Taeclas spent the rest of the afternoon in the dungeon farm ensuring that all their new seedlings and other plants had been properly moved to farming plots, even taking wooden scraps from the carpenters to build a small fence around the plots to discourage people from walking through them.

Lori, meanwhile, inspected the side tunnels she'd made looking for one that was convenient for her purposes. Thankfully, most were empty and none smelled of either piss or waste, although she found that someone had been using rocks and dirt to make their own tuber planters. Surprisingly, there wasn't as much of a mess as she thought there would be given that the rocks were a loose barrier. The improvised planter was small and the tuber plants in it stunted and wilting because they didn't have enough light despite being positioned as close to the mouth of the side tunnel as possible.

…

After the brat and Taeclas had moved the stunted tubers from the improvised planter to the plot with the seedlings—there was plenty of room left in the farm plots—Lori set about turning the end of one of the side tunnels into a warm environment suitable for the sweetgrass. She excavated stone from the floor to make a plant box for the sweetgrass. Bindings of lightwisps were anchored to the walls to shine light down on the empty planter box. She'd wire them later, but for now it would be enough for her to work.

Construction halted for lunch, and Lori found herself pleasantly surprised as when she saw that instead of flat little disks of bread Rian and Riz came back carrying round buns of leavened bread. The sound of conversation in the dining hall became loud and excited, and for once she could understand why. The flatbread they'd had was tasty, but only in comparison to not having flatbread. Having leavened bread…

For once, Lori bit into her bread first, savoring the airy texture, the warmth, and the hint of salt as she chewed—

She chewed and swallowed. "Rian, what are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" her lord said.

Lori rolled her eyes. "It looks like you're hollowing out your bread."

"Now that would be very silly of me. No, I'm packing in the insides of my bread to make more room. Completely different thing. My way doesn’t waste any of the bread."

All right, she'd concede that. "Well, why are you—" Lori broke off as Rian took a meaty, tubery spoonful of stew and began stuffing the bead. "Ah. That's why." She watched Rian as he continued stuffing his bread with stew, and he wasn't the only one. "No, no, this explains nothing. Rian, why are you stuffing your bread with stew?"

"Because this way, when I bite into it each mouthful will have a perfectly blend of sauce-soaked bread and stew," Rian said cheerfully. "Admittedly, this first attempt is probably going to have some defects that I'll need to correct in future versions, but testing will still be delicious." He poured in a spoonful of only the sauce the stew had.

"Well, be sure to eat it all. If it falls off your bread, I expect you to put it in your mouth and eat it anyway."

"Yes, your Bindership." Rian began eating his stew-filled roll.

"Shasha, can you make me one of those?" Shanalorre's cousin said from the other side of the other Dungeon Binder.

"Of course, Yoshka. Give me your bread."

Lori glanced at her roll—no, no, she wasn't going to do something so silly. She ate as she always had, consuming her stew with a spoon and dipping in piece of bread for variety, then wiping her bowl with the last of the bread to clean it.

Once lunch was finished, Lori went back to work. Excavating stone from the floor of the dungeon farm—it would be the start of a new farm plot—she used the stone to raise up a wall to block off the planter for the sweetgrass. With string, weight and stone-levelling tool in hand, Lori made the wall tolerably plumb, leaving a door-sized opening to be filled in with a door later. The resulting room wasn't very big—it was a four-pace length of excavated corridor, with a third of that consisting of the empty planter—but it should be large enough to grow the sweetgrass.

"Ah, it's a bit too shallow, L—I mean, your Bindership," Taeclas said, visibly reminding herself to not use Lori's name at the last moment. "I'm keeping Honey in a pot right now, but sweetgrass is… well, a grass. It needs room to spread its roots, especially if we're going to be growing more sweetgrass than just Honey."

"I see," Lori said, looking down at the planter she'd made. "How deep?"

"Oh, a pace would be best, but half a pace will do as well. Although it will need drainage so that the roots don't rot."

… well, it was still summer. The sweetgrass could wait a day. Thankfully they still had farm plot-to-be full of rocks.

Once Lori had excavated the plot to a pace and a half, she made a small drainage cistern off to the side to give water somewhere to go, surrounding the latter with a knee-high wall to keep people from accidentally falling in. Then it became a high wall so that people wouldn't accidentally trip on it. And then she widened it because in the event a child fell in head-first, they'd be stuck in the position and potentially drown…

Stolen novel; please report.

In the end, it was a larger cistern with a high wall around it, giving it a strong resemblance to a well, but at least it was… well, far less likely someone could fall in and drown while unnoticed.

"Rian," she told him when he sat down at the table, his hair damp from the baths, "I need people to put some of the drainage rocks in the plot I made for Taeclas' sweetgrass."

"Oh, you made a special plot for Honey? That was nice of you!"

Of course he knew what the plant was called. Though to be fair, even she was unlikely to think the sweetgrass looked like anyone else…

"Focus, Rian," Lori said flatly.

"Right, drainage stones to be moved into the plot."

"Large stones, smaller stones, and then a pace of dirt on top. Then have the carpenters make a door for the doorway I made."

"You made Honey her own room?"

"The sweetgrass needs warmer conditions, so it's best to separate it from the other crops."

