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.”

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…”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

But Niia encountered every problem that Arfaen had anticipated, and some new ones that we hadn’t warned her about. Her first week, Niia bought beef and venison and mutton from a butcher. In three Quick Quarter days, she had sold most of it. She sent a runner out of the Quick Quarter to the butcher she had chosen as her meat supplier — who had already sold most of his restaurant-ready cuts of meat for the day (since, for him, only nine hours had passed), and had only inferior ones to available.

Niia hired a variety of primes with a variety of skills, and whipped them into shape as decent kitchen staff. Most of them left her fairly quickly, after only a few months of Quick Quarter time. They didn’t want to get too old too quickly. This is, incidentally, official Kismirth policy — not that you can’t live your whole life in the QQ or even the QQQ and die very fast as the outside world measures time, but we do have a few ministers who make sure you understand the consequences of what you’re doing, and interrogate you once or twice a year.

Staff housing or feeding arrangements were another perplexity. If an employee lives in the QQ, he will need to be fed, clothed, and otherwise tended. This requires supplies and such that need to be brought in from outside, in vast quantity. The city brings in these supplies to sell to quicktimers, but the markup on these supplies is large, and Niia didn’t want to pay it. She brought in things on her own, and discovered why the markup is so large. In the end she would have been better off buying from us.

Or, the employee could live outside the QQ. This means that the employee would, say, go home to dinner and bed after a day of work, and come back in the morning — eighteen hours (real time) later. Which is to say, six days (QQ time) later. Niia could in principle have hired six times as many people as she would need in one day, and arranged their schedules well, but … there simply aren’t that many immigrants to Kismirth yet, and there are plenty of jobs for them to do, and why pick a temporally and magically exotic position in a mischancy venture like Niia’s when better choices are available? She could barely manage to hire one set of staff, much less six.

In the end, she wound up with a staff of mostly taptet, not primes. Taptet are congenitally less concerned about their own survival than primes. A small village of them moved into the QQ to work with Niia’s Nook. Not ridiculous of them, I think: they weren’t cutting down their lifespans relative to each other.

But hiring taptet was a moderate problem in its own right. Taptet are short — shorter than Rassimel, even. Niia’s kitchen was set up for primes. This meant that the taptet could barely use the stoves and counters without standing on stools. Standing on stools in a kitchen isn’t a wonderful idea.

Having antlers in a kitchen isn’t a wonderful idea either, especially when one is climbing around on stools a great deal. Pots and pans sometimes got ganked off their hooks. One unfortunate taptet had an impromptu bath in hot frying oil, and then an impromptu visit to the Healer’s Guild: poor Greblakaan’s first attempt at healing a taptet, and the poor taptet’s first time at being healed by a master-healer. (It worked brilliantly.)

And it cut into Niia’s business. Some of the more prime-supremacist clients don’t like Arfaen using taptet to carry food around. Those supremacists had been some of Niia’s most enthusiastic customers … until Niia started serving food, not only served by taptet, but even made by them.

Niia’s Nook never did that brilliantly. Arfaen’s kitchen didn’t have nearly as much logistical trouble getting food delivered, nor as much trouble losing cooks and other staff. Being able to cook food at convenient times for the chefs, and serve it in perfect condition at convenient times for the diners, is a huge advantage in more ways that I had realized. E.g., at the end of the day, Niia had to dispose of many gallons of food that perfectly of saleable quality, but which she couldn’t sell — some of which went to her staff, and some to garbage. Arfaen has much less of that problem: she can simply buy as much as she can cook, cook it all, and serve it at leisure, or send it to the Fucked-*p Firefly. Arfaen’s dinners will stay good until the World Tree grows branches above Ketheria.

And, in my opinion, Arfaen’s cooking is better, her menus broader and more interesting, and her presentation more beautiful. But I am biased — not so much by being Arfaen’s zpouse, but by coming from the same world-branch and culinary tradition. And knowing that Arfaen has a large staff of excellent chefs working for her, and so on.

Niia worked there, with all her fierce intensity of spirit and skill at cooking and organization. We rarely saw her outside of the Quick Quarter; every time she left for a night at home, she was away from the Nook for three or four days QQ-time, and it usually was diving into disaster by the time she got back. Niia’s Nook never failed. But it never got very far from failing, and only several loans from Arfaen and others kept it going.

Chiver rarely went to Niia’s Nook. He taught students in ordinary time, and, when he visited the Quick Quarter, Niia was generally furiously busy with the restaurant and didn’t pay him much mind.

“Wonderful! I’m so glad to hear that!” said Arfaen, and, if I know her as well as a zpouse ought to know zir wife, she meant it. “Where’s it going to be?”

“That doesn’t matter much! I’m going to deliver food to the Quick Quarter, just like you do,” said Niia proudly.

