Sythyry's Journal

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Pofnu is what they speak in Hajina. It is sort of like Ketherian, but, like all divergent languages, tosses out some useful and important things, and elaborates the impedimentia beyond all reason. Or beyond all chance of memorization.

Unlike our trip to Srineia, we don’t have anyone on board from a Pofnu-speaking region. We have some energetic linguistic students, like Strappie, and some experienced linguistics students, like Hrone. So we had a study group a few times, before it sort of fell apart due to a general lack of interest.

Vocabulary

Strappie: “My absolute favorite part about Pofnu is that it’s very very precise! Like, ‘padi’ is thick cloth, like felt or something, and ‘dejing’ is thin cloth! So far that’s just an important distinction we don’t have in Ketherian! It’s important! You won’t be trying to buy thick pajamas in Hanija and buy thin ones by mistake!”

Me: “A mistake I have never managed to make, even in deficient Ketherian.” What I really meant is, I don’t go looking for ‘thin cloth’, I will go looking for ‘aerophane’ or ‘cambric’ or ‘grenadine’ or what have you.

Arfaen: “That’s because you sleep in the fireplace when you’re sleeping alone. No pajamas there!”

Nalche: “I’ve never bought pajamas. Stolen them from my sister a few times though.”

Strappie: “But! It goes beyond more than that! When you fold that cloth, you ‘geno padi’, but you ‘geyi dejing’! See, it’s two different verbs too!”

Nalche: “And this is a good thing?”

Hrone: “For the employment prospects of language teachers, certainly.”

Me: “Anyone who wants a few extra weeks to try to memorize all those verbs before we get there, see me in my laboratory after class.”

Arfaen: “Especially cute Orrens! Hey! Sythyry, what’s that vicious look for? I’m just trying to help you out here!”

Caste Markers

Hrone: “Now, different sorts of people will use slightly different vocabulary when they talk to each other.”

Jyondre: “I read about this! The good news is, it’s easier than Srineian. The bad news is, it’s different from Srineian.”

Hrone: “I don’t know about Srineian…”

Jyondre: “Srineian is very simple! We have status markers on pronouns, mostly. So Sythyry used I-nob to imply that zie was a noble…”

Me: “Falsely!”

Hrone: “Well, Pofnu doesn’t do that. You don’t say you’re a noble — you say you’re higher or lower status than the person you’re talking to.”

Jyondre: “That is so obnoxious! Suppose I say I’m higher-status than you, and you’re really a Great Baron but I don’t know it?”

Hrone: “I believe that the Guild of Administerers of Social Correctives can be called in that sort of case. You might call them hired torturers.”

Strappie: “No! Don’t call them that! They will torture you for it!”

Jyondre: “I think this completely proves my case. You can’t be tortured for missing status markers in Eigrach or Heleshario!”

Hrone: “Foreigners probably won’t be tortured in Hanija either. Not for that anyhow. Just use the neutral markers and you should be fine.”

Me: “Very good. What, then, are the neutral markers?”

Hrone: “Well, that depends on what sort of a question you’re asking. For a ‘where’ question, the marker is ‘kuza’; for a ‘how’ or some ‘why’ questions, it’s ‘tasapahu’, and for most other questions it’s ‘ropaf’.”

Jyondre: “What about for statements and commands?”

Hrone: “You can’t give a command without knowing the status of the person you’re commanding. That’s not Hanijan, that’s just politeness.”

Me: “And statements?”

Hrone: “Oh. Statements. That’s in the advanced book. I didn’t get that far yet.”

Phaniet: “We’re going to be so very, very rude.”

Mirrored from Sythyry.

While Jagration was trying to coax Bryef into sharing his job, Phaniet acquired Prince Rastomil in a parlor. (At some point I shall construct an airship that contains fewer than 82% parlors.)

