Sythyry's Journal

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Verhump stepped back to the podium. “I would like to thank this sclud wizard Sythyry. Zie has pointed out quite clearly why every serious Vepri should read volume two of Fixing the Future, not just the introduction to volume one and a few popular pamphlets.

She opened a copy of volume two to a page she knew well. “In section 2.8c of volume 2, we explain some important details that are often omitted in popular renditions of our work. We use ‘generation’ as a shorthand, a mere approximation of the longer and more precise but less mellifluous phrase ‘effective generation of origination’. Both the chair and the Vepri tests indicate, in fact, a perfect measure of spiritual development, or, if you prefer spiritual degredation — when they are applied to cooperating subjects.

“Note that last phrase — ‘cooperating subjects’. We do have tests that can accomodate lies, using imperfect information and behavioral observations to detect spiritual development. But these were not the tests applied in this case! We used precise tests, suitable only for use with truthful subjects! These subjects lied — they even lied about their species! Their evidence should be no more acceptable than the spewings of any other liars! No wonder the test results were wrong!

“Furthermore! It is clear that both Sythyry and Sazandigraa are exemplars of a terrible state of spiritual development! They reveal all the flaws of the sclud! Their effective generation of origination is the current generation — they are as glate as it is possible to be! For most species, when one says ‘third generation’, one means the generation born late in the first century. Not so for Zi Ri! These Zi Ri, hatched recently, must be considered to be of a generation suitable to the year of their hatching.

“They are hardly the optimes of the third generation that they present themselves as! They are scluds through and through. Their actions prove it! Sythyry is the leader of a vast shitfest of perverts! Sazandigraa is a dealer in wicked mind-magics!

“So, when in their scludditude they come here and spew forth lies and stupidities, I bid you — read section 2.8c of volume 2, and learn to wave away the thin but stinking miasma of their words with the truth!”

The legeriators and functionaries fulsomely applauded her. There didn’t seem to be much point to staying around and, say, arguing that the Chair didn’t do anything like what she said it did. Probably section 3.9sh would explain that away too.

“Saza? Should we explain to her that she’s put you in a generation a thousand years after you were born?”

“Sythyry, you can’t seriously imagine that they care what we say, can you? This isn’t about a scientific theory, and never was. It’s just about putting a modern mask on a power grab,” zie said.

“I suppose we had to give them a chance to be honest but wrong,” I said.

“Shall perhaps we leave before the lynching starts and the massacre becomes necessary?” said Yylhauntra, rather louder than was necessary.

So we left in a loud crash of Locador.

The Aftermath

“Well, that was useless,” I complained.

“Silly little optimist!” said Saza. “Expecting a bit of truth to swish away such a cloud of privelege and pomposity. We’ll just have to take a bit more active an approach, that’s all.”

Mirrored from Sythyry.

“Our analysis produces the facts,” said Verhump. “Bluelark is an optime, of the eighth generation, and a person whom you can trust. Rainboat is a glate, born for the first time not many decades ago, of the hundred-and-thirtieth generation; a person of wicked and criminal tendencies, and surely headed for gaol and an early grave.” Yylhauntra had insisted on addressing the Legeriat of Draffmoug immediately afterwards, and a dozen bored legeriators and several dozen even more bored functionaries lounged about, trying to pretend to pay attention to zir.

“Interesting, interesting,” said Yylhauntra. “Is there any question or uncertainty about this diagnosis?”

“There is not,” said Verhump. “If you believe yourself to have contrary evidence, you must examine the contrary evidence for flaws and failure. The methods of the Vepri are perfect.”

“Grandchildren, it is now time to explain the situation,” said Yylhauntra to “Bluelark” and “Rainboat”.

“With pleasure, honored grandparent!” we said, and broke a pair of Cloaks of Another God. “Rainboat” was Sazandigraa, and “Bluelark”, of course, was me. The sudden crack of intense Destroc Magiador, the sharp taste of spells breaking, and the surprising appearance of three Zi Ri on the podium, woke up a great many legeriators and functionaries. Even the Duke came out of his closet to see us.

I spread my wings (yay, wings) and levitated, rampant, above Verhump. “I am Sythyry: a Zi Ri wizard, grandchild of Glikkonen and Verehinga, and of Myrihaaveinen and of Tnirvakuovvka who was the child of lost Caathestaa and of the great Yylhauntra who is here before you. My full geneology is well-known and carefully attested in many living memories, even to the firstmost of days. And there is never a doubt about Zi Ri parentage. This is Sazandigraa, whose grandparents and great-grandparents are the same as mine, though through different couplings. Geneologically speaking, we are pretty much the same person. We are both of the third generation of Zi Ri measured the short way around, or the fourth the long way around.

