At dinner that night, Lori handed Taeclas—she'd checked her now-triangular rock just a moment before—the nicer of the two river rocks she'd found that afternoon. Like Rian's, the rock fit easily in the palm, rounded and smooth, with a flat side that would let it lie evenly on a surface. The opposite side glowed from the heavily imbued binding of lightwisps anchored to it, shining brightly. "Here," she said as she held out the rock to the Deadspeaker.

"Oh! For me? Thank you!" Taeclas said as she reached for the rock, which Lori let go. "Ah, Rian had something like this. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised he got it from you. Now we don't have to use the oil lamp so much!"

"I told you you'd get one," Rian said.

"Don't lose it," Lori said. "Best you keep it in your belt pouch at all times."

"I will!" Taeclas said cheerfully, doing just that. "This will be really convenient for going out to the latrines at night. Even with the lights outside the houses, the way to the latrines is a little dark."

It is? "It is?" Lori said, looking towards Rian.

"I've never thought there was a problem," Rian said.

"Eh? But it's so dark! There's that slope going down to the pavilion there, and then there's another dark stretch on the road until you reach the path to the latrines."

Her lord looked genuinely confused. "That's… why don't you just use the latrine a little bit uphill from your house, at the end of your row?"

"There's a closer latrine?"

…

Was their Deadspeaker an idiot as well as insane? Actually, idiocy would explain naming a plant as well. But… she was a wizard. One couldn't be acknowledged as a wizard without the intelligence to have studied sufficiently! So she couldn't be an idiot! But she was acting like an idiot! So… how… how…

…

Lori decided to just not think about it. Though she wasn't going to let Taeclas use Deadspeaking on her at the moment. She'd see how the crops turned out first.

––––––––––––––––––

The next day, Lori headed for River's Fork, as much as she didn't want to.

With the boat back, she'd have preferred to use the Coldhold, but as it was just her, Riz, Shanalorre, and the ones Riz had chosen to escort her, the Coldhold would have been too much, so it was Lori's Ice Boat again. This time, however, Rian followed behind them on Lori's Boat, up until he overtook then because he had only himself as a passenger. He had to stop a few times to let them catch up.

They still managed to arrive in River's Fork a little past mid-morning, and fortunately or unfortunately, she hadn't seen the Typhon Beast drinking on the shore of the river on this trip.

Lori had disembarked and was watching as Lori's Boat was beached—she'd removed the bone panels that acted as stabilizers to keep the boat going straight beforehand—instead of being tied to the dock as normal when Yllian finally arrived. "Great Binder," he greeted, which Lori acknowledged with a nod.

"Yllian!" Rian called from where he was helping move the wooden boat further onto shore. "Could you call some more people over to help lift this out of the water? And call Lidzuga too? Her Bindership wants to talk to him!"

Once there were more people, it was relatively easy for all of them to lift Lori's Boat out of the water and place it on the trestle stands that usually supported it when it was stored in her dungeon. Once the boat was in place, the outriggers needed to be removed so they wouldn't weigh down the boat and make it wobble on the trestles.

By the time that this was done, with Rian using a wooden mallet to remove the wooden wedges that squeezed the locking mechanism holding the beams of the outrigger in place, Lidzuga had revealed himself. "You called for me, your Bindership?" the Deadspeaker said.

In reply, Lori held out the less nice of the two river rocks she'd found yesterday afternoon. Like the rock she'd given… whatshername… the crazy, possibly idiotic woman who'd named a plant… the rock fit easily in the hand. Its surfaces had been smoothed by time and the river's waters. One side was mostly flat, which would let it lie evenly on a surface, but rather than being rounded, it was irregularly shaped, with seven sides in total and had a pointed, if blunt, protrusion on the side opposite where it was flat. "Here," she said as she held out the rock to the Deadspeaker.

"Uh…Oh! Thank you, your Bindership! This will be really useful at night!" He glanced back towards the dome over the settlement. "And a bit in the late afternoon."

"Don't lose it. Keep it on your person at all times."

"Of course, your Bindership!" The Deadsp—Lidzuga seemed to have recovered from her chastisement. Lori wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

"I am told you've been performing maintenance on the houses and other structures of the demesne."

