Sythyry

“I did not become your deacon for the purpose of making teleport gates in some city that’s halfway between nowhere!” yelled Flaenstra, loudly enough so that Phaniet could hear it from across the hall.

“I know perfectly well why you chose to become my deacon,” hissed Glikkonen. “It was a terrible reason. But, as long as you are my deacon, you will do what I require of you. That is what it means to be a deacon.”

“You may make any use of me you wish! You should do! You must do!”

“I will do! What I wish of you is to stay in Kismirth for a year or two, help Sythyry and Saza with their teleport gates, and make sure that nothing goes wrong, and that everything is proceeding according to theory,” snapped the wizard.

“That’s not at all the right wish!” wailed Flaenstra.

“It is a perfectly respectable wish! Of course you have no use for ‘respectable’. Well, neither do Sythyry and Saza, so you will be in good company,” said Glikkonen.

“You are trying to set me up with them!” shouted Flaenstra. “Do you think I am inconstant and ridiculous?”

“I think you are constant and ridiculous! I have never given you the least bit of encouragement, yet you persist in treating me as your lust-mongie!”

Flaenstra must have been livid and flat-eared. “Not the least bit? What about a thousand bits! Starting with employing me as your deacon after I had described my everlasting love to you! You have praised me no fewer than six hundred and twelve times to my face! Four thousand six hundred nineteen smiles, which I can subdivide into eleven major and fourteen minor categories! Shall I go on?”

“You shouldn’t go on, but I’m sure you shall,” said Glikkonen. “I told you that I wouldn’t treat you any differently from any other non-Zi-Ri deacon, and I haven’t. I told you that you had not the slightest chance of romance with me, and you haven’t. And now, I need someone in Kismirth who understands enchantment, to keep an eye on my enthusiastic and skillful but occasionally careless and doom-ridden grandchildren, and that someone will be you.”

“You need someone in Kismirth who understands enchantment — and Locador, and gate-making! You need in Kismirth — Dargent-Sporray, not me!”

“If you refuse, I will indeed ask Dargent-Sporray to take on the job,” said Glikkonen in an ominous hiss.

“Then I shall refuse!” crowed Flaenstra.

“If you refuse, you shall no longer be my deacon; you shall no longer be in my employ at all,” said Glikkonen. “I have no use for a deacon who does not do what I require.”

Flaenstra wailed and threw herself on a couch. “I should resign! I should leave off your service!”

“If you regard my service as a way to my bed, yes, you should!” snapped Glikkonen. “If, as you have said any number of times, you find it valuable training and valuable assistance to primes everywhere, a source of wealth, an access to tools that no Rassimel your age could afford, and all the other things — independent of your little crush — then you may stay. But you shall stay in Kismirth, as long as this project runs, because I need someone with your talents here, and — deny it though you sometimes try — you, yourself, have your talents.”

“I’ll stay,” said Flaenstra sullenly. “But I don’t like being scraped off your paw like sticky guntry-shit.”

“Unfair! If I were scraping you off, I would simply tell you to leave, to depart, to begone! Another few conversations like this and I shall do so! Besides, guntry dung isn’t that sticky,” said Glikkonen.

Phaniet reported this conversation to me, adding only, “You are definitely zir grandchild. I can’t imagine you handling that situation any better than Glikkonen did.” Which stung a good deal, largely because it was true.

“Oh, very simple. We’re going to use them all,” said Feralan. All of the sleeping wizards and assistants woke up.

“And make some watchers and wardians so that we know exactly how much each one is being used, and for what,” I added.

“Impossible!” cried Talujjan.

“I had expected it to somehow be impossible. What, though, is the reason it is impossible?” I asked, a bit mopily.

“No government, no duke, no mayor, no legeriat anywhere on the wide and woody World Tree will pay for four protections. At most they will pay for one, or perhaps one and a bit. Never two. Never ever three. And four is quite beyond the question,” said Talujjan.

“But is there a magical reason why not?”

“Bah, of course not. But this world is not run by magic, you idealistic little lizard! This world is run by money, by budgets, by finance, by taxes and levies and debts and leins! This I know, for I have made any number of gates — at least two a century!”

“We’re only interested in magical reasons,” I said.

“A fool, a fool, an ivory-tower fool! Your duke will exile you when you show them the price!”

Phaniet quietly said, “There is no duke involved here; the duke of Vheshrame will not be paying. And I am the mayor of Kismirth.”

“And I am the city-maker. We’re not looking forward to paying for the enchantments, but we’re not planning to make a profit on them,” I said.

