When Lori woke up, her initial confusion and almost panic at waking up in a strange place was detoured by the fact she no longer hurt.

Bewildered, she raised her right arm. The bandage was gone, and there was only unmarred skin on her forearm. How…?

That's when she realized she wasn't inside her demesne.

Lori jerked up to a sitting position, looking around. She was in a room with walls made of wood. Not wood planks, or cut logs, but one contiguous wall of wood, all of a single piece. The floor was wood too, smooth and whole and melding seamlessly with the wall. She was lying on a bed—a normal bed, made from carpentry instead of Deadspeaking— atop a sweat-soaked bedroll, and none of that mattered because she couldn't feel the wisps around her. The bed was one of two, and the other bed was just bare wood. The windows were small and round, looking like knots in the wood, and there was a single door marring the smoothness of the walls.

She started breathing in barely controlled panic, taking in magic, letting it build up inside her, giving herself something solid to focus on. She had nothing to readily work with but airwisps, lightwisps and darkwisps, but that was fine. The most basic methods of self-defense magic were blinding and deafening your foe.

The door opened, and she leapt to her feet, magic from her core rushing through her as she bound the airwisps in her breath and around her head, blocking her ears to keep from being deafened as she—

—tripped on the skirt she was wearing and stumbled, falling face-first on the floor as she lost control of her wisps in her surprise. There was a loud snap—as opposed to the deafening bang there would have been—as the airwisps she hadn't finished binding released the magic she'd partially imbued into them.

"Gah!" she heard someone—Rian?— cry out, their words muffled. "Oh, you're awake. That was fast. We thought you'd still be asleep."

Lori blinked, and released the binding over her ears as she looked up to see Rian holding a tray and—BREAD!

No, no, she had to stay focused! She wasn't in her demesne, she was in danger!

Also, why was she wearing a skirt?

…

Oh, right.

Rian put down the tray—she saw it was just the writing plank he carried around being used as a tray—to help her up. Normally she wouldn't have needed his help, but she hadn't worn a skirt in so long she kept stepping on the hem, almost pulled the skirt down her waist, and fell over trying to keep herself from becoming stripped indecent.

"Careful," he said as he caught her, preventing her from falling on her face twice in one day. "We just got you healed up. Stop trying to break your neck so soon."

She glared, though since she was still bent over, it wasn't directed at his face, and so he missed the full effect. After making sure of what her feet were stepping on, Lori straightened and pulled herself out of his grip. "Where are we, Rian?" she demanded.

"River's Fork, where else?" Rian said, turning around to pick up the improvised tray. Lori twitched when she saw the three pieces of flatbread on the tray, as well as a bowl of various chopped fruits, and another bowl of what looked like stew. "It was the only place we could take you."

"Why?" she said, trying to growl the word out through gritted teeth to keep the panic in check.

"Your wound had gotten infected despite the antiseptic, which we ran through a lot of, by the way. You'd gone feverish and delirious, and we were all out of medicines to treat an entrenched infection," Rian said. "None of the doctors and medics were sure they could keep you alive. So I made the decision to take you here to try and get you healed. I figured having you alive to be mad at me was better than literally any other alternative that involved you dead."

"Mad? Why would I be mad?" she said. "After all, you just decided to remove me from my demesne and put me in the power of another Binder. Why would that possibly make me angry?"

She was snarling as she finished, binding the air around her, wondering if she should risk drawing lightningwisps from her arm to throw it at him. It would just replenish thanks to her connection to her core, after all.

"It was the logical thing to do," he protested. "If you died from infection, we'd have needed to go to her to try and convince her to claim the core anyway. Anyway, you can calm down. She obviously healed you instead of killing you, didn't she?"

"That doesn't mean it was what you should have done!" she snapped.

"Well, you should have left orders for what we should do if you were ever incapacitated and unable to make decisions," Rian said. "You made me lord, so I made a lordly decision to bring you here and see if she'll heal you, which she did."

"She is unlikely to have done that for free," Lori said darkly.

"No, she did not," Rian confirmed. "But don't worry, I haggled her to something you'd accept."

"Oh." Lori coughed. "Well, I'll be the judge of that! What does she want in return for this?"

"Well, she originally wanted to do it for free, but I managed to convince her you'd be really suspicious about that, so I talked her up to three sets of stone wheels for carts and you listening to a proposal she has," Rian said. "No agreeing, just listening. And I even got her provide you with meals while we're here. Just you, don't worry, everyone else is taking care of their own food arrangements. They all have friends here, so they'll be eating with them." He sighed. "More ration stew for me."

Lori latched on to the only thing she had to be suspicious of. "What proposal?" she demanded.

"She didn't say," Rian said. "But don't worry, you only have to listen, there's no obligation to go through with it."

"There better not be," Lori said.

"There isn't!" Rian said. "I made sure of that. Honestly, as far as medical treatment, meals, and a place to sleep tonight goes, wheels and a conversation are pretty cheap."

Lori crossed her arms, then glared down at the blouse she was wearing. It was far too loose on her frame. "Well then, where are my shoes?"

"In the bag," Rian said, pointing behind towards the foot of the other bed. Lori looked, and saw a leather satchel that she hadn't noticed from her previous angle. "Your socks are in there too, along with the rest of the clothes you were wearing when you had your completely avoidable and surely never to be repeated accident. Umu and Mikon washed them with your nice new laundry area."

