Demesne 508 - A Long-Term Solution For Storing Boats

Despite the incompetence of the newly arrived Whisperers—what was so hard about rolling stone to where you needed to take it—Rian’s succeeding reports informed Lori that things seemed to be progressing well in River’s Fork. New planting terraces had been stacked and filled with soil, although Shanalorre had asked for permission to reassign one of the Whisperers to fuse the stone of the terraces together to give them structural strength. Lori had given her authorization, and once the Whispering work was done, they would be able to get started on planting the crops. Once that was done the Deadspeakers could be assigned to accelerate their growth.

Rian also reported that the number of seels in the river were lessening as they moved downriver towards… well, wherever it was they went for the winter, and what few remained were apparently being seeled by the brat, who had apparently been scolded for tracking blood everywhere, which had at first made her a public nuisance—if a well-meaning one—and then had given her some notoriety once others had tried seeling and found that it was a lot harder than it seemed. There was actually a small group permanently assigned to assisting the brat with draining the seels of blood, skinning them, butchering them, and holding the rope tied to the brat’s waist to keep her from getting swept away from the river when she inevitably tried jumping in to try and stab the seels that way.

Speaking of food, there had inevitably been attempts to try and take food outside of meal times. There were people trying to take fruits from the trees, and it had to be explained many times that just because there were fruits in the trees didn’t mean people could just take them for themselves. This had led apparently led to a brawl among the children, because many of those taking had been some of the newly arrived children, and while the children apparently had a rule that it was all right to eat one or two while collecting fruit, some of the new arrivals had just been eating them straight off the tree.

Rian hadn’t been forthcoming with the details, only that one of the children had taken a stick and set all the new arrivals straight, although this had apparently caused some friction from the parents of these children, even the ones who supposedly agreed that their children shouldn’t have been doing that. This had of course led to the parents of the local children to be indignant on their behalf, and now there was resentment in the demesne over the matter. It hadn’t helped that a few particularly stupid idiots had thought to try and rob the food storage vault one night with the intention of stealing some meat to roast for themselves, and had run into the fact that Shanalorre had decided to move her sleeping spot from her office to the front of the food storage vault.

“You’re sure it was another child?” Lori said. It was the day before Rian was to leave for Covehold Demesne, and he seemed to trying to inform her of as many things he felt she needed to know or deal with as possible. On either side of him, Umu and Mikon were pressing against his side—the latter had changed places with Riz today so she could sit next to Rian—and if they pressed any firmer they’d be using him as a backrest.  

“Yes, it was another child,” Rian said. His elbows had been pulled in as far as they could, and he looked like he was sitting on overcrowded public transportation. “We don’t have people that short in River’s Fork. Besides, do you think I’d let an adult do that to one of the children? If anyone had tried, I’d be reporting to you about how someone was severely beaten and lost all their teeth, all while still covered in their blood.” He frowned. “Well, no, I’d take a bath first. Blood is disgusting to have on you. And I’d probably be regretting the teeth, eating is going to be problematic for the rest of their life unless the Deadspeakers can do something to fix it. It was a child. But as you can guess, the Lady Binder’s administration is a bit unpopular right now,” her lord said as he gave that day’s report. It was a mark of how the season was cooling that he was waering his winter robe already, 

“Fools,” Lori summarized.

Her lord shrugged carefully so that he wouldn’t dislodge the two weavers too much. Off to the side, Riz, Taeclas and… whatever her name as, Taeclas’ wife, all seemed amused. “That’s just how government work is. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but it’s possible to do everything right and still have people angry at you, and in this instance she could have been more diplomatic. Parents tend to take a dim view of the government endorsing a child hitting their children repeatedly with a big stick. No one seems like they’re going to do something foolish right now—well, more foolish—but that’s not really a guarantee.”

This was also when Lori had learned that while the new arrivals had surrendered the food they had brought to the demesne, they had not included the booze with that food, and there were apparently several small barrels and bottles of the stuff spread out across the new arrivals. The ones who had thought it would be a good idea to rob the food storage vault had reportedly been drunk, which was the excuse they had given for doing such a thing.

Shanalorre had assigned them to latrine duty until spring, and declared that anyone so drunk as to be obviously impaired would receive a similar assignment, whether they remembered being that drunk or not. Actually, especially if they didn’t remember being that drunk.

Lori frowned. “I’d have thought that retired militia would be more orderly.”

“The same orderly retired militia that almost managed to overeat themselves into starvation?” Rian’s elbows were so pulled in he had to hold his spoon awkwardly just to get it into his stew.

Well, when he put it that way… “Is this likely to continue to disrupt public order?”

“I don’t think that will be much of a problem. If there’s one thing militia knows how to deal with, it’s disorderly militia.” Next to Mikon, Riz nodded. “Yllian just couldn’t justify having people assigned to keeping public order until someone wasn’t orderly. And after their little brawl the new children are behaving. Mostly because they’re afraid that they’ll be next.”