Arfaen curled her tail. “Well, that’s not the easiest market to serve, Niia.”

Niia frowned. “Don’t be discouraging. You said you don’t mind the competition!”

“I don’t mind the competition, really, and I don’t want to discourage you exactly, but it’s a lot harder to work in the Quick Quarter than outside it,” said Arfaen.

“You do it just fine,” said Niia.

“Yes, but it takes some exotic things, and has its own problems that you’re probably not used to. I wasn’t when I started. Like, there’s the people who do delivery for you. It’s not a good idea to spend a lot of time in the Quick Quarter unless you want to or unless you’re immortal, because you age too fast compared to the outside. So what will you do for waiters?”

“I’ll hire taptet, just like you do,” said Niia. “I have done my homework.”

“Fair enough! While you’re getting started, you can use my taptet to make your deliveries. How about this — as long as you’re taking less than, oh, ten percent of the taptet’s orders, I’ll make it a gift to you. Between ten and twenty percent, you pay that fraction of their salary. When you start getting above twenty percent regularly, you’ll go hire your own staff.”

Niia frowned. “I suppose we can do that.”

Arfaen was taken aback by Niia’s disapproval; she thought it was a quite generous offer. “Twenty-five percent? I can do that, if you think you’ll need that much extra time.”

“I won’t need extra time! My business will grow very very fast!” said Niia, with less confidence than she felt.

“Well, I suppose it could do,” said Arfaen. “There’s the food-abayer, which puts meals in time-stasis until the customer unwraps them. That’s not a small thing to get, even if your zpouse happens to be a Zi Ri time-mage.”

“Well, you’ve got one, right? Or two…?”

Arfaen wagged her tail. “I’ve only got one. As far as I know, there’s not another one like it in all Ketheria. Have you seen it?”

“I haven’t — I’d love to!” said Niia. So they went to the Finishing Kitchen at the restaurant, or the Hall of Lots and Lots of Doors because it has fifteen of them. In structure, the Finishing Kitchen is a very long and very thin banquet hall, with a single eighty-foot table running down its middle. And what a table! It is made of porcelain, glazed a very light green, with the Patterns of Partial Perpetuity in silver inlay dancing up and down its length, adorned with ivory fruits and amber birds (without which, the discord between Lenhirrik and Kvarse would cause a dish with both meat and vegetable components to separate over the span of centuries). A crew of cooks scrambled around it, assembling trout tarts, sausage salads, mushroom towers, cups of scallop bisque, cheese and pickle tesselations, and other delicacies delightful to the tongue, the eye, the nose, the tongue again, and occasionally the ear.

“Open your magic sense to it,” said Arfaen.

Niia did. The table glows like a long slice of sun, to the magic sense. “Looks pretty strong, I guess.”

“There aren’t three other wizards in Ketheria who could have made it!” said Arfaen proudly. Which is only true if “making it” counts making the physical table all at once as well as doing the enchantment on it, and probably not even then — I don’t particularly brag about my smithcraft, and there’s no reason why any other wizard would either.

Niia looked it up and down. “Well. I guess I can’t ask to borrow it.”

“I’m afraid it’s not going anywhere,” said Arfaen. “It won’t fit out of the door even.”

“So I’ll use, maybe, that end,” said Niia, pointing at the less crowded end.

Arfaen lowered her tail and managed not to frown. “I’m afraid we’re just here at a light time right now. We often use the whole of the table and wish it were twice as big.”

“I thought you didn’t mind competition,” said Niia.

“I don’t, but I don’t much want to scramble my schedule like a bowl of eggs, either,” said Arfaen.

“How about at night? Do you use it at night?” asked Niia. Arfaen shook her head. Niia continued, “Well then, we’ll use it at night.”

Arfaen said, “Well, you’d have to cart food over from your kitchen, wherever that will be. It’s not impossible, but it’ll be awkward.”

Niia thought a third of a second. “We’ll use yours at night. You don’t need to frown like that, Arfaen! We’ll clean up everything before your people start working!”

Arfaen shook her head. “I can’t see that working very well for long. If you’re going to be using our kitchen, our magic items, and our waiters, I think you might as well just work for me. How about this idea — you be one of my chefs-de-partie, you can design and prototype a line of traditional Craitheian meals for me, and manage their cooking and assembly. No risk on your part. If it works well, we’ll expand the line. If it works badly, well, I always need more chefs and I’m sure we can find something you like to do.”

Niia snapped, “I really want to run my own restaurant! I’ve done it before, I can do it again — and, having done it, I don’t want another boss. Arfaen, I don’t know what to say. You keep saying you’re not afraid of competition, but you put all these blocks in my way when I try to compete with you.”