“Not directly! Making Kismirth the transit point for teleporting between branches — now that will make the city rich in the long run!” said Phaniet, who understands these things. Some wizards and scholars nodded, and most simply looked puzzled.

“So, are there any magical reasons why our plan is dangerous?” I pressed.

There were. They were too technical to describe. We wound up changing nearly all the details, but none of the generalities such as have been discussed in here.

A few points are worth mentioning:

1. Despite popular rumors, we did not invent some wholly new way to make teleport gates. A few details are new. Most of it what we’re doing is centuries old, or older. We’re making something bigger and stronger than anyone has done — and safer! we hope! — but it’s not a magical breakthrough.
2. We are taking great advantage of Vae and hCevian. Both of them are intimately involved in Locador magic, in almost opposite ways. Both of them are cooperative. No other gate-builder has had a nendrai like Vae, ever, for there isn’t another one as far as we know. hCevian is more common, but we have more reason to trust him than any gate-builder has had to trust another Locador demon.
3. Talujjan will stay and help. (By “help” I sincerely hope he means “help”.) He doesn’t want the biggest and flashiest gate-building project on the World Tree this millennium to happen without him.
4. Our teleport gates have one fixed (to Kismirth, though of course Kismirth moves around) and and the other end moveable. (More specifically, we’ll be able to turn the gate off, and start it again leading to somewhere else.) This is a rare design, because moving the moveable end is very bad for the underlying universe. With all our overbuilt safety and repair measures, it should be safe for us to do, given a four-hour rest between moves. We plan to have the engine that moves it work once a day, so the rest should be all but automatic.
5. Our gates are all one-way: half leading to Kismirth, and half leading from it. Two one-way gates are easier to make than one two-way gate. Most cities prefer the two-way gates (according to Talujjan, who pointed out that our mayor would absolutely reject getting the inferior choice. Silly Orren wizard had forgotten that Phaniet is the mayor.) Our mayor noted that we’d very much like to have travellers walk through the city, perhaps stopping at our many wonderful bordellos, restaurants, hook-joints, hotels, brothels, museums, cat-houses, gift-shops, whorehouses, etc.
6. The gates will be surrounded by of our ridiculously over-powerful and very flexible city walls, neither inside nor outside. So hostile, rude, belligerent, or unseemly intruders will be caught, unable to return home or enter Kismirth, to be dealt with at our convenience.
7. We will build two long-range teleporters, of a sort that we could only build with Talujjan’s help. After a great deal of mathematics, we think we can get a ridiculous range. The rest (ten others) will be shorter-range, but quite far.
8. Talujjan could have built a quite-far teleporter any time. He tried! (Sort of.) His customer for it got overthrown in riots, due in some part to the expense of the gate, and in some part to the popular terror of having such a gate in the city, and in several parts to various other things, such as torturing political opponents and creditors to death. (Addendum: several quite-far teleport gates have been made, but with limited numbers of uses, usually just one. They are escape holes for certain extremely wealthy and extremely unpopular people, or, in some cases, research vehicles. A few are still in existence, having never been used.)
9. We won’t be able to point the teleporter just plain anywhere. Each teleporter will have an associated talisman which, once a day, will let the teleport gate remember one location. A gate will be able to remember dozens of locations, and we will have protocols for controlling which ones it will forget to replace with which other ones.

“Historically there have been four ways to make a teleport gate safer,” said Feralan.

“Yes — really no there are more — yes and you list them all in your plans,” said Talujjan. “What you don’t explain is which one you plan to use.”

“The oldest method is space-healing,” said Feralan, ignoring Talujjan. “This is an emergency measure. If the universe around the gate is crumbling, the space-healer uncrumbles it. Usually then they stop using the gate.”

“And call for someone to repair it — someone like me!” crowed Talujjan. “I’ve made more money off those repairs than ever I did from making gates in the first place.”

“You devious devil!” proclaimed Glikkonen. “You ought to make the gates properly in the first place, and forgo your greedy repairs!”

“Hah! It is your gates I must fix and fix, not my own!” countered Talujjan, with the air of a fencer pricking the tip of his foe’s nose. Again, we took steps to separate the two. Some of these steps involved coffee-cake, and some of them involved the erection of walls and monuments.

“The second method, historically speaking, was the mounting,” said poor Feralan, when the bickering subsided. “That is, an enchantment or spell which anchors one end or both of the gate. It both separates the gate from the edge of the universe somewhat, and lessens the chasmatic tendencies of the gate.”

