Sythyry's Journal

Mirrored from Sythyry.

After hearing about Pirly, and about the Rounses and Noritts, you might get the impression that everyone who moves to Kismirth loves it — the casinos! The open transaffection! The erotically-charged atmosphere! The quasi-Hrreptite governmental system! The gentle yet loving yet insightful yet perfect hand of Phaniet and the other Wrongfolk guiding all things!

That is not the case. A significant number of immigrants don’t like this or that feature of the city. Even the Rounses and Noritts aren’t terribly fond that their children are going to grow up in as immoral a place as Kismirth. (If their children have any clue of the horrors of adolescence that await them, they might be glad of it. Which is what their parents are afraid of.)

And people who can tell early on that Kismirth is not for them generally don’t generally immigrate. Any number of people have come here thinking it would be a wonderful place to live unlike their current home — or a place where it was possible to live, unlike their current home — and been shocked by all the different-species couples or triples kissing in the streets, or been upset by the laws against stealing from tourists, or what have you. People who know they shouldn’t move here mostly don’t move here.

Niia and Chiver did move here. They were a very typical immigrant couple, Rassimel woman and Cani man, coming from a Vepri-infested city-state that didn’t approve of them at all. But it didn’t work very well for them.

This story does not end with everyone moving to Kismirth and being happy forever. Kismirth is not a Heaven of Mircannis (or a Heaven of Sythyry); and even a Heaven of Mircannis doesn’t seem able to please everyone. Don’t expect Kismirth to either.

Though we (and Mircannis) really try our best to make it so.

Chiver and the Principal: Hating Kismirth, part 1

The lords of Choulano have not, historically, tried to make their city be a Heaven of any sort for much of anybody. Actually the first lords of Choulano were a pleasant and well-intentioned lot, according to Yylhauntra, who was there. But there have been many, many lords of Choulano since then, as with any of the earlyish cities on Craitheia, and they haven’t always been the best.

(Note to self: See if there’s some way to keep the same thing from happening to Kismirth.)

The current lords of Choulano are a pack of Ministers, as the city has a fairly democratic parliamentary sort of system. There’s a Duke of Choulano I think, but she is somewhere between a figurehead and a public ceremonialist. So they’ve got a pile of Ministers of the Exchequer and Ministers of the Culture and Ministers of the Armiger and Ministers of the November and Ministers of the Alkaseltzer anything else at all. [Free translation. -bb] Most of these Ministers, currently, belong to the ruling party, the Vepri. (Democracy is not the culprit here. The Duke is also a Vepri.)

Chiver and Niia were not Vepri. One of Chiver’s uncles — his parental family was rather large, even as Cani longhouses go, so he was plentifully supplied with uncles and aunts, most of them sensible — had been for several years the Yarlving D. Thwaliostro Professor of Magic Theory at Amborkk Academy in Choulano. As the Vepri started becoming more prominent and more powerful, the uncle — like anyone else who knows much about magic theory — had certain reservations about some fundamental articles of the Vepri program, and he expressed them in very distinct terms in a long and exceedingly clear guest editorial in the Choulano Chopper. Not long after, Chiver’s uncle’s office burned up, with the uncle — generally a teetotaler — dead drunk and passed out on the desk in it. While the uncle survived, he was not good for much Magic Theory after that, and, indeed, rarely left his bedroom save in a wheelchair.

Vepri are the so-called VErified PRImordeals. The basic theory is that (1) the people from the earlier generations were more virtuous and wise and excellent than those from later generations. (While this is obviously true in my case — I am third or fourth generation depending on how one counts — there is no particular reason to think it true.) And (2) the leadership and members of the Vepri are themselves early-generation people, or, specifically, the reincarnations thereof. They claim to have devices and methods to verify this. Any magic I know that does so is quite hard and rarely bothered with. But it’s a popular movement in Choulano, and other places as well.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

On a world devastated by the importation of alien grasses, Melyl is an intelligent, telepathic tree who can eavesdrop on the minds of anyone who eats her berries. She was kidnapped, enslaved, and forced to use her powers to spy on her master’s rival nations. It won’t be long before she is discovered, uprooted, and burned as another invader. But how can she free herself when she is rooted in her kidnapper’s garden?

After far too long, my non-World-Tree novel The Wrath of Trees is available, with spiffy cover art and some interior illustrations by the amazing Tod Wills.

You can get it on Amazon in paperback
or a whole lot cheaper in Kindle format.
Or, you can get the paperback on CreateSpace here for the same price but more of it goes to me.

Quiz by Grinwipey, with real-world references by Bard.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Because you asked for it

The crystallization method is an advanced, poorly-controlled, and poorly-understood enchantment technique for making buildings pervaded by magic, generally much larger on the inside than the outside. It puts Locador in places where even Locador was never meant to go, and introduces economies of scale on a frightening scale.

• Crystallization lets one make very large buildings. Making the same kind of building by other means would not, generally, let one make buildings as large. For one things, crystallized buildings do not require supports; each room held to its place in the underlying Locador lattice, supported by the structure of space itself, rather than putting its weight on the more fragile walls and support columns of an entirely physical building.
• Unfortunately, the buildings can get too big, inside. It is not uncommon for them to grow without bound. Of course the outer boundary of the building is fixed, but the space inside will grow with the building. Furthermore, as it grows, the spaces get weirder and weirder, so the unlimited size is of limited value.
• Crystallization can let one magic item serve for an vast number of residences. For example, a water-creator that can create ten gallons of water as often as desired, will usually go idle even in a very large noble’s house. With crystallization techniques, one such item could supply water for an entire city. The power of the item is used in many places at once.
• Unfortunately, as one gets deeper into the edifice, the power from such items is used in increasingly peculiar ways. Their effects are refracted and distorted by their conduction through the crystal; they are blended and superimposed; they become strange and stranger. As crystallization is fundamentally a Locador construct, magical effects that are not related to buildings come off worse than those that are. For example, most crystallized buildings have air-freshening spells, and those spells work adequately more or less everywhere inside of them (though with occasional regions of intense temperature or smell or foggines or what have you deep inside). One early crystallization experiment included a continual healing spell that should have applied to everywhere inside; it was rapidly distorted to chaotic Corpador spells almost everywhere, and that experimental building is not safe to enter.