“They’re mostly set by the physics and magics of the situation, really,” said Arfaen. “Plus me already setting things up already.”

Niia frowned, flicking her tailtip. “Well, I’ll just have to do it another way. I’ll set up a real restaurant, with chefs and waiters and all the usual things.”

Arfaen wagged her tail. “I’m sorry to have offended you,” she said, which was true although she wasn’t quite sure how she had offended Niia. “Like I said before, I’ll be glad to out and get you started. I do think that’s a better idea. There’s plenty of need for a good new restaurant on the Promenade, say.”

“Not on the Promenade. In the Quick Quarter,” said Niia triumphantly.

Arfaen’s tail drooped. “I … I hope you can get that to work well. It sounds very hard to do, to me, and I have thought about it a great deal.”

“You, my sweet and conservative friend, don’t have the personal force or the entrepreneurial spirit to do it. Don’t worry — there’ll be plenty of business left for you!” said Niia, smiling dangerously.

In the earlier years of Kismirth (or the earliest earlier years — in a decade or three, I’m sure to call today one of the earlier years of Kismirth) newcomers generally lived with or next to a more established inhabitant, as a sort of mentor or guide. Now, in these more rush-rush modern times, we don’t do it all the time. But it is still an option; still, even, and ideal. So we invited Chiver and Niia to move in with us until they got their paws on the wood: and by ‘we’ I mean ‘Arfaen, myself, and our smallish household aboard Strayway, which is currently parked decoratively on a private dock in central Kismirth.’

The Consolations of Mathematics

Chiver: “They say you like mathematics.”

Feralan: “I don’t so much like mathematics as live mathematics.”

Chiver: “How’s that?”

Feralan folded a sheet of paper into a glider, and tossed it over Chiver’s head. “What do you think of that?”

Chiver: “A classic parabolic path!”

Feralan: “Not at all! The wind adds one perturbation to the parabola, the wobbling of its wings another, and many other things as well!”

Chiver: “I suppose — but when it is all taken into account, is the path of the front point parabolic, say?”

Feralan: “It is close, but it is not a true parabola. Observe, here are some equations which give a few of the perturbations.”

Chiver: “I have never seen such equations as these!”

Feralan: “I have seen them; I see them still.”

Chiver: “I should hope so — you wrote them down!”

Feralan: “You don’t understand. I wrote down the equations that I saw. Seeing the equations comes naturally to me now. Seeing the airplane itself is more effort.”

Chiver: “I think I must take lessons from you, not you from me.”

Feralan: “You can also take lessons from my Locador demon if you want.”

Chiver: “I … suppose I should be interested to meet it, at least.”

The Consolations of Cookery

Arfaen: “I’m always looking for more first-rate chefs.”

Niia: “How big is your restaurant, for the sake of the loghran?” (No, I don’t know what a loghran is)

Arfaen: “It’s huge. We do most of the catering for the Quick Quarter, which means making meals for everyone there. That’s nine times what any reasonable person would eat, or eighty-one times for someone in the Q-Q-Q. And with plenty of variety, and for our high-end line, each meal has to be a work of art, a true luxury. It’s a bit intimidating.”

Niia: “That could be a bit of work. You’re really the only restaurant in there?”

Arfaen: “Some people try to economize by bringing their own food.”

Niia: “What do you do to discourage that?”

Arfaen: “We sell the best food we can manage in one line, and the cheapest decent food we can manage in another.”

Niia: “Ha! No, really, you can tell me.”

Arfaen: “That’s about all, really. If someone wants to eat ground groundnut sandwiches for a year, they can. Sometimes people like that get tired of the groundnuts after a month, and then we might get another customer. But we’re really not out to extract every last lozen from our clients.”

Niia: “Why not? They’re foreigners. If you don’t get their money, someone else will.”

Arfaen: “Well, this is Kismirth, and we do things the Wrong Way here. We’re trying to be a tourist city. We want our tourists to feel safe here — to be safe! — so it’s actually against the law to cheat them.”

Niia: “Well, that’s silly too. If Kismirth doesn’t get their money, some other city will.”

Arfaen: “Well, we’re hoping that they come back to Kismirth. Better to get, oh, a hundred lozens off of them two times, than a hundred fifty once. And we’ve got people who’ve come back five or six times so far.”

Niia: “Huh. How do you feel about competition?”

Arfaen: “You’re thinking of opening your own restaurant?”

Niia: “I am indeed, Arfaen! I thank you for your offer, but I like being in charge myself, if you know what I mean.”

Arfaen: “Well, any good tourist destination needs lots of restaurants. We’ve got a number of Craitheian places, but Craitheia is a large and ancient world-branch, and I imagine you could come up with a traditional menu that doesn’t overlap any of them. I only handle the Quick Quarter, and it’s not a real restaurant — more of a factory.”

