"With another week of similar growth, the surface area of the demesne will increase by almost half of it original size," Rian practically cheered after he did some calculations on his slate, muttering to himself the whole time. "At this rate, we might even be the size of Covehold Demesne in a year or two!"

"Unlikely," Lori said flatly. "It's clear the summer heat is some kind of factor, so growth will be slowed over winter. And your estimate is assuming that I do nothing but expand the demesne. Did you forget I need to make a new steam jet driver today?"

"Ah… right…" Rian laughed, sounding embarrassed. "Sorry, I forgot."

"This obsession of yours with numbers going up is very concerning, Rian."

"I do not have an obsession! It's not the numbers that matter, it's what they represent!"

"Rian, cease pouting, it makes you look like a child."

As much as she thought Rian's fixation on numbers was silly, she had to admit that his calculation helped put the expansion of her demesne into perspective. Still, the week she'd spent expanding her demesne was only possible because there was nothing she had to do personally. Even so, part of her mind had been waiting for the announcement from Shanalorre, informing Lori that a large number of people were entering the boundaries of River's Fork Demesne…

Rian shook his head. "Fine, fine… so, about the steam jet driver. Are you going to…?" He hesitated, glancing sideways towards Shanalorre and…—Lori checked the rocks in her belt pouch—Taeclas. "Actually, how secret is this? Besides, you know, all the smiths knowing about it."

Lori also turned to look towards the two, considering. Shanalorre stared back impassively, while Taeclas seemed wary. She tried to consider the situation from their perspective. Technically, they already knew of the existence of the alloys—she and Rian had discussed it at the table—but there had been no mention as to what exactly those alloys were. All either knew would be that they had spent a day on experimental metallurgy.

On the other hand, both already knew that she could produce bound tools in some way…

"Binder Shanalorre," Lori said, "Wizard Taeclas. You are both aware of the fact that I have been producing bound tools."

"Yes, Great Binder."

"Good morning, Binder Lori! Yes, and I've been wanting to talk to you about those… but I'll ask later."

Lori nodded curtly. "The fact that I am producing bound tools is a secret that is to be kept to my demesnes. Under no circumstances are you to reveal it to anyone else without my explicit order to do so. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Great Binder," Shanalorre said promptly, and Lori nodded in satisfaction.

"… why are you keeping the fact that you can make bound tools a secret?" Taeclas asked.

Lori stared at her. "Does that really have to be explained?"

"Uh, yes? I mean, you can make wispbeads and bound tools. You're already selling wispbeads to Covehold. If they find out you have bound tools too, people would be screaming at you to take their beads or whatever else you wanted as payment."

"Because having the ability to make my own bound tools is an advantage I have over all other demesnes on this continent," Lori said. "While Covehold Demesne, and possibly some of the others as well, have bound tools, they cannot make more, save for if they have the necessary components or finished tools brought over from the old continent. If people from outside of my demesne realized I had the capability, every Dungeon Binder and wizard who can make a demesne will want to know how I do so to have that advantage themselves. This will no doubt result in them coming after my demesne to try and find out the secrets of doing so. Other demesnes would attack us to try and force me to. I would need to worry about spies breaking into my room looking for hypothetical notes as to how it is done—as if I would simply write it down—or women coming to seduce me to somehow convince me to reveal my methodology."

"…why women?" Rian asked.

"It's always women in plays and novels for some reason."

"Ah, of course, of course. Silly of me for asking."

"…I… don't think anyone would do that? They'd probably just try to buy bound tools from you," Taeclas said hesitantly.

"It's what I would do in their place," Lori said.

"Ah, I see," Shanalorre said, nodding.

As Taeclas stared at her, Lori met her gaze. "So. You will not reveal the fact that I am capable of making bound tools to anyone, unless I have explicitly given you permission to. Is that clear?"

The Deadspeaker hesitated, glancing at Rian.

Rian shrugged. "Think about it this way. Who can you tell? Why would you tell them?"

Taeclas blinked and titled her head thoughtfully. Then she nodded. "Yes, Great Binder. I promise I won't tell anyone."

Lori nodded, satisfied.

"And goes for all of you listening in too!" Rian suddenly cried, raising his voice to be heard. "Understood?"

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Various staggered and renditions of, "Yes, Lord Rian!" sounded out from the tables around them, including high-pitched ones from behind Lori.

"Don't promise to me, promise her Bindership. She's the one who's going to be annoyed at you and make your lives terrible over this, after all."

Another staggered chorus followed, this time a rendition of, "Yes, your Bindership."

Lori nodded again. "Very well. Now, with that out of the way, what were you saying, Rian?"

"Are you planning to add a prototype dial or slider to the new bound tool?"

"Eventually. At the moment, we need to design a physical mechanism for it."

"And by 'we', you mean the smiths and carpenters."

Lori shrugged. "I leave such matters to those with the expertise."

"Should I get them after breakfast, then?"

Lori considered it. "Yes, but we should begin testing its efficacy with something besides a driver bound tool. A wisplight will do. Once the prototype has proven effective, then it would be a simple matter to integrate it into a driver."

Rian nodded. "What sort of mechanism do you have in mind, then? A dial, a slider or a lever?"

"Whichever is easy to build, and least likely to break."

"So… no specific preference between the three, then?"

