"Well, I think that went nicely," Rian said happily as he carried his various planks and rocks with notes on it down to one of the alcoves she'd made in the new level while people put the dining hall back to the way it usually was and the volunteers got started cooking lunch. So close to midday, with not enough time to get any substantive work done, people were taking a cue from the children and resting, enjoying the free time until they had to work in the afternoon. She would transcribe the notes on the things into stone tablets later, once Rian had gone over them to ascertain what was worth preserving. "You didn't actively have to actually threaten anyone with death, I think people are going to get along better now, except for the selfish ones who would be hard to get along with in any case, and you basically legally emancipated every child in the demesne and explicitly made them majority homeowners over adults." Rian tilted his head thoughtfully. "I'm not sure I want to count that last one as too much of a win."

"They contribute to my demesne, why would I consider them as less important than any of the already unimportant people?" Lori said.

"You can't fool me," Rian said. "Or else you wouldn't wait until no one but me can hear you before saying things like that. Aren't you worried I'll quit after you keep saying I'm unimportant?"

"If you quit, I'm revoking everyone's rights," Lori said. "That was the agreement. I don't care about it but you do."

"Oh yes. How silly of me to forget," Rian said. "Well, I'm still happy with this. Though it does bring up a few things I need to talk to you about."

"Doesn't it always?" she said.

"You were the one who wanted to be the Dungeon Binder of a demesne," Rian said. "Did you think it was all board games all the time?"

She stopped. "Board games?" she said.

Rian shrugged. "I don't know anything you like doing for fun besides your new obsession with sunk." Sometimes she wondered about his accent. It made him pronounce words strangely. "I mean, you don't seem the type to just sit around with a glass of pretentiously expensive drink and look at yourself in the mirror."

"Sit around with a drink and look at myself in a mirror?" she repeated again. "Is that what you think Binders do?"

"I think it's what people think Binders do, when they only listen to the stories and don't stop to consider all the administrative work that goes with being the head of the government," Rian said.

"If people only listen to stories, they probably think Binders spend all their time conveniently dying and losing their dungeon's core for some lack wit story character to somehow fortuitously find and bond," Lori retorted.

To her surprise, Rian chuckled. "I can't argue with you there. But still, it was a good meeting. Hopefully people will be able to work out their differences among themselves in the future instead of complaining about it and getting angry with each other. "

"You're just happy because you got to give another heroic speech," Lori said.

Rian blinked at her. "What? I wasn't giving a heroic speech. I was just telling people how things were!"

Lori stopped and stared at him.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he said.

"Never mind," she said, rolling her eyes and not needing to worry about hiding it.

"Never mind what?" Rian asked, looking confused. "Lori, never mind what?"

"If you don't know, I see no need to inform you," Lori said.

"The most terrifying words a woman can say to a man, short of 'I'm going to rip off your balls'," Rian said. "Fine, don't tell me. But if I don't know, you can't blame me for not knowing! Because you didn't tell me! Whatever it is!"

"Noted," Lori said dryly. "Come on, I want to take a nap, all this nonsense made me sleepy."

"Having trouble sleeping?" Rian asked, tilting his head.

Lori thought of her hard bed and the seeming hours she lay there staring at the stony ceiling, trying to get any magic besides Whispering to work! "The meeting bored me," she said. "So I want to nap."

"Well, sorry if it didn't hold your interest," Rian said, rolling his eyes. "Should I arrange for a snack intermission in the middle next time?"

"Yes, that would be nice," Lori agreed. She yawned. Yes, she definitely needed a nap. "Wake me up when the food is ready," she said, heading for her rooms.

"How?" Rian said behind her. "You don't exactly have a door bell!"

Her nap was quite enjoyable, and she woke up in time for lunch.

––––––––––––––––––

"All right," Lori told him at dinner as she started setting up her game board after an afternoon of excavating, adjusting water flows and temperatures, and curing wood. "Tell me."

"Tell you what?" Rian said as he sat down to wait for the food to get ready, massaging his hands.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Tell me what new thing you think we need that's going to keep me from having a wooden cup of pretentiously expensive water and looking at my shadow on the wall," Lori said.

Rian took a moment to consider that. "Huh. We really don't have anything to drink besides water, do we?" he mused. "We don't really have enough fruit to make juice. I don't know if anyone has a mirror either…"

"If you don't tell me now, I'm going to ignore you if you try to bring it up tomorrow," Lori said. "I already need to finish the Dungeon's new level and make a mushroom farm."

"So, we need a bridge," Rian said briskly.

"A bridge," Lori said blandly.

"A bridge," Rian confirmed. "The river cuts the demesne in two. Half the resources are on the other side and there's no easy way to cross. At the very least, if we can get a bridge up we'd be able to collect the edibles, ropeweed and trees on that side, and we'd also be able to use it as more farmland." He considered. "Actually, it might be good to make the other side our industrial area, give the tanners and other people someplace distant from food preparation and living quarters to keep their chemicals.

"I thought I made it clear I wasn't going to build a bridge and you'd had a long rope commissioned for a ferry?" Lori said.

"At the very least, we could at least put in a dock, so we can use a boat–"

"Lori's Boat."

"A boat, not necessarily that one," Rian stressed, "to cross between sides. Or are you seriously going to call every boat we make 'Lori's Boat'?"

"What's wrong with it?" Lori challenged. "'Lori's Boat' is a fine name."