“It is properly called a bastion, not a mounting,” said Talujjan, and the semantic bickering was off again. We sprayed the wizards with seltzer water mixed with tincture of fallasleepia until they calmed down, and then we waylaid them with lamb chops and potato croquettes and parsley sauce.

“And it doesn’t actually work very well,” said Talujjan, when he was calm.

“It works just fine,” said Glikkonen. “What it doesn’t work for is long: a few centuries at most. The mounting — and I use that term with full knowledge of the subtleties thereof — the mounting accepts the tremors and quarms that would otherwise damage the husk of the universe. Can the mounting endure forever what the universe itself cannot? Of course not! Though a well-made mounting can endure for far longer than a weak spot in the husk.”

Talujjan said nothing, perhaps because we had filled his muzzle with Arfaen’s best and stickiest caramel for the occasion.

“The third method is the space-toughening. It reinforces the underlying structure of space along the length of the gate, so that the use of the gate causes fewer points of injury to the fundamental reality,” said Feralan.

“My invention!” crowed Talujjan.

“What about the contributions of Nirion Havstard and Baron Sir Lord Charubdobbis?” asked Professor Isotomable. “To say nothing of the fact that our own Glikkonen was the first one to actually produce a space-toughening enchantment?”

“Bah! The enchantment is trivial once the spell has been invented! The spell — My spell!” cried Talujjan.

“What, you have mastered the art of making an enchantment that holds a ritual spell?” said Glikkonen with a hissy sneer. “A greater invention by far than any number of space-toughenings!” (Yes, indeed, a greater invention: mostly we think that it is impossible.) “Yet, somehow, you have neglected to mention it all these centuries.”

“Fool! Tiny-head! Big snob! Ah, so blatant a liar!” warbled Talujjan. This time we installed heavy space-toughenings and ferocious bastions (not mountings — even I would hesitate to mount Talujjan, and Glikkonen is my grandparent and the wrong species) to shut them up.

“Finally, and in the last two or three centuries only, have been the mounting-healings … bastion-healings?” said Feralan uncertainly. “If a gate is made with mountings or bastions, then a subsidiary enchantment can repair those bastions as quickly as the use of the gate damages them.”

“Technically, that’s not a method of improving the gate, it’s a method of improving the mounting,” observed Prof. Isotomable.

“Practically, that’s out of the question in most cases,” said Talujjan. “Aside from research prototypes, I’ve only twice managed to persuade any city-state to pay for it. They’d rather pay less for a worse gate, and fix it when it needs it. Faugh!”

“And those are the main ways that gates are made safer,” said Feralan.

“Ridiculous!” said Talujjan. “The single most important way is keeping the gates far apart!”

“Incomplete!” said Prof. Isotomable. “What about the other eighty-three approaches?”

Feralan whimpered. I tried to rescued him: “We’re not using those. Besides, they are largely variations on the four we have listed.” This of course caused a third of an hour of argument. They even had a point: mounting-healing is a variation on one of the others. Finally we managed to shush everyone, largely by constructing a giant bumble-bee out of flax and flan, and thumping everyone with it until they stopped arguing and/or lapsed into unconsciousness.

“You still haven’t said which one you’re going to use,” grumbled Talujjan.

“Oh, very simple. We’re going to use them all,” said Feralan. All of the sleeping wizards and assistants woke up.

“Everyone in the room knows this. Several of you were deeply involved in the history. But Sythyry insisted I say it anyways, in case you have forgotten about the time you saved the world, or nearly destroyed it.” Feralan was wearing a blind-mask, a pair of leather disks over his eyes, the same color as his Rassimel mask. He was using peculiar Locador spells to stay aware of the edges of the dias and to avoid knocking into the podium. This got him many odd looks from many Locador experts. Fortunately he could not see the odd looks, or he would never have finished a single sentence of his talk.

“I only broiled eleven cities!” said the Wild and Scaly Llezcaryg. I could have sworn zir count was higher; but maybe zie is only counting mistakes. Or, perhaps, actual broiling.

Feralan tried to continue. “Teleport gates are well-known to erode the universe around them. If two gates are too close together, or if a gate can be pointed at different places, it can make tiny cracks in the shell of reality. As the cracks grow and join together, it makes holes that are large enough for wickedness from outside to come in.”

hCevian danced over Feralan’s head. “Wickednesses like me from the non-place where I was spawned, if you are lucky! There are many worse things out there.” (The real point of this introductory material was to get the audience used to hCevian’s presence, so that they’d listen to the important parts rather than staring at him or analysing him.)