“Yet, somehow, the infallable methods of Verhump herself have perfectly and infallibly placed me in the ninth generation. I don’t even think there are any ninth generation Zi Ri. And, even more remarkably, they identified Sazandigraa — third-generation Sazandigraa — as hundred-and-thirtieth. They could hardly be more wrong, save by an excursion into the hideous realm of complex numbers!

“And furthermore! I am a wizard, an expert in enchantment, granted my title by Glikkonen zirself. I have inspected Verhump’s ‘Chair of Spiritual Origination’ in detail, watching it as it operated. It is in no way a device to reach into the past to determine one’s generation of origin. It determines one’s spiritual purpleness, and how much of one’s spirit is actually flesh or plant material. Rather different, rather unlike what the Vepri methods call for!

“I hereby proclaim the utter vacuity of the Vepri. The so-called science and theology is utter nonsense, incapable of distinguishing one end of time from another. The philosophy is based on the vapors of clouds and Khtsoyis-farts, and is pernicious and worse than useless. And any political system based on it is surely based on a rotten, stinking worse-than-nothing.”

And I sat down next to Saza and Yylhauntra, bristling with a Holocaust-war’s worth of magical defenses. I had some sense of how popular that speech was going to be, right in the heart of the Vepri. The audience stirred and muttered, clearly expecting some sort of excitement.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

“We employ several means of determining what generation someone is. The first to be used was this chair,” said Verhump. The chair in question was certainly a terrible tangle of enchantments. “Once we had some data about generations and behavior, we were able to validate Doggerly’s philosophical treatises almost to the word, matching behaviors to generations of origin with perfect accuracy. That let us devise tests that do not use magic at all, but which still give precise results. At times individuals — generally scluds — are unwilling to take these tests, or to answer truthfully. The degree of their scludditude can be fathomed in other ways, with some slight uncertainty. The second volume of my magnum opus Fixing the Future gives all the details of the testing methods. It has never been found wrong. You have read it, have you not?”

Yylhauntra shrugged. “The first volume was technical and — forgive me — occasionally obscure. I did not get to the second. A personal visit was preferable.”

“Of course, of course!” said Verhump. “Well. I shall administer the question-test to Bluelark, while Rainboat sits upon The Chair Of Spiritual Origination, and then the two shall have their roles reversed.” “Rainboat” and “Bluelark” indicated their assent to the plan.

“Now, Bluelark. Have you ever wished for the dawning of a new day, for reasons that have nothing to do with illumination? What reasons were they?” asked Verhump.

“Well, yes. I wanted more cley,” said “Bluelark”.

“H’m,” said Verhump, making notations. “Do you enjoy telling people latest scandal about your associates?”

“I always present everyone’s foibles in the best light possible! Unless of course they have somehow managed to make themselves my enemy,” said “Bluelark”. This was duly recorded.

“Do you browse through skyboat schedules, or dictionaries, or lists of child names, just for pleasure?” asked Verhump.

“My interest in such things is purely technical!”

“Very well,” said Verhump, and the interrogation continued through a list of similar obtuse questions.

Then it came time for “Bluelark” to sit in the Chair of Spiritual Origination. She privately checked to make sure the Eye of Mirizan and Melizan was in her pocket, not that there was the slightest chance it could have gotten away from her without her noticing.

The chair was a suitably elaborate thing. Big carved loops of wood, with inlaid rune-enamelled plaques of copper and brazinion, ocular gemstones, hunks of glass, and an assortment of similar occult-looking items, encircled the head of the full-sized person sitting in it. Cryptic runes had been embroidered on the arms and back. When “Bluelark” sat in it, it puffed the scent of ancient, exhausted herbs. Oddly, few of these were things that one might expect to help a Kennoc Spiridor Tempador enchantment. They were mostly of value in Corpador and Herbador work, or not for enchantments at all.

“Ready? It will take some moments, and, of course, do not resist the magic,” said Verhump.

“Bluelark” was a touch nervous about not resisting some unknown and eccentric spell being placed on her. But she had come with a goodly selection of defenses and investigations, so she sat down without complaint. The chair did its thing. Its “thing” was, indeed, a big pile of Kennoc.

There was actually a nontrivial Kennoc Spiridor Tempador effect, which determined, in an overly complicated way and with an excess of power, how large the subject’s spirit is in a certain spiritual dimension, which would be degree of purpleness if the spirit were visible, which it isn’t. Most of the spell, though, was a somewhat murky and Illusidor-obscured Kennoc Spiridor Corpador Herbador spell, which determined, with massive power, just how much of your spirit was composed of flesh, and how much composed of plant material. The answer would generally be “none”, though one might imagine a person being merged with a Corpador or Herbador angel in the way that Feralan was once merged with a Locador demon, so it’s not completely impossible for some part to be.