“Prince Rastomil,” said Phaniet. “This incident with your bodyguard was strange and disturbing. In Vheshrame, even the most brutal of the ducal bodyguards rarely, if ever, injure children. I suspect that there is more of the story than has been fully revealed to us.”

Prince Rastomil got up and curtsied to her. “I am discovered — revealed — exposed!”

Phaniet produced a small ceramic skeropythrope from one of her several pockets and fidgeted with it, as if to hint that she was there as the representative of a powerful mage, rather than simply a curious and nosy onlooker. “Since you are already partially discovered, revealed, and exposed, I recommend that you finish the job.”

The prince shrugged, a regal courtly shrug that wriggled his body from ears to tail. “I suppose that I shall not compel you to seek the Barency broadsheets of the last two or three weeks, or ask half my classmates. I am under a bit of a cloud at the moment — this trip, for me, is more on the order of an impromptu smidegon of exile than it is a purely educational experience. Though I was to receive an education as well — an education in the perils of defying a ducal command!”

Phaniet nodded. “I have heard of such perils. They do, indeed, sometimes result in exile or broken bones. Generally the exile is miserable, though, and the bones involved are those of the defier himself, rather than an under-aged fellow passenger on a chartered skyboat.” (I believe she had heard the informal diagnosis of Feralan’s injuries — made by Umbers, based on asking Feralan “How badly does it hurt?” — rather than the later diagnosis made by an actual healer.) “This leaves the situation unclear to me, as if there are still details about it that have been hidden under pillows and strewn with strongly-scented licorice root.”

“Well, the ducal command was more by way of a parental command, you know. I was to marry Princess Twisifell of Oorah Gothnard,” said Prince Rastomil. “The marriage was part of a more complex agreement, involving the importing of brandy, the export of books and cheese, the analysis of boundaries, and any number of other tedious things. It was a popular agreement in Barency, at least among the wealthy and powerful. There is a cheese bubble in Barency at the moment, and the wealthy and powerful and sensible wish to sell their inflatedly-valuable cheeses quickly … In any case, I did not wish to marry for the sake of cheese, no matter how valuable.”

“Twisifell was not to your taste?” asked Phaniet. Rather later, she confided to me that she was wondering, and indeed hoping, that Twisifell would turn out to be the wrong species, and that the choice of us as a particular implement of punishment was somehow particularly congenial. She further confided that she briefly entertained the thought that Prince Rastomil and someone on board, perhaps Inconnu or myself, would fall in love, settle down, and be exceedingly happy together.

“Twisifell was perfectly fine, charming and pretty and well-spoken, as fourteen-year-olds go. [That's about 9 of your Earth years. -bb] I imagine that she will grow up into quite a perfect princess by the time she is thirty. I admit that princes rarely get to choose their own spouses, but I don’t really wish to wait fifteen years. And that would be fifteen years as a married man. Furthermore, I cannot imagine enduring a wife undergoing adolescence! What a torment. Unfortunately, suitable Rassimel of suitable rank and parentage were scarce in Oorah Gothnard this year, and Twisifell and I were the best match. So, after some complexities, I refused to marry her.”

“Was she offended?” asked Phaniet.

“Oddly, I do not believe she was. I did not actually talk to her about it — we only met the once, early in the engagement, and our discussions were of the most superficial and tenuous kind. I kissed her hand as gracefully as I could… I suspect it was not graceful enough. That very night she braided her bedsheets into a ladder, strapped a sword on her hip, scooped her jewels into her squire’s old leather backpack, and attempted to flee the palace and upcoming nuptials.”

Phaniet nodded gravely. “Such flight may be taken as prima facie evidence that she did not favor your suit. Also, it is a traditional beginning to a course of delightful adventures, though usually ones that would reflect quite poorly upon the older, uglier, and more fiendish groom.”

