Sythyry's Journal

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Feralan: “Master, this is Wexiset, of whom I have told you some.” Feralan only calls me ‘master’ when he’s trying to emphasize that he’s my apprentice, and that doesn’t happen every year. Wexiset, please to meet Sythyry.

Me: “Welcome to my parlor, Wexiset!”

I have a lot of parlors. I haven’t counted them all, or even visited them all, but it must be thousands at least. This is because I live in my sky-yacht, Strayway, which (from the inside) is a quite large building, or (from the outside) a rather overdone silver candelabra some fifteen feet tall drawn by a pair of three-headed green metallic antelopes. The interior of Strayway, like the interior of Kismirth, was constructed automatically, by a barely-understood magical crystallization procedure, and I didn’t get the blends perfect. I did better — though still not perfectly — for Kismirth. (Sometime I may actually get the hang of the technique. Or perhaps someone else will get the hang of it. Nobody does it quite right yet.)

Wexiset: “Hello!” She was quite nervous. I was too, but fortunately feathers and scales do not show nervousness nearly as much as Rassimel fur does.

hCevian: [materializing suddenly by Feralan's head, in the form of a small spiky black ball.] “Hello, Wexiset! I will not hurt you!”

Wexiset’s tail flicked nervously. She glanced at hCevian with magic sense, in which he appears to be a small but very intense and quite highly structured vortex of space-distortion magics, as if his physical body barely exists and he is largely composed of magic. (In fact, his physical body barely exists and he is composed largely of magic — which is, at the finest level, true of everyone, but most of us have a few layers of reality between that and ourselves. (I have no idea if Wexiset was thinking about this. I certainly wouldn’t have been at the time, in her place. A more ordinary thought on meeting a Locador demon is, By what means shall I escape from this being of pure positionality?, a question whose answer is frequently quite difficult. (Oh, dear. I am babbling, aren’t I?)))

Wexiset: “Hello, hCevian. Where is your triangle?” She has evidently learned the meaning of hCevian’s name.

hCevian: “You three large and living peoples will represent the edges for this cozy social gathering!”

Wexiset: “Why don’t we represent the vertices instead?”

Feralan: “I bet because we’re all too rounded to be points. Wexiset especially.”

Wexiset blushed a bit and smiled a bit. hCevian, who understood the exchange, danced and sparkled like a black star. Feralan … I am going to have to have a talk with Feralan. Two talks probably: one to tell him that he was flirting with her and that she did not seem utterly displeased, and another to tell him what one does when one flirts successfully and wishes to follow up on it. I doubt that one can grow up in Castle Wrong and remain wholly unaware of the advanced forms of the latter topic. It’s the basic forms (e.g., inviting her out for snacks and conversation and a puppet show) that he needs to know — and needs to know he starts with.

Me: “When and why did you come to Kismirth, Wexiset?”

Wexiset: “Four months ago. We’re from Choulano. My mother’s in the Vepri there, she got very involved with them after my father left her and took up with Aunt Frutti. She got them declared to be scluds — and me too. My father’s a smart man, says he can infer the cliff from seeing the mountain, and we’d be better off leaving Choulano before the whole city went off it.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but my Ketherian is a century or two out of date.” It isn’t; I keep up quite well with the latest vocabulary and slang. “What is the Vepri, and what are scluds?”

Wexiset: “The Vepri’s this big important society or club kind of a thing; it’s got departments up and down Craitheia. It stands for Verified Primordeals — it’s all about what generation your first incarnation was. Primordeals are from the first few generations, and the Vepri thinks they’re very important. Scluds are people from late generations who are bad or something. I’m not very clear on all of this. Anyways, people who had been called scluds had been beaten up and lost their jobs and such, and then Aunt Frutti got attacked and had zir left antenna broken off, and we decided to leave for somewhere friendlier and newer. So we’re here.”

Feralan: “Not for being traff?”

Wexiset: “Yes, for being traff, for being an enemy of an important Vepri, for writing anti-Vepri articles, for being a late generation, all sorts of things.”

Me: “Well, that sounds painful and rude and unfortunate and sad. I’m glad we could provide a friendlier place than that! Though I daresay that the bottom of a scorpion pit would be a friendlier place than that.”

Wexiset:[shrugging] “We got the idea they didn’t want us.”

hCevian: “Sythyry, do you dare to stop interrogating Wexiset?”

Me: “Dare I? Why, I have dared far more dangerous and terrible things than that! Such as sitting in a comfortable chair and reading an insipid novel! Which, indeed, I shall do straightaway. “ (But of course hCevian was right.)

Feralan: “We’re going to use the big table in the seventh lab. Is that all right?”

Me: “I don’t see why not!” Indeed, I didn’t.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

[Beware: This post has some rude words in it. Some of these words are: "foodments", "firefly", and "sensitive". Some others are not.]

Lady Datarina Quostillion, Baroness of Maffenthroutch in Daukrhame, often known as the Beauty-She-Wolf despite being Rassimel with squirrel styling and not the least bit wolfy in appearance, had come to Kismirth for reasons that we will not, as a matter of policy, make the slightest guess about. She gambled; she cavorted; she sipped vodka (imported). And she dined at the Fucked-*p Firefly, for reasons best known to herself.

Digression: The Fucked-*p Firefly

I suppose it is worth explaining the Fucked-*p Firefly for a bit. We’ve got a plentitude of food businesses around Kismirth, starting with Arfaen’s ready meals, continuing with the Grand Pickles (made by Narwin Borswimmy himself! as enjoyed by the Queen of Regnoth, no less! Wherever that may be.), and ending, perhaps, with the restaurants of a dozen hotels. Most of these places have an irregular supply of irregular foodments. Perhaps Arfaen wishes to have three chops on a plate, and made a thousand chops — so there is one chop left over. Actually, out of a thousand, there would probably be 27 chops that were not suitable for plates for one reason or another, like being too small, or singed in a corner, or what have you, which still leaves one perfect one left over and the 27 quite delicious ones. Narwin Borswimmy might be packing perfect pickled peppers in two-quart jars, and discover that a few peppers per pickling bin were, alas, imperfect. (And not suitable for the refined sensibilities of the Queen of Regnoth! Wherever that may be) And, worse, that there was a spare quart-and-a-half! And on and on.

Now, most of these foods are actually somewhere between ‘good’ and ‘excellent’. In Vheshrame, say, they would mostly go into garbage middens or compost heaps, but through no fault of their own. We actually could do that — and our farmers, who are complaining that the soil is bland and flavorless, and could do with an infusion of fancy compost.

But, instead, we have employed a number of taptet — we have a somewhat alarming number of taptet around — to bring all these leftovers to a restaurant sort of place. And we have employed Hops to coordinate the matter, and a few of the more inspiration-based cooks around to turn the occasionally-incomplete and generally-surprising foodments into actual delicious and astounding dishes. (And by ‘and’ I mean ‘and/or’.) So Hops runs the Fucked-*p Firefly. This is appropriate, because Hops, herself, is a Herethroy with firefly styling, and is a both-female and hence congenitally wrong.

So, the Fucked-*p Firefly is a buffet of sorts, at which one can dine from a huge and constantly-changing buffet of the finest foods on Kismirth, in more or less flawed form, for a remarkably cheap price.

I wouldn’t say it’s one of our nicest restaurants. The atmosphere is raucous and chaotic, the food is quite variable, and the service is uncertain at best. (Immigrants to Kismirth often wind up working there for a while, until they are skilled enough and known enough for Hops to give them a good recommendation to somewhere classier.)

On the whole, it’s a place where only Kismirth natives go. And it’s more of a cafeteria sort of place, or a dining hall or mess hall, than a Destination. You don’t take someone there for a treat generally, unless you are very poor or are a great fan of chaos and surprises. But you can get a substantial and scrumptious meal there for cheap, even if you are very poor, so long as you don’t mind sitting at a long table next to nearly any sort of anyone.