Lori’s frown deepened. “Next what?”

“Next to get into a brawl with another really violent child,” Rian clarified.

She stared at him, her flow of thought coming to a conclusion. “…is Shanalorre employing the children to enforce her will against the other children?”

“Noooo…” Rian said, drawing out the word. “I can honestly say this child isn’t employed, they’ve just decided that public order needs to be enforced among their peers and taken it upon themselves to do so. Do you want me to tell them you said to stop? Because as… problematic as this is, you still haven’t given any acceptable punishments for children when they end up breaking your laws, especially if they do so deliberately.”

Lori coughed. “Well, moving on… what other matters are there to take care of?”

Rian looked up at the ceiling again. “Well, nothing you need to actively deal with yourself, but there is an issue from last year that’s become relevant again.”

Lori sighed. “And that is?”

“We’ve talked about this before, but it was forgotten in the face of other issues,” Rian said. “But with the coming winter and the fact you’re basically going to be staying in the demesne more, now’s the best time to bring it up again. Since Lidz finally finished the last of the boats you asked him to make, we now have seven boats, not counting the Coldhold. While carrying the smaller boats into the Dungeon has been working so far, now that we have so many they’re going to take up more space in the dungeon. So I think we need to revisit the idea of building a boat house again.”

It took a few moments for Lori to recall that conversation, and she grimaced as she did so. “Ah. That.”

“Yes. That. We talked about it before the new people arrived, and this is the last opportunity to do it this year, so I thought I’d remind you while it’s still an option. Well, I think it might be an option, you’d know better than my how long something like that would take to build.” He tilted his head, a thoughtful look on his face. “You’d probably still be faster than the Whisperers in River’s Fork, though.”

Obviously. “Obviously,” she said, only partially concentrating on her reply. Lori had been distracted by her studies of lightningwisps, as well as the work she’d done enlarging the baths in her Dungeon that would be used in the event of a dragon, and then the new ones from the Golden Sweetwood Company had arrived, so she hadn’t actually been able to give the matter any consideration. In addition to a place to house the boats, they’d also talked about… “You said something about an extension to the entryway for chokers?”

“Oh good, you remembered that part so I don’t need to re-exposit it. Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I don’t think’s that’s as urgent as I said it was? For one thing, the eggs haven’t hatched yet, although Tae says that they’re developing well, and beastlets are a bit more manageable that the full-grown thing, so we should be able to hold off on that until spring. The boat house is a bit more immediate though, since winter is coming and we have a lot of valuable boats.”

Lori sighed. “Couldn’t you have told me this earlier?”

“I did tell you a few days ago,” Rian pointed out with annoying technical correctness. “Not my fault we’ve both been too busy to get around to it.”

Familiar hatred briefly coursed through Lori, and she let it pass through her. “Fine,” she said. With Rian leaving for Covehold Demesne and the Coldhold already loaded with all the beads they weren’t keeping for themselves—it only held beads now, since they were keeping the furs to keep people warm through the winter—she could take a break from amalgamating beads for the moment. The stockpile they’d kept for themselves should be able to keep River’s Fork functioning through the winter, so this was a good stopping point. “I’ll get to work on it as soon as you leave.” She supposed now was a good time as any to build a long-term solution for storing their boats.

“I’ll look forward to seeing it when I get back,” Rian said. “Speaking of which, anything you want from Covehold? I know I already have the shopping list, but anything you want personally? A new book, maybe?”

“I haven’t even been able to start reading the books you’d already bought last time,” Lori pointed out. “… anything that’s not a romance.”

“No romances, got it.”

“Um…” Taeclas raised a hand.

Lori turned her gaze towards the Deadspeaker. “What is it?”

“Could Lord Rian get us a romance novel or two?” Taeclas said. “Please, your Bindership?”

“No romance novels. Just watch Rian like everyone else.”

“Aw! But it’s not the same! And it’s so boring! Where’s the turmoil? The doubt about being good enough? The grand romantic gestures?”

“Hey!” Mikon declared, sounding offended. “We are not boring!”

“And I’m a man,” Rian said. “All the turmoil and doubt is buried deep inside where I can ignore it until it goes away.”

“I’m militia. We don’t have doubt,” Riz added.

Umu stared down at the table.

Without looking, Rian and Mikon both reached out and each put a hand on the blonde’s shoulder.

Lori rolled her eyes, pushing down her own the mild nausea, and gave Taeclas a look. “See?”

“Well, I suppose that’s a romantic gesture,” the Deadspeaker said, only to be elbowed by her wife. “Ow! Moonlight.”

“Petal, stop being creepy and let them have their privacy,” the blue-haired woman scolded mildly.

“… yes, moonlight.”