Structure and Disstructure

The crystallizer, as part of the process, designs a Plan for the edifice. The kinds of rooms are detailed; there may be some dozens of sorts of room. The preferred arrangement for their assembly is also described. Kismirth, for example, has several kinds of rooms for restaurants: a big kitchen with a double door and counters and stoves, a pantry with shelving and cooling, a large dining room, and corridors and bathrooms that are shared with other sorts of places. The Plan indicates three ways that these may be assembled: a simple small restaurant with a kitchen and one dining room; a larger one with three dining rooms; a banquet hall with five kitchens in a row and sixteen dining rooms surrounding them in a 3×7 rectangle.

The crystallizer must acquire magical devices (or spells, but usually it’s devices) capable of making all the desired rooms and magical effects in the building. These devices had best be capable of unlimited use; they will power all the magic in the building, both the magic of creating it and the magic of any continuing effects. There is no need to make the effects perpetual, as the crystallization technique will re-cast them form the device as often as necessary. These spells are called the Solution [in the sense of a chemical solution, not the answer to a problem.] Some good examples:

1. Creation of rooms, corridors, plazas, etc.
2. Lighting. We have one sort of lights for dwelling-places (gentle and controllable), and another (bright and nourishing) for farm-rooms and atria.
3. Fresh air — crucial in a building which may be arbitrarily or even infinitely large, with windows only on its outer surface.
4. Water
5. Waste disposal
6. Temperature control
7. Furniture creation
8. Fireproofing and other invulnerabilization
9. Scrying Windows. In most crystallized edifices, most of the rooms are indoors. People who come to live in a floating city do not, I think, wish to live indoors and never see the sky! So Kismirth apartments have windows which show the outside, even for rooms deep in the interior of the city.
10. Gardening — an atrium or indoor garden every few blocks does wonders for the comfort and sanity of the inhabitants.
11. Pools and bathing facilities — crucial if you’ve got Orren.
12. Animata to be servants to the inhabitants. After some considerable debate, we didn’t do much of this for Kismirth. But there are animata doing a few of the most unpleasant or widespread tasks, plus the farming-golems and the like.
13. Animata to provide directions to those trying to make their way around the place.
14. Internal Teleport gates: A straightforward teleport spell has a range of, say, twenty feet. The exterior of Strayway is only fifteen feet from tip to tip. Teleport spells built into the crystal go by real-world distance, so a very simple teleport can go from anywhere inside Stray to anywhere else. I did not do this in Strayway or Kismirth — I did not think it was safe, with so much Locador around. I hope it is, in fact, as safe as the mathematics says it is, since I have found two distortion-induced teleport gates in Strayway.
15. Levities: places where people and objects are levitated and whisked from one spot to another.
16. Time Distortion: Our Quick Quarter and Slow Section are expanded by crystallization.
17. Levitation and transvection, if you are building a floating city from scratch.

The crystallization method exploits these items mercilessly, but does not add to their power. If, for example, you were to use a device that cast a day-long light spell 12/day, only twelve cells in your city would have light each day. (But if you used a device that cast perpetual light 12/day, twelve new rooms in the city would get perpetual light spells each day.) An unlimited-use day-long light spell device, or even an unlimited-use one-second-long light spell device, would be enough to illuminate every room in the building constantly.

(Unfortunately, deep in the crystal, the power of these items is distorted and recombined in troublesome ways.)

Then one constructs a Form, the outer surface of the edifice. It could be as flimsy as a gigantic cage in the right shape, as for Kismirth, or as solid as a thousand-year-old fortress as in Talujjan’s original crystallization project. It is simply used to guide the crystallization and establish its outer boundary. One may also establish certain large features, such as the radial avenues of Kismirth, by including them in the Form. There’s a bit of enchanting or spellwork required to get the Form to be a Form rather than a simple cage: nothing too hard, and, in the case of a Kismirth-sized building, something that can be done by making a suitable magical tool and giving it to an enthusiastic non-wizard.

The actual edifice will start out more or less following the plan, where it starts. Easy crystallizations start with a single room (or suite of rooms — the technical literature calls it a cell, but I rarely remember to call it that. It’s not a jail-cell or a monastic cell, in any case. It’s either a big room like a restaurant kitchen, or a suite of rooms for an apartment, in Kismirth.) More elaborate crystallizations create cells lining the entire border of the edifice — I did that for Kismirth. I believe that the first cell to be grown will follow the plan precisely. After that, there are no guarantees.

Crystallization proceeds from the existing rooms. The initially-created rooms are called “first ply”. The rooms created next to the first-ply are “second ply”. Those next to only second or later ply are “third ply”. Alarmingly, this pattern continues and proceeds, giving each room a ply number. To a first approximation, the first-ply rooms are normal and Planly, the second-ply rooms nearly so, and each ply a tiny bit less Planly than the previous ply.

Each cell is attached to the one-lower-ply cell that inspired its creation, and, generally, to all the cells in the area whatever their ply. The connections are architectural or Locadorical. Ideally, a door in one cell will simply open into a door the next cell; the wise architect will include a certain number of doors on the outside of each cell. But if there are no doors, the crystallization will make its own openings: perhaps a mirror on the wall of one room is a mystic portal into the arch of a pair of trees in an atrium. If the design of the room fails to include any such proto-portal on each relevant wall, the whole wall may become an oversized portal, which rather defeats its purpose as a wall. (In the extreme case, a cell that is simply a cubical room without doors will get every wall, floor, and ceilining converted to a portal, resulting in a room which only levitation can use — even touching the floor will send one elsewhere. This is very silly and only happens in one sector of Strayway, and not at all in Kismirth.)

If one tries to draw a map of what cells connect to what, one will surely be disconcerted, or become drunk. Under no circumstances will even the second-ply cells fit properly into [Euclidean] three-dimensional space. A cubical first-ply cell should have five neighbors, one for each face other than the one on the boundary. The first cells of my various essays in Strayway had between six and eleven neighbors.

Incidentally, from the inside, a cell always seems to be of a simple shape — a cube, say, or whatever was designed. But from the outside, cells are tiny, and decrease in size with each ply.

A sensible crystallizer will attempt to rein in this process, making each ply a fraction of the size of the one before it, so that the whole edifice will be of finite size. This is not guaranteed to work, even for the best crystallizer. Often an inner-ply suite will wind up following a mutant Plan which has lost the controls on the size of the process.

