Of course, despite the previous failures, Lori tried all the molds again, just to be sure. She even made a little level table using ice to give the curved molds the best chance of working. Some of them actually did work then, but unfortunately they still didn't make it all the way to the end. The failures weren't even consistent about what size they failed at, so she couldn't even use them to make smaller denomination beads.

By the time they had to return for lunch, she had several undersized beads and twenty of the size she'd been aiming for. It was a moderately good haul, but she'd need to make it more efficient. If she didn't care about size, she could simply heavily imbue the binding she'd be amalgamating with and then have several start growing at once. Given she was going to be limited by the amount of magic she could channel to the binding through the metal contact, she'd need to make each production run of a fairly large scale to make it efficient…

Once Lori had removed all the water that had gathered at the bottom of the boat so that people wouldn't slip on the ice—putting down some of the cut ropeweed as something to step on helped—they all got back aboard to head back down to her Dungeon. Lori held her prototype and container of beads carefully, noting that she needed a bigger container again. The trip back was slow as, again, the boat was full of cut ropeweed. She took the time to imbue her new shed, since she didn't have anything else to do, and made a note to herself to add the shed to her list of things to imbue in the morning. The shed would probably need to be replaced with something actually solid at some point, but for now options were limited, and required either gathering stone or a very large number of bones.

After delicately maneuvering Lori's Ice Boat to the dock and waiting to be able to get off, Lori found that lunch had already started. Rainbows. She hoped that didn't mean only the dregs of food were left: mostly water, lukewarm, cold gummy bread, and disintegrating tubers. Ugh, maybe they should have brought food this time.

She went up to her room to dump the beads in with the others she'd already made. Perhaps she could make a basket made of bone or something, with a handle for easier carrying? That might work better for transporting beads from the edge. She definitely needed something with a wider base so there's risk of it falling over when full…

Her prototype mold in hand, Lori went down to her table, where Mikon and Umu were already eating. As Lori sat, wishing her bench had a backrest to lean on, Riz arrived with two bowls of food. To her surprise, the bowls Riz came back with were… not full of dregs. In fact, there seemed to be more meat and tubers in the stew than usual! There was even an extra disk of bread! Wait, was that because they were the last to get food, so since no one else was going to get food they got more of everything? Does that mean she should start waiting for everyone else to get food first…?

No, no, she couldn't wait that long. Though in future, maybe she'd consider sending Rian for a second serving if she was still hungry.

"Riz," Lori said, and the woman in question paused… well, paused as much as she could whitle stil using her spoon to bring food in her mouth and eat. Rian should learn from her. "Inform the carpenters and the coppersmiths I need to meet with them after lunch. I need them to build something for me."

"Uh… now, Great Binder?"

"No, it can wait until after lunch. But I need to talk to them today. After that meeting, you're dismissed for the day."

"Understood, Great Binder. I'll get to it after lunch, then."

Lori nodded absently, staring at the little prototype mold as she continued to eat.

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Unlike Rian, Riz didn't prepare a list of the carpenters name arranged according to where they were sitting. Well, she wouldn't be addressing any single one of them anyway, so that was fine.

Lori placed her prototype on top of the table the carpenters and coppersmiths were seated around. "You probably have things to get back to, so I shall make this brief," Lori said. "I need a new tool based upon this prototype. It must be a tray at least a pace long and half a pace wide, divided into a grid of cells such as these. Each cell must contain… well, whichever of these four designs would be easiest for you to replicate for each cell."

She indicated the cells of the prototype that had functioned until the beads had grown to the size she wanted. Lori supposed it was a good thing the cells with the concave-shaped molds had all failed early and been removed from consideration, since they would have been difficult to reproduce in a timely manner with the equipment they had now. Not impossible—craftsmen could be amazing with hand tools—but it certainly wouldn't be quick, since it would likely require hand-carving each cell.

The prototype was passed around as the carpenters all examined the cells she had indicated, though many turned it over to look at the ingot of copper embedded into the tray.

"In addition to the tray, cells and whichever shape you all decide will be easiest to put into the cells, there also needs to be metal at the bottom of each cell as a contact point," Lori continued. "Sheet metal will do, but it will need to be completely flat and level, and either all one piece or connected together by wire. It will also need to have removable and adjustable legs, since I will need to be able to move it back and forth from where I need to use it."

"Does… this have to do with making beads, your Bindership?" one of the carpenters asked.

"Did I say that?" Lori said blandly.

"Um… well, everyone knows you come back with new beads on mornings that you go to the edge, your Bindership."

"Oh? And does this 'everyone' include Shanalorre?" she said, turning to look at Riz intently.

Riz flinched. "I… don't know? I don't think so…"

"See to it that it doesn't," Lori said, turning back to the craftsmen. "Are you asking to be compensated with beads for this work?"

The carpenters looked at each other, then all pointedly looked at the one who'd first spoken. He, for his part, looked towards Riz, who looked away with a theatrical air of innocence—Rian's was better—pretending not notice. Lori, for her part, never looked away from him. Eventually, he turned to face Lori again. "No, your Bindership. After all, what will we spend it on? But…"

"Rest assured, you will be compensated," Lori said. "And…" The next words made her want to sigh. "…when you finish with this project, and I've used it successfully, I'll have Rian declare a… a holiday."