I wind up there two or three times a week.

Back to the Baroness

Beauty-She-Wolf: “These grilled pig slices! They are simply deific!”

Toadster: “Yup. They are good. Dunno where they come from though.” I don’t know Toadster very well. She is an Orren from Craitheia; she works “individually” with “clients” as a “tour guide” and “personal assistant”. She has the dubious distinction to be the first person fired from the official city brothels, after the fourth time that one of her clients had to get sent to the Healer’s Guild and given a full refund due to Toadster getting upset in mid-employment and attacking the client with claws, teeth, fire spells, and chairs. I’m sure that a whore’s clients can be annoying and even dreadful. Being a whore requires a certain amount of resistance to annoyances and dreadfulnesses, though — worse than being a waitress or fur stylist even — and someone as sensitive as Toadster probably shouldn’t be one. I am not sure that being a freelance “tour guide” and “personal assistant” is a better choice — I don’t even think it is’s a different choice — but there’s no management who can fire her. And so far none of her clients have ended up in the Healer’s Guild as far as I know.

Beauty-She-Wolf: “Still! Such people we have been around on this trip! Can you believe it? The nerve of that Cani, flirting with me so openly! And he came from Tauvane!”

Toadster: “What’s wrong with Tauvane?”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “Can he really imagine that I came here to fornicate with members of other species who come from, not just a different city-state, but a whole different branch?”

Toadster: “Can’t see how he could get that sort of idea, ma’am.” She put on the most professionally bland and blank face that she could manage. But she did vocalize her vowels and swallow her sibilants in a very broad Craitheian accent, and smooth her trousers as if they needed it after the Rassimel’s demands. Draw your own conclusion.

Beauty-She-Wolf: “And that fruit-manager last night! Making demands! ‘Drop your trousers, ma’am, and I’ll see what I can do on you.’ What nerve!”

Toadster: “Ma’am, if you won’t do that sort of forfeit, you should stick to the money-only tables at the casino.”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “I can’t abide losing money at gambling! I didn’t come here to open my purse and dump it all out!”

Toadster: “Fair enough, but if you lose at those tables, you open your pants instead, and your twat too.”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “I didn’t come here to lose at gambling!”

Toadster: “Ma’am, nobody comes here intending to lose at gambling. Sometimes the balls roll against you, though.” (In fact, people often come here to lose at gambling, but that’s another essay.)

Beauty-She-Wolf: “And in the promenade! Herethroy and Rassimel, holding hands! In public!”

Toadster: “That’s Kismirth for you, ma’am.”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “The last time I was here there was even a Sleeth making out with a Herethroy on a bench! Right in front of the casino! I suppose it’s all for the best that traffs have a place to go away from decent people, but! That! In public! By the casino! Bothering innocent tourists!”

Toadster: “They’re married, those two. Leastaways there’s a Sleeth and Herethroy married who work in the casino days, it might be them.”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “Married! Who would marry a Sleeth! They’re nearly monsters — nonprimes!”

Toadster: “Ma’am, look about you.”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “Look! Taptet! Mherobump! Mherobump! Taptet! Half the people in here aren’t prime!”

Toadster: “I wouldn’t go shouting about it in that tone of voice, ma’am. They can hear you.”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “As if I should fret about the feelings of taptets and mherobumps! They’re not prime — I don’t even think they have feelings!”

Toadster: “I hear they do, ma’am.”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “Even if they do I don’t see why it matters.”

Toadster: “They’re citizens of Kismirth, ma’am.”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “That’s ridiculous — nonprimes can’t really be citizens. Even if they somehow get inside the city walls!”

Toadster: “Well, they’re not citizens of the city-state, just of the city, ma’am.”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “And I don’t see why they’re allowed in here! I shouldn’t have to eat sitting next to one!”

Mherobump sitting next to her: “Sorry! Did I juggle your soup plate with my elbow?”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “See! They can’t even talk properly. Probably they come from Craitheia or something too where they don’t speak right!”

Toadster: “Well, I can’t do anything about how anyone talks, it seems. But you don’t have to sit next to him. I can fix that.”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “Do so! At once!”

Toadster: “Oh, waiter? Herself there doesn’t want to sit next to the mherobump. Dump her vittles in a bag and hand it to her and send her out, before she starts a fight from being so rude and offensive.”

Beauty-She-Wolf: “What? What? My own personal tour guide, betraying me?”

Toadster: “Keeping you safe, ma’am. Part of the contract.”

Beauty-She-Wolf glared at Toadster. Toadster glared back. I thought Toadster was about to get take some dramatic action and fired again, if not actually send someone to the Healer’s Guild. But Toadster lowered her eyes.

Toadster: “All right, all right. O waiter, please wrap my lunch too.”

Beauty-She-Wolf:[After paying, as they walked out of the restaurant] “But I can’t endure monsters! Or traffs!”

Toadster: “Why do you keep coming back to Kismirth, ma’am? This is your fifth visit you said, in under two years. And if there’s a returniste who comes back as often as you, I’ve never heard of them.”

Beauty-She-Wolf:[very quietly] “… it makes me feel like myself. even if I don’t really like it.”

Mirrored from Sythyry.

An essay on part of the Kismirth economy — just to prove it’s not all prostitutes and enchantments.

Perhaps you were a person of some importance: the Assistant Minister of the Exchequer in Vheshrame, to pick a topic utterly at random without any thought or awareness of recent crimes and scandals. Perhaps, too, you have been dismissed from your post by — let us say — the malice and ill-will of the actual Minister, plus a potage of purely meritless accusations of embezzling. Perhaps you wish to have a deliciously scandalous and juicy, and eminently readable, book on the shelves of every bookstore in Vheshrame, wherein you demonstrate that the actual Minister was the embezzler, and, additionally, a notable intimate of goats, armadillos, taptet, and other such — though of course the book stops short of explicit libel on this point. Perhaps you are aware that the actual Minister is writing a similar book, though one that seems to involve a wide and surprising array of invertebrates about you. Perhaps you want yours out first — and best if it’s out, oh, next week — months before the Minister’s!

Well, when this sort of scandal happened nineteen years ago, you would have simply been out of luck. Your ghost-writer would have had no advantage over the Minister’s ghost-writer. Whoever wrote faster and published faster would be on the stands first. And everyone wanting to read the deliciously disreputable details would get both books more or less at the same time, and would form an unbiased opinion. Alas! Woe!

But today — today! Send your ghost-writer to the Quick Quarter in Kismirth! In that blessed place, the power of a great time-wizard has arranged that the days shall speed past. Your ghost-writer shall have a week of time for each day that the Minister’s ghost-writer has! Your victory is assured!

What? Even that is not enough? You wish the book to be on the stands all but instantly? Kismirth’s Quick-Quick Quarter is at your service! In that place, time passes at an astounding clip — a day in the normal world is three months for your ghost writer! Your book shall be done within the week, with time to spare! And, unlike the Minister’s book, it shall be well and carefully written, full of the sort of literary allusions and amusing epigraphs and other authorial flourishes. It shall be more enjoyable to read — to the degree that it shall all but make your case by itself! “Who cares about the truth of the details — the Assistant Minister is delightfully clever; the Minister is a turgid beetle!”

Some Truth

• It was Daukrhame, not Vheshrame. I’m actually pretty certain that the Assistant Minister is guilty — if only because of the amount of money he was willing to spend on his ghost-writer. That does not preclude the guilt of the Minister, of course.
• You might wonder how we tend the ghost-writers. Obviously we can’t have a whole commercial district inside the Quick Quarter, much less in the Quite Quick Quarter. (Both names are in common use.) What we have, for most sorts of goods, is catalogs. A great many things can be bought in the QQ and QQQ, but they must be ordered. Runners arrive every day or two to see what you might want or need. They take your orders — and your lozens, oh, your lozens will fly from you! — and scoot to the merchants of Kismirth, and bring you what you have requested, as quick as they can. In the QQQ, by the very nature of time itself, you may wait for two or three days to get your new supply of nibs, or your replacement undergarments. Best to order generously, so you do not run out of anything essential!