“Yes, yes, we all know about the Eater of Cities — we all fought the Eater of Cities,” said Talujjan. (You probably haven’t heard of Talujjan, unless you’re interested in the history of Locador, but his name is all over that topic. He is one of the relatively few Orren wizards older than a few centuries.) “Get to the point, will you?”

“Not all of us! Not even everyone in here who was alive in year 1531 got to the Eater in time to fight it,” said Glikkonen. “Feralan ky Disastro certainly did not. He’s not yet thirty years old.”

“Oh, great staring gods,” said Talujjan. “I mistook him for being Sythyry’s age at least. Pray continue, young Rassimel! And young demon, too.”

“Well, there haven’t been many teleport gates built since then, and no variable ones,” said Feralan.

“By ‘variable gate’ do you mean ‘a gate capable of being opened and closed’, or ‘a gate capable of excluding certain substances or beings, the list of exclusions being capable of being changed at need’, or ‘a gate capable of visiting several destinations’?” asked Prof. Isotomable. (One of only two mortals, a Rassimel in case it’s not utterly obvious, given primary invitations to the seminar; he is an authority on the theory of Locador magic, but he is not a wizard or even much of a mage.)

“Multiple destinations, and closing too, I suppose,” said Feralan. His hands were shaking. It’s surely intimidating enough talking to an audience like this, but doing it blind must be horrible.

“That’s not true!” said Talujjan. “I, myself, have built any number of gates since then — at least two a century!”

“And the rest of us have probably built as many, between all of us, put together,” said Glikkonen. “Which is — what, under two hundred gates, total. How many new city-states have been founded in that time, on the uppermost branches alone? Ten times as many, eighty-four times as many? I think that counts as Feralan’s ‘not many!’”

The two wizards went at it with daggers, flails, glaives, hand-axes, pikes, scimitars, and triremes, which might well be mistaken by the mere amateurs at magic for a discussion of the semantics and entomology of ‘a few’. (And I do mean entomology, not etymology. They were as crazy as scatter-bugs.) Feralan whimpered on the dias and waved his hands. hCevian danced a figure-8 with parallel sides over his head. Eventually the rest of us whomped on the combatants with enough frozen squids and gelatinized gristle girdles to make them shut up.

Some of them were willing to come when we invited them — Glikkonen in particular, who is fond of zir grandchildren, Saza and myself. The rest got a lot more willing to come when we told them what we were building, and when. They knew how dangerous such things had been in previous times, when millions of primes had died from the mistakes of deep-wizards, and Flokin the fire god burnt cities to ash and glass to keep matters from getting any worse.

We were planning to do that sort of thing again.

We had a pretty respectable guest list. Of the dozen most famous experts on Locador magic in Ketheria, we had eight as visitors. These included such dignitaries as Professor 1, Doctor Sh, Wizard α, and others who I will not bore you with even a listing of the lizard-assigned pseudonyms thereof. They all brought between three and a trillion assistants, supporters, hangers-on, same-species spouses, other-species people of suspicious attachment, valets, varlets, duvets, ferrets, merits, demerits, etc, whom I shall also not mention unless they are mentionable. Fortunately we held the seminar in Kismirth, which has plentiful hotels, restaurants, entertainments, and vistas to hold and amuse such people. (Never mind the other things that Kismirth has. (even to hold and amuse such people.))

They also included Glikkonen, a first-generation Zi Ri; the oldest and best wizard on the World Tree. (That’s not just my opinion as zir grandchild. Saza thinks so too. So do many other people.) Being a grandparent as well as a first-generation Zi Ri and a wizard, zie is a manipulative and viciously well-meaning spawn of a god.

For some reason, Glikkonen had, I thought, hired and brought a low-to-medium-priced teenaged Rassimel floozy from our prostitution district. I had no idea why. All the first-generation Zi Ri are utterly cisaffectionate, without the slightest interest in romance or carnal play with anyone but other Zi Ri.

“Sythyry, I would like particularly you to meet my deacon Flaenstra,” zie said with a meaningful flick of zir tail. Meaningful, that is, except that I didn’t understand it, so it was meaningless.

“Of course! Delighted to make your acquaintance, Flaenstra,” I said. She was a short and brawny Rassimel woman of classical styling, with a fine-ringed tail and a pronounced eyemask. She was also wearing a respectable self-sculpting talisman, so the fact that she chose to appear as a low-to-medium-priced teenaged Rassimel floozy was voluntary.

“Likewise delighted, I’m sure,” snapped Flaenstra. Evidently she means something rather different by “delighted” than most people do. I was rather surprised she was talking, given her tone of voice, rather than wringing some scaly neck or other.