The carpenters all looked at each other as they considered that.

"A five day holiday," the one she was talking to rebutted.

"I'm not going to haggle this," Lori said flatly. "I will agree to a minimum of one day of holiday. You can negotiate with Rian for the other four when he comes back."

The man paused, but nodded, obviously thinking that Rian would be easier to convince.

"Good. Now, tell me which of the cells would be easiest for you to build…"

The carpenters got down to business, asking her which parts of the prototype were necessary and which could be removed or modified. No, the walls of each cell didn't really need to go all the way to the down to the base, they were just there to separate the different cells. Yes, the rows and columns did need to be spaced that far apart. Would the angled trench design still work without the panels that separated the rows cells? She… wasn't sure, but maybe? She'd have to test it. No, just wires are unlikely to work, it will need to be sheets, though relatively thin sheets will do.

Someone got a plank and sketched out a diagram for a design. It… well, stripped of the parts she had said they could strip out, the resulting tray looked like a laundry board. The rows of the angled-trench design ran parallel to each other, implied to have strips of copper on their bottoms and there was no grid of cells.

Lori imagined using the proposed tray, and… thought it would actually work, and work very well. The separate growing beads didn't fuse together in any case, meaning it didn't matter if they touched while amalgamating and growing. She'd need something to anchor the bindings to start with, but if she put firewisps or lightningwisps in the metal she could anchor the bindings to those. At worse…

"Cut the edge short on one side of each trench," Lori directed. "While it should work, I might need to make a modification if I experience problems. Best to put the space for me to install the modification now." She could put a small strip of bone or stone to anchor the bindings too if needed. "If it's not needed, then the change shouldn't affect the functionality of the tray."

"Can we trim both sides?"

"If you feel it best."

Eventually, the design of the tray was tentatively finalized, but Lori had them start working on the base of the tray first while she tested the long-trench configuration tomorrow. While she believed it should work, best to test it while they still had time to modify the design. She gave the redsmiths the ingots they needed to begin making the copper sheets needed. Lori hoped they could make the sheets as flat as she needed.

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The second prototype bound tool had been completed and was presented to Lori when the two smiths making it saw she was done speaking to the carpenters. It had, admittedly, slipped her mind that morning, but with it now in her hands, she decided to begin testing how well it worked… after she also made a base for it so it wasn't just flopping around like some sort of dismembered extremity.

The second prototype… didn't look all that different from the first bound tool prototype. Oh yes, one was round with wire coming out from it, and the other one was a compact, hard square that had been sealed—forge welded, unless she missed her guess—with a wire secured to its side, but beyond that aesthetic difference, they were very similar in principle. In her hand though, the second prototype was clearly more solid, and had a greater sense of weight. The shell of the first prototype, despite being work-hardened, felt a bit delicate to her touch. The second prototype also had a shorter length of gold wire, and instead of a saucer made from a spiral of gold wire, it had one made from a sheet of copper.

A part of her already expected the second prototype to behave in a similar way, which was probably bad scholarship on her part, but she couldn't really help it. As a prototype, the first had been fairly successful, so she wanted the second to at least meet the same baselines. Physically, she could already tell that the second prototype would probably be more solid than the first.

With Rian absent, she had to write her own notes again. Unlike the first prototype, which had a binding of wisps anchored to the white Iridescence and then again to the copper shell, this prototype had the samples of white iridescence tightly packed and pressed right up against the layer of copper containing them, so the firewisps or lightningwisps within the copper shell could be anchored to the white Iridescence directly. Aesthetically, it was an improvement for her, but in practical terms, it wasn't all that different from the first prototype. But then, that was to be expected.

Repeating all the various bindings of wisps that she tried on the first prototype, they all worked in the same way, even the binding of airwisps for circulating air was as ineffectual until she mounted a bone ring to the prototype to extend the area of the binding.

The difference, however, was that the second prototype felt much more physically robust. Lori was more willing to use the second prototype as a base to make a water jet bound tool than the first bound tool, which made her feel like a knock could deform the copper shell, tear it open, and either chip the sample in the setting to tear at the binding or let water in and allow the sample to dissolve away.

As difficult and time consuming as the second prototype was to make, if she was going to be handing out bound tools to her idiots, she'd rather use it as a base since it seemed more likely to survive idiotic behavior.

Maybe that's why they used glass in bound tools? Glass was known to be a relatively fragile material, and any damage to it fairly obvious. When people saw the glass of a bound tool, they might be more inclined to handle it carefully.

…

She really hoped that wasn't the case. If one simply wanted to keep a bound tool from being easily damaged, making parts of it out of large blocks of metal would be far more effective than relying on people's tendency to be careful with glass.

Well, she'd find out herself once she started trying to melt the glass they did have into something she could try to use.

For now, she—

There was a knock on the door. "Great Binder? It's time for dinner."

—would go down and eat dinner, then tell Riz to prepare to go out to the edge again tomorrow.