Clever enough! There aren’t many people with the depth of magic analysis (or the Eye of Mirizan and Melizan) to tell the difference between one complicated and blurry Kennoc Spiridor spell and another. The Chair certainly had plenty of power, which one might think would be helpful for peering back in time. With two enchantments it might also seem complex enough to do so.

But nothing about the chair’s magic could possibly reveal the soul’s past.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

One Zi Ri arrived at the gate of Draffmoug with zir entourage. The Zi Ri was Yylhauntra. Now there’s a name to conjure with, to entwine historians and philosophers and idealistic revolutionaries and prime supremicists. Yylhauntra, the Zi Ri with malachite-striped scales, as bright-eyed and eager as zie was the instant that the peculiar appendage of Hren Tzen created zir back at the beginning. I will give the Vepri this: the surviving first-generation primes are indeed imposing.

I won’t give them the following: the reincarnations of the no-longer-surviving first generation primes are not even known, according to modern theology and magic. Nor, I suspect, do they shine with forty-four centuries of experience and passion.

Yylhauntra announced zirself to the guards at the gate of Draffmoug. In due course a lacquered carriage came from the mansion of Verhump, drawn by four matched white stallions whose toeclaws scuffed the boardwalks. “Verhump is officially a simple philosopher and occasional guest-lecturer,” remarked Yylhauntra to zir unremarkable companions, “but her equippage could not be more honeyed if she were an empress.”

The coachman called back, “Good Zi Ri, O optime, please to note. Verhump is in fact the reincarnation of Wilsamander, of the first-created Rassimel. She is older than even you. What we give her is her due, and barely so!”

“Oh, Wilsamander of the first Rassimel! It has been a while since I saw him last. Perhaps because he had such poor tactics in the first war against the cyarr. Far be it from me to forbid you to honor him, or, as he now seems to style himself, her,” said Yylhauntra.

(But the Cani man called Rainboat whispered, “Was Wilsamander even in the cyarr wars?” To which Yylhauntra whispered back, “no.”)

Confronting Verhump

Verhump has been installed in the left wing of the Ducal Palace of Draffmoug. I rather have the impression that the Duke himself is stuffed in a closet in the smaller and shabbier right wing. In any case, the Duke was nowhere to be seen. Verhump, a shit-brown Rassimel in a robe of rubies, was awaiting Yylhauntra in a small throne room where a parlor would do.

“Yylhauntra! It gives me the greatest pleasure to welcome one of the first generation Zi Ri to Draffmoug!” proclaimed Verhump.

Yylhauntra can, when zie wants, perform a courtly curtsey as devastating as a whirlwind of scissors. “Professor Verhump! I am glad to be here, for quite serious reasons!”

“Your petition for an audience did suggest that there were deep matters which none better than I could assist with,” said Verhump. “Of course, the full powers of Draffmoug may be placed at your disposal, if it is as serious a matter as all that!”

“I shan’t be needing the full powers of Draffmoug. I shall be needing two or three hours of your time. Some might find it self-serving of me to start a Vepri movement in Inihithre,” said Yylhauntra. Verhump’s eyes widened; she had not expanded the Vepri past the cities of the trough, and here was Yylhauntra casually discussing starting a branch in one of the greatest cities of the world! “There is no question about what generation I am, after all. Whoever else may benefit and whoever may not, it is surely in my interests. So I wish to be certain about matters before I begin.”

“Of course! I have rooms and rooms of evidence, of case histories, of historical and philosophical discourses, of theoretical analyses!” said Verhump.

“In fact, I wish to conduct an experiment of my own. I have with me two companions, whose history and morals in this life are thoroughly known and established and known to me. I wish for their generation of creation to be computed by your tools and methods. If you proclaim them glates, when in fact they behave like optimes, I shall not be well-pleased! But if you proclaim them glates and calculate properly their glatish behavior, my course is clear!”

Verhump looked just a touch nervous. “My most able assistants shall be put at your disposal, with careful instructions…”

Yylhauntra frowned, the devastating sort of little frown that suggested that zie was on the verge of ranking your recent suggestion as the stupidest one that zie had heard in the last fifteen or sixteen centuries. “Are you personally unavailable? This is a matter of personal importance to me, that Vepri methods can pick out which one of my companions is the glate.”

Verhump rose from her not-quite-throne and curtsied. “I shall be glad to assist you!” She clearly thought to herself, One more slip like that and it shall be child’s play to ensure the proper answer!