“Now, now, Flaenstra,” said Glikkonen. “There’s no sense in being rude to Sythyry. You two have a great deal to talk about, after all, you know!”

“I don’t see that we do,” she said. She turned to me and explained, “With all due respect, I’m primarily a metallurgist. I don’t have a lot to do with Locador magic, and I wouldn’t even have come to this seminar if Zirself there hadn’t insisted.”

I dipped my head. “Well, you’re also an enchanter of no small skill, or so I have heard! And I am a master-smith, with a keen appreciation of metallurgy, though no especial talent therefore. My smithly activities run to the creation of metal, and the making of jewelry — for people or for floating cities.”

She shrugged. “Fine.”

Glikkonen flapped zir wings. “There’s no need to be snippy, Flaenstra! No reason for either brusqueness or rudeness!”

“There’s no reason to shove me around, either,” said Flaenstra. “I pick out my own … friends.”

“I don’t. I have my grandparents to choose them for me,” I said helpfully. “As they do for you, is it not so?” Which got a quarter of a grin from Flaenstra. It got a perplexed look from Glikkonen, too. Glikkonen’s social skills are legendary. When this legend is told, the refrain is, Oh, no! Zie didn’t!. (I understand there is a similar legend about my sexual exploits, with a far less dignified refrain. I have heard several versions of it. 60% of my legendary exploits are serious misunderstandings of the circumstances; 70% of them are invented out of whole cloth; and 80% are quite aspirational for me but unlikely ever to come about.)

Glikkonen snapped, “I am not choosing your friends! However, you have continued to be my deacon, and so I get to choose your professional acquaintances and fellows!”

Flaenstra scowled back at Glikkonen, “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You are certainly dressed as if you were here,” zie said.

“I’ve got a part to play. I’m dressed for it,” said Flaenstra, in a voice as bitter as overbrewed kathia.

“Grandparent? I don’t think there’s any great need to have me seduced. If you want me to do something, well, I have invited here to ask your advice, so recommend a course of action and I will surely do it,” I said. “And if the course of action is a saddening and disheartening one, even up to abandoning the project, I have a very nice wife and a very nice lizardfriend to comfort me.”

“Ridiculous! I have no secret plans and no ulterior motives!” snapped Glikkonen. “Now I seek out the famous buffet, or perhaps the top of the central spire of Kismirth which I have never seen despite spending some weeks here working on the walls and dining with Sythyry and Saza up there several times, or maybe a museum which has not yet opened!” Zie flew off, spitting sparks.

Flaenstra towered over me, drew a dagger dripping deadly dew, found a fiendishly flaming +1 flail, grasped a glowing +2 glaive glistening with ghastly ginger-ale, hefted a huge +3 hand-axe with a hideous Herethroy head on the handhold, picked a poisoned +4 pike with pungent powers of putrefication, seized a sizzling +5 scimitar smeared with some sanity-sawing secret substance, and threatened me with a +6 trireme of totally turgid terror, and frowned distinctly. “I am not here for any purpose beyond doing my part in analyzing and perhaps performing the enchantments. Not to drop my trousers for anyone of Kismirth, least of all you.”

I fluffed my feathers at her. “I have a wife and plenty of lovers as it is, and no lack of professionals available if, somehow, I want something specific that my friends cannot or will not arrange. My requirements for your body are distinctly limited. Feel free to keep your rump in the comfortable chair we have arranged for you in the conference room; it shall have no place in my bed.”

“I shall insist on nothing less,” said Flaenstra, and stomped out.

Saza gave my a pitying look. “Ooh, poor Sythyry. You and she will be boinking bravely and belligerently in about three days, and have an amazingly melodramatic breakup for about three years. Feel free to come to my bed for occasional moments of sanity.”

This is a boring sort of story, without plot, conversations, intrigue,
alliteration, or even doom. Still, I found it impressive.

Preparation of the Speaker: Space Seminar part 1

“I can’t give the talk!” said Feralan. “Everyone there is famous and full
of expert!”

“That’s the point,” I said. “All these famous people should know who you are
and what you have done with theoretical space-magic.”

“They’ll tear me apart! They’ll find every mistake or misspeak!” he said.

“They aren’t so bad as all that. My grandparent is actually pretty nice. Yes,
they will find every mistake any of us have made. That’s why we’re doing this
seminar at all. We want to find every mistake in the design before we build
any sort of teleport gate,” I said.

“They’ll have facial expressions!” he wailed.