This will lead to unboundedly large sections of the city. (They will not be infinitely large — at any given time, the whole edifice has a finite size. But parts of it will constantly be growing, and there is no limit on their growth.) These sections get increasingly off-Plan, making them interesting or troublesome to inhabit. After some point, they can get uninhabitable in any number of ways. A waste disposal spell, intended for kitchens and toilets, might destroy any organic matter that doesn’t resist it, including clothing and children. An atrium cell might mutate into a vast jungle, or a solid cubic mile of thistles. A fresh air spell might make fresh but unendurably cold air, or air full of a deafening sound of birds chirping. In general, the usable part of the edifice will be finite; beyond a certain point it will be useless or impassable.

On Tinkering With The Crystal As It Grows

The beginnings of the crystallization are fairly slow. One has plenty of time to stroll through the cells as they begin to exist, to note flaws and infelicities in the Plan. One may wish to — shall we say — include a light-spell that one has forgotten. Or, out of a spirit of whimsey, to see how big a dining hall one can create. It is straightforward to add new first-ply rooms, with their own Plans which need not have anything to do with the original Plan. These new first-ply rooms will start to accumulate their own plies of architecture around them. (One may wish to destroy an unfortunate-seeming cell. Resist this temptation! It will probably do horrible things to cells for a dozen plies all around.)

The excitement of that happens when the crystallization with one Plan meets that with another. The border between the two will evolve its own compromise Plan. The results are quite confusing. But Strayway does have eighteen regions with their own consistent — and somewhat different — architectures. We generally lived inside of one of them and didn’t visit the others very much.

For Kismirth, we actually used all the room-creators and such, following the Plan ourselves, and tinkered with things before we started the crystallization. The first-ply rooms in Kismirth are greatly satisfactory.

On Tinkering with the Crystal After It Is Grown

One of the peculiar concerns with crystallized buildings, as different from real space, is that doing things to one cell may influence the cell’s neighborhood. In Vheshrame, if you install a new door in your house, nothing at all will generally happen to your neighbor’s house.

In Kismirth, if you do so carelessly or unluckily, you change the flow of magic through the crystal. So, installing a new door in your house might create a similar door in your neighbor’s house — or, more likely, will cause a new sofa to appear there, or make the lights a few percent brighter, or cause their air to smell faintly of lilacs.

(Only very rarely does the appearance of a door in the neighbor’s house inspire a door to appear in the house beyond that. Such a chain reaction is possible, but each cell in turn will attempt to resist it, and usually succeed in resisting it, and if a single one succeeds, the chain ends there.)

Major changes may have drastic effects for several houses around. Knocking out a wall between rooms in one cell might replace all the kitchens within three cells’ distance by swimming pools, or cause bedrooms and all their mundane contents to vanish, or cause ceilings to shrink to three feet high. We did this thrice in the depths of Strayway to see what would happen, and those are the three effects we got. We are trying to keep people from doing this experiment in Kismirth.

Crystallization and Kismirth

We used the technique to fit a whole household in Strayway, using the space distortion to the fullest. This is traditional for architectural crystallization projects. And by “traditional” I mean that the dozen-or-so crystallization projects that weren’t purely experimental up to that point all did that.

For Kismirth we took the opposite approach: the greater part of inhabited Kismirth is first-ply cells, almost comprehensible as if they were ordinary space if you don’t think about it too hard. (If you fret that, though those apartments that have front doors three feet apart, both those front doors open onto twenty-foot-wide rooms, you are thinking too hard.) Even the second ply of Kismirth has a distinct semblance of reasonability to it, though if you inspect too closely you will discover that it is actually spatially impossible even if you can’t tell the difference between three feet and twenty. We expect people to live mainly in the first ply, or perhaps the second.

In fact, we tried to stop the crystallization after the second ply. This failed. Failure was mathematically inevitable, according to hCevian and Feralan, and we knew it in advance, but we had to try. There are so very many rooms on the second ply. Each room on the second ply has its own slight variation of the Plan — or rather, a variation on a variation on the Plan. Some few of those variations admit a third ply … we know of fourteen such places, but there might be more.

So there are fourteen places where the third ply has started to grow, and they will presumably evolve their fourth and fifth and twentieth plies, and in time they will be wild chaotic regions bigger than the ordinary part of Kismirth. This is one of several reasons why we made the city walls of Kismirth so strong and so adjustable: one never knows for sure, but there might at some point be something in those regions which we wish to keep out of the downtown.

Kismirth carefully includes plenty of doors on the edges of each cell. No mystic teleportation mirrors in every apartment for us! Furthermore, these doors are all very heavy: solid eight-inch slabs of meng [comparable to bronze -bb], reinforced with internal lattices of Sir Glass [not far from steel -bb], and equipped with heavy bars and bolts on both sides. You sometimes see such doors at the fronts of banks in Vheshrame. The crystallization method requires that you have doors into to your neighbors’ houses. But they don’t need to be doors that either of you can open. (But, if you do want them open — e.g., if you occupy a first-ply apartment, and your family becomes large, and you want the uninhabited and barely-visited second-ply apartment behind it too, it can be arranged quite easily.)

Some Technical Details

• The various Plans of Strayway each fit on a single scroll of some thirty feet. The Plan of Kismirth takes up a substantial book of two hundred and eighty pages.
• I did not mention the Boiler (Boil the Architectural Construction) spell, which is a rather heavy Creoc Mutoc Sustenoc Locador Tempador Magiador Spiridor ritual spell, required to get the Form, the Plan, the other enchantments, and the seed to actually start crystallizing.
• One can control the speed of crystallization. Strayway grew at hundreds of rooms per day. Kismirth started at dozens per day; we turned it up to myriads per day for a while, when we were satisfied that it was going well, and then down as low as possible when the first and second ply were largely finished. Unfortunately ‘as low as possible’ had gotten to be … we’re not quite sure, but hundreds per day, mostly in the fourteen third-ply-and-beyond regions.
• The Form has to be enspelled by a simple but regrettably twisty spell.

Comparison with Other Methods

There’s really nothing to crystallization that you couldn’t do in more traditional ways. The city of New Kottarnu on Aradrueia, for one place you may have heard of [In the World Tree novel A Marriage of Insects -bb], has been doing it the traditional way for a thousand years.

We used crystallization because it is super-cool because we wanted to distribute the benefits of a number of magic items throughout the whole city. So, rather than requiring the dwellers in each room in Kismirth to provide for their own water, fresh air, fireproofing, and so on, we do it all at once for everyone.