"Ah. Would a normal door from the carpenters suffice, or do you want Tae to try at her hand at making the door?"

Lori waved a hand dismissively. "Whichever is faster."

"Are you sure? A simple project like this would be a good time to assess Taeclas' skill in woodworking, as well as how well she works with the carpenters."

Lori considered that. "Fine. Have Taeclas assist with building the door and learn whatever thing you feel needs to be learned from it."

Rian nodded as Umu arrived, stepping over the bench to sit next to Rian. She leaned against him, and without looking away from Lori he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, giving her a squeeze in acknowledgement. "So, I'm up to date on what happened in the demesnes while I was gone. Except for the typhon beast and the disruption to hunting that it caused, everything seems to have gone well, so there isn't really anything to worry about. Well, there's our effect on the local seel population, but that's sort of inevitable. In lieu of the lack of problems, I've had the carpenters start measuring everyone's windows in preparation for putting paper on them."

"Start with Shanalorre's residence," Lori said. "The rest may be at your own discretion." With paper-covered windows, people could open the shutters on their homes to let in light without inviting in bugs. While it would be little advantage in the summer, when people would likely prefer to let in cooler outside air even at the cost of letting in some bugs, come the next season and the winter it would be more useful.

Another nod. "Hopefully the bugs won't chew on the paper too quickly," he said as Mikon and Riz arrived, sitting on his other side from Umu. “Now, setting aside the issue of the Typhon Beast, are we still continuing the construction of the sawmill?”

Lori nodded. “Yes. With you present, we can at least begin the installation of the waterwheel and saw.” The carpenters and smiths had been making those over the past month, along with all the fittings needed to mount them. “What is the status of those parts?”

“The smiths managed to finish giving the saw wheel teeth and sharpening them, so there’s that. The carpenters have already test fit the water wheel, and have been working on the axles and gears needed for it. They're not done with all the fittings yet, since they haven't been rushing it like they did the waterwheel we built for River's Fork last year, but we can get started on the foundations for the mill. And by 'we', I really do mean 'we'. We can have people dig up the foundations and you can just set the stone in place when it's deep enough, maybe excavate the river a little so that there's room for the waterwheel.”

"Did you think I wasn't doing anything the whole month you were gone? I've already done the river excavation."

"Ah, of course. I apologize for presuming otherwise. I'll have people start digging. The carpenters should be mostly done with window frames by the time the excavation is finished and you've put in the foundations, and we can use the dirt for Honey's farm plot."

"Be sure to tell them to clean after themselves if they track dirt into my Dungeon."

"I'm sure the people in charge of cleaning will be more than willing do that themselves, but I'll be sure to tell them."

"Hello, Riz! Hello, Mikon! Hello, Umu! Hello, Rian! And can you please tell her Bindership that I said hello and that Honey is really grateful for the special room her Bindership is making?"

Rian smiled at Lori. "Tae says hello and that Honey is really grateful for the special room you're making for her."

"Noted," Lori said flatly as her new Deadspeaker and her wife sat down next to Umu, the latter giving the weaver her own more subdued greeting. "Taeclas, exempting the sweetgrass, have you finished with tending to the crops that you transferred to the dungeon farm?"

"Oh, I can talk to you now! Hello, Binder Lori! Your demesne is wonderful! The baths are so nice! Ah, I've finished transferring them all, and now I just have to tend them to be sure they're settling in properly. But don't worry, I just need to visit them every morning, I can get to work on the crops in the fields outside. However, Shana—"

"Shanalorre."

"Oh, right. Shanalorre suggested we practice working together first, holding a wire between us and then I use it to claim all the separate crops and tame their life into meanings, and then she uses the wire to imbue them, and then I activate the meanings. If we practice doing that for a little bit, we'll be able to do things faster. Shanalorre said she'd never used imbued magic through a wire before, so she probably needs some practice on that at least."

Lori frowned. On the one hand, she didn't want Shanalorre to become more capable of Deadspeaking. On the other hand, simply learning how to imbue things through metal wasn't really dangerous to Lori. Still, she'd have to prevent Shanalorre from learning anything else. The other Dungeon Binder was as Lori wanted her: useful, capable, and of little threat. Allowing her to learn to do anything beyond that was giving the Dungeon Binder the means to challenge Lori, and she couldn't have that.

"As long as she practices imbuement only," Lori said.

"Of course," Taeclas agreed. "It's far too dangerous for her to try anything else… well, besides the one meaning she knows, but according to her that doesn't work on plants, only people and maybe beasts and fursh. And given how much Rian says needs to be done, I don't really have time to try to teach her. It's not like I have any primers."

"Oh—"

Lori kicked Rian. Fortunately, her aim was true, and her foot connected with him instead of either of the women next to him.

Her lord stared at her, but didn't continue whatever he was going to say.

"Eh? What was that Rian?" Taeclas said, turning towards him.

"Nothing, I just accidentally hit my own knee with my boot heel."

"Oh, I hate it when that happens. If there's any more pain, just massage it and it should be fine by tomorrow. Ah, if we had ice I'd recommend putting some on it…"

"I can scrape off some frost from the walls of the cold room."

"There's a cold room?-!"