The din of conversation in the dining hall seemed louder than usual as the people of her demesne began to fill the room. At first Lori thought it might just have been her imagination, but as the volume of the voices kept growing and growing, she had to retract that thought. It wasn't especially annoying—well, it was no more annoying than usual—but she had to wonder why. Even the children, sitting at the table behind her with Shanalorre and the brat, were talking enthusiastically about… something, and being far noisier than they normally were, which was already very noisy.

  She formed a binding of airwisps around her head to muffle the cacophony so she could consider her options. Lori already had some ideas as to how to increase the accuracy of her bindings, beginning with 'anchor the binding to a stick and learn to aim' to 'build the stock of a crossbow'. That was that you called that part of a crossbow, right? She thought she remembered it from a book, although she might be confusing it with how to make a soup…

  Idly, she looked at her hand, holding thing her thumb and forefinger outstretched so that they were at right angles to each other. Raising it to eye level, she lined up to the tips of the two extremities, taking aim at the back of someone's head two tables in front of her. While that gave her a relatively straight line from her eye to whatever she was trying to aim at, it wasn't really a good way to aim her lightning bindings. It was too close and directly in the view of her eye, so every shot of lightning would likely blind her. That wasn't even counting the heat…

  There were also all the new bindings she'd developed that she could only use with extensive testing preparation. While her new lightning binding could be aimed with piercing unseen light, her primary lightning ball and fire ball did not have such a means of easy direction, something that she would have to correct. Still, the lode forces generated by lightningwisps were looking promising, and all of her new bindings incorporated lightningwisps already…

  A hand waved in her line of sight, and she blinked, frowning at Rian as he pointed at his ears, then at the side of her—oh.

  She deactivated the binding of airwisps around her head, then winced as the noise crashed into her ears. Ugh, it sounded like they were holding a dungeon shelter party with a more inept band of musicians than usual. She'd have to put up with this all—

  No, wait, she didn't.

  "Quiet!" she called out, her voice amplified by the binding of airwisps around her head, their purpose now inverted. Her word rang out across the dining hall, and there was an immediate lull in the conversations. She nodded satisfaction, then immediately turned to look behind her, glaring as she swept a hand to point at all the children—and two of Mikon's cousins who looked so much like her they were near indistinguishable—sitting there. "Don't even think about it," she warned them.

  "You heard the Great Binder, everyone," Shanalorre said from where she had been sitting directly behind Lori. "No yelling."

  There were disappointed groans, but the children went back to their conversations, though at a slightly less ear-stabbing volume. The adults slowly did so as well as they realized she wasn't going to make some sort of announcement.

  Lori turned her attention back to her table. Rian had returned to his seat across from her, and had been joined by Riz, Umu, and Mikon, the weavers and not-an-officer sitting on the bench to either side of him. They had been mildly amusing and occasionally frustrating back when Rian had been ignorant of their attraction and had been trying to make themselves known, and had progressed to mildly nauseating to look at when they had remedied that. Still, it was a familiar sort of nauseating, so she tolerated it to a degree.

  In addition to Rian's household, there were also two women sitting at one end of the bench, as physically distant as it was possible to be from Lori while remaining at the same table. Now, Lori's memory for names and face and names with faces was terrible—she was willing to admit that—but even she could recognize the demesne's other Deadspeaker and her wife. She could even tell which one was which, a great achievement. As to names…

  Well, the wife wasn't important, but the wizard conveniently had a head cloth on her head embroidered with 'Taeclas', presumably so the head cloth could be easily identified when doing laundry—

  Lori froze, and she was suddenly aware of the beating of her heart as she stared at the Deadspeaker who was THERE, right THERE, close enough to touch, and they were touching the table, the wooden table—

  There was a hand on her face. Someone had suddenly placed their hand over her face.

  It was incongruous enough that her flow of thought actually paused, trying to decipher what was going on. Fortunately, her eyes weren't completely covered, and after a few moments of thought and focusing she was finally able to decipher what was going on.

  "Rian," she said flatly, her voice slightly warped since her upper lip was being slightly pressed down upon, "get your rainbowed hand off my face and explain yourself immediately."

  The hand was slowly removed from her face, which implied a lack of caution on her lord's part since she felt a very strong urge to bite the appendage. "Just getting you to stop panicking. Tae is one of yours, remember? She's not a threat."

  "I'll be the judge of that," she snapped, even as she recalled that the woman was, in fact, insane. She named her plants, after all, and treated them like children!

  "Of course you are," Rian said, and though his face and expression didn't change, there was something about his tone even as he agreed with her. "Just reminding you in case it slipped your mind. I know that sometimes happens. That's why writing and notes was invented." He paused. "Well, that and for people to keep track of their stuff. How else are they going to know they're richer than everyone else?"

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Huh. An intriguing supposition. The one she'd heard was that it was meant for keeping track of people… though if you thought of people as 'stuff'…

  She shook her head to banish the thought out of the demesne of her mind, and leveled a flat look at Taeclas. For some reason, she'd grabbed her wife and was holding her below the level of the tabletop, which must be quite awkward. For a moment, Lori contemplated the woman. So far, the Deadspeaker had made no attempts to try and kill her. The woman had been too focused on raising her sweetgrass and spending time with her wife. And again, she was insane—unlike Lori—and had some sort of irrational hatred of trees.

  That didn't mean she couldn't be dangerous, but… well, it was a general, ' to everyone around her when she becomes violent in addition to insane' kind of dangerous, not a specific 'she wants to be a Dungeon Binder and will take your demesne to add to her own' sort of dangerous…

  The Deadspeaker was looking at her, her expression confused and possibly concerned at Rian's strange behavior. "Um, is there something wrong, L—your Bindership?"