Lori rolled her eyes. "No, so you can put whatever idea you no doubt have into action."

"Well, if you give permission like that…"

"Just get me a usable mechanism that I can test on a wisplight. You may satisfy all your concerns about people accidentally bumping into the mechanism or whatever else as long as you bring me that."

"I'll get the smiths and carpenters and Taeclas on it after breakfast, your Bindership."

"Wait, I will?"

Rian looked towards the Deadspeaker. "Well, your part can wait until after lunch, we'll probably need some wood fused together."

"Oh, I can do that! Though, you know, what you just talked about doesn't seem worth swearing me to secrecy and being worried about women coming to seduce her Bindership."

"Her Bindership has her reasons, I'm sure."

––––––––––––––––––

It took two days of work, but eventually the redsmiths and carpenters and Rian were able to put together a mechanism utilizing the darkwisp-anchored white Iridescence alloy.

Lori spent the mornings during that time testing the alloy to better familiarize herself with how its magic-impeding properties worked. The smiths had drawn a portion of the samples out into wires to test their ductility—where it was revealed that the airwisp and waterwisp alloys could be drawn into wires more easily than the other samples, with the airwisps able to be drawn much finer than the waterwisps—so she had a length of darkwisp alloy wire to experiment with, even after she gave a ten yustri length of it to Rian for the mechanism being made.

She had begun by testing how much wire was needed for the resistance in the wire to lower to a level where enough magic could pass through and imbue the binding such that the alloy was usable for the purpose it was intended for. In this case, she'd taken one of the wisplights she had made and tied the darkwisp alloy wires she was testing around the bead receptacle. She then touched the alloy wire with a bead, moving it back and forth and using the wisplight's brightness to assess how much of the imbuement from the bead was reaching the binding of lightwisps anchored to the bound tool's core.

It took several tests and cutting wires of different lengths before she was forced to reach a conclusion: it didn't matter how long the wire was. Touching the bead to the middle of the alloy wire—with the bead not connected to another wire to make the contact point more precise—caused the wisplight to glow at the same intensity whether the alloy wire was five yustri or ten yustri long.

Which made no sense! Surely there was more darkwisps alloyed to the longer length than the shorter one? And yet, no matter how she tried to change the results, it remained consistent.

On the one hand, this was convenient, as it meant that any length of allowed wire would do, although longer lengths of course would allow for more fine control. On the other hand… it made no sense! The longer wire should offer more resistance because there was more alloyed copper for the magic to pass through! But that wasn't what happened!

…

She wondered if it was results like this that had led to the empiricists wiping out the thought experimentists. This was surely a test that needed empirical results, as a thought experiment would have been incorrect unless one already knew the results, in which case one has already done empirical testing.

In the afternoon, she worked on expanding the demesne, writing down the results of her morning's experimentation onto a bone tablet for Rian to transcribe into his notebook later as she imbued the shells of bindings. She wasn't able to expand as many times as in a usual day, but that was to be expected.

At the end of those two days, Rian presented the finished mechanism to her at dinner. It was a wooden tube that appeared to be four yustri thick, just the right size to be gripped comfortably. From one end, a pair of copper wires stuck out, while on the other end was a rounded knob. On opposite sides of the tube were long, groove-like holes that showed that the tube had been hollowed out and had another tube inside it. A peg that passed through the inner tube helped it slide back and forth along the groove while keeping it from slipping out or rotating.

"How does it work?" she asked, turning the mechanism over in her hands.

"It's basically a sliding switch," Rian said. "There are two wires in there running in parallel, and a piece of springy alloy to provide tension. As you pull out the knob—" Lori gripped the knob and did so, and it slid out with some resistance, "—the pure copper contact slides along the dark alloy wire, until it reaches the pure copper wire welded to the end of it. When fully pushed in, the wires are not in contact. Pulling it out a little puts the copper in contact with the alloy, and pulling it out fully the contacts are copper to pure unalloyed copper. The wood is there as a hard casing so it can be used in day to day work on a boat."

Lori considered that exposition, pulling the knob in and out of the tube. "And if someone accidentally struck the slider, pushing it in deactivates the bound tool," she surmised.

"Yup," he chirped. "I'll admit, this was designed with a boat driver in mind, but it should be usable for wisplights and… well, whatever else it could be used for. Unfortunately, at the moment we couldn't give that slider a way to activate a second bound tool so the driver can go in reverse, so if you're going to put a reverse setting on this one, it will need a second switch."

Lori frowned, but she supposed that was to be expected. "Something to consider. At worst, Lori's Boat Three simply won't have the capability for the driver to go in reverse. I'll test this mechanism tonight and inform you if it can be used for a driver bound tool tomorrow."

Rian twitched for some reason. "I'll have the carpenters make some oars for the boat to help it maneuver. I've also taken the liberty of having the carpenters put together the usual driver fittings, so when you're ready, all you'll need is a bone tube."

Ah. Well, that was convenient. "Is there anything else?" Lori asked as she set the sliding switch mechanism to one side.

"Well," Rian began as Deadspeaker whatshernane—Lori glanced at the headcloth she was wearing, which had 'Taeclas' embroidered onto it—and her wife sat down on the bench next to Umu, "they've started to get some good ore from the copper mine, and I've been having them start using the mine tailings to build up more farming terraces, or at least reinforce the ones already there…"