Traditional approaches are a bit less frenetic. While one does, not infrequently, accidentally construct huge (or sometimes honest-to-”Here” infinitely) large places with dubious and dangerous content and eccentric local rules, crystallization all but guarantees it. Perhaps more troubling is that traditional approaches usually construct a new space and are done. Crystallization is not done; it continues and proceeds and goes on, probably forever.

Given sufficiently skilled people (and especially if you have a Locador demon helping out, and a Glory of one of the relevant gods), crystallization might well cost less than other approaches: perhaps as little as half as much.

Game Mechanical Hints

[There are no concrete rules for crystallization.]

[The intent is that a mage (or a group of mages) with relevant magical arts of 30 or so, and Enchantment and Ritual magic of about 20 could undertake a Strayway-size crystallization project, taking a handful of years' total effort -- which is how long Sythyry took. Much of this time is required for the Solution: a dozen unlimited-use magic items will take some dozens of weeks. Another significant chunk of time will take place after the crystallization is started: watching it grow, and guiding it. Building a Kismirth-class city is a larger effort, but could be done by half a dozen well-chosen prime mages whose best arts were in the 40's, with a few having Enchantment 25 and and at least one having Ritual magic of 25, in a handful of years.]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

“I’ve never been this far down in Kismirth,” said Arfaen. She had fretted for an hour about what to wear — it was a formal invitation to the Herethroy farming community, so she should dress up, but it was farmers, so she should dress down…? She dressed up. I wore ribbons, as usual.

“I haven’t been here very often either,” I said. I did create the whole city, and I’ve been on every floor in every district at least, but certainly not in every room. The farms are fairly far down from the promenade, and the Green Witch Herethroy had set up their village sort of a thing three floors below the farms.

[A better, if less evocative, translation of the name would be 'The Village of Advanced Magical Farming'. -bb]

On the world-branch, one would have plenty of warning as one approached a Herethroy village. First one might come upon flocks of grazing animals, being raised for wool and horn and bone and sale. Then orchards, and then a mile or so of fields of vegetables and grains. Interspersed all around one would find outbuildings and the occasional barn. The village itself should be visible from some way off, as a cluster of two- or three-story homes, plus barns and silos and such. The details vary from place to place, but villages are, first and foremost, visible.

That’s not how it works in Kismirth. Kismirth is constructed from wood (and other materials), and is, in effect, one immense building hanging in the sky. Its promenades and corridors must needs curve around the outside. One simply cannot see very far in it. And, while vegetation is plentiful if one thinks of it as a building, it is mostly such plants as can be taken care of by simple elementals or very routine spells — or are replaced nightly before they can wither.

Unless the locals put in some extra plantings. So our first warning of Green Witch Village was a series of window-boxes in front of the windows of the outer promenade, brilliant of flowers and gleaming berries. Seasonal, too, which was odd in its own way — Kismirth has no seasons; it is always at a comfortable temperature.

“I think our Herethroy are up to something,” I said.

“Oh, no! We don’t have any evil plans!” wailed Elecampagne, who was demonstrating zir lack of evil plans by lurking in an alcove and eavesdropping on me. Or, perhaps, being the lookout and greeter.

“I think you’re up to beautification, and honoring the cycle of the year even though we don’t really get much of one in here, and making Kismirth look like home!”

Ellie flattened zir antennae. I was pleased to see that the two of them moved quite naturally; I couldn’t tell or remember which had been pulled off and reattached. “Is that evil?”

“Not in the least! I am glad to see it!”

Reconstituted Herethroy Village

The villagers were waiting for us, arranged in a semicircle around the top seats of an underused amphitheatre. I’d estimate between two and three hundred adults, plus suitable children. They sang a Traditional Herethroy Village Greeting Song, of a sort which used to be popular a long time before I was born, when a village was greeting honored guests. (When I was young, such songs were mainly performed in Herethroy Farming Village Themed Herethroy Farming Villages, viz. those which made a bit of extra money putting on traditional entertainments for tourists.) They sounded quite ragged, even to my untrained ears, as if half of them them weren’t quite used to the tune or perhaps the language. And as if they hadn’t been singing together for generations like a real Herethroy village would have been.

It wasn’t the Rounses and Noritts alone inviting us over. It was the whole of Green Witch Village.

Some Impressions

1. The Herethroy come from all over. Not even just “all over Ketheria”; we’ve got three families from lower branches. They came to Kismirth for a wide variety of reasons, but all of them variations on a theme of “living at home wasn’t any good anymore.” The Rounses and Noritt’s story wasn’t too unusual.
2. They quite intentionally set up their homes a long way from the center of Kismirth: as far from the whorehouses and opera hall and restaurants and libertine city life as they could. They were trying to preserve some of the lifestyle, the ethos, the traditions of Herethroy villages. They are trying to keep their children somewhat out of the admittedly luxury-prone and arguably wicked life of the tourist regions of Kismirth.
3. These two facts don’t work very well together. Since they come from all over Ketheria, they don’t have the same lifestyle, ethos, or traditions. They are not hideously incompatible, but they are not the mini-monolithic polity that a typical Herethroy farming village is.
   1. There were five bowls of plue on the table, in five fairly different styles of cooking. Arfaen instinctively took a small portion from each one, and found good things to say of each. I, less cluefully, took a small portion from just the closest one — how much heavy grain porridge am I to eat, anyhow? I’m a tiny lizard! — and disappointed most of the Herethroy, including the Rounses and Noritts.
   2. They don’t all speak the same dialect of Ketherian. Some say “potato” and some say “potarbo” — and some say “We moved to Kismirth” and some say “Wie moffed at Kismirth“. The non-Ketherians don’t even speak any dialect of Ketherian very well, and say things like “Allus Kismirthi movaan“.
   3. They speak plainly. Your typical farming village has lots of subtle and idiosyncratic turns of phrase — “This plue is quite delicious” to mean “I don’t like it at all but will not directly criticize it”, but “This plue is very delicious” to mean “I love it”. Or vice versa for the next village over. The Green Witch villagers don’t do that. They are quite obvious about not doing it — one actually said of another village’s style of plue, “This plue is quite delicious” and then corrected herself to say, “But it’s not really to my taste, it’s a touch foreign, but it’s surely all of a delicious for its native land!” They’re working to get along and become a village, but they’re not there yet.
4. At some point we’re going to need to start making people pay for homes. Not yet, not while we’re trying to lure people to Kismirth. But this village of a few hundred Herethory have rather liberally helped themselves to apartments. (Since Kismirth is really one big building, one lives in a suite of rooms. I did manage to tame the crystallization method somewhat, but the typical apartment still has two or three extra parlors.) In some instances I don’t blame them — they’ve got a small herd of sheep, and everyone, bug or sheep, is probably happier that the sheep live by themselves. In others … one four-adult family with two children and two grandparents has taken over two Cani-family apartments: enough space for thirty adults plus children and servants. They’d be rattling around in one of those, but they took two. (Up in the center of town, people aren’t obviously being greedy about it — or rather, when someone is too greedy, they get scolded and usually seem to stop it.)