• This won’t do for crucial items, like food. We offer a special dining service. (By “we” I mean “Arfaen and I”.) A large supply of delicious and varied meals will be prepared and ensorcelled, so that, when you wish to dine, you may pick one from the supply and have it fresh-cooked and smoking-hot and wholesome and delicious, no matter how long ago it was actually prepared.

  This is actually quite hard to do. We prepare, at times, thousands of meals in a day. Each one is wrapped in an elegant paper doily. It is then marked as to the precise nature of its contents, for it would never do to for the hungry auteur to call for duck breast in brandy sauce with spätzle and grilled cherries, and — horrors! — find instead an elegant terrine of salmon, confit of shrimps, and candied turnips! (This catastrophe actually happened in our earlier days. The horror of the ghost-writer was barely measurable — but one annoys a ghost-writer at one’s extreme peril; one risks mockery, which is a terrible weapon against a struggling new tourist spot!) Then, when they are at the height of perfection, the dishes are individually placed in abayance, by means of an enchanted tool prepared by the greatest time-wizard in all Kismirth. They will remain at the height of perfection until the seal on the doily is broken. Then they may be eaten. Only the most magically-sensitive of diners will detect the residual hint of the time magic used on them.

• Our prices in the catalog are quite high. I feel no shame from this. The logisitic difficulties are quite high as well. We must keep everything available constantly, and well-stocked stores near the Quarters must be open all the time. Runners willing to endure the difficulties of the time distortion must be hired, and kept in constant motion, and endure the difficulties attendant on time distortion.
• Incidentally, our runners are not all prime. We have a substantial population of taptet, tiny cervian monsters of no great power or danger. Taptet are, on the whole, more willing to sacrifice their lives — or take the risk of death — than primes are. They seem glad to get jobs as runners, for which the risks are minor. (Runners live as long as anyone else. But, if they spend a long time in the QQQ, they will die at a hundred years old a mere, say, seventy years after their birth … or forty. We encourage them to balance their quick time with slow time, but almost nobody does so.)
• The moral dilemma of the first half of the year was a Rassimel who identified himself to us as “Feralan Stensio” — Feralan being an exceedingly common Rassimel name — but we suspect of being one Malakip Prenkrip. Prenkrip, if it was him, had embezzled nearly a million lozens from a count of Ulmarn. He wished to live out the rest of his life in luxury in the company of his wife and their beloved, and suddenly much larger, collection of tea caddies. He estimated his remaining years as ten — it proved to be a mere nine. He could have tried to flee to some distant region and live in some mixture of hiding and fear of being found. Or, he could come to Kismirth and do so efficiently, in the Quite Quick Quarter, and have his nine years take but a month in Ulmarn. It took twelve days for Ulmarn to find his trail adequately, and another eleven days for the extradition request to visit all the offices and officials in Ulmarn and Vheshrame that it needed to visit. And another day for it to get to Kismirth, and for us to figure out how to manage it, since the extradition papers usedg the name ‘Malakip Prenkrip’ and we had no idea who that was. When we finally, politely, hauled the right person out of the QQQ, he was in the last few months of his life, and had gotten pretty much full value out of his crime. (If it really was him, and if we really didn’t deliver an innocent Rassy to Ulmarn to die, etc. I wish I could be sure. One good reason not to be a duke is that I do not want to actually try to make that sort of decision.)
• Yes, Arfaen’s business’s cooking is good enough so that eating it for nine years counts as ‘living in luxury’. Well, her top line is. There are somewhat cheaper choices too.

The Less Glamorous But More Profitable Time Warping Business Model

That’s what I thought of with the QQQ. But actually there are only a moderate number of scandal-ridden Assistant Ministers, or even Malakip Prenkrips. What we actually do in the QQQ is, of course, is to age things very quickly.

Suppose that you are V. Astorio, seventh in the line of V. Astorio Vintners. Or that you are Mvs. Ganquin et Qualosquin, cheesemakers of the finest. Or K. Q. Vorgram and Sons, makers of the finest in whiskey. Or Alonzo DeLort, whose well-cured polypimento is the spice of choice for all who enjoy dartmorts, the branchwide dish of Hybraeia. Or Narwin Borswimmy, Grand Picklemaster by appointment to the Queen of Regnoth, wherever that may be. Or any of, as of today, sixty-eight other makers of various fine food items and whatnots that need to be aged.

Anyhow, you are such a manufacturer, and you wish — unaccountably! — to make more money, by selling much more of the food you produce, yet keeping its quality as high as it is now — or even higher. And, indeed, you could make a great more wine, or cheese, or whiskey. But your wine takes eight years from bottling to age to the minimum quality you are willing to sell, and should ideally age for fifty. The mightiest cheese that you sell takes two years, though the stuff aged for five years is amazing but too hard to produce. Your whiskey should sit in scorched arkenwood casks for five to eight years. And so on.

Well, you could build vast warehouses, big enough for years of aging of the quantity you wish to produce. And you could wait, personally, for years and years, until your stock is ready to sell. Or you could go out of business by then, or die of old age, or various other problems.

Or you could rent space in the QQQ, where a year passes in three days, where fifty-year wine is ready in a few months. Where there is a wizard who can arrange for the temperature to be cool, for the air to be dry, for a floral-scented breeze to circle endlessly, for golems to turn the bottles thrice a day, and so on.

It’s not that cheap. But it is not so expensive as you might think at first, and it does mean that you will be able to sell your fine foods this month instead of some distant and hypothetical one. And you might well cooperate with V. Astorio, Mvs. Ganquin and Qualosquin, K. Q. Vorgram and Sons, Alonzo DeLort, Narwin Borswimmy (Grand Picklemaster! To the Queen of Regnoth! Wherever that may be), and most of the sixty-eight other makers of various fine foods and whatnots, to share the costs of the sky-barges that carry your fine foods and whatnots hither and yon about Ketheria.

And, in the end, I am pleased. Whatever the reputation of Kismirth, our actual industry is doing well: even without the tourists and the trades which entertain them in sometimes undignified ways, we have a solid economy based on making delicious items that primes can enjoy thousands of miles off.

And arranging matters so that fifty times as many people can have the best dartmorts, or drink Astorio wines, or even dine on the same pickles as the Queen of Regnoth (w.t.m.b.), pleases me as well. I am no more of a populist than the next prime, but I see no reason why luxury foods should be supremely expensive if they can be made just as well for less.

The Even Less Glamorous One

We have huge tracts of land. They are indoors, in the Quick Quarter. I don’t know quite how big they are, because they were made by crystallization and space distortion techniques, but I would guess that Kismirth’s fields and meadows could easily be a dozen or nineteen times those of Vheshrame. Even if they are all indoors. Sunlight, soil, and hot and cold running water are provided as well.

So the grain for the whiskey, the milk for the cheese, and the vegetables for the pickles enjoyed by the Queen of Regnoth (w.t.m.b.) are actually from Kismirth. The fruit for the wine and the spices are more finicky, and are grown at home … though some of the vintners are learning how to use Kismirth’s potentially voluminous (but, alas, relatively bland compared to those grown in natural soil exposed to natural weather and natural parasites) fruit.

Welcome to the future of Ketherian civilization. It’s a vast and well-provisioned place, though we’re still figuring out how to make it quite as tasty as the present.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Three Interrogations in One

The day after Senneth left, a nosy Rassimel showed up. He was not exactly our desired tourist either. He discovered the three relevant prostitutes — easy enough, since they were the three highest-class full-time ones in the city at that point. We have more now. As so often happens (when I am too lazy to report three similar conversations), the three had identical conversations with him, down to peculiar turns of phrase that serve for three rather different people.

Inspector Vector: “Excuse me, ma’am or sir as the case may be. I’d like to ask you a few questions about the recent visit of a Sleeth named Senneth.”