“Well, yes. People do that,” I said.

“I can’t talk intelligently to strange people who are doing facial expressions
at me!” said Feralan.

“That is a bit of a problem,” I had to admit. I have seen Feralan attempt to
buy a biscuit from a friendly Rassimel street vendor, and end up in tears for
it. “Would it help if you can’t see the audience?”

“Oh, yes!” he squeaked. “I’ll give the talk blindfolded, can I, please?”

“I suppose so…”

Niia had taken the stolen skayak, and, as it happened, the most portable bits of equipment and cash from the Nook. She flew off alone, to some other branch.

Chiver mourned her departure for several weeks. He found some comfort with a sweet Rassimel from Daukrhame, also teaching at his school, and also recently dumped by a different-species sweetheart.

Arfaen took over the Nook. Once or twice a week she operates it as a live-service restaurant in the Quick Quarter. For the most part, the people and equipment went back to Arfaen’s kitchen, or to other restaurants in more reasonable parts of Kismirth, or into other trades entirely.

But of course Niia sent us letters, a few months later.

Arfaen,
Enjoying that useless dog I left for you? I’ll have you know that I’m the head chef to Count Toberlane. He’s the de-facto ruler of Drysselwyn! A big city-state in the Transwynt on Aradrueia! I have, in fact, cooked the city-wide Creation Day blood soup! Now, know you this — in most places, blood soup is simply made from the blood of any animal that’s been slaughtered lately, with grain and greens and garlic. Not so Creation Day blood soup in Drysselwyn! Here every citizen of the city nicks a finger and drips three drops into the pot! So I have cooked and eaten the whole city of Drysselwyn! Or Cooked for and had my food been eaten by the whole city of Drysselwyn! Which is a bigger city than Kismirth will ever be!

So much for you, protecting your pitiful little restaurant that doesn’t even serve people, stomping out your competition or breaking up their marriages like a coward!

Arfaen and I decided to let her have the last word.

Postscript

Niia was unusual in that I had a lot more contact with her than with most people who move to Kismirth and then leave it. But people like that are not so unusual. Of course the better sort of people all move to Kismirth and stay there, and the worse sorts all come and leave … or actually not. I did show off the more insane and ridiculous side of Niia, but pretty much every Rassimel has that side, somewhere or other. And I might have been kinder to, oh, those Herethroy farmers, than their stories deserve.

I think that, for every four or five people who move to Kismirth, about one tries and leaves, for some reason or another. We are not, after all, a heaven.

(Or, Why Rassimel Do Not Rule The World Tree)

Eleven days later, Niia stormed into Chiver’s study without warning. (Exactly what warning is required when one occupant of a shared apartment storms into a room thereof is not clear to me. I suspect that we ought to sell official Kismirth Storming Licences, though that might suggest that we allow storming the barricades or some such.)

“Chiver! Now you must decide!” she proclaimed.

Chiver looked up from a student’s incomprehensible abuse of mathematics. “What must I decide?”

“Me — or Arfaen! Loyalty — or betrayal!” said Niia.

“You and loyalty of course,” said Chiver. “But how does this choice manifest in reality? What, specifically, must I do?”

“Arfaen is trying to destroy my restaurant! Guess what she has done? She has hired two new Craitheian chefs, and is offering mushroom tarts a la toissande — offering horns-of-purity — offering chub-beetles en brochette! By the spanglio, what is she not offering — to them or to you?”

“I daresay you proved that Craitheian food is popular,” said Chiver.

“And her waim-fondue! The most expensive dish in the Nook, because it must be prepared from beginning to end after it is ordered, and two cooks must work hard and fast to have it ready in time! But Arfaen! Arfaen and her damnable stasis-table! She makes it in bulk, at leisure, and sells it so cheap!”

“Well, I don’t understand the full intricacies of her pricing scheme for her high-end foods, but doesn’t she have one price for a Herethroy dinner, and another for a mammal’s dinner, and that’s it? So she’s just charging the mammal price for the waim-fondue?” asked Chiver.

“Ridiculous! And the fondue itself! Who ever heard of making waim-fondue with pigeons? Waim-fondue is served with three roast ortolans! That is the tradition! A roast pigeon — oh, much cheaper I’m sure, but not right!”

Chiver cocked his head. “How do they make it in Draffmoug?” He knew the cuisine of the Trough of Kreischan almost as well as she did. (That’s the part of Craitheia which they come from — a big low spot between two mountain ranges, containg Choulano and Draffmoug and other cities.)