   Or maybe we don’t need to any time soon. We’ve got plenty of space, with more showing up all the time. I’m too used to thinking of flat cities, where a typical building has only a few floors. (I shouldn’t be — I fly around over Vheshrame often enough — but I am.) Kismirth has more than a thousand floors even in its most natural aspect.

The Judgment

“And how do you like Kismirth, now that you’ve been here a few months?” I asked, despite my wife flomping me with her tail to shut me up about such an indelicate and direct question.

“There’s not a simple answer there,” said Allam. “It’s, well, snug. Very safe, in ways none of us are used to. The walls you made are as stout as those of Vheshrame city herself.”

“Stronger, a dozen times stronger or more,” said Arfaen, who has actually lived inside Vheshrame’s walls and knows them as well as most.

“And I didn’t make the strongest parts,” I added. “Glikkonen did.”

“I don’t know who made ‘em and of what,” said Allam. “But they’re there, and that’s somewise a comfort, and somewise not.”

“How could it be not?” asked Arfaen.

“It’s as if the wizard there expects to need them that strong. What could be plaguing us, that even Vheshrame’s walls wouldn’t keep out?” said Allam. “What sort of monsters do you expect to be stopping by? The nendrai’s the most terrible in all Ketheria, and she’s kept out by Vheshrame’s walls.”

“And let in by Kismirth’s; we built them that way. If there’s any trouble coming that needs walls to keep out and wizards to fight off, we’ll have that nendrai helping out,” I said. “But the walls are seeds planted deep, to sprout in decades or centuries.” I had hoped that the farmers would like that agrarian metaphor, but they simply looked perplexed. Maybe no seeds are actually sown deep to sprout in decades or centuries. “We don’t need them so strong now, but we might sometime.”

“Well, that’s that, then, and I’m satisfied knowing that,” said Allam. (Arfaen told me that he meant just the opposite.) “Anyhow, there’s more to Kismirth than just the walls. The pay is good, and I’ll not mourn owning my share of the village and the fields again.”

“How does that work?” I asked. Phaniet arranged it, not me, and I didn’t read all the details. Or any of the details.

“When everything is going well, there’s one fraction for the city, there’s another fraction split evenly among all the farmers who work at the Green Witch farms, there’s another fraction split among everyone who works for Kismirth anyhow, and there’s another fraction set aside for future needs of the village, and there’s another fraction set aside to take care of us in our old age, and there’s another fraction set aside to buy seeds and tools and make repairs and any-such-things. Oh, and there’s another fraction to pay for duelling accountants and some auditors. Not sure I see the point of so many accountants and auditors.”

“You won’t see the point until you get cheated out of nearly everything you own by an embezzler,” I said. “Which will be never, if I and all those duelling accountants and auditors have anything to say about it. I’m still a bit upset over when it happened to me.”

“That’s your right then, I suppose, as … whatever you are to Kismirth.”

“What happens when things go badly?” I had to ask.

“I don’t know in practice, m’lord,” said Allam.

“I’m not your lord, or anyone’s lord,” I snapped.

“Mine! Mine!” chirped Arfaen.

“Only when you’re in a particularly submissive mood!”

“Anyhow, I don’t know in practice, O Zi Ri,” said Allam. “We haven’t had them go badly yet. But the rules say that the city’s fraction goes away first, and that’s a rare wonder if that’s how it actually goes when the shovel snaps and the … the child falls and cracks zir head.”

Arfaen arched her tail up. “What, you think we won’t keep to our own rules?”

“I didn’t, I wouldn’t say such a thing!” (Arfaen told me later that he meant such a thing and implied such a thing but didn’t say it.) “But I’ve never heard of a landlord who didn’t get her rent every year. And, begging your pardon, we’re using a lot more than land here in Kismirth, what with the carts and the elementals and the Quick Quarter and all. I wouldn’t be a proper peasant if I didn’t trust the nobles to take their due first and leave me to scrabble with what’s left. It’s happened a thousand times before that way, O Zi Ri, and if it’s ever happened the other way even once I wouldn’t know.”

I half-spread my wings. “They mightn’t teach it in Peasant Academy…” (There’s no such thing; peasants usually get eight or ten years of the best schooling their village can provide — from teachers who might have had a few years more than that, often in city schools. It’s something, to be sure.) “…but it has happened before. Yylhauntra was telling me about how the Hrreptites did it during the Holocaust Wars, just the other year. We cribbed a fair bit from them.”

“Begging your pardon, O Zi Ri, but the only of those names I’ve heard of were the Holocaust Wars” said Allam. “Did you build these walls in case we had another round of those?”

“For one sort of enemy,” I said. “Or for an off-world god on a rampage, or that sort of thing. Anyhow, Yylhauntra is one of my grandparents; zie’s been alive since the beginning of time.” Allam waved his antennae, so I had to correct myself: “I mean, since the creation of the Zi Ri. Your species was around a few years before Yylhauntra and zir cohort existed. Anyhow, zie got involved in a philosophically-based rebellion during the Holocaust Wars. Ultimately unsuccessful, but they had some strong ideas about how a country should be arranged, and for whose benefit.”

“Whose?” asked Elecampagne, who had insinuated zirself under Allam’s arm while I was talking.

“The people who live there,” I said.

“What’s right with that? Why would it be arranged for the good of the people who don’t live there??” asked Ellie.

“Well, usually the nobles and landlords and such get their share of benefit first,” I said. “Ask your father; he knows. Actually, Kismirth isn’t a city-state, it’s just a city in the city-state of Vheshrame, so the Duke of Vheshrame and the Vheshrame treasury get their share of Kismirth’s money. So do you, though, since you’re a citizen of Kismirth.”

“I get the same as the Duke…?” asked Ellie.

“Well, the Duke’s share is the biggest by far.”

“What does the Duke do for Kismirth?” asked Ellie.