Prostitute: “I didn’t get his business. I don’t do Sleeth.”

Inspector Vector: “I wish to hire you myself — I am, as you can see, no Sleeth –, and we shall converse as we couple. A hundred lozens [$1000 or so -- a lot! -bb] will be your extra fee if your words satisfy me.”

Prostitute: “I am highly trained in the arts of conversation, having graduated from the Ulmarn Academy of Literature or a similar institution, or, in one case, being a pleasant and gregarious insect despite (or because of!) no formal training in such matters!”

Inspector Vector: “We’ll see about that!”

A variety of professional activities ensued. Inspector Vector is either a libertine, or willing to act like one.

Prostitute: “I have satisfied you as well as I possibly could!”

Inspector Vector: “Well, miss or boy. You’re not quite there yet. Observe these thirty-three lozen coins, which amount to the bonus I mentioned before?”

Prostitute: “With some difficulty, for they are balanced on my nipples (if I am of a species which has such things) and my genitalia (to the extent that flat places are available on or near them), and my neck is not so sinuous as it might be! Somehow, while they help conceal my most personal spots, wearing them as clothing makes me feel more rather than less naked than simple nudity.”

Inspector Vector: “That is because they emphasize your hireability. Earn your wages! Tell me about Senneth and you can keep them!”

Prostitute: “I professionally demur! And not in the slightest because I recognize the opening of a bargaining session, but because of my solid professional integrity, despite in two of three cases being fairly new to the profession and in the third aware in detail of just how integratuitous it is!”

Inspector Vector: “Observe this further trio of thirty-three lozen coins?”

Prostitute: “I cannot see them, for you have chosen to insert them surprisingly. But the glimpse of them that I caught en-route showed them as quite attractive bits of amber indeed.”

Inspector Vector: “Tell me about Senneth and you keep them too.”

Prostitute: “La! I shall keep them regardless, for any monies inserted in that particular slot are definitively gifts! Or, in one of three cases, I somewhat irritatedly proclaim that they are not shaped properly for that opening and a variety of useful and appropriate utensils are available if your own appendages are worn out and you still want to fill it.”

Inspector Vector: “Consider, then, this third trio of coins, fanned enticingly in front of your face. Senneth?”

Prostitute: “I sit up, I collect the nine nice coins!”

Inspector Vector: “Senneth?”

Prostitute: “We had an encounter on such-and-such a date. I invited him to my professional office the pretext of showing him my etchings and allowing him to taste my brandies, with the suggestion that a purchase of one or the other might be possible if he was suffiently moved. Having lured him in and plied him with flavorsome delights, I attempted to seduce him for my customary fee. Alas! He resisted my charms, nor did he purchase art or brandy. A most meagre customer was the Sleeth! Or some other such lie that makes the Sleeth come off looking good.”

Inspector Vector: “H’m. I shall replace those thirty-three lozen coins with hundred-lozen coins if the story becomes more salacious by far, and if it is notarized.”

Prostitute: “(a) I decline, I rather brusquely end the session, though I am sure to take the coins already earned. (b) I accept, and recite an encounter between a Herethroy maiden (which I am not) and a lusty tom-Sleeth in the greenwoods in spring (which this is not), based on a quite vulgar folk-song, and even get it notarized, and claim my nine hundred lozens for uselessly false testimony; (c) I attempt and even succeed in distracting Inspector Vector by professional wiles and activities, and wind up charming two of those coins from him as well as the monies already earned. Afterwards, I negotiate quite vigorously for his desired story, and manage to soak him for thirteen hundred extra lozens. I decline to explore the question of what I would have done had the story been more shameful, or had the Sleeth tipped better.”

Senneth and Inspector Vector made their joint report to the nobility and wealthity of Vheshrame. Not so much about the quality of our sex workers — I suppose they assumed that pretty much anyone who has genitalia or other appendages and is willing to use them can perform well enough. (Does anyone know if that is true?) But about their devotion to the privacy of their clients. Certainly the honor of many prostitutes can be bought — that is, in some light, the point of the trade. But the prostitutes of Kismirth did at least keep the price quite high, and did not provide the best blackmail material even for the high prices. Which is better, and less risky, than most prostitutes in most places.

(What that actually means is that our sex workers are smart — smart enough to recognize Inspector Vector as an information-weasel, and to respond in a sensible way.)

And over the next two weeks, we started to get a trickle of curious (and traff-curious) tourists from Vheshrame, generally from the higher classes and generally diving straight to the more carnal parts of Kismirth. Many of these were indeed quite concerned about privacy, and made a point of paying extra for silence. It took a year before we were getting as many tourists as we had hoped, and another year before we were getting a good deal more.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

It’s hard to precisely specify who, exactly, our first tourist was. The distinguished Herethroy gentleman who showed up while we were building the outer framework, who joined us in the galley of Strayway but never said a word, and who seemed endlessly interested in watching sweaty, half-naked Cani and Rassimel carpenters as they built the outer hull? The charming Orren and Herethroy couple who stayed with us for a month, mostly as guests of Umbers and Tingula? The two assorted professional gamblers who helped us design the games in our casino, and showed us for a high fee how they would cheat us?

But I think I’ll count the first tourist as Lord Senneth, two years and some ago. Lord Senneth is a large and slightly albino Sleeth, tawny-furred and pointy-eared. He is a baron of Vheshrame. He has not always been a baron of Vheshrame, and it is not common to have a Sleeth be any sort of nobility. He started his career as a hunter and adventurer in the Verticals and wild lands. His star-serpent slithered up the dome of Vheshrame’s heaven when he helped out in a few of Vheshrame’s more foolish duel-wars, being the only one left standing in three of them. His title was a grant from a grateful Legeriat — or, if I understand the details, a Legeriat which was not so much ‘grateful’ as ‘responding to his threat of moving to Daukrhame and being on their side in the next duel-war’.

“I am here! The nobility of Vheshrame charges me with the exploring, with the spying and the scouting, with the peeking here and there, with the mission of investigative discovery of this new city on the World Tree!” proclaimed Senneth, as he prowled off of Windigar’s yacht. Kismirth, of course, is not technically on the World Tree. It was at the time a six-sevenths-built confection of wood and glass and gleaming metal plating, twinkling and dancing in the sky not ridiculously far from Vheshrame.

“Well, it’s not finished being built yet. And we’re still working on hiring all the dancers and chefs and whatnot,” said Phaniet, who knew him from before.

“These are not the questions asked by the nobility of Vheshrame! The Count of Does-Not-Want-Me-To-Say-Where asks about the availability of prostitutes, courtesans, hookers, sluts, wenches, toss-tails, and flibbertigibbets. I do not think he uses that last word right, but he is a count, so the people understand what he means. The Baroness of Somewhere-Else-Private asks about whether a Rassimel can have her secret Orren and the news of this will not reach her husband back in Vheshrame. I do not know how I am supposed to discover this! My husband back in Vheshrame is the very clever husband, and is discovering all such things before they happen,” said Lord Senneth.

“How did Brickrrang do that?” asked Feralan.

“He puts down bones from our dinner on the carpet! He says, ‘This femur of guntry is for the three Cani that you mount on your visit. This shell of mussel is for the Herethroy. This fur of rabbit is for the Orren and the Rassimel, the seven or eight Orren I think you are getting. This cupcake of squid is for the Khtsoyis.’ So that is my budget. Perhaps I do not use the whole of my budget.”

“Do the nobility of Vheshrame really consider Kismirth to be one big brothel?” asked Phaniet.

“Why, no, they do not! Some of them are far more enlightened. They recognize that Kismirth is a congeries of many brothels, some of them quite small and exclusive!” said the exceedingly innocent Sleeth.

“Really?”

Senneth sat on his haunches. “Kismirth is made from Castle Wrong. Kismirth is the tourist spot. The thought in Vheshrame is: what should one visit Kismirth for, but to play a little at being from Castle Wrong?”