"I'm not going to argue with you about this," Rian said, which was the first sensible thing he said, "but regardless of how, we need to see about making an easier way to cross to the other side. It's not like we can just wade across. It's too deep for that, and just swimming across won't let us bring along necessary equipment." He tilted his head. "Maybe you can use magic to make a tunnel of air under the water so we can just walk across?"

Lori stared at him. He stared right back.

"You're serious," she said blandly.

"No, I'm Rian, we've been over this already."

"You want me to use magic to make a tunnel of air," Lori repeated.

He shrugged. "I don't know your limits. For all I know, you could, you just haven't thought about it."

"Air goes up in water, Rian," she said. "Any airwisps I push into water would…. Well, it wouldn't last."

"And if you used magic to have the water sort of create a tunnel?" Rian said, making a vaguely lewd gesture in the air with his hands.

"Which force do you want to hear destroying this tunnel, the weight of the water pressing down on it, the insufficiency of tension and cohesion, or the fact the air in the 'tunnel' would be buoyant and try to rise?" Lori said. "And no, before you ask, I'm not going to try tunneling under the river through the stone. While possible, it would be much too time consuming. The rope to be used to pull a ferry across would be woven faster."

Rian shrugged, not seeming to care he had been shown to be ignorant. "I didn't know, so I asked," he said. "You can't blame me for thinking about it, the way you can drag around water like a toy on a string."

Lori coughed. "Yes… well. While I am, of course, very powerful and certainly impressive, some things I just can't do quite yet. Perhaps when I've learned Horotracting."

"I'll look forward to it," Rian said. "Well, if we can't have a bridge, then can we have a better road? Or at least regularly compress it down if you're not going to pave it with stone, it keeps breaking apart."

Well, that was certainly doable, but… "Why?" she asked.

"Dragon preparation," Rian said. "Our cured wood is stored a long way away from the Dungeon. If we had a road leading straight to the Dungeon from that area, than in the event of a dragon, we could… well, maybe not bring in all the wood, but at least a fair amount so we'd have a strategic reserve for repairs after the dragon leaves. That way, we'd have material to build with while new wood is getting cut."

Lori considered that. "That sounds reasonable…" she mused. "And it won't be too difficult to make enough wheels for them to have some kind of cart to move the wood with."

"And the same road can be used to transfer crops to the Dungeon for storage," Rian said. "Well, uprooted crops, anyway, if the dragon appears in the middle of the growing season, which it very well might. But the road first. It'll make everything much easier."

"I can do it tomorrow, it will only take a little compressing, and maybe a layer of stone to keep it in place," Lori said.

Rian nodded. "Now, have you thought about the aqueduct? I know it's a lot of effort, but an open, gravity powered system—magic to get the water where gravity can pull it down not withstanding—would require the least maintenance, and the sun-exposure will be better for keeping the water clean than running it through an enclosed pipe. And with the new houses, we definitely need a way to get water up there, especially for when the third bathhouse comes up. We could sink a well, but…"

"Someone would throw shit into it," Lori said.

Rian sighed. "Yeah… at least this way, if someone throws shit into the water, the flow will wash it out a lot sooner."

Lori shuddered at the thought. "I'll consider it," Lori said. "It doesn't need to be a single raised aqueduct. Perhaps multiple low aqueducts, staggered along the way, each subsequent one rising to a higher level."

"At least the elevation isn't too high," Rian said. "Less risk of it falling over in the event of a dragon."

That hadn't occurred to Lori. "Of course," she said. "That's why I thought of it."

Rian nodded, completely believing her. The gullible fool. "Smart. Glad you thought of it before I did," he said dryly.

He yawned, covering his mouth for some reason. "Well, I think that's it, besides the boat we'll be using to get to Covehold, and I need to wait until enough of the houses are done so we'll have more people free."

"Do you really need to wait?" Lori inquired, genuinely curious.

"We need the workforce," Rian said. "They don't know how to build a boat, true, but they can work together, they know how to use tools competently, and they can do heavy lifting, which is really important because we don't have any cranes for lifting things. If we're going to brute force a solution to the boat problem, then we need brute force."

"Well, try to get it done sooner rather than later," Lori said. "You were the one who suggested bringing Grem to Covehold and leaving him there. Don't be the one delaying things now."

"Yes, yes, make it my fault," Rian said, rolling his eyes.

"It is your fault," Lori pointed out. "Otherwise we could have left him to die in the middle of nowhere."

"So noted," Rian said. "Don't worry, we'll get it done. Though my optimistic estimate we'll be able to do it before winter is looking less and less likely."

He glanced towards the kitchens. Lori followed his gaze, and saw the food was ready and being handed out. He stood up. "Well, I think that's enough for now," he said. "This was nice. I'm glad you thought that discussion was important enough to warrant not playing games while we talked."

Lori blinked, then glanced down at the untouched game board in surprise. "One game!" she immediately demanded.

"We're having dinner together, of course we'll be playing," Rian said, rolling his eyes. "Really, can't we play something else?"

"I don't have a board for anything else," Lori pointed out. Really, he got her this board, he should know that.

"You could borrow one," he pointed out.

Lori gave him a level look.

"Right, that would involve talking to people, got it," Rian said, shaking his head for some reason. "You better hope I never get sick or else you're going to starve to death."

He went to get their food.