“Less than your parents do for Kismirth, truth to tell. It’s more what he’s done for us beforehand that earned him his share — he and his ancestors. There’d be no Kismirth if Vheshrame hadn’t trained us and tolerated us, and they deserve respect and some money for that. The plan is that Kismirth will pay some nice taxes to Vheshrame for a century or so, and then become independent. We’ve got it all worked out in the city charter.” (And I don’t believe for a minute that it will happen that way. Perhaps I have been to Peasant Academy myself, or listened to how the Viceroy of Pelcour dealt with the Hrreptites and their philosophy. One reason for those walls is a hate-war against Vheshrame. I do not even hint at this to anyone but those I trust the most, such as extradimensional monsters whom I have never met.) “So you might wind up as a citizen of Kismirth Mene before you’re old enough to retire, Ellie. For that matter, you might wind up as the Mayor of Kismirth Mene — and that’ll be as important as the Duke of Vheshrame then.”

“I’m just a peasant cosi…” said Ellie.

“You live inside the city, and soon enough you’ll have lived here longer than most people,” I said. “And the mayors get chosen from people who live here. So you’ve got as good a chance as Arfaen’s son Quendry, say.” (Well, except that Quendry is a Cani growing up close to all the most powerful people of Kismirth, and Ellie is off in Green Witch Village and as far away as possible. By the city’s laws I’m right. Ellie could be Mayor of Kismirth when zie’s of age; zie could never, ever be Duke of Vheshrame. That’s something, isn’t it?) I remembered something else. “And a better chance than me! Nobody over a hundred twenty years old can be Mayor.”

“Why not is that?” asked Allam.

“We don’t want to be the City-State of the Immortal Overlord,” I said. “I’m going to get stodgy and set in my ways and unaware of the needs and ways of the modern world, and generally Entirely Archaick And Obsolete.” (Arfaen whispered, “What is this going to get? You’re like that already; you were hatched like that!” I hope she is mostly teasing.) Which is just fine for a wizard, but it’d be terrible for the head of a country.”

“You’ve got that silly veto power, though.” noted Arfaen, and told the farmers. “Zie can veto anything the city does — any law, say, or any election of a mayor, or de-ratify a treaty, or nearly anything else. But don’t worry. The city can overrule zir veto, they just have to wait a year. Or — but don’t worry. Zie can’t actually make any laws or appoint any mayors or make any treaties zirself.”

I spread my wings. “But! I am allowed, by the city charter and some of the by-laws, to say nothing of custom that has dated back to the earliest days! And by some of the invisible writing on the oath that Allam swore when he moved to Kismirth! And by incredible signs and most solemn and secret testaments!” When Allam, at least, looked nervous, I added, “To have a second helping of dessert. Anyone else like some?”

Ellie did. Zie scampered ahead of me to the dessert table, skipping on three legs, the way that Herethroy can do that doesn’t look at all possible. Perhaps zie saw zir future as sweet and choicesome as the desert table. Perhaps it actually is. Perhaps the Wrongfolk and I are doing something Right.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

The next time that I saw any Rounses or Noritts was two or three months later. I had just finished an enchantment — something exceedingly technical involving teleportation, so subtle and obscure that I didn’t really understand it in the slightest — and was attempting to abduct Arfaen for a pleasant lunch. Arfaen said, “A third of an hour, you demanding lizard!”

“Why, O Cani wife of mine? Why, why, oh why?” I wailed.

“What, O Zi Ri wife of mine? How can it be that you have not been tasting little bits of your projects at work? I certainly do that at mine! And hush! I won’t hear a word that you are working on some ridiculous wooden ruler, so very different from my huge and tasty kitchen. You, lizard, are being uppity, and you, lizard, must wait until after the herb delivery.” She sometimes talks this way. I think I am a bad influence on her.

“How long — how long must I wait?” I wailed.

“Arfaen? The herb-farmers are here,” said one of her assistants.

So I sat on her shoulder, and coiled my tail comfortably around her neck, and kissed her left ear, and was thus discovered by Allam and Coriander and a huge hand-cart of bundled herbs. “Is this a bad time? We can return later if you prefer…,” said Allam.

“Actually this is the best time. Arfaen won’t have lunch with me until she’s done with you,” I said.

Arfaen stood up, wagging her tail. “Let’s smell what you’ve brought!”

The next third of an hour was all about sniffing and tasting spices. I sulked on Arfaen’s shoulder for the basil and the krillmary, but by the time they were discussing the ginger, I was curious enough to stretch my neck out.

“It’s still not as strong as Dren Mafferhame’s ginger,” said Allam.

“It’s better than last year’s Kismirth ginger, at any rate,” said Arfaen. She took a glass-edged knife to a rhizome, and popped one of the slices in my mouth. “I can’t use it for everything, but there are plenty of recipes where I can simply use a ninth or a third more ginger. It’s certainly very mellow. Which isn’t a good thing for ginger all the time — a good ginger should be piquant and pungent — but at least, when I use extra, it doesn’t get off-flavors.”

Which was not true of the saffron or the blue-saffron, and on and on.

“So what’s to become of the herbs that Azliet won’t take?” I asked them, at the end of the inspection.

The Herethroy seemed surprised that I didn’t know that. “Why, the saffron and blue-saffron we’ll hand-plow back into the carts, and we’ll see if they can flavor the basil a bit better next time ’round. The other spices we’ll take to some other restaurants and see if anyone wants to buy them.”

“They’re good enough for most people. I just wouldn’t serve them to Cani,” said Arfaen. “And, since most of our food goes to we-know-not-who in the Quick Quarter, we make everything as for Cani,” she added for the Herethroy’s benefit. “And mostly for Herethroy too — the meat dishes and such are all marked, and everything that we could make Herethroyable, we do. Speaking of the Herethroyable, are we finished? I do believe that my concubine is making demands on me.”

“Concubine?” asked Allam.

“The lizard currently insinuating zir feathers into my ears, who claims to be married to me. A dubious argument indeed, with only a few legal documents to support it!”

The Herethroy blushed and fled.

Which should have been the end of it — except for what Arfaen and I did at lunchtime, which was devouring scraps and leftovers from her restaurant best not described in a public and polite diary. But the Herethroy invited us to dinner the following week.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

“Great guzzling gods, it’s Dr. Sythyry!” cried Allam.