“In this case, the delightful adventures were sadly curtailed, though, in fact, the traditional gruesome death of the old and fiendish groom was curtailed as well — a circumstance that some of my family now consider to be even more sad. The princess is not good at braiding ladders, or, perhaps, she was overbalanced by the substantial weight of jewels she brought. In any case, the escape wound up crashing upon the spiky top of the picket fence around the palace, and, from there, a very hurried trip to the Healer’s Guild. She was still there a week later when I left.”

“What did you do?” asked Phaniet.

“I sent flowers, chocolates, and a few books of children’s stories. She burned the flowers, and tore up the stories. At least she ate the chocolates. She is a very practical princess, in some respects, and I am sure will make some other minor scion of the major Rassimel nobility a fine spouse in a decade or two. If she can ever live the incident down, of course.”

“I imagine that even the most ridiculous of childish indiscretions can be ignored, by suitable applications of rank, wealth and beauty,” said Phaniet. “And then…?”

“Then I returned home and announced that the engagement was off. I don’t mind the escape attempt, but I won’t be having a wife who treats books that badly,” said the prince. “Though, privately, I think she was furious that life was not behaving sufficiently like a children’s story for her, and not with the books themselves. In any event, I hoped that my attitude of bibiophiliac reverence would get the Bookbinder’s Guild on my side — they were one of the parties whose trade arrangements came unravelled when I cancelled the engagement. Alas, they care more for their profits than for their honor. One might almost suspect them of being guildsmen, with an attitude like that! So in the end, everyone who had anything to gain from the treaty occurring was quite annoyed with me.”

Phaniet stood and wagged her tail. “I believe I now understand the need for bodyguards. The fearsome and well-read assassins of the Bookbinder’s Guild are after you!”

Rastomil smirked. “I am not so important. And, in fact, there was a certain amount of sympathy for my point of view, though never enough to overcome the irritation. Still, it is far and away more convenient for my parents and all if I, myself, am far and away. Also, it would be convenient for many if I were discovered to be, well, unsuitable for marriage at all. Or at least, if I were to more fancy marriage to that bouncy Orren lad, or even one of the Zi Ri wizards, than any number of Rassimel princesses.”

Phaniet flattened her ears, based as much on prior thoughts as anything. “This is not the case?”

“With all due respect, and not the slightest bit of insult intended, I have the most mundane and conventional of tastes. I find that I am only interested in other Rassimel. And, indeed, only Rassimel of a similar age and social status to myself. When I chance to have an unchaperoned hour with such a one, and should she be similarly inclined and interested in experimentation, my preferred experiments are of the most routine and unremarkable sort, such as would be written in three insipid sentences in even a fairly conventional book of pornography. My imagination and my most torrid fantasies involve little more… Still, Wentalilla had been instructed to make sure that I was quite thoroughly debauched by the end of the trip. In the presence of enough witnesses (the fellow students) so that the lords of Oorah Gothnard would be relieved, rather than enraged, that I was not married to the flower of their city-state,” said Rastomil.

“So we have deprived Wentalilla of her important task. Jagraton cannot help?”

“Jagraton, like myself, is a person of unremarkable appetites. Wentalilla is notoriously traff; she slept her way through the experimental, the dissipated, and the simply unwary among the nobility of all species save her own. Were she not Rassimel and he not Orren, I would suspect her of being Inconnu’s cousin — actually, given that they’re both so traff, I must suspect that they somehow managed to arrange something of the sort despite the species barrier.”

Phaniet’s ears went flat. “That is not a joke aboard Strayway. Such things do happen, by wicked karcistry, and the children of such ceremonialized unions are miserable and short-lived. Though we care for them as best we can, and never think otherwise.”

The prince continued, “My apologies! I am not well-versed in the matter; it has not been mentioned in class this term. Anyhow — I personally suspect that Wentalilla had hoped to enjoy the fleshpots Hanija in great detail, as well as her ducally-inspired mission of immersing me in them and holding me down until I gulp them all in. Jagraton will try bravely, I imagine, but they are not his natural environment as they are hers.”