Mirrored from Sythyry.

From:Sythyry, Kismirth, 14 Hispis 4402
To: Yylhauntra, Inihithre

Dear grandparent,

Perhaps you are unaware of the uses that your honorable and long-historied name and early stories are being put to. The Cities of the Trough are getting overrun by the so-called Verified Primordeals, or Vepri. One Verhump, drawing heavily on the philosphy of Doggerly and nearly as heavily upon your own memoirs of the first days, is coming up with some persuasive nonsense about how early-generation primes are inherently superior to late-generation ones, and, therefore, society should be ordered by one’s generation of origin. Which they claim to be able to calculate based on various behaviors.

I do not dispute the brilliance of the first generation! Your heroics and glories are well-established! But later generations can do nearly as well: even current generations.

For example, you made somewhat of a point that none of the first-generation primes were transaffectionate, that all of them were intimate with only their own species. This has been interpreted by this Verhump as meaning that transaffection is a sign of being of late generation of first birth. (I thank you for telling me that third-generation primes were occasionally transaffectionate, which the Vepri say is impossible. I rather wish you would publish that fact more broadly.)

Yes, transaffection is my personal hobby-horse (and it gives the best rides!). But the Vepri are quite serious about the matter — of generation, not of transaffection. They have been brutal about depriving late-generation people, whom they call “glates” or “sclud”, of their rights, and of their intact bones and unburnt houses and such as well.

A fair number of such people have moved to Kismirth. I certainly appreciate the influx of skilled, congenial, and appreciative immigrants. But I’d rather be attracting them for Kismirth’s own sake, than having them whipped out of their home cities by some vile philosophy.

So I was wondering…

One doesn’t often get interrupted when one is writing a letter. I didn’t this time, but the reply came so fast — the next morning — that I might as well have been interrupted.

From: Yylhauntra, Inihithre, 14 Hispis 4402
To:Sythyry, Kismirth

Dear grandchildren (for I know that Sazandigraa is more likely than not to be found in Kismirth, hoping against hope to get a few scraps of Sythyry’s attention)

I have looked into the Vepri movement. I went so far as to read the whole of Doggerly’s The Cancerous Degeneration some decades ago. A monstrous pile of uncleaned guntry intestines! For my opinion, one generation seems much like another in terms of morality, art, greatness, intellect, or what have you. There may be minor differences here and there, but the trend of prime civilization is upward! Outward! Downward to the hypothetical roots of the World Tree! Crossward to the reaches of wisdom and magic! Bestward, ever bestward!

But I know adventurers such as yourselves! What subtle plan do you have that requires my help? And my own weak assistance, as opposed to the mighty wizardries of your more renowned grandparent Glikkonen? Where shall we meet? What tools and equipments shall I bring? How long will it take? How much will it cost?

Oh, and please forgive me, once again, for siccing that nendrai on you. My intentions were rather the opposite.

Your loving grandparent,
Yylhauntra.

“Well, that was easy,” I said to Saza.

“Yylhauntra has always been rather the philosophical warrior. Zie has principles! In many ways they are unpleasant principles. I do believe zie’d be happy to kill every nonprime person on the Tree, starting with your friend Vae that zie supposedly sicced on you. But this is a matter of primes, and we should be able to work with zir,” said Saza.

I caught zir by the wing and dragged zir into the fireplace for activities which need not be described to anyone who does not happily lounge and squirm around in fireplaces.

Afterwards, zie bonked me with a wingtip. “Not that I am complaining in the least, but how much of that was genuine Sythyry interest? I ask because you are not so physical with me every year, and I don’t think you’ve ever been so direct with an expression of interest.”

I enslithered Saza by way of answer, and did my best to distract zir. The answer to zir question was, yes, about 1/9 actual interest and 8/9 guilt for avoiding the matter so much that Yylhauntra had to prod me about it.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Heen set forth this missive.

The guild-masters in Iluc said I had committed every crime. That’s only in a letter to the guild-masters in Kismirth though. It started when Pumperpriest, she’s the head of the guild in Iluc, invited in the Vepri examiners to test everyone in the guild. Masters, journeymen, apprentices … everyone. “It won’t do to have an optime given orders by a glate!”

So everyone has to answer all their questions. Oh, such questions. “When you wash your face in the morning, where do you pour the waste-water out?” they ask. “Do you smile a bigger smile when a Rassimel buys from you, than when a Cani does?” That’s another one. “When you eat a bun and soup, do you tear off bits of the bun and soak them in the soup?” They ask so many questions, and each and every one of them dead stupid.