“Dr. Sythyry?” said Prince Rastomil. “Why, I suppose zie is a healer, but never have I heard zir called that. In any case, I do not see the whole of the lizard. But that blue tail emerging from under that wagon, largely scaled but adorned with feathers, could scarcely belong to anyone else. ”

I popped my head out from under the wagon. “This afternoon, I seem to be Apprentice Plumber Sythyry. This wagon is not leaking enough, Prince Rastomil, which won’t do at all. And who is that with you — why, it’s Elecampagne, with both zir antennae all matching and tied with green ribbons in bows! And zir parents and, um, whatever the other two are called.”

“We’re honored that you remember us, Dr. Sythyry!” said the farmers in unison, giving the excessive bows that peasants sometimes make to royalty or other people they want to impress.

“Well, you’re only actually honored if I write your names down in my diary,” I said. “Which I did, so you’re about as honored as I can manage. What brings you to Kismirth? Not another injury, I hope.”

“If it please your lordship …” said Allam.

I cocked my head. “I don’t have one … a lordship I mean. Prince Rastomil does, so you could try to please his lordship. I’m just an esquire, and that’s not much more than a courtesy title.” (Which is true — my hereditary rank is ‘Zi Ri’, because, well, I’m a Zi Ri, which is enough to count me as a noble of the lowest order. If I had been several parts better at politics I could probably have been a great baron by now, but I’m dreadful, so I’m not.)

“Your doctorship…?”

“Well, it pleases me to have an excuse to stop having mud drip in my face,” I said. “My various titles and offices have no opinions.”

“Why on wood are you under that wagon with mud dripping on your face?” asked Rastomil.

I tried to rub the mud off my face with a handkerchief, but, unfortunately, the handkerchief was in the ordinary universe — being washed — rather than the pocket universe I use as a pocket — where I could have gotten it. “When you say, ‘why on wood’, are you referring to the wood of the World Tree, as the expression usually means? Or the wood of which Kismirth is made?” It is good Zi Ri manners (which is to say, ‘bad manners, but almost instinctive to Zi Ri’) to answer questions as obliquely or evasively as possible.

“Do you prefer a modern exclamation, such as ‘by the spanglio!’?” asked Rastomil, whose Zi Ri manners (like all his manners of any sort) are better than mine, despite him being a Rassimel rather than a Zi Ri.

“Not until I learn what ‘the spanglio’ is,” I said.

“Well, I can’t tell you that,” said Rastomil. “Not until you tell me why you’re under that cart anyhow.”

“It’s not a cart,” I said. “It’s a plant-wagon. Crucially different, let me tell you!”

“I shan’t let you tell me,” said Rastomil. “I shall let you tell these stout Herethroy, whom you seem to know already, who are considering moving to Kismirth and who would like to know about farming here.”

“Oh! By all means!” I pounced to the rim of the plant-wagon. “Here in Kismirth, we grow food and flowers and flutterby-fodder in the Most Scientific and Advanced Way Possible. Mostly because doing it in the Classical and Best Way Possible needs farmland, and we don’t have any.”

“Allam was wondering about that,” said Tansy.

“What we do is, we grow plants in these here Plant-Wagons,” I said. After I heard myself say that, I decided that I ought to talk like myself, not like a farmer. “They’re big wagons full of soil, and their wheels are a bit unusual. Anyways, we have a lot of some things that the regular countryside does not have extra of, like time and space. But we don’t have some things that the regular countryside does have, like soil and farmers. So we make do. We plant these plant-wagons with seeds, as if they were garden beds. Then we roll them into the Quick Quarter, where they grow fast.”

“What about light, water, pollenation, weeding, pruning, all those things…?” asked Cory.

“Light we’ve got in the QQ; that’s easy enough for magic to do well. Bees, too — bees are happy enough to live their whole lives at nine or eighty-one times speed. What we can’t have, though, is people living in there farming. I mean, it’s fine and safe to go in there for a bit, but if you work all day every day in there, you’ll grow old and die long before your family and friends do, and that’s not fair.”

“I’ve read my magic fiction,” said Periwinkle. “I don’t want Cory and Gathern to go like that.”

I nodded. “Of course not. We’ve got some golems which roll the carts in and out of the fast regions. All the tending by people is done out here.”

“That’s why you plant in carts then!” exclaimed Periwinkle.

“Just so! And that’s why I need to make sure that the carts drip enough but not too much. The golems can water, but they’re not as reliable as real people, so we need to provide for the plants but not drown them. So I am staring at the carts and getting instructed by Twelve-Spikes here, trying to figure out just what I want in a device for making the carts semipermeable to water, so it lets out enough but not too much,” I said.

“You make enchanted carts? Isn’t that awfully expensive?” asked Allam.

“I make tools to put spells on carts. And statues to make golems, and light-spell-casters, and whatever other gadgetry we need to have a decent agricultural system here. And whatever else we need to have a decent city here, actually.”

Periwinkle looked at the corridor, which was made of shining white meng, and sloped rather steeply down from the Quick Quarter. “Your golems must be strong, if they’ve got to haul carts that size up such a hill-hall.”

The Prince curtsied. “Actually, if I may interject, I do believe that the hallway slopes downward both ways. We were coming from above, so we see it slope thus; but when we set off for the central regions again, it will be downhill for us again.”

“Though the golems are pretty strong,” I added. “Oh! And that’s the reason for that track in the floor.” I pointed at a groove in the middle of the meng floor, three inches wide and over a foot deep. “The carts have sticks on the bottom that fit into the groove. With crossbars at the bottom; the groove is in the shape of the perpendicular-sign [an inverted "T"].” My guests looked confused, even the Prince, so I explained a bit. “The carts won’t go wild and roll crashing down the corridor and crush someone against a wall; they stay on their tracks. You could get still get hurt by one if you’re standing on their track, so, if you’re working here, stay off the track. I don’t want anyone hurt in a farm accident — or any other kind.”

I’m pretty sure that at least the two women decided to move to Kismirth right then. Not every farming village has a wizard who pays attention to farmer’s safety!

Or, in this case, who takes advice. Cory asked, quite tentatively, “What if you drill holes in the cart, instead?”

“I tried that,” I said, “Holes all over the bottom of the cart like a sieve. The water all runs out the holes in a gush of mud, and the soil gets dry and gone. We want to leave some water in the cart, and all the soil.”

Cory said, “Well, how about holes in the side of the cart, a few inches up?”

“That would leave a layer of wet mud at the bottom of the cart, would it not?” I asked.

“Just a shallow one. Enough to humidify the rest of the cart, I should guess,” said Twelve-Spikes.

“But my device would be adjustible! If you need wetter soil, you could make the wood less permeable!” I insisted.