"Amazing," she said blandly. "See, you can talk to them and ask them to do laundry for you."

Rian, in the process of bending down to put the tray of food on the bare wooden bed, paused. "Are you seriously making sarcastic comments about me being unable to talk to people? You? The woman who specifically has someone—me—to talk to other people because she doesn't like doing it herself?"

"I dislike talking to people," Lori said. "What's your reason?"

Rian put down the tray. "Well, at least you're feeling better. Any headaches? Lingering pains? "

Lori frowned and rotated her right shoulder. There was no sudden explosion of agony. She poked at her right side. The flesh beneath was soft and did not erupt into burning fire that made her want to turn the blood there into ice. "None," she said. Even the slight ache in her back from sleeping on her bed with only her laundry and raincoat as a mattress was gone.

"Well!" Rian said. "Definitely worth some wheels and a conversation, don't you think?"

"Hmph," Lori 'hmph'-ed contrarily.

"Anyway, eat up," Rian said, straightening up and leaning on the wall next to the bed. "I helped Shana make the bread, so you don't have to worry about it being poisoned or anything."

"She's a Deadspeaker, she doesn't need to poison it to kill me," Lori pointed out.

"Yes, she could have not healed you," Rian said brightly. "But I figured you'd still like to know I watched to make sure it wasn't poisoned."

Well, yes… but he didn't need to know that.

"Shana says you can rest and wait until tomorrow to make the wheels," Rian said. "The doctors say you need to rest too, since your body's been through an ordeal. They say they'll be bringing you a lot of fruit and bread to try and bring your body's reserves back up."

"We're leaving tomorrow," Lori said. "So I'll make the wheels today and then listen to her proposal. What time is it?" It was a bit hard to tell from the light at the window, since the dome over River's Fork had an effect on the sunlight coming down.

"Not yet noon," Rian said. "So this is technically breakfast and lunch."

Lori frowned. "Not yet noon? How did we get here so quickly? It usually takes us half a day to get here with the waterjet."

"I'm flattered you think we got here that fast," Rian said. "But you were down and just this side of being a corpse. Doctor Samoth said you were dangerously feverish several times. It's a good thing we had to keep splashing you with water to get rid of Iridescence, or you might have overheated."

Lori blinked. "Then how did we get here?"

"We rowed," Rian said blandly. "I had oars made when it looked like your wounds might be infected, just in case, and we traveled on eight manpower for all day and part of the night. It's a good thing someone had a good mirrored lantern they were willing to lend us. And that this place was downriver. Everyone is completely exhausted."

Lori raised an eyebrow. "You don't look like it."

"I accidentally took a nap while you were unconscious after Shana healed you," Rian said. "I'm really glad no one killed you in my sleep, or else I'd be really embarrassed."

Lori blinked and took a closer look at her lord. His eyes had a slightly unfocussed look, and he was swaying slightly.

"You haven't slept yet," she realized.

"I told you, I had a short nap while you were asleep," Rian said.

"Rian," she said, pointing at the bedroll she'd just vacated. "Go to sleep before you fall where you stand."

"Is that an order?" he said.

"Yes," she said. "That's an order."

"You sure? What if you need someone to watch your back?"

"Then I'll put it against a wall. Go to sleep, Rian."

He nodded. "Yes, your Bindership."

Lori watched him take his shoes off before he collapsed onto the bedroll she'd been sleeping in and closed his eyes, an arm over his face to block the light through his eyelids. After a moment, he pulled the pillow from beneath his head and put that on over his face.

By the time Lori finished the first disc of flatbread, his breathing was smooth and even. When she started on the sliced fruits—there was happyfruit, hairy blueball, and a few others she was surprised to recognize from the old continent. There was a pink lady, and… yes, that one was a golden bud! She loved those! Had the Golden Sweetwood Company, or at least this place's previous Binder, managed to bring seeds with them? That… maybe if she threw in another pair of wheels, Shanalorre would let them have some seeds?

It was something to consider.

By the time she finished all the food, Rian's foot was twitching on the bedroll.

For a moment, Lori sat there, and had to wonder whose bedroll she'd been sleeping in all this time. It wasn't like the village had any spares. In fact, considering she didn't have one, there was a definite deficit. Someone had to have volunteered their bedroll for her to be laid down on.

She sighed, adding them to the list of people she had to offer restitution to, along with the owner of the clothes she was wearing. Something to have Rian find out for her later.

Lori gave him one last look, then started taking deep breaths. When she'd taken in enough magic, she bound some lightwisps for illumination, and then covered the windows with darkwisps for some privacy, and changed clothes. After putting on her shoes and socks, she folded the skirt and blouse neatly and stuck them in the bag with the jars of rations and water skin in there, before dispelling the darkwisps.

She took a deep breath, already planning how to make the wheels. There should still be boulders in the river she could use as materials, provided she could get close enough to touch them. More than enough for three sets of wheels. Simple. Then she could listen to whatever proposal Binder Shanalorre had in mind and be away in the morning. Lori's Boat was still their only vessel, so they must have taken that, and the water jet was still attached. They'd be back by midday tomorrow.

Lori wished she had her staff with her, if only to make her feel better. She always felt better when she had a long, heavy stick to hand for hitting people with if she needed to. But no, she'd left that in her room in her Dungeon, because she hadn't thought she'd need it during a walk…

She shook her head, reminded herself she was a grown woman and a Binder, and stepped out of the room into the pre-noon sun.