Phaniet sighed. “We are going to have to advertise a lot more: advertise the gambling and the time distortion.” (She left out the museums and restaurants and cultural attractions, probably because they existed mainly in the future.)

The Sleeth flicked his pointy ears. “What is this? You do not wish to be the everyone knows of you as the Brothel in the Sky? How can this be?”

“We’re hoping for a bit more dignity than that,” said Phaniet.

“Dignity is a silliness!” said Senneth. “Except for the Sleeth. We have importantly of the dignity. Now! I wish to see the gambling and the time distortion! These are the things I investigate for my own interests!”

“Ah, of course!” said Phaniet.

The Researches

Senneth did wind up hiring three prostitutes of three different species from our none-too-large collection over the course of his three-day visit. Then he had a particular sort of conversation with each of them.

Senneth: “I have a requirement!”

Prostitute: “My willing and supple body, well-equipped with sparkling genitalia appropriate to my gender and species, is at your disposal!”

Senneth: “I have a requirement concerning your mouth!”

Prostitute: “I have, in two out of three cases, not yet essayed such a requirement from a tom-Sleeth with my mouth, but in all three cases I should be glad to try and will exert myself quite heartily to provide satisfaction!”

Seneth: “No exertion is called for. I require the opposite!”

Prostitute: “I shall lie most passively upon this divan and present my mouth to your hopefully-not-overly-barbed member, following your quite clear wishes!”

Senneth: “Yes to the lying passively. No to the member, which will remain sheathed.”

Prostitute: “Have you been taking speech lessons from that wretched Zi Ri, or what?”

Senneth: “Here is what I require! You must not tell anyone what we have done here today.”

Prostitute: “Nothing could be easier! For, as of now, I have no idea what we will have done here today.”

Senneth: “I wish for nothing more elaborate or dubious than a thorough and proper fur-brushing. But news of this must not come to Vheshrame!”

Prostitute: “There is nothing tighter than the silence of a whore of Kismirth — save certain of the whore’s orifices! Which may be rented for a moderate and respectable fee.”

Senneth: “I require no such orifices! Furthermore I do not pay you anything but your moderate and respectable fee.”

Prostitute: “Alas, for a poor tipper!”

Senneth: “Neither one tip nor the other! But now, O hired one, service me as promised according to the terms of our agreement!”

Prostitute: “Very well. With a professional attitude, albeit a lack of enthusiasm induced by your promise of poor tipping, I do so.”

The next day, the actual research started.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

At which point Arfaen acquired me, by the simple expedient of scooping me off the back of the chair whereupon I had been sitting, and plopping me on her shoulder. “My soon-to-be-former concubine!”

I kissed her happily. “My soon-to-be-former keeper!”

Arfaen: “I do believe I owe you something!”

Me: “What? Oh, right! My salary!”

Greblakaan: “Your salary? But she is your cook…”

Me: “And out of the meagre allowance I pay her as her employer, she is required to set aside a substantial sum for the care and future life of her concubine. On pain of being tossed into a prison cell with dancers, prostitutes, and other such disreputable people in Hanija, if I recall properly.” The “meagre allowance” is technically correct. Arfaen is the proprietor, manager, and president of the two largest and most unusual restaurants in Kismirth. She is not yet rich, but I imagine she will be soon. It also doesn’t let her do much cooking professionally, so she does most of the cooking for our now-small household. She gets a certain allowance out of the household monies for food.

Arfaen: “No — the penalties on keepers are a bit more harsh. Remember when they beat you and broke your wings?”

Me: “I remember, in spite of diligently trying to forget!”

Arfaen: “Then — in this envelope is your salary!”

I took the envelope, which was of fairly nice white paper, with my name written in Arfaen’s uncomplicated handwriting on the front.

Arfaen: “Open it!”

Me: “As your obedient concubine for another four hours, I can hardly disobey!” So I severed the seal with a clawtip, and unfolded a sheet of paper with various account numbers for a modest trust fund on the Bank of Teleporting Hexagons. It all looked to be in accord with the law of Hanija which we were amusing ourselves by obeying.

A scrap of white paper fluttered out from the folds of the account numbers, and away. Greblakaan grabbed it, glanced at it, and tucked his ears flat.

Greblakaan: “I think this is meant for you.”

Paper: “Sythyry — will you marry me in the style of Zi Ri?”

Me: “Of course!”

Assembled Wrongfolk: “Yay! With occasional slight reservations!”

Greblakaan and such: “What?”

(We have decided, after considerable consternation and deplorable discussion, to provide eight standard forms of marriage, viz. those appropriate to the eight prime species. (People can write nearly any sort of contract that they want, but the eight forms are the easiest.) The Zi Ri form is arguably the most distant: it provides for occasional connubial visits separated by long periods of independence. I don’t personally find it that pleasing, despite being 50%-100% of the Zi Ri population of Kismirth, but it’s all of Arfaen that I have ever gotten.)

Wrongfolk: [whispered to visitors] “It’s one of our kinds of marriage here! It doesn’t auto-divorce after seven years either!”

Everyone: “Yay!”

Me: “Now pardon me for a moment, I have a suddenly urgent errand.” I attempted to flee, but my keeper and fiancée held me firmly by the tail.

Arfaen: “I’ll have none of that! For a few more hours you are my concubine, and I have need of your services! No, not like that — as a hostess to this party!”

Me: [meekly and trying not to giggle] “Yes, keeper.”

Arfaen: “Besides, I know what is waiting for me in your dressing room. Did you think you could plot to propose to a Cani without her figuring it out?”

Me: “I probably shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t propose while I was still your concubine — that would be, oh, lese-majeste?”

Arfaen: “I’m sure! Punishable by something horrid back in Hanija. Where I plan never to go again.”

Greblakaan: “Wait … did you two just have a big party to celebrate going back to the same relationship that you have had for the last seven years?”

Me: “You understand!”

Postscript

I was actually going to propose a Sleeth-form marriage to her. It is a very tenuous form of marriage in many ways. It does, however, suggest that we might be living in the same building (or candelabra, in our case), which the Zi Ri form does not. Also she does go Sleething around a lot, so it seemed appropriate.

But since she proposed Zi Ri style to me, which is probably more dignified or something, I didn’t much want her to see it.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Arfaen and I were getting divorced, so we threw a nice private party for a few friends that we thought would understand. Most of these friends were with us for our surprising and unintentional wedding, so it seemed only fitting to have them there for the predictable but equally unintentional divorce.

Of course, we also invited some more recent friends — and I use the term optimistically — like Greblakaan, the new head of the new Healer’s Guild. (Kismirth is big enough to have a proper chapter of the Healer’s Guild, and, I’m afraid, wild enough to need one.) Greblakaan and his pack of half-a-dozen same-species husbands and wives had only arrived from Ulmarn two days ago, and they were not yet used to the way that we do things here.

(I shouldn’t blame them for not being used to the way that we do things here. We’re not used to it either — we’re still making it up.)

Of course, this lead to some awkward conversations.

Greblakaan: “You seem quite cheerful, Sythyry. So may I congratulate you on your divorce from Arfaen?”

Me: “Why thank you, master-healer!”

Greblakaan: “If I am not mistaken, Arfaen is quite cheerful as well…”

Me: “I certainly hope so!”

Greblakaan: “A generous attitude, which I find commendable. Usually I should expect a divorced Cani to be reacting … somehow.”

Me: “Well, my marriage with Arfaen is not the usual sort.”

Greblakaan: “Insofar as you are a Zi Ri and she is a Cani, I should think not! Yet I should expect some sorrow — to the extent that I will stretch my imagination, in the Kismirth spirit, and pretend my hardest that it is a marriage of some sort.”

Me: “Well, actually, that’s not the unusual feature. Our marriage is more properly a concubinage — we are not equals in the eyes of the law. Well, in the eyes of the law of Hanija, where we got married.”