And after that they call a big meeting, with nearly everyone there. Well, wouldn’t you know? Most of the masters are optimes. Most of the journeymen are norums — that’s younger than optimes and older than glates. Most of the apprentices are norums too. But Teffimer is a glate, old Teffimer who got into a big fight with Pumperpriest last month. Dahine is a glate, Lippister is a glate, Mocktschiba is a glate, and I’m a glate. Every master that had any sort of quarrel with Pumperpriest is a glate. Fancy that!”

“Well, and there are new laws coming up in Iluc — all through the Trough of Kreischan! We won’t be having optimes ruled by anyone of later generation, and glates can’t command anyone at all! This honorable Guild will be in the first ones compliant with those laws!” says Pumperpriest, and all of the guild-masters who came up optimes say “Hear, hear!”.

“And it’s out with old Teffimer. No pension for him, for he’s stripped of his guild membership, and nothing for eighty years in the guild! He protests, he complains, he sues in the court! But there’s never a trial. The Doippmers come to his house in the night, a dozen thudding tall men. It’s broken bones a-plenty for old Teffimer, instead of lozens, and scimitars slashing through his big closet full of fancy clothes. He leaves away after that, and his lawsuit and everything abandoned.”

“Not that I’m any smarter, me. The guild votes to demote all of the masters who are glates. Dahine’s vote comes up first. I demand to be given a vote about him, for I’m a master in the guild and the laws say I can vote. But no, they say, I’m a glate and not to be allowed. Master? Glate? The optimes beat me out of the room, and it’s not sweet. Then they vote me to journeyman, and prohibit me from any sort of job that has me telling anyone what to do.

“Well, and I sure tell them what to do. I tell them to take their carding-combs and their modelling mannequins and stuff them up their asses! That’s that, though, and I’ve got to get my tail out of Iluc in a hurry.

They don’t like me any more, the guild, and when you write to them about me, they send back a bunch of lies. There’s only one of them that’s even true: I took guild-master secrets with me to a city outside the Trough of Kreischan, me as isn’t a guild-master. And the only reason I did that is, they demoted me and I left the region without forgetting all what I knew.”

The affedavit took quite a while to write. We checked every single sentence with Heen, making sure he throught it was true, and it took a dozen tries sometimes to be sure he didn’t have any reservations about what he’d said.

I cast a morally-dubious spell on Heen, ruling him completely for a moment. “Now, tell us if any of this affedavit is false, and tell us what the truth of the matter is!”

“It’s a lie that I’m not smarter than Teffimer; he’s a dull old man. Thirty years ago he was a silk-needle of wits, but now he’s a knitting-needle, and drinks Khtsoyis tea. The rest is true,” said Heen.

“Thank you, Master-Couturier. My apologies for the need to thus interrogate you, O my brother in this honorable Guild, and I welcome you to the mysteries and honorable secrets of the Guild of Kismirth,” I said. Which was slightly inappropriate — it’s really Eleven’s job to say that first, and we should have voted — but none of my siblings in this honorable Guild complained in the slightest. (Also, not that we have any real secrets. Like the Green Witch village, we’re a guild of scraps: masters from a dozen cities, who have just recently started working together.)

And we performed suitable silly but traditional highly secret and honorable rituals, and made Heen a master-couturier of Kismirth with all the rights and priveleges attendant thereto, and none of this Vepri nonsense.

Plotting

“I really don’t like how the Vepri are behaving,” everyone said.

“But what can we do about it?” asked everyone else.

“I don’t know! But Sythyry should do something,” everyone said.

So I’m going to do something.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Heen Sranac was a stout and tall Rassimel man with squirrel styling, wearing an intricately embroidered gown in the latest fashion of Creitheia, just as a master-couturier should. I felt a bit shabby in just my ribbons, which were fine for enchantment in private, but a bit meagre around the guild. We introduced ourselves and exchanged certain secret guild-signs and minor rituals that my oath utterly forbids me to describe because they are too secret and sacred, and, if I were not bound by oath, my literary sense would forbid me to describe because they are too petty and puny.

“Well, Master-Couturier Sythyry, I’m half-glad you’ve come to listen to me, and half-ashamed. But I offered to Master-Couturier Eleven that I’d take a truth-spell to prove my story. It was just a manner of speaking, like, for I’ve never heard of anyone actually going and doing it. But here you are, a wizard too, and now that you’re here to cast one, I’m not going to back out of my word like some numbled lick-splutter,” said Heen.

“Well, this is serious, if you’re asking for a truth-spell. You do know that that’s mind-magic? Which I am allowed by special dispensation of the Duke of Vheshrame to perform lawfully, but even I only do so with the greatest of reluctance and care?”