“So you’re being sent to Hanija with us to ruin your reputation?”

“Precisely. I’m not sure whether or not I shall cooperate, though I am more thinking of drinking, gambling, duelling, and, if I am uncharacteristically bold, a slightly salacious fling with an adult Rassimel woman of … dare I think it? … the lower nobility, or even the upper merchant classes. Perhaps we shall be so bold as to slip away from chaperones and sneak occasional fingers under each others’ clothes.”

“Would that make you unworthy of Oorah Gothnard?”

“Yes. Unfortunately it would make all nobility unworthy of them as well, but that is already the case,” said the Prince. “Ah, well. If everyone is lucky, I shall come off much the worse in one of the duels and nobody will have to fuss with me again. Though why I’m bothering flying a thousand miles to find such a duel is beyond me.”

Phaniet frowned, and poured the prince another chalice of brandy.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Consequences

Me: “Wentalilla, on this ship, when it is necessary to chastise children, we stop short of physical violence. Stabbing hCevian, while wrong, is more understandable: he is an adult (I think) and he had already struck you. Albeit in defense of Feralan.”

Wentalilla: “My job is to protect the prince.”

Me: “You can do that as much as you like. As you and the prince take commercial skyboats back from our night’s stop to Barency. Or even to Hanija, if you like; I don’t much care where you go after you are off Strayway. I won’t have this sort of recklessness and violence on my skyboat.”

Rastomil: “Am I to be expelled, then? I have done relatively little wickedness on board, save to be collided with and brutally guarded.”

Feralan: “Prince Rastomil? Are you being very anxious about getting expelled? You look very nervous and worried!”

Rastomil: “O young Cani of a Rassimel — I am indeed less than eager to return to Barency.”

Me: “I don’t see any reason to kick you off for having a troublesome friend, Rastomil, so long as you behave well.”

Wentalilla: “Then I must stay to guard him!”

Me: “You must leave the skyboat at our next port of call, which is Flowdeen, in about an hour or so. “

Wentalilla: “This is in defiance of the law and the Duke!”

Me: “The law and the duke of Barency, a city which we cannot even see from here. You may spend the meantime packing if you wish, or in persuading Rastomil to come with you. Your choice.”

Jagraton: “This is inappropriate behavior, and will be met with suitable measures!”

Me: “If you do more than write a strongly-worded complaint to the Vheshrame embassy, I will remove you from the ship as well.” And, when I saw where Jagraton’s hand was, I added, “Threatening violence to the ship’s captain is a great crime to the Sky Pilot’s Guild — whose laws do apply here, as we are on a skyboat.”

When we docked at Flowdeen, we escorted Wentalilla to the door, sans luggage. Violence was nearly necessary, but Prince Rastomil agreed to accompany her over the threshold, onto the dock. She tried to grab him and kidnap him away there, but was prevented from doing so by Windigar’s quick use of the ship’s defenses.

Jagraton looked daggers at me every time he saw me, and recruited one of the Cani — Bryef, a Barency city guard — as a spare bodyguard for the prince.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Quendry, at least, has some new friends. The Cani are all one big family — I mean that quite literally, all the adults are married to each other in one degree or another. I do not think that this is a coincidence. I think that the Barency Cani students decided, family by family, whether they would come with us, and one family said yes and the other(s) said no.

As befits a Cani family, there are puppies. Six of them: Garkin, Semiravide, Dulcet, Hurue, Lusplin, and Warkiet, though I can’t tell who is who. They’re a touch younger than Quendry, but that’s fine because Quendry’s social development is not all it could be. Quendry’s evil father deliberately suppressed him; Quendry’s well-meaning but peripatetic mother has done what she could, which was not everything.

In any case, Quendry pounced upon them as soon as he could smell them, and instantly choofed them all for Knowing The Way Around, and, on having affan, started leading them on a tour of Strayway.