Greblakaan: “So she is celebrating her … liberation, I suppose, if I may use a slightly unflattering word.”

Me: “Oh, not hers. I was her concubine, not she mine.”

Greblakaan: “But she is your … cook, is she not?”

Me: “Yes, and quite an excellent one, too.”

Greblakaan: “Having tasted these stuffed chub-beetles, I must agree. You are a wizard and a master-healer, are you not?”

Me: “I certainly hope so, or you’ve got much less of a guild chapter than you expected.”

Greblakaan: “And she is…”

Me: “My cook, and, until about noontime, my keeper.”

Greblakaan: “One might expect that, if there were some social inequality in the relationship, a cook might rate below a wizard and master-healer?”

Me: “What? You have tasted her chub-beetles, and you still suspect this? Is your tongue deficient, man? … Well, there’s a professional inequality in the relationship. But it’s not a professional relationship, so I don’t see why that matters.”

Greblakaan: “I don’t quite understand, but I suppose I don’t need to. After noon it won’t be a social relationship either, which should simplify matters greatly.”

Me: “It won’t?”

Greblakaan: “Well, not an intimate one at any rate, and I should imagine she will be moving out straightaway.”

Me: “I should be surprised and displeased if either of those were true!”

Greblakaan: “I beg your pardon?” Greblakaan tucked his tail between his legs.

Me: “She’s not actually going to move away from me. I imagine you don’t wish to know any intimate details …”

Greblakaan: “I would just as soon not.” While Kismirth is The City of Transaffection, most people who have moved here so far are cisaffectionate — like Greblakaan, they keep their romances and other entanglements within their own species. Arfaen and I, and many others here, have no such decency.

Me: “… But we shall be living just the same as we have for the last five years.” Which, for those who care about the details, means that I am one of Arfaen’s dozen or so regular lovers and I-have-lost-count-even-if-I-ever-had-it-which-is-doubtful irregular ones, and she is one of my two — the other being Saza, who visits once in a while. Arfaen, for those who need all the details, frequently amuses herself with anyone who catches her fancy — and her fancy does not try too hard to escape. I, predictably, aspire to such a state, but don’t seem to manage it exactly.

Greblakaan: “But, if you are going to live just the same as you have been, why bother to get divorced at all? Merely to confound the newcomers?”

Me: “You seem unfamiliar with the laws of Hanija!”

Greblakaan: “Surely you mean, the laws of Kismirth, where we are now! For Hanija is a distant city on distant Aradrueia, and its laws cannot apply here. Can they?”

Me: “Kathbeia, actually, which is a side-branch of Mrasteia.”

Greblakaan: “Further away still! What should I know about the laws of Hanija? Or, what should I know about them?”

Me: “Oh, the term of my concubinage was seven years, and it’s over today. We can’t really renew it without going back to Hanija. And that is impracticable as well. I doubt that they are quite ready to forgive us for our last visit.”

Greblakaan: “And with this intimate understanding of the behavior of tourists, you are seeking to make Kismirth a tourist destination of the finest?”

Me: “You understand!”

Greblakaan: “What, precisely, do I understand?”

Me: “Why we need large and skilled Healer’s Guild chapter here!”

Greblakaan: “Oh, dear.”

Kismirth needs a mayor. That's less than a duke. (We won't have a duke at all. I'm going to have a couple of ducal powers ((1) I own the whole city (because I made it), and (2) I can veto various things), but I did such a bad job of ruling Castle Wrong and Strayway that I do not want to try to be the mayor of Kismirth.)

So, who should be our first mayor? [This person's term will have started a few years before the Feralan story. But I will use the results of this vote. -bb]

So here's what our candidates say about themselves:

• Arfaen: I'm gentle and I can run a kitchen, even a pretty big and complicated restaurant-style kitchen. I'm a low-status Cani, so I won't be a mean and overbearing kind of mayor, but I do know how to get stuff done. Also Sythyry's my concubine, so that would concentrate the power in the city in one bedroom, which might be a good thing while we're getting started, though it might get a bit tyrannical (or maybe just ducal) if we keep it going too long.
• Grinwipey: Wait, what? I'll be shoggled in my own butterfunk if I gotta be mayor! How c'n I get rich breaking the laws of Kismirth if I gotta do the laws of Kismirth? I ain't gonna may for you and that's a fact that you can cram in your windpipe and smoke it!
• Inconnu: I'm fearless and dashing and glamorous -- just what Kismirth needs as a public face when we're trying to get established as a very wonderful place one must visit! And I exemplify the fun side of transaffection better than anyone!
• Jyondre: I am perhaps the most sensible person in the core Strayway crew. I do not fear to take action, but I do not stupidly charge into action either. Yerenthax and I exemplify the devoted side of transaffection better than anyone.
• Phaniet: I'm very organized and very good at organizing people, which is crucial for a young city. I have considerable personal power, and can get people to do what needs to be done in a number of ways. And, if we're going on the basis of transaffection, I have been Este's partner for decades; we are what any traff couple should aspire to.
• Prince Rastomil: Well, my main qualification for being mayor is being royal. I suppose I can handle the symbolic aspects of the role adequately. But I have many other qualifications as well! I am inadequate as a degenerate and a lush, and will come to work sober more often than not. I have considerable experience at being enchanted in horrible ways and lounging around for weeks in the body of an older woman, which gives me a unique perspective which I very much hope will not be relevant for anyone in Kismirth ever again. I have failed to get married, and done so in an exceedingly dramatic way. I am not quite sure which of these is a good thing for a mayor. Still, if I am elected mayor, I daresay I will keep Kismirth in the broadsheets quite well. Occasionally, by accident, it might even turn out to be in a good way.
• Someone New: I am not any of these people! I surely have other virtues and flaws as well!

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Safety in the Lab

Feralan teleported back to the workshop. hCevian manifested, dancing around him, his black spikes twinkling. I — I am the wizard Sythyry, in case I haven’t mentioned it before — was sitting on top of a cabinet, embroidering flowers on a sash. Feralan recognized me instantly: not because he has seen me every day of the last many years, which he has and which does not help a bit, but because I have a large but generally-invisible nametag which he sees at first glance instead of me. He understands the symbol of the word ‘Sythyry’ much better than he understands the feathery blue lizard in physical reality.

I asked, “How did the class go? I ask with friendly quasi-parental concern.” If you really want Feralan to understand your connotations, this is how you must talk. I do it when I remember to, which is sometimes.

Feralan crouched on his perfectly circular ottoman. “It was awful. All people and personalities and names and motives.”

"That is what you need to learn to work with," I said.
"I know it's not easy for you, but you need to have some skill with the concepts, even without any remaining natural ability. I speak with quasi-parental concern still."

“Can’t I put it off for another few years?” asked Feralan. He answered himself, “I know, I know, we did that once already, if we do it again I’ll probably never get to it. But … there are so many students in the class! Fourteen, plus the teacher!”

"You certainly have my sympathy, and my pleased approval for being willing to stick with something that you find so difficult," I said.
"If there is anything I can do to help out, please let me know."

“There is! The other students don’t seem to understand what’s wrong with me. The teacher told them, but she made it seem confusing and minor and insurmountable and horrible and all. Could you tell them, in a way that makes them understand it?”

I had to chuckle a few sparks. "I am amused! Often the comment about doing anything to help fundamentally means almost the opposite. But I will write yesterday's story down, from your point of view, and perhaps they will read it and perhaps they will get the point.

Feralan reached up to scratch his head, stopped to shiver for an instant when he caught sight of his arm, and continued. (I frowned to myself: I thought we had mostly overcome that problem years ago. The day’s stress must have brought it back.) “Will that work?”

"Most people can understand emotional content from my scribblings, or so they tell me," I assured him. "And I have been meaning to restart my diary, or at least write stories of Kismirth, and this will get me going. So I will do it, and you may show it to your fellow students ... well, check with Phaniet first. She might say it's a bad idea. Which I mean with a lightly ironic detachment, that a person a fraction of my age and power gets veto power over my ideas." Phaniet is as socially adept as Feralan is socially broken.