“Vheshrame? Why’s the Duke of Vheshrame got a say in it?” asked Eleven. “I thought you’d be asking the Mayor for it.”

“Kismirth is a city in the city-state of Vheshrame, Master-Couturier, and we are under the laws of Vheshrame as well as our own. This is an important point, and not to be neglected — though it rarely arises.” I am a bit prissy on this topic! I have been a citizen of Vheshrame since everyone else’s grandparents were children, and I care about it considerably. But many respectable citizens have never even visited Vheshrame, and know it only as a round blotch on the world-branch below us, and have, I believe, confused it with a particularly colorful bacterial infection.

Heen nodded, his wimple flapping a bit. “Yes, I know it’s a mind-spell. I do care a lot to have this all set aright. I’d rather suffer the spell — and pay for you to cast it — than to have anyone think that the Iluc guild’s libel is anything of true.”

“Well then. We shall have the guild-secretary write down your story, and you shall read it and correct it until you are sure that every word is true. Then I will cast one quick mind-spell to verify it. There are two choices. A Kennoc spell which reads your mind — and, being Kennoc, has some small chance of failing. Or a Ruloc spell, which compels you to tell the truth: no chance of failure if you accept the spell, but it is mind-control and no mistaking it. Which would you like?”

Heen flattened his ears. “You’re asking if I’d rather have a thumbtack put in my left eye or my right, Master-Couturier!”

I nodded. “The thumbtack is your choice altogether, Mas… Heen. If you don’t want it, we can use usual investigative processes.”

“Oh, I’ll take it, I’ll take it. And, if it’s really a question of which eye gets the thumbtack, one’s as bad as the other, so I’ll take the Ruloc spell and get the full confidence for no more Mentador,” said Heen.

“A brave choice!” I said.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

I don’t generally attend many guild meetings, especially in Kismirth. I am a member of too many guilds, and the traditional evening for meetings — the first night of the week — means that I would need to be in three or four places at once. That’s a lot, even for me, so generally I skip them all. I pay my dues and follow guild laws and generally behave well, and the healers and sky pilots and smiths and tailors understand that I am not really being any competition for them. In good years they take my membership in their honorable and ancient orders as a compliment. In bad years they pretend I’m not really a member.

But once in a while, like yesterday, I do get a polite note saying that there’s a drop of trouble in the Couturier’s Guild and could I please come to the meeting if it’s at all convenient for me. I pay attention to notes like that. I always halfway expect they’ve realized I’m not a real couturier and they’re going to kick me out.

Instead, Master Eleven — Eleven what? I don’t know. She’s Herethroy, so it probably is ‘spots’ or ‘stripes’ or something, but they’re under her master’s robes, which are as impressive as the robes of the guildmaster of the Couturier’s Guild ought to be, and I have not yet managed to seduce her so I can find out. (To be precise, I haven’t even thought about the topic until just now, when it arose out of pure logic.) Master Eleven said, “Ah, excellent! The wizard has just whisked in the window!”

“Forgive me, Master-Couturier, but wasn’t that the door?” I had to ask.

“Forgive me, Master-Couturier,” said Eleven. “I was alliterating, in honor of my new boyfriend!” Eleven is as traff as a … as … as I am, say, or as my wife. She seems to be dating a Gormoror now. (Note to self: confirm health-care arrangements before attempting seduction of Eleven.)

“What is this doomy disaster that has come upon this honorable Guild?” I asked.

“This honorable guild has a bit of a paradox and a perplexion and a problem, which a whistle of wizardry could set straight! We’ve got a journeyman who just moved here from Iluc, on Choinxeia, and he wants to be made a master in this honorable guild,” said Eleven.

“And for some reason the usual qualifications, of seventeen years’ professional work, preferably in the shop of a full master in the guild, are not applicable? Nor are the alternate ones, of a seventeen-day examination and demonstration of all aspects of the noble and mighty craft of this most puissant guild, and payment of a substantial fee?” (Notes: (1) When I joined the guild, I campaigned for the seventeen-day examination; I wouldn’t have worked for seventeen years in someone else’s shop. It has been done a few items since then, always by journeymen past their eleventh year. (2) Guildsmen are urged by custom and long usage to talk like that about their guilds, at least in the guild hall. It makes everyone feel more important, which is nice when one is in a silly little thing like little the Couturier’s Guild.)