Niia snapped her fingers in his face. “That for Draffmoug. The cuisine of Draffmoug is debased — is everyway inferior to that of Choulano!”

“Perhaps so, but I do know that Arfaen has hired a few refugees from Draffmoug. She took them in, much as she took us in. Only they didn’t want to start a separate restaurant.” (Which is true — we’ve had a lot of people from Craitheia move in, mostly trying to escape the Vepri. Arfaen has hired the best of them. Arfaen, incidentally, is not nearly the best chef in her own restaurant. A couple of the newcomers are world-famous, far beyond Arfaen or Niia, but wanted to work with her for a while to get used to the local situation.) )

Niia glared at her lover. “Well, I’ll bet that your dear little Arfaen is having her pick of them in bed, too.”

Chiver flattened his ears. “I don’t know about that.”

“She’s not sharing, then?”

“I wouldn’t know. She and I only copulated the once,” said Chiver softly.

“Perhaps! I have know way of knowing if you’re telling the truth!” said Niia. “You certainly haven’t been a thunder of excitement in mye bed. Who knows where else you’re splashing your seed?”

Chiver tucked his tail between his legs. “I know — in my own hand and nowhere else. And I’m mournful about us being bad in bed. My fault is that, I think. Every time I’m with you anymore, I have the horrible memories of that afternoon of gushflush.”

Niia snarled in a fury. “What? I took care that afternoon, hours and hours of it, with you puking and shitting on me and on my pantry! And now you’re punishing me for it?”

“I’m not trying to punish you. I’d forget that whole afternoon, truly I would.”

Niia glared at him. “You haven’t even tried to get over it.”

Chiver was backed into a corner. There was no answer save the one that would enrage Niia. “It hasn’t been so easy to try. You’ve barely shared my bed since you opened the Nook, and when you do you’re thinking about the Nook more than me anyhow.”

Niia snapped, “And Arfaen’s easier, is she?”

“It was just the once! And we’re both Cani — we could smell the interest — we weren’t even flirting with each other!” protested Chiver.

“So you were fucking the she-dog as a break from her destroying my business,” said Niia. “Some loyal partner you are.” She pushed past Chiver, snatched a pair of suitcases, and teleported off somewhere.

Chiver fell to his knees and howled.

Arfaen took my teleport arrow. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with an interpretive snack!” and popped off.

Chiver sat in the tangle of well-used covers of Arfaen’s bed, and looked at me, with that peculiar expression used mainly by people who realize that they have just cuckolded a wizard, and that said wizard is now peering at them out of enigmatic lizardly eyes. (I have such lovely eyes, and so enigmatic (when I don’t know what to do (which is most of the time))). “Well, um … I … did I … could I … um …”

“Do you need some objects for your sentences, Chiver?” I asked him.

He looked rather miserable. “I didn’t … or … I didn’t mean …”

“I’m not sure what you’re fretting about, Chiver,” I said as nicely as I could manage. “If you’re worried about what Niia thinks, you know her better than I do. If you want me to keep it secret from her, um, we’ll have to have a bit of a talk.”

“Oh, no, Niia! I forgot her! What will she think?” wailed Chiver.

“I don’t know; I haven’t seen her for weeks,” I said. “And I don’t know what your terms are like.”

“We’ve an open relationship … and I haven’t seen her for weeks either … but … um … are you going to curse me or something?” asked Chiver.

“No — I know just how much monogamy I can expect from Arfaen. So I’m hardly surprised to fly in here and find someone in her bed. It happens once or twice a year. That I flap in on her, I mean; she takes quite a few lovers. But this is the first time it’s ever been another Cani. That’s a bit disconcerting.”

“Oh, no! Have I broken something…?”

Arfaen materialized in the room with a big tray. “Hi! Interpretive snack time — scrambled eggs on toast!” She proudly lifted the first of three leather domes over a serving platter.

I peered at the eggs on toast under it. “I am not doing so well interpreting your interpretive snack. Are you angry with us and wish us to suffer?” The eggs on toast were horrible. The toast was burnt, the eggs were carbonized on the bottom and nearly raw on top, and the whole thing smelled awful.

Arfaen took a big helping of the nasty stuff, and shoved a few mounds into her mouth and somehow choked them down. “That represents my cisaffectionate marriage,” she said. She tossed the contents of her plate into the serving dish, and the dish into the trash. “You don’t need to eat it. But try this:” She lifted the second leather dome. “Better?” The scrambled eggs were fluffy and soft and pure, with a hint of butter and a hint of salt and a hint of perfection. The toast was very straightforward and also perfect, crisp at the edges, soft in the middle. Arfaen served it forth, and took a bite. “See? Very nice! It sort of redeems the dish, after you’ve seen the first one. There’s cisaffection with someone you actually like, by mutual choice.” Chiver smiled and blushed his whiskers.