Feralan nodded, shivering. hCevian grew to a largish size, a massive sea anemone of menacing black spikes, and surrounded Feralan. I am pretty sure that this gesture amounts to a close and protective hug, between the two of them.

"For now, why don't you take the ... I mean, I give you permission and encouragement to take the rest of the afternoon off to chase down some hyperbolic functions," I said. Feralan squeaked happily inside of hCevian.

I added, "No time distortion though! You're too many years older than your age already!" Which is a real problem! Feralan is mid-adolescent, though, by a count of calendar years, he should barely be starting adolescence. This is a terrible habit he picked up from me, and for which I take considerable blame. But my species is timeless by nature, and his is not; and until he manages to make himself immortal, he had better not press the limits of his mortality too hard.

Classwork

Two days later, Feralan brought the first half of this story to class. The original plan was that he would show it to the teacher, but, for reasons that nobody understood, he kept it in his sachel, and brought it out after the morning’s sessions (on poetry). During lunchtime, he contrived to sit next to Wexiset, probably by means of sitting next to her without the usual grace of asking her permission. “Please read this,” he told her, handed her the folded papers, took a hard-boiled egg out of his bag, closed his eyes, and started eating it.

Her voice was even harder to understand when he couldn’t see her mouth move, but he managed to understand it.

Why are you eating with your eyes closed?

“So I don’t see my hands. It’s easier that way. I think it’s somewhere on the first page,” he said.

Wexiset proclaimed,

You are a very confusing lad.

She read the first page.

This is about me.

“Only a little bit. It’s mostly about me. It’s about how I see everything,” said Feralan. He finished his egg, and opened his eyes and his box of dumplings.

You make it sound like I'm some sort of terrible monster.

“Not exactly a monster. Just like I’ve never seen anything like you before, or that’s how it is until I think about it a second,” said Feralan.

Wexiset’s face deformed, as it had a few items before.

At least you make Miss Qualsohn sound like a monster too.

“Everybody is unfamiliar! Even me!” protested Feralan.

Paper rustled; Wexiset was a fast reader.

Oh. I'm trying to be funny.
That's what this gesture means.
It's called a smile.
I can't believe nobody told you that before.

Feralan got his handbook out of his satchel, and flipped to page eight, and showed her a page full of sketches of smiling Rassimel faces. “This is for trying to be funny, this is for happiness, this is loving, this is contemptuous, this is respectful, this is patient, this is flirtatious, this is proud, this is submissive. There are two more pages of Rassimel smiling and meaning different things by it.”

Wexiset took the handbook.

They look pretty similar.
I do see it,
this one is definitely proud,
and the first on the next page is definitely coy.
I guess that smiles can mean all sorts of things.
I thought they were just simple smiles.
I mean I never really thought about it.

“Expressions aren’t simple, not when you have to understand them from the outside.”

I guess not.
I can't imagine how I tell.
I just know.

“There’s a particular organ in your soul, with a five-syllable name, which does it. It’s sort of like the amorion, the part that lets you feel love,” said Feralan.

You're trying to do it with your mind,
not your soul.
That's why it's so hard for you,
isn't it?

(Wexiset figured that out in a flash, compared to, say, a collection of Zi Ri wizards and soul specialists a few years ago. Perhaps this is why she is in the class for the brightest adolescents of Kismirth.)

“Mostly it’s not that hard, I just need the second to think about it,” said Feralan.

Wexiset’s face distorted again. She said,

That's me smiling again, by the way.
It means ...
... what does it mean?
Friendliness and companionability, I guess.
Wow, this is harder to think about than I had guessed,
when I have to put it into words.
Anyways, can I squeeze your hand
to express some sympathy and hope that we can be friends?"

Feralan closed his eyes, and held his hand out. Warm blunt-clawed fingers meshed with his, and he concentrated on Wexiset’s words, and squeezed back.

If you're as mathematical as that story says,
do you play diamond chess?
That's my hobby.
Oh, and I'm smiling companionably now.

“I do! I’m smiling back. And feeling a lot less doomed about going to classes.”

Mirrored from Sythyry.

[OOC: posting on a schedule won by about two to one, so I'll keep doing that.]

Feralan followed Wexiset past the Witch column. To his left was the wall of Kismirth, on this level a plain circular cylinder of polished wood. Twelve yards to his right was a balustrade, each wooden baluster echoing the Witch of Agnesi until it abruptly and discontinuously ended in a square capital, as if the arc of the railing — a simple circle! though a huge one, since it went around the city! — could not bear the contact of the Witch. Past the balustrade was a region of protective enchantment, strong enough to easily defy the people who dwelt in the native region of Feralan’s soulmate. They were transparent, invisible, to afford a spectacular view of the branches of the World Tree spread out like an endless plane irregularly tesselated in green beneath Kismirth. Feralan knew the walls were there; he had helped his master construct them. The walls comforted him; he knew far too well what those people were capable of, what they rejoiced in.

Wexiset turned to inspect Feralan, her bright black eyes full of some incomprehensible message or emotion.

You must be new to Kismirth!
They say that the vista grabs you
by both eyes for the first month you're here,
by one eye for the second month, and
by the third you can ignore it.

Her face deformed again, as it had before.

 I think that's silly. Wouldn't it mean that Khtsoyis
 got distracted by it for five months? That is how many
eyestalks they have, isn't it? I don't know any Khtsoyis
well enough to count their eyes.

Feralan pondered her words. What could she mean? Why was she talking about not knowing any Khtsoyis? Was she hinting at some conspiracy against the Grinwipey, master of the casinos, the most important of the few Khtsoyis in Kismirth? He thought he should pump her for further information, but could not think of any way to do so. He temporized, saying, “I’m not new to Kismirth. I helped build it.”

The creature, the girl, emitted a sort of sharp barking noise.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Kismirth has been open for five years.
You would have been a child when it was being built.

It had been rather more than five years for Feralan. He answered, “I’ve been Sythyry’s apprentice for a long time. Since before zie started Kismirth. I was a child … I only helped with a few things, mostly the Locador spells.”

Wexiset turned to stare at him, the way one enigma might stare at another.

The wizard doesn't have an apprentice.
Zie's got an assistant, Phaniet. Well, some kind of assistant.
Phaniet is a lot more important than Sythyry.

“Phaniet sometimes teaches me too,” said Feralan, truthfully.

Wexiset barked again.

Ha! Ha! You are such a joker. Phaniet takes
time out of her busy schedule to teach a lost
and slow little boy?

Feralan reached up to rub his head in confusion, and suffered another instant of disorientation when he discovered he somehow had a pair of rounded furry ears there. Where had they come from? He forced himself to remember seeing those same ears in the mirror-bracelet a minute ago, the same ears he had had all his life. “She doesn’t take time out of her day. She puts it into her day. We do a lot of Tempador, time magic. Some days are three or four days long for us.”

I know they do Tempador. They made the
Quick Quarter and Slow Side, didn't they?

She leaned towards him, and he could smell her breath, with a hint of some pulpy fruits that she must have devoured not long ago.

Are you claiming to have helped with that?

“Just a little of the math and space distortion,” he admitted.

The creature pressed her advantage.

Well. If you're helping the wizard with zir math,
you can help me with my math homework.

An assertion of status? An offer of an alliance? A conciliatory gesture? There was no way to tell. Feralan searched for a way to divert attention from the topic, looking this way and that along the corridor. He discovered that it was a straightforward and bland rectangular prism, radial to the huge circle of this district of Kismirth … and occupied at some distance by a swarm of uncanny beings, combining anthropoid and insectile features. He shuddered, and sought and found a nearer distraction.