Feralan and Ochirion went chasing them down one or another of our many, many long hallways, because they are closest in age, and because Feralan has had far too much company of adults and monsters and demons and angels and similar boring whatnots.

Inevitably, since they are on a skyboat with many square miles of floorspace, Feralan collided with Prince Rastomil. We cannot wholly blame the bodyguards for failing to prevent this collision, since they were being quite overwhelmed by the puppyflood.

“Excuse me,” said the prince. “I believe that you have left your elbow in my liver. Or perhaps my spleen; I have never been quite sure which organ is under that precise bit of my waistcoat.”

Feralan started, “Are you…?” At which time, Wentalilla grabbed him from behind and slammed him against a wall, hard enough so that, in the end, Feralan needed to come to me for medical attention, and thus I heard about it.

Rastomil tugged his bodyguard’s tail. “I heard something snap. Perhaps his shoulder-bone, perhaps an ornamental filigree on the wall. If you would be so kind, Wentalilla, please put him down now. I am certain he has been rendered harmless, even if he wasn’t from the beginning, which I somehow suspect he was.”

Wentalilla snarled, “You are not in charge of your safety, Rastomil. I am. Shut up and let me do my job. This is not a normal child; it is an emotionally-mutant thing, spirit-tied to a demon. Its actions are unpredictable and not to be taken lightly. Hey!” The exclamation was occasioned by Feralan teleporting out of her grasp and some moderate distance down the hallway. He has gotten good with Locador spells for some reason.

“Hey, prince? Are you upset or angry or mad or furious?” called Feralan. “And if so, which one of those would you say it was? Oh, and that goes for your bodyguard too.”

Rastomil fidgeted with his tail. “I would say that I am upset — not mad or furious, perhaps a touch angry. I do not, as a rule, approve of my chaperones damaging my hosts. It’s not even the first time it’s happened. As for Wentalilla, I cannot say. If she has any emotion but a tightly-restrained fury, she has not seen fit to display it around me.”

“Are you upset with me?” asked Feralan, rubbing his shoulder.

“You have slightly inconvenienced me, and diminished my dignity. If I was upset with everyone who did both of those, I should have little time for anything else,” said the prince. “How badly are you hurt?”

“My shoulder hurts, here,” said Feralan.

“Wentalilla, since you damaged the boy, please do me the favor of repairing him,” said Rastomil.

Wentalilla glared at the prince. “I don’t like your attitude. He could be an assassin — or a distraction, getting me out of reach of you before the actual attack happens.” She made a show of looking up and down the hallway before striding towards Feralan

… and screamed, as a terrible black spike pierced her chest. hCevian was behind her, a floating sea urchin thrice my size, though in the perplexing way of Locador demons, he had stabbed her from the front. She shouted, “Rastomil! It is a trap! Run!”

“Exactly how is he supposed to flee from me?” asked hCevian. “But it is not a trap. I am protecting my friend from further injuries. You, not the prince, are my prey.”

“I am nobody’s prey!” shouted Wentalilla. She struck at him with a thick and well-enchanted shortsword, breaking off the spike through her chest and a dozen others.

“I amend my previous commentary; I shall provide a more defensive sort of defense,” said hCevian. He darted away, scooping up Feralan, and teleporting both of them to my workshop, and then to the galley where Arfaen, Phaniet, and I were complaining about a few things that seem unimportant in comparison. Feralan’s shoulderbone was not broken, though some tendons were bruised and twisted, and I did for him what healers have done for millenia for such injuries. hCevian had lost several spikes and suffered a wound to his primary surface, which I was able to heal with some improvised Healoc Locador spells. (Note to self: Work out some Locador demon healing spells, or at least a device. The usual ones don’t work on them.)

Back with the Prince, Wentalilla snorted and looked exceedingly competent and exceedingly dangerous. Which was unarguable: scaring off a Locador demon is not a small matter.

There were consequences of this turn of events, of course.