Arfaen popped the third and final dome off its platter, and grinned.

“That’s a quiche. It’s not scrambled eggs on toast,” I said.

“Well, people say that about traff liaisons, too,” said Arfaen. “But it’s not that far off. Cooked beaten eggs atop a crusty wheaten thing.” She served it forth. Eggs, yes, but slivers of bacon and caramelized onions and scallions, and the top had threads of gorgonzola and a sort of coffee-and-ham-stock sauce. The crust was as thin as eggshell, as crisp as shortbread, and sparkling with spices.

“This is delicious!” exclaimed Chiver.

“This is an appetizer from the restaurant, mind you; I didn’t have time to make it. It’s still basically eggs on toast. But this one you have to pay attention to. That one is delightful because it’s so simple. This one is delightful because it’s so complicated,” said Arfaen. “You can simply gobble it down like the other, or you can revel in each and every subtlety of flavor and texture.” She took another bite of quiche, snuffling a bit to enjoy the complicated aroma.

I’m not entirely sure that I understood all of her point, not being Cani and not having either the Cani social understanding or the acute Cani sense of smell. The snack was delicious, and I quite recommend variations on eggs on toast when one is a first-class chef and making sure that matters are smooth with one’s spouse and new lover.

So we nibbled and chatted for another third of an hour. Then we stood up. I fluttered to Arfaen’s shoulder. Chiver excused himself. He turned to curtsey to us as he left, and his eye fell upon the table, and all of a sudden his ears went flat and his tail drooped.

Arfaen had taken only the one taste of her simple scrambled eggs; she had not touched them after praising them.

Arfaen and I are married, but we are not very married. We generally spend the eighth night of every week together, unless, for some reason, we don’t.

So, on the 16th, I realized what time it was, rather later than I should have realized, and got out a special arrow, and teleported right in front of the door to my wife’s bedroom. Teleporting into her bedroom can be a startlement, and a startlement can lead to bandaging her head if she bashes it when she jumps in surprise, which is not a good way to start the eighth night of the week if you know what I mean which I hope you do for I don’t want to explain.

I was rather surprised to hear Arfaen barking and warbling in a particular special kind of happiness on the other side of the door. Not that I expect the least bit of exclusivity or monogamy from her … actually, I do expect it, on the eighth night of the week, unless we’ve decided otherwise.

So I poked my head in the door to see what was up, and, e.g., if Arfaen had brought home a nice Orren for us to share, which she does on occasion because she knows I like them better than I like Cani, and I never pick them up on my own.

I was extremely surprised to find her bouncing up and down joyously on top of a quite naked Chiver.

I sat on my haunches and considered my options. I could, I suppose, be offended that she had forgotten our night together. Or, if she was planning to share, that she (a) had gotten started without me and (b) not asked me if I was in that mood. Or, I could be offended and/or astounded that she was mating with another Cani, which she has not done voluntarily ever in her life. Or perhaps, since it was a he-Cani, she was planning to have another puppy. Or …

“Hi, Sythyry!” Arfaen warbled. “Oh! Could you be a dear and put a contraceptive spell on me? I forgot I’d need that.”

Not that last one, I realized! So, I was a dear, and put a contraceptive spell on her, feather-casting it. And, as I am a patient sort of person (or not in a hurry for the discussion) and I like the way my wife looks, I crouched on a table and watched them. (Of course they don’t mind. Cani are more comfortable doing that sort of thing with a whole family around.)

Afterwards, when she and Chiver were wiping themselves off a bit, she asked me, “And what brings you here tonight, O my zpouse?”

“Didn’t we have plans for tonight, O my wife?”

Arfaen got a terribly worried look on her face, and dashed over to peer at her calendar. “If we did, I didn’t write them down.”

“It’s the eighth day of the week,” I said.

“No, that’s tomorrow. Today’s the sixteenth, making it the seventh night of the week,” she said.

I puffed up my feathers. “I am a mighty time wizard! The mysteries of Tempador magic are … um …” I looked at her calendar. “… completely over my head sometimes. Today’s the sixteenth. It’s the seventh night of the week, and you are being utterly faithful to our vows and our scheduling both. I am a bit curious though…”

Arfaen looked at me, and looked at Chiver. “Still, this is an interesting situation. I think I need to make us an interpretive snack.”