Niia: “So you don’t mind?”

Arfaen: “Not at all! If you need some equipment or a loan or whatever to get started, I’ll be glad to help out. Oh, and I should introduce you to the farmers. We still import too much food from outside, but we’re growing more and more here. It’s a bit bland…”

And the two restauranteurs went off, as friendly as anything, chattering about the technical details of starting a new cafe. Arfaen meant everything she said, even.

Niia snarled, “Well, that’s ridiculous. We’ve been living here for six years now, we’ve paid our rent on time every month, you’ve not had the slightest complaint about us from any of our neighbors. You can’t blame us for some criminals breaking in and destroying the place!”

Nummentzartt’s ears drooped. “No, I can’t blame you, and that’s a fact. I’d give you the second-floor apartment, it’s a bit nicer than your old one was, if it were up to me, and that’s another fact. Same rent, even. But it’s not up to me, and that’s another fact, and the sort of fact that comes in with straw and torches and blugeons.”

“What? You own the building, Nummentzartt!”

“I’m as sorry as a puppy as got into a bag of pepper, Niia. But when they came to burn your place, they stopped by my office first. I’ve still got them bruises. Said they’d be back for me if I didn’t kick you out.”

Niia bristled. “How can they do this? It’s not legal or moral, to beat up an honest landlord, much less to burn a citizen’s apartment!”

“They can do it ’cause they’ve got the government with them, Niia. When the Doippmers came to do their burning, three city guards were standing by and watching and helping hoist the straw. The Minister of the Guard is a Vepri, so the guard’s not going to be telling the Doippmers what they can and can’t do. And what they can do is break my ribs if I rent to scl… you.”

“What kind of justice is this, Nummentzartt?”

Nummentzartt’s ears drooped. “It’s no justice at all, and that’s a fact, Niia. I’m a Vepri myself, ninth generation on their test, and I pays my dues, but even so I’m getting my ribs thumped and my tenants burnt. No justice!”

* * *

After two troublesome days, Chiver came to Niia’s cafe. “I’ve finally found us a place to live.”

Niia set aside her mop. The cafe was still closed, and she did not want to spent from their suddenly-shrunken savings to hire a cleaner. “Chiver, your ears are flat and your tail is tucked. You don’t look at all happy about it.”

“I’m not happy, Niia. I called on every apartment in the nicer quarter, and in the student quarter, and none of them would have us. We’re on a list, you see. But there’s a building on Air-Dyuvel Street, it’s not too bad, the Doippmers said they could rent to us.”

“What! Air-Dyuvel street is nearly all the way across the city from here! And it’s not a safe place to live!”

“It’s the Khtsoyis ghetto, that’s the truth of it. But this apartment’s on the first floor, and the Khtsoyis in the building are in the Gezirk, so there won’t be trouble,” said Chiver.

“We’ll share a building with the criminals to avoid trouble?” Niia was incredulous.

“They don’t tolerate trouble in their own homes,” said Chiver. “And the Doippmers don’t care what happens in Air-Dyuvel street, so we’re safe from them.”

Niia looked at her cleaning supplies. She set the mop against a wall and stomped on it, and the handle splintered under her weight. She threw the filthy water over the tables. Chiver took her hand. “Niia! What are you doing!”

“Wrecking the place so that whoever gets it next, won’t get much. I’m not staying in Choulano another day, Chiver,” said Niia. “It’s not a proper city, if we get beaten and poisoned living here, and then sent to live with the criminals if they’ll have us. Are you coming with me?”

“Leave my family and friends and everyone?” whined Chiver.

Niia stripped off her leather gloves and hugged her partner. “I know it’s hard for a Cani to pick up and go. But it’s not safe to be your friend or family member here, any more. You got beaten mostly because of your uncle, after all.”

“That and antagonising them,” said Chiver.

“Well, do you think you can stay here safely, laying low and not antagonizing anyone, and hoping that the Vepri decide you’ve been punished enough? It’s not like they’re thirty-six ounces of pissed at you and now that you’ve had your dose it’s all goody-good with them. They’re making an example of you, of us, so that other teachers and landlords and restauranteurs won’t resist them.”

Chiver thought about that, rubbing bare patches of skin where his fur was barely starting to grow back. “Where can we go? Sprelna’s Vepri are worse than ours, and I don’t think that Draffmoug or Gurtzmanoy are any better.”

“Leave the whole snake-god-bitten branch. Leave every branch! I’m going to Kismirth.”

“Kismirth. We’ve got some friends there already,” said Chiver.

“And we’re taking that scudbutter Tzantschalffer’s skayak to get there,” said Niia.

Chiver thought for a moment. “Under other circumstances I might have ethical concerns about that. As it is … when do we go?”