  "No, Wizard Taeclas," Lori said. "Rian simply has strange ways."

  This time Rian rolled his eyes. "Yes, that's what happened."

  She nodded. "See? He agrees."

  Taeclas let out a little laugh for some reason. Well, she was insane, random laughter was to be expected.

  Shaking her head, Lori turned her focus on her lord as she kept the Deadspeaker visible in the corner of her eye. "What is it, Rian?"

  "Huh—? Oh! Ah, well, it's partly related to the reason why you made yourself deaf a while ago. I need your authorization to give people paper."

  She looked at him sharply. "Why?"

  "Well, you know what I said earlier about people writing to their friends among the new settlers? Well, the planks and rocks and things became very unwieldy very quickly, so I told everyone to hold off writing until I could get them some paper. I think a sheet per household would be enough, and we can probably wash off the ink to use the sheets later."

  They could? "They—we could?" she said.

  "Uh, maybe? At the very least, Kutago could use the sheets to make new sheets, though they won't be as white and clean as the originals. I've been collecting the used sheets that aren't being used for long-term records, and it's about time I had her try and make something out of it."

  Lori waved a hand dismissively. "How many actually know how to write?"

  "…not all that many, to be honest. I mean, they can recognize words, and most know enough to read a list and do basic counting and adding, but writing's a bit more limited. Those of us who know how to write have agreed to write for them, so that's my night and most of tomorrow morning gone."

  "How unfortunate for the four of you," Lori said blandly. "Do we have the ink and paper to spare for this?"

  "Oh, yeah," Rian said. "That's not a problem, we still have a lot, and we can restock when we go to Covehold Demesne." He paused. "Unless you want me to cancel that expedition because of the new settlers? I'd understand if you want everyone on-hand for this."

  "No," Lori said calmly. "We made a commitment to a trading partner, so we need to keep it to show we are reliable. However, I want you to be as quick as you can. With the quality of our goods now proven, the transaction should be much smoother."

  Rian nodded. "How quickly do you want us back? Because while I asked them to have iron ready for us when we returned, if we ask them to acquire anything else that would take another day or two."

  Lori considered that. "Do we need anything?"

  "Well, with Shana and Tae we don't really need that much medicine, but some more antiseptics for the childbirths we're going to have this winter would probably help—"

  "What childbirths?" Lori interrupted.

  Rian blinked. "The… uh, we have three pregnancies coming up, and there were a couple more this past year after the winter. People have been using the Um a lot, after all."

  Lori looked at the women on either side of him, trying to judge the size of their stomachs behind the—

  "It's not them." Rian's voice was so flat she could have used it as an anvil face.

  "Though not from lack of trying," Mikon intersected cheerfully. "Every night we—"

  The rest of her words were muffled as Riz, Umu and Rian each put a hand on her mouth. Off to the side, Taeclas looked impressed, clenching her fist and bending her elbow to hold her forearm up straight in an approving gesture, ignoring the chiding swat her wife gave her.

  "My congratulations, I suppose. Please never mention it again. Ever."

  "I'm have absolutely no objection to that," Rian said. "Moving on, more antiseptics?"

  Lori nodded. "More antiseptics." Slathering newborns with honey to keep them from getting sick probably wasn't a good idea. "You may have one day to purchase other supplies. If it can't be acquired in a day, don't bother. We'll get it next season."

  Rian nodded. "I'll get back as soon as I can with as much iron as we can safely carry aboard. Well… a little less, we'll need space for salt too. But I think we have enough time to put off going until after the new arrivals are settled in and understand how things work. I know you'd rather not have to deal with that by yourself."

  "I'm sure Erzebed would—"

  There was a clatter as the militiawoman bodily threw herself off the bench, rolling as she hit the stone floor and came to her feet running as she dashed for the entrance of Lori's Dungeon.

  They watched as she ran out of sight.

  "I think that's Riz's way of politely asking you to choose someone else for something like that," Rian said.

  "Hmm. I'll consider it. By the way, inform everyone that there will be fire, lightning and explosions tomorrow."

  Rian's gaze sharpened as he directed it towards her. "They won't be happening inside any enclosed structures, will they?"

  Lori's expression became offended. "Of course not. What sort of fool do you take me for?"

  "Do you really want an answer to that question?"

  After a good night's sleep, checking and imbuing all the active bindings she needed to maintain, a pleasant breakfast—the bread was in the form of buns rather than flatbread, a rare treat—and remembering in time that the insane Deadspeaker was not a threat at the moment, Lori stood on the stone boat dock along the river, her hat on her head to shield her eyes from the bright morning sunlight. It seemed a wonderful day to test bindings for destroying and killing.

  Humming to no particular tune specifically, Lori claimed and bound lightwisps out of the air through her connection with her dungeon's core, forming a glowing light that she carefully moved just above the water of the middle of the river. It was a bright and hard to miss target, even in the daylight. Gathering more lightwisps, she formed another binding for piercing light that used unseen light.

  For a moment, she considered the second binding. While a wonderful way of aiming her lightning—even the rudimentary lightning she learned in school, the binding for which needed to be reformed because it was consumed after use—as it was it only worked within her demesne. Unseen light could not be seen, after all, and therefore was difficult to aim with the senses. Still humming, Lori began altering the binding to try and rectify this deficiency. After all, there was no point in being able to aim her lightning if she couldn't tell where she was actually aiming at.

  It was looking like a good day.