“Well, you see, Master Sythyry, he says that he was a guild-master in Iluc for a decade and more, but they demoted him down to journeyman because of some Vepri stuff. And so he says he should come here as a master, without any need for journeying or for tests,” said Eleven. “Of course we have letters from the guild in Iluc. They say he broke the guild-laws a dozen ways: revealing guild secrets, selling inferior wares for the prices of good stuff, undercutting and denigrating his brother and sisters in the guild, arranging a secret smuggling route with scluds in Choulano.”

I hopped onto the back of a chair. “He must have worked quite diligently; it sounds as if he broke every one of the guild-laws, except the one against seducing the spouses of other masters.”

“Actually, one letter said he’d tried that too. Cross-species, at that, so he should fit quite well here if that’s true,” said Eleven.

“Well, for breaking every guild-law, he deserves to get a special award — and probably to get demoted to journeyman too, if not actually expelled,” I said, because it is an obligation on guild-masters to uphold guild law.

“The thing is, he says he didn’t … well, he’s in the next parlor.” (Aieee, those parlors, those supernumary parlors! they infest every crystallization effort I perform!) “Hear him for yourself.”

Mirrored from Sythyry.

“I love you both,” said Simmerene. She was nestled between Folded and Octagons, on the huge and generally soaked pillow they used for body-play. She squeezed some of her favorite parts of the elfimel, and said again, rather more pointedly, “I love you both. I really do.”

“Every day, after work, you do” said Folded. “And nicely, too. I’m almost getting used to it.”

Octagons flicked her ears. “Simmerene, I don’t quite speak Ketherian perfectly yet. The way you say that makes it sound as if there’s something more that you mean than that you trade pleasure with us. I think we figured out that you do!”

Simmerene curled her tail in the precise and slightly cockeyed curl that would convey, I am embarrassed by the actions that my harsh and inappropriate needs compel me to take, but I will take them anyhow to another Cani. Arfaen would have understood perfectly; I might have gotten a hint of it; the Elfimel had no chance. “I do mean more. I want to live with you.”

Octagons spread her huge ears. “How strange a thought is that! I am barely wise in the concept of living in one place at all. Are you about to try to teach me more?”

“I mean, I want to be your wife,” said Simmerene.

“It was only seven of your years ago that I even learned the word, wife,” said Folded. “There is much about it that I do not know. Primes value marriage greatly; did not Sythyry build Kismirth so that zie could marry Arfaen?”

(The real answer, by the way, is: No. Arfaen and I were already married at the time, at least in the eyes of one city a long way away from us.)

Simmerene wagged her tail hard. “Exactly, zie did. Marriage means the most to us of nearly anything. Will you marry me?”

“I don’t know how … do you, Octagons?” said Folded.

“Not really,” Octagons admitted.

“Let me live with you, let me teach you!” cried Simmerene.

“I suppose we could do that,” said Folded.

“We’re still confused by all the ways of primes,” said Octagons.

Which makes my engagements with Arfaen seem like grand peaks of romance, really.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Later that afternoon, I cornered Namie in her bedroom. She had a messy pile of old clothes in one corner that she slept in, a few cushions, a closet full of the monochrome cloaks that she wore when she had to wear anything, and not much else. One perpetual light spell; apartments inside of Kismirth have no windows, and I don’t think Namie can afford candles. No art to soften the stark white meng walls and ceiling and floor. As un-Heavenly a place as possible.

(And yes, whenever anyone talks seriously about killing gods, the matter is immediately referred to the nearest available wizard, in this case, me. Or, if there is no wizard to be found, one gets the nearest available fur-stylist or puppeteer. The results are equally good.)

(And no, I can’t remember anyone ever discussing deicide in any sort of serious terms before.)

Me: “You want to kill Mircannis, the goddess of healing.”

Namie: “Yes! She must die! The sooner the better!”

Me: “What happens then?”

Namie: “Her wickedness is revenged upon!”

Me: “Wickedness is such a gelatinous term. She’s one of our nicer deities. Still, leaving aside the practical matter of how you can manage deicide, do you know what killing her will do?”

Namie: “Wizard, you are a child compared to me, a snidlet with of a tiny fraction of my age.”

Me: “And the reciprocal of a tiny fraction of your education! You didn’t even know what a ‘child’ was until seven years ago. Whereas I have studied theoretical theology with Ghulmannis himself!” Afram oa Ghulmannis being the first professor of theoretical theology I remembered; he was an adequate teacher and an adequate scholar, but nobody famous. I could trust that Namie had no idea of that.

Namie: “Well, I daresay you’re going to stay here until you tell me, or chase me through the corridors and avenues shouting theological theory at me. So talk.”

Me: “For one thing, it will deprive all that lives on the World Tree of healing, for as long as she stays dead.”

Namie: “A pregnancy-length without healing? That is nothing! I sometimes go for that long without the slightest injury!”