“That side-corridor! It is named Chavan’s Striped Walkway!” Feralan and his soulmate had designed a complete system for giving unique coordinates to each corridor and room in Kismirth, in terms that would let one calculate directions from any place to any other simply from their addresses. Even the most mathematically-adept of the other builders winced at the intricate twelve-or-more-part coordinates, and accepted a simpler (but utterly useless for calculation) system of naming each roadway.

The creature moved her head to some swift unheard rhythm.

That's the road. Our class suite is number Sh, on the right.

“Sh isn’t a number. It’s a letter,” said Feralan, who was sensitive about such matters.

Wexiset proclaimed,

I can't call it a house letter. That would be silly.

There was no accounting for the arbitrary precepts of such strange creatures.

Suite Sh was immense: thirty-one rooms, two of them large enough for 418 students, if arranged correctly, to stand so that they could not touch each other or the walls. It was also mostly empty. The same went for most of Kismirth. It was a the size of a large town, but where a branch-bound town would be more or less two-dimensional (with brief excursions into a third on upper floors and basements), Kismirth was fully three-dimensional, or occasionally more where Sythyry’s spells had gotten out of hand. It could be regarded as a single building a mile tall: room enough for the population of a hundred large cities. But nearly all of that space was empty, despite the best efforts of the Purists, and would be for decades or centuries to come.

Feralan followed Wexiset’s ringed tail around two corners in the suite. The door to the classroom was open. The room was pentagonal — a barely-regular pentagon, composed of a square with an equilateral triangle attached to one face, the addition surely due to imperfections in the wizard’s city-construction spell. The ceiling was high and fantastically arched, and a dozen chandeliers of autoluminescent beech-wood crescents made the room bright.

A tall creature stood on four legs in the center of the room: half anthropoid, half insectile, encased in gleaming white chitin and purple and black garments. It stood on four legs, holding a notebook in one forelimb and a pen in the other. It turned its eyes on Feralan when he entered, and raised its antennae and worked its mouth-parts, speaking to a lazy assemblage of a dozen assorted smaller creatures sitting attentively on couches.

Hello, Feralan!
 Students, this is the new pupil I was telling you about.

Feralan instantly understood that the half-insect must be the teacher. An instant’s comparison of her appearance with a memory of their interview revealed that it — she — was indeed Miss Qualsohn. (Or, as persistent and precise inner voice reminded him, it could be some other Herethroy who resembled her in some moderate degree. Feralan had made such mistakes before, often.) He quietly said, “Hallo.”

Miss Qualsohn addressed the half-circle (though Feralan noted that a half-dodecagon would be a better description, as the students were sitting on straight rather than curved couches — and not a completely regular dodecagon either) of students.

 Just to remind everyone, Feralan is the wizard
Sythyry's ward and apprentice.
He's very clever at magic and mathematics;
he won't be studying those with us.
He's been neglecting other studies somewhat. 

With his bitterest flaws thus revealed but minimized, Feralan could only nod.

Miss Qualsohn continued,

 Feralan, would you like to say a few words to introduce yourself? 

“No,” answered Feralan.

Miss Qualsohn gesticulated with her antennae, speaking to the students.

 I'm sorry. He's also the victim of an unusual psychic injury,
and has trouble with ordinary conversation.
Just pretend that you're a Cani talking to a non-Cani,
be very clear about what you mean,
and everything should be fine. 

She turned back to Feralan.

 I meant, please tell us a few words about yourself,
such as your full name,
a bit about your family,
and what you hope to learn this term. 

Feralan shivered in the doorway. He thought about teleporting away, to the safety of his hidey-hole outside the main universe … but Miss Qualsohn’s class had seemed the best place for him to get used to being around people, and he steeled himself to the ordeal. “I’m Feralan ky Disastro. My mother and her Cani lover were Sythyry’s accountants. They embezzled all zir money. Sythyry caught them, and they’re captives in Oorah Thrassen. I don’t see them much. I’ve got one brother, Ochirion, who is fostered with a Rassimel family in Kismirth. I’m Sythyry’s ward and apprentice. My soulmate is named hCevian; he’s here…”

Feralan’s familiar demon manifested by Feralan’s head. hCevian could not wear clothes of course, but he had orthonormalized himself for neatness. All of his spikes were perpendicular to the others, and all were of the same length: one could hardly appear simpler or snappier. Of course, people confined to a three-dimensional locally-Euclidian space (such as Miss Qualsohn and her students) would simply see hCevian as a floating ball of black spikes, glittering and wicked, the size of a walnut. But hCevian did what he could. “I am pleased to meet you all!” hCevian’s voice was an elegant blend of harmonics, purer than the voice of anyone made of flesh.

Feralan nodded nervously. “This is hCevian. He’s a Locador fairy.” Everyone else called the species Locador demon, though the distinction between fairies and demons was sketchy at best. “Vae, the nendrai, had taken me on a trip, and got me killed. She waited a bit too long to get me to a healer, so she grabbed hCevian and transformed him and used him as spiritual glue to keep me from being totally dead until Sythyry could heal me. Then we were stuck together a long time. We got cut apart, except bits of his soul came with me and bits of mine came with him.”

By this time, the students had all become rigid. Those with external ears had generally flattened them, and those with visible tails had tucked them between their legs. Several of them were making low whining or whistling noises. Feralan tried to remember from his notebook what that might mean, but, in his nervousness, he could not picture anything but the cover.

Miss Qualsohn, nearly rigid herself and with lowered antennae, said,

 Feralan, you must banish the demon.
 It is scaring the other students. 

Oh! That was fear they were displaying! He tenderly said, ⊙ ¬({hc} δ here) to the fairy, a slangy mixture of proximity topology and modal logic. hCevian giggled happily. “Told you they’d fear me at first!” He whirled, his spikes appearing to pass through Feralan’s head, but of course missing by whole dimensions, and became mostly elsewhere with the barest ripple in the essential world.

“hCevian won’t hurt you,” Feralan said. “He’s a refugee here. Vae wrecked his soul, and he’s not safe in his proper region. He’s under Sythyry’s protection, and Vae’s. He won’t hurt anyone. He can’t hurt anyone too much; he understands too much about feelings.”

The students remained silent for a moment. Wexiset asked, in a quiet voice with unusually complex frequency and amplitude spectra even for a voice based in flesh,

Will it be back?

“Well,” Feralan said uncertainly. “hCevian isn’t precisely not here, and, fundamentally, couldn’t be anywhere else in the universe without also being slightly here too. Imagine that he’s a …” Feralan glanced at his bracelet to confirm the species. “… a Rassimel with an infinitely fluffy tail — infinitely dense and infinitely long tailfur, but finite mass, so …”

Miss Qualsohn spoke firmly,

 Feralan, leave off.
The question called for a simple yes-or-no answer,
not a mathematical theorem.
Students, the demon has left;
it will not return.
Infinitely fluffy tails need not enter the picture. 

With a familiar person — Sythyry or Phaniet, say — Feralan would have argued. It wasn’t a theorem, and hCevian had simply become far less here than he had been before. Well, there were some points of view from which hCevian was absent. Perhaps Miss Qualsohn was thinking of one of them, rather than considering the matter more generally.

Miss Qualsohn continued.

 Feralan, have a seat on that couch, next to Wexiset.
Now, it is time for a lesson in history.
We discuss the events leading up to the Holocaust Wars." 

Feralan sat down, crouched a bit as if to maximize the ratio of his interior to his surface. He tried to follow the history lesson. The flood of names of historical figures would have overwhelmed him at the best of times. Worse, the bulk of the lesson tried to explain their motivations, why they entered the web of alliances and vengances that nearly destroyed Ketherian civilization. Motivations generally eluded Feralan at the best of times, and the motivations of people who only existed anymore as a mess of words were utterly incomprehensible. He carefully wrote down everything the teacher said, and, in her pauses for breath, developed a formalism for describing alliances and motivations. By lunchtime, he had set of equations detailing the history. He might not understand what it meant for one wizard’s honor to be impugned by another’s actions, but he certainly could chart when it happened.