“Well, we could close off some holes, if we were doing it that way,” said Allam. “Stuff corks in them.”

“Ah, corks!” said Twelve-Spikes. She waved her antennae mysteriously, and I had the impression she had already thought all this through and decided that she might as well get another magic item off me if she could so she didn’t tell me, or rather than going through the work of drilling any number of holes through hard meng carts. “We could drill two or three courses of holes, even, for the making of more adjustments.”

I folded my wings. “I daresay that it’s faster to drill holes in fifty wagons than have me make one make-wood-somewhat-transparent-to-water-erator. And you can always drill more holes, or plug them up, so you’ve got almost endless room for adjusting and fiddling. I’ll leave you to that approach, then, and be glad at one greater enchantment I don’t have to make.”

“Quite so, O Zi Ri,” said Twelve-Spikes. She glanced at me, and what I was smeared with. “I shall instruct the golems to scoop up whatever mud trickles out of these uncorked side-holes, and scoop it up, and put it on top of the carts.”

I turned to some Rounses and/or Noritts. “And thank you for your suggestion! I hope you stay to see how well it works.”

Twelve-spikes handed the Herethroy some radishes from the truck. “What do you think?”

“They’re fine,” said Allam. “A very soft flavor, as radishes go.”

“Too soft by half!” said Twelvespikes. “We’ve got the problem here, that our produce is bland. We grow squell peppers — squell peppers — that you can pick off the vine and pop in your mouth and munch away, and you won’t want to drink half a river the next minute.”

“Is it poor soil, then?” asked Periwinkle.

Twelvespikes said, “It’s healthy soil, but maybe too healthy. I’ve got the thought that soil gives experience to plants, the way that adversity gives experience to people. These plants are bored — they’re bored flavorless!”

“Well, you know, when I grow squell peppers and go weeding and digging around the roots, I always see little isopods or grubs in the dirt. Do you think those might matter?”

“Might could be, might could be,” said Twelvespikes. The farmers went off to chat and discuss the technical details of planting. I, for my part, poked more at the cart, and decided that I’d probably be best off with the most potent water-control device I could manage: less, and I’d surely end up making the better one at some point.

Prince Rastomil, the exemplar of grace and dignity, offered me his handkerchief.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

We have hired Windigar and the sky-schooner Joyful Scimitar to fly to and from Kismirth. We really want people to visit a lot. It didn’t seem right to make the skyboat entirely free; a round trip from Vheshrame costs a lozen, and takes two-thirds of an hour each way. It costs rather more — though it seems to take rather less — if one resorts to the expensive but excellently-stocked bar on Joyful Scimitar, or, on certain evenings, the exotic dancers who sometimes perform en route if Kismirth is being slow.

Windigar, being one of the most sensible Orren currently living, has been given authority to make judgments about the fares and such as suits the situation. Allam explained to him that the farmers were considering immigrating to Kismirth. Windigar, as aware as anyone else in the Inner Circle of Kismirth that we need to get our population up quick, was pleased to offer them free passage, and, I believe, free kathia.

A truly elegant gentleman with a truly elegant copper coronet — a High Prince’s crown — stood by the port, smiling, as passengers trickled off of Joyful Scimitar. Allam immediately jumped to the utterly wrong conclusion, and respectfully bowed to him, saying, “Excuse me, O Great Mayor of Kismirth…”

The gentleman smiled, and bowed back, a fine if nonspecific courtly bow, and said, “I’m afraid you have the wrong Rassimel. I am not the mayor of Kismirth. Instead, I have the honor to be the High-Prince-High Prince Rastomil, and the official greeter and ceremonialist. In this office, I am most pleased to welcome you to Kismirth. Still, if you have a question or concern or wish that does not require the whole of a Mayor, you may feel free to present it to me, and I will do my very best with it.”

“We don’t mean to intrude on your lordship,” said Allam. “Please excuse us…”

“Ah! But you simply intrude upon a reverie — I would not go so far as to call it boredom. I was watching passengers disembark. And, if the truth be known — as it inevitably will be, that being one of Truth’s ruder habits — I was hoping to have a more interesting conversation with one of them than the simple smiling and returning of bows that I had been doing. So you see, if you do me the honor of telling me what it is that you wished to speak to the Mayor about, you will actually be doing me a service — more than that, by the spanglio! An outright kindness! Unless, of course, your need requires the Mayor herself, in which case I shall delay you no further.” Prince Rastomil punctuated his discourse with three flourishes and one curtsey, following the court protocol of Barency.

“Well, your lordship, we were thinking of, well, moving to Kismirth, and we were wondering what the farming situation is like. I’m sure that that’s beneath your notice and your dignity, your lordship, such a common thing as that.”

“If there’s anything undignified about farming, I’m sure I would never notice!” said Rastomil. “One thing that I have noticed is that we need rather more farmers than we have at the moment, and five skilled adult Herethoy such as yourselves — to say nothing of your bright-chitined children — might do extremely well here. What would you like to know?”

“Well, the first thing we were wondering is, have you got any farms here?”

Rastomil nodded. “Indeed we do! They are not quite like other farms anywhere on the World Tree, though. I should be glad to show them to you.” He saw Allam’s perplexed look: nobles do not often give tours to peasants! So he added, “If you prefer, I could ask a farmer to do so. But our farmers are all doing useful and important things, and I am merely standing about smiling at people. My time is far less valuable than theirs.”

“That’s not how barons and counts of Vheshrame usually rate their time,” said Coriander.

“Ah! But I am not a baron or a count, and I am not of Vheshrame. I am, in fact, a prince of Barency. A slightly disgraced one, whose position is such that everyone is happier if I am off in Kismirth than at home in the court of Barency, lurking and lurching around like a soap-golem or what have you, and reminding everyone that my fiancée preferred to leap out of a window and smash her leg, her rose bushes, and her city-state’s trade treaties, rather than marry me. Dreadfully embarrassing, even if I was just as glad not to marry her. Delightful child, she was, but dreadfully young and dreadfully impulsive … in any case, I have been granted a rank here that would be High Prince if Kismirth were a city-state, but it’s not, so I am simply High-Prince-High. Which is a very long-winded and Rassimelian way of saying that my time is not very important at all, and, to the extent that I ever manage to do anything the least bit valuable with it, the value comes solely from helping visitors to Kismirth do whatever it is they have come here to do.”

So saying, he lead the farmers this way and that, mainly deeper into the corridors or avenues of the city, and somewhat down.