"Yes, your Bindership. Binder Shanalorre and I have an arrangement where she'll imbue any meanings I tame and leave deactivated overnight. It's really helped me with imbuement-heavy meanings. I'm almost done with all the houses that are occupied, there's just the ones that are high up on the central tree."

"So you haven't begun working on accelerating the growth rates of the crops yet?"

"Not yet, your Bindership. Lord Yllian and Binder Shanalorre both said that performing proper maintenance on the houses and the dome was to come first for public safety, and then Lord Rian said that a special wire was being made that would help me with claiming and taming the life in the crops. "

Well… she supposedly she hadn't exactly given him anything to do for his probation, so it only made sense that Yllian—and Shanalorre, apparently—decided to assign him productive work. "Good. I'm here to assign you further tasks. They will count towards the fulfillment of your probation."

"What do I need to do, your Bindership?" He sounded eager.

"Have you conducted an examination of the load-bearing portions of the dome yet?"

"Only of the broken portion, your Bindership," Lidzuga said promptly. "I'm told you were the one who wrapped it in stone? It seems to be holding, but Lord Yllian asked me to fuse the tree back to the stump, and there was enough contact that I was able to. If you could remove the stone, with Binder Shanalorre's help I should be able to fuse more wood to the stump for a more secure support, once we've collected enough."

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"Collect enough material to do so first," Lori said. "Unless there's an imminent structural risk, the matter is not a priority." She gestured at Lori's Boat. "This is our oldest boat. I am told it was built by Shanalorre's predecessor, who was also the one who built this dome. I need you to examine it and provide what maintenance is needed. Do what you can to waterproof it."

Lidzuga stared at the boat. "It's a box," he said, his tone strange.

"It was originally intended as a cargo barge that would be pulled from land. After I acquired it, it was modified to suit our needs. The modifications had to be as they were since we could not repair the boat should it be modified with carpentry."

"Oh… I guess that makes sense? Truthfully, I don't really have much experience with boats. The Coldhold and the one that took me here to the new continent is the extent of my experience with them."

"I'm sure Rian will be more than willing to answer any questions you have," Lori said. "However, that shouldn't be necessary. You are only to do maintenance, reinforcing the structure, check for rot, add more wood as necessary, and study the structure of the boat."

"Study it?" Lidzuga said cautiously.

"After some consideration, I have decided that directly comparing your productivity to Taeclas during your probationary period would be difficult to quantify." Possible, but difficult. It would need accurate record keeping and calculation, and they probably didn't have any people to spare for that. Something easier to confirm was better.

The feeling of hating Rian having a point was a familiar one to her by now. Not pleasant—being wrong would never be pleasant—but at least it meant future mistakes potentially avoided. Being annoyed that a mistake wasn't made was far preferable to being annoyed that a mistake had happened.

Lidzuga looked hopeful at her words, and fortunately for him that was all he did.

"Finish performing maintenance on all Deadspoken buildings under the dome, and maintenance on the dome itself. Keep the dome from collapsing and crushing everyone beneath it. Are you capable of that?"

Instead of answering, the Deadspeaker looked towards the dome, eyes narrowed critically. "Hmm… I could, but with this sort of structure, Deadspeaking alone has its limitations. It would be better if we had people who could climb to prune the branches and reduce growth that way. Without that… I would need a way to claim the entire dome and have Binder Shanalorre imbue it, simply so I'd have the sort of fine control needed to alter the shapes of branches enough to structurally weaken them."

Lori grimaced. That sounded extremely inefficient. "Do what you can that's reasonable. I'll see what can be done about manually…pruning? Pruning. Well, so be it. Maintenance of Deadspoken buildings will be your responsibility from now on, although you need only take action about an occupied building when a matter is brought to your attention. Inspect unoccupied buildings once a month at your discretion. The dome is to be actively maintained, lest it collapse, but how you go about it is up to you. If it becomes structurally weak and collapses during the next dragon's passing, I will want an explanation as to why. Is that understood?"

"Yes, your Bindership. House repairs when asked, storage repairs when needed, don't let the dome collapse."

Lori nodded. "Once you've finished inspecting and performing maintenance on the buildings and dome, your regular duties will be caring for the crops and accelerating their growth. A wire is being made to make it easier for you to claim the life in the crops."

"A wire? Not a mesh?"

Lori blinked. "A mesh?"