Me: “You’re being heartless and foolish. The World Tree is a violent place; accidents are frequent. Actually I have no idea how long she’d stay dead. Probably for just an instant. Perhaps forever.”

Namie: “What, she is so ill-liked that her sisters wouldn’t re-enbody her?”

Me: “I don’t think that creator gods reincarnate each other by pregnancies, the way you did in Heaven. I have no idea how they do it, if at all. We’ve only seen one god die — Hressh-Huu — and she’s simply a very large air elemental, more different from a creator god than you are from a pigeon pie. Mircannis resurrected her in an instant, and a good thing too or everyone would have died from lack of air.”

Namie: “I do not care about such things! Mircannis must die for creating a Heaven as her private torture chamber! When she returns she will be more considerate!”

Me: “She’s one of our nicest deities. And if we started blaming deities for everything that’s wrong with their worlds, what are we hoping for? Are they to stop creating worlds unless they’re perfect? We’d have lots fewer worlds then. And besides, everyone thinks that your world is an attempt to be perfect.”

Namie: “My world is a perpetual swirling of psychological and philosophical stagnation!”

Me: “Why don’t you try to figure out what a perfect and endurable and wonderful universe would be? Then see if a couple World Tree natives agree with you — one prime and one non-prime, say. You might ask Vae as the non-prime. She thinks about that sort of thing a lot, and, if anyone in Kismirth were able to help you fight a goddess (and nobody is), it would be Vae.”

Namie: “Now you’re trying to get me killed and buried and un-resurrected and away from your twispy little goddess.”

Me: “Well, no. If I were trying to kill you, I’d just do it.” Which is utterly untrue! I do not kill my friends, clients, acquaintances, siblings of friends, fellow primes, or anyone else I take seriously. Even if, say, they betray me and embezzle everything I own.

Namie: “You are the very tail of Mircannis! So awful and rude!”

She turned and buried herself in sleeping-cloths, and refused to come out or talk more even when I poked her foot with a claw. At which point I seemed to have a choice between actual violence (such as pouring a cup of water on her and on her bed, or, as a later resort, breathing my candleflame breath barely-weapon on her exposed toes) or retreat.

Me: “I cannot imagine how Namie could be a threat to Mircannis. Namie is very quick with a dagger, to be sure, but she has no magic, and in any case all magic comes from Mircannis herself or from her friends and relatives. Nor, I think, is there anywhere on the World Tree a dagger which could hurt her. Indeed, Mircannis is not even reachable without considerable travel. So the main danger seems to be that Namie will hurt herself in some extravagant attempt. I could give her a bodyguard.”

Namie: [muffled] “I will knife any bodyguard, piercing them to death!”

Me: “That you won’t.”

Theological Considerations of Deicide

Me: “… And that’s the full story, Arch-Preceptor Lenske, save for whatever details I have forgotten.”

Lenske: “A story indeed!” He is the oldest mortal Rassimel I can think of having met lately; his fur is quite white. Maybe he bleaches it to match his robes. His ecclesiastical rank entitles him to wear a wooden crown carved with cherries, which he does does with grace and aplomb.

Me: “What should I do?”

Lenske: “Clearly you should prevent this Namie from killing Mircannis.”

Me: “How…?”

Lenske: “I would not dream of trying to teach you wizardry. However, given the power gap between the two, anything you do, up to and including using the fullness of your abilities to help her kill Mircannis, will prevent Namie from killing Mircannis.”

I disentangled that a bit.

Me: “So, anything I do will keep Namie from killing Mircannis?”

Lenske: “Precisely.”

Me: “This does not leave me much more advised than before.”

Lenske: “What have you done so far?”

Me: “I have imprisoned Namie in the Supremely Slow Sector, so that three months of our time is just one day for her. She is guarded by a floating silver Khtsoyis golem of admirable power, which watches her constantly and — in principle — keeps her out of trouble.”

Lenske: “What if she stabs it?”

Me: “She has done, several times. The automaton repairs itself though, more quickly than she can stab. Also it takes her knife away whenever she stabs it.”

Lenske: “An estimable precaution!”

Me: “Still, a temporary one. In the long term — which is now eighty-one times as long as it might be — what should we do with her?”

Lenske: “Sadly, I lack useful advice. If you had imprisoned the goddess Mircannis herself, or even one of her angels, I should be happy to tell you more. Namie, though, is outside the scope of my theology.”

Me: “She is a creation of Mircannis.”

Lenske: “As am I. Nonetheless I do not feel moved to kill my creator. You must look elsewhere for advice.”

See sythyry.livejournal.com for a poll about advice