By the time Rian finally woke up, still surrounded by his three minders, the air was filled with the smell of seel meat sizzling from its own fat as the sun gently began to dip to the horizon, the first of the moons beginning to tint the demesne with its colors. Pans had been placed under the meat to catch the fat dripping down, for frying mushrooms, vegetables, and the more dry beast meat. They'd cut out a lot of the fat for the chandlers, but some had deliberately been left to flavor the meat.

Lori was halfway through a dish of sizzling seel meat, a smaller cut of beast thigh, some fried fungus and plant stuff, and a nice, cold drink when Rian had planted himself on the bench opposite her.

"I don't remember us having dishes like that," he remarked.

Lori looked down at the square stone dish she was eating from. "I made it," she said, ignoring the three who'd sat down on either side of him. "Bowls are not the best way to eat large hunks of meat. Insufficient preparation was made to avert the No-Plate Crisis of Eventually. Fortunately, many people had plates and appropriate dishes stored away, so it is not impacting morale as terribly as feared. Still, this was an obvious failure on the part of the one responsible for planning for this."

"So, translated: this is my fault," Rian said dryly.

"These were part of your lordly duties," Lori nodded. "You said so yourself. I didn't even assign it to you. You should have done better at a task you chose to set out to do."

"I should have stayed in bed," Rian sighed.

"We should have," Umu said.

"We should have," Mikon nodded.

"We should have," Riz repeated.

Rian blushed as all three women nodded. "You know, I've rested," he said. "You don't need to keep following me anymore."

"Keep following him," Lori said. "Make sure he gets a good night's sleep tonight."

"Yes, your Bindership/Great Binder!" they chorused.

Rian looked up at the sky for some reason, muttering to himself. Eventually, he looked back down. "Why?" he asked.

"I don't trust you to not stay up late planning something for tomorrow again," Lori said.

"When did this lack of trust start to happen? You've always trusted me before."

Absurd! She'd never trusted him, that was why she closed off her rooms at night.

"When you started thinking it was a good idea to go beast hunting while sleep-deprived," Lori said.

"Says the woman who tried to ride a rock," Rian said flatly.

"I didn't want to walk. What's your excuse?" Lori said.

"I…! Uh…"

"See," Lori said triumphantly. "You don't even have an excuse. Shows how much thought you gave the matter."

"Oh, come on! It's not nearly the same thing!" Rian protested.

"Yes, I stopped you from doing something stupid," Lori said. "Be thankful."

Rian sighed, rubbing his eyes. "All right, fine, fine, I'm too tired to argue."

Lori frowned. "I thought he slept?" she asked the nearest of his minders.

"He did, your Bindership!" Umu said.

"We were there to make sure," Mikon confirmed.

"You didn't need to hold me down," Rian said.

It was times like this Lori had to wonder if her lord was truly ignorant or just pretending. Or, as the rumors suggested, into men.

"Go get something to eat while there's still something left," Lori ordered. "I worked hard catching those seels and I'm not having them go to waste. Also, get me another cut," she said, holding her plate out to him.

"It's a holiday, why do I have to work?" Rian said. Nevertheless, he took the plate before she had to stare him down and headed to where someone was tending to a fire and making sure meat didn't burn.

The three immediately got up and followed after him, likely to get their own food, or make sure Rian got some for himself.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Almost immediately, she regretted telling Rian to just get her meat. The mushrooms had been good too, and she felt like having more. A pity all they had was water. A sweet drink would have been wonderful with the meat. Well, she had golden buds. She could put slices of it in water, give herself a little sweetness and flavor…

Rian came back, a bowl stacked awkwardly with too-big pieces of meat and other things in one hand, her plate in the other, carried like it was a tray. Besides meat, it also had a little of everything else on it, something that actually made Lori smile eagerly.

For some reason, Rian slowed down, staring. So did his minders.

"What?" Lori asked.

"Were you… smiling?" Rian asked. "I wasn't imagining, that right? It wasn't a trick of the light? She was actually smiling."

"I saw it too," Riz said.

Umu and Mikon both nodded, their bowls of food in hand.

Lori rolled her eyes and held out her hands for the stone plate. "Food," she demanded.

"Maybe I imagined it?" Rian said as he put the plate in her hands.

"If you did, Lord Rian, it was a shared delusion," Umu said, before chirping happily, "Something we have in common!"