"Oh, you haven't heard of those?" Lidzuga said. "Well, no surprise, it's relatively recent. I heard some smiths were starting to make them and selling them to the farming demesnes outside of Covehold. You take wire and mount it to a wooden frame, arranging the wire into a lattice like a giant bugswatter. The lattice is mounted on a haft with a wire running down it." He mimed holding a long staff-like tool. "You hold the haft and lay the wire lattice on the crops you intend to claim and it lets you have a contact the size of the frame head. Properly arranged, the wire lattice can touch most of the crops the frame is laid on, and it's a tool that only needs a single person to use."

Lori stared at him. There was something about that smile… "Inform Rian," she said. "Explain every detail to him. He's the one arranging tool construction with the smiths. Whatever tool you receive, however, I expect you to get started on applying meanings on what crops we have to accelerate the harvest. At the moment, this demesne is subsisting on meat procured from hunting and seeling. With the typhon beast that settled outside of its borders, hunting has ceased, and what seeling is being done is not providing sufficient surplus for the demesne's winter stores."

For some reason, an eager smile broke out over Lidzuga's face. "There's a typhon beast outside of the demesne?"

"Yes, and you will not go near it until it's dead. Anatomical drawings can be made no matter what its vital state."

"But… the opportunity…!" The man looked like he was in actual physical pain.

"At the moment, the opportunity I'm concerned about is the opportunity to hunt and feed my demesnes, which its presence is preventing. So it will die."

"… can I at least be present when you deal with it?" he pleaded. "Just to see it alive and in motion…?"

Lori gave him an unamused look. "Convince me of your reliability by providing me with a harvest as soon as possible."

"Yes, your Bindership! You can count on me!"

Well… at least he intended to work. "Can you reproduce the meaning that's been used on the fruit trees?"

Again he paused, looking thoughtful. "Yes, although it will take time. A large amount of the trees are part of the meaning, so I'll need to claim relatively large portions of each tree I intend to place the meaning on. Though I respectfully suggest I don't use the exact same meaning."

"Why not?"

"The meaning on this one is a northern-style binding. As a side effect of the accelerated fruiting, the leaves and some other parts of the plant tend to run hotter than is normal for a plant. In the north, this wouldn't be a problem because of the climate, and actually lets them grow fruit trees from warmer environments, but with the summer we've been having, the parts of the plants under the influence of the meaning have been slowly dying because they've been getting too hot. I've taken the liberty of temporarily deactivating the meanings on the trees and letting them rest for the moment."

Lori frowned. "That is unacceptable," she said. "We need the fruits the trees provide to augment our food supplies."

"With all due respect, your Bindership, the fruit trees need time to recover. I could use a meaning to assist the trees to heal, but that would require altering the meaning on the life of the afflicted areas, and I'm not sure I could reconstruct the meaning in question."

Her eyes narrowed. "I thought you said that you could reproduce the meaning given time?"

"Yes, but that time would have been spent studying the meanings and trying to plot out its flow diagram. Whoever made this binding had either far more experience with it than me or had a flow diagram they were following, and I wouldn't know which. If there is a flow diagram I could follow, that would make things easier, but I'd still need to modify it for each fruit tree. That's another matter, the lack of adjustments to the meaning to account for the trees' growth, nutrient supply and pervading weather conditions have been part of what's harming it. The fertilizer and regular watering have helped, but…" He shrugged. "You don't just leave a meaning unattended on something alive. The living change, and the meaning has to be changed to account for that."

That last adage was a familiar one. She hadn't heard it in school—she'd been a Whisperer, after all, and had attended lectures meant for Whisperers—but it was often a sentiment she'd read in some form or other in her novels. She supposed this was probably evidence that it was true.

"We'll have to deal with that, then," she said. "In that case, in addition to monitoring the fruit trees and activating them when conditions are right, I will need to you find local fruit trees and apply an equivalent meaning to them. Once applied, be sure that people know to provide the fruit trees with waste and water. Yllian should be able to direct you towards the local fruit trees."

"Um, wouldn't it be better if I simply started raising a small grove of the fruits in question nearby?"

Lori looked at him. "That leads to the second part of your probation," she said eventually. "I have decided to assign you projects. These once your probationary period is over, completing these projects will earn you… time off…" she allowed her face to convey what she felt about the concept, "for you to conduct your research. But after your probationary period! You still need to prove your capability!"

"Yes, your Bindership! Thank you, your Bindership!"