but in my defense, it's usually after I stop aching and therefore need a reminder." Rian shrugged as Mikon made her next move, moving another militia to be able to open the way for her wizards. "So I talked to the smiths again before I called you down, and they're ready to help with the experiments tomorrow. Hopefully, it will work."

Lori nodded. "Rian, we had an astrologer around here somewhere, right?"

"Yes, Cassan," Rian said promptly. "What about him?"

"Can he write?"

"Oh, yes. He's one of the people I've asked to help me keep track of our inventory. Why do you need something wri—wait, are you planning to have experiments without me again?"

Lori gave him a flat look as he suddenly leaned towards her from across the table. "No, I need people to transcribe some things for me. And for you, for that matter." She moved her Horotract, moving it over her militia.

He blinked. "Huh?"

"I want him to transcribe the records on the planks being stored onto some tablets," Lori said. "It will let us stop using the wood for record keeping. The same for some other materials that I don't want to keep recorded onto stone anymore."

"Oh! I'll talk to him, he should be willing to do it. But I thought you had to do it because the stone tablets broke easily?"

"I will still need to be present, since it will involve softening earthwisps, but he should be able to mostly do it himself. I will need you to write too."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I need you to transcribe our research notes."

Rian raised an eyebrow as Mikon mimicked her move, lifting her Horotract over the militia as well. "Don't trust anyone else to know what it says?"

"No. You already know, so you copy it."

A small sigh. "Yes, your Bindership."

Lori pointed at him. "See? It's not just being asked to write something."

"Uh… what?"

"You still have the notes in your house?"

"Uh, yes. I was planning to read them tonight—"

"No. We'll be taking them back to my room. You can peruse them when you're transcribing."

"Can you leave just one…?"

"No. If you want to entertain yourself tonight, find something else to do."

Next to him, three women stared at Lori. She ignored them.

Rain didn't notice. "Well, I suppose I can think up more experiments…"

"I already have my own experiments I want to run," Lori interrupted. "Stop trying to think of ways of staying up late. My orders about you getting rest still stand. I want you at your best for tomorrow's experiments so you can take proper notes.

Her lord pouted—what was he, a child?— but sighed in a resigned sort of way. "Yeah, I suppose you're right."

"I'm always right."

He gave her a flat look. "Didn't you decide to ride a moving rock?"

"You decided to go hunting while sleep deprived."