Then she let out a more distressed sound as she realized Riz and Mikon had managed sit on either side of him, the former even giving her a smug look. Lori ignored them. There was food to be had. Back home, most of her meals had been padded out with bread and boiled dough—which was delicious of course, especially since she hadn't had any in literally months—but meat…! Now that her body had adjusted to all this meat, it was absolutely delicious and she couldn't get enough of it.

Everyone seemed to agree, given how she had noticed people were going for more than one serving. She'd thought they would have to preserve the seel meat in the cold room since it would be too much for everyone, especially with the beasts the hunting party caught, but now it looked like they'd have nothing left but bones.

Had everyone been secretly starving? She'd thought getting a bowl of stew three times a day had been enough. She'd certainly felt full afterwards. Lori looked down at her plate full of warm, juicy meat that she wanted inside of her, and intended to enjoy every moment of the process of it doing so.

Well, she supposed there not being any leftover meat would be understandable.

Soon, her plate was empty again. While she definitely wanted more… she could wait, maybe let her stomach settle a while. Licking her lips, Lori wished she had something to lean back against.

Argh, she missed the old couch from ho—from the apartment she'd shared with her mothers! She was probably not going to see it's like any time soon. Probably not in the next decade, at least. She didn't even have a proper mattress for her bed, hoping for a nice, stuffed couch was probably impossible.

Why had she come all the way out here again?

Oh, right, absolute power and supremacy as a Dungeon Binder. Well, she could put up with a lack of amenities for that. Well worth it.

"So," Rian said abruptly as he put his utensils down on his bowl. "About tomorrow…"

"I'm on holiday. Talk to me the day after," Lori said.

"Oh, all right. I suppose I can wait until after the degeneracy and violence happens to talk to you about how to avert it," Rian said, nodding. He made to stand up. "I should go get some more steak while—"

"Sit down," Lori said coldly. "Explain."

"After today, it's going to be clear to people that there's not a lot to do around here but work," Rian said. "Tomorrow, if something isn't done, all people will have to do for the holiday is eat, sleep, splash around in the river, that thing you made illegal to do in public, or get into fights because they have too much time on their hands. And since we all seem to have had our share of eating and sleeping today… well, people would be bored of that tomorrow, so it's probably violence's turn."

Umu and Mikon blinked, staring at him. Surprisingly, Riz was nodding in agreement. Perhaps she was just being sycophantic.

"He's right," she said. "Anyone in the militia will tell you that people get in trouble when they've got time on their hands. Er, according to what I've heard, Great Binder."

Lori rolled her eyes. "So what do you suggest?" she said blandly. "You always have a suggestion."

"Nothing onerous," Rian said. "We just need to have a few activities planned. Maybe a chatrang tournament, have someone officially declared the demesne's chatrang champion. Some competitions, something with rules that people can play for fun. Really, they just need an activity they can either be part of or will enjoy watching. That will keep most people out of trouble until we eat, than another activity until dinner, then we all go to sleep because there's work the next day."

Lori twitched. "Are these 'play with other people' things?"

Rian paused and stared at her. So did his minders.

"Ah, of course," Rian said, nodding. "I should have realized. Right… all right, leave the games to me. You don't have to play if you don't want to."

That was a lie. It was always a lie…

Lori resolved to sink anyone who tried to make her play games into the ground and leave them there.

"Well, that should take care of the violence by giving people a semi-violent outlet for their energy…" Rian said. "Mostly. I'll ask around, see how many people are interested in what, and what we can play with what we have now…"

"So, you want to make people do things," Lori said.

"I want to present something they can do so that if they were inclined to do something, they'd choose to do that instead of letting them come up with their own ideas, which might get messy," Rian said. "Someone dead set on doing something stupid will probably still do it, but this way they can't drag as many bored people with them to it."

Lori gave him a bland look.

"It's a 'dealing with people' matter," Rian said tiredly.

"I'll leave that to you, then," Lori said. She frowned. Was she forgetting something…?

"I'll get to work on it after dinner," Rian said with a nod.

Lori pushed her plate forward.

"Seriously? You were able to get the first one before I got here!"

"But you're here now, so I don't have to," Lori said.

Rian sighed and picked up the plate. "After this I'm done. I'm going to go and talk to people about tomorrow."

Lori tilted her head thoughtfully. "Get me double what you did last time, then."

Rian rolled his eyes as he walked away, his minders going after him, grabbing their own bowls, and his as well.

Once more, Lori wished she wasn't sitting on a bench. She really wanted to just lean back and relax.

Even the amateurish music wasn't as irritating as it usually was…

She was still going to get them to stop it after sunset so she could go to sleep though.