Every Inch a King

XIV

Yes, I know this is the thirteenth chapter. But it’s not Chapter XIII. There’s a difference. If you don’t believe me, ask the next tall building you happen to meet.

When I woke in the morning, I had some trouble remembering where I was and who I was supposed to be. But I didn’t have any trouble at all remembering what I’d been doing. I smiled. Traces of cinnamon and rosewater and sandalwood still lingered in the air. My smile got wider.

Had it been only the morning before when I was crowned King of Shqiperi? By Eliphalet’s curly whiskers, so it had! This would be my first whole day as a sovereign among sovereigns, equal in rank (if not in might) to the lords of Schlepsig and Torino and Leon.

In something over half a day’s worth of kinging it, I’d started a war and started an orgy. I wondered what I could do to top that, given a day with the full complement of hours.

First things first. I looked under the bed. Zogu’s stuffed eagle stone was still there. He’d warned me about overusing it, but he had said I could get a few days out of it. You never know how much till you try. It would, I told myself, be purely in the pursuit of knowledge. Can you deny that carnal knowledge is knowledge like any other kind? Can you deny it’s more fun than any other kind?

Didn’t think so.

I walked over to the closet to see what all was in it when it wasn’t holding Max. Besides those incandescent robes, it turned out to have some specimens of Shqipetari national costume. What Shqipetari wear is more attractive than, say, Lokrian clothes: no short skirts, no pompoms on the shoes. Past that, I don’t have much to say for it. One of these days, I might have to put it on anyway, to show I was at least pretending to be a jolly Shqipetar like the jolly Shqipetari I ruled. (More often than not, a jolly Shqipetar either has something wrong with him or he’s just killed someone, but that’s another story.)

Along with the white shirts and tight trousers and clumsy cloaks and horrid headgear (and those robes, which even Count Rappaport would have disdained), the closet held several sensible, comfortable Hassocki caftans. Evidently I was allowed to recall the land I came from as well as the one I now inhabited. A caftan and a crown go together oddly, but I donned them both. Maybe I would start a new trend.

The faithful-I hoped-Skander wasn’t far from the door when I came out. If he saw anything odd about my outfit, he didn’t mention it. “Good morning, your Majesty,” he said. “How may I serve you today?”

“Coffee,” I said. “Breakfast.” A king has to have his priorities straight. I thought about asking for another helping of harem girls, too, just to see the look on Skander’s face. But I couldn’t do them justice right then, and my mother always taught me not to ask for anything I couldn’t use. So I tried a different question instead: “Who wants to see me this morning?”

“Several scribes, your Majesty-they seemed quite insistent,” the majordomo replied. “And Essad Pasha-he seemed quite upset. And Untergraf Horst-Gustav-he seemed quite…well, quite hung over.”

“I’ll deal with all of them,” I said, though the prospect of dealing with scribes made me wish I were hung over, too. Considering some of the katzenjammers I’ve had, that tells you how much I love scribes. I couldn’t face them on an empty stomach. “Coffee,” I repeated. “Breakfast.”

The coffee was Hassocki-style, thick and sweet and muddy, the way it always is in the Nekemte Peninsula. It was also strong enough to pry my eyelids apart despite my sweaty exertions the night before. If I had been hung over, the curses and clashing cutlery in the kitchens would have driven me to despair. As things were, they helped wake me up.

Fried eggs. Fried blood sausages. Fried mush, which looks like something from the wrong end of a cow but actually tastes pretty good. The cooks didn’t fry the strawberries. If they had, I might have ordered my first executions.

Max staggered into the dining room when I was about halfway through breakfast. He looked even more bedraggled, or possibly bed-raggled, than I felt. “Coffee,” he croaked in piteous tones.

“Yes, your Excellency.” Skander bowed deeply. “At once, your Excellency.” He acted a lot more deferential toward Max than he had the day before. He must have decided Captain Yildirim was a powerful wizard along with being my aide-de-camp. How else could the redoubtable captain have got out of a locked room? Not for anything would I have told Max’s secret.

I lingered over coffee, and smoked a cigar to stretch things out still further. It seemed to distress Skander. Shqipetari, I learned later, reckon anything but a pipe unmanly. This doesn’t keep some of them from smoking cigars and cigarettes. It does give the rest an excuse to sneer at the ones who do. And Skander couldn’t very well think me unmanly, not after the night before.

Bless the girls, anyhow!

At last, though, I had to face the evil moment. Captain Yildirim at my side, I went to the throne room to do it. Maybe the royal trappings would impress the foreign scribes (there were no Shqipetari scribes, proving the kingdom did have something going for it after all). Or maybe not-the trappings didn’t much impress me.

In swarmed the scribes, pens poised above notebooks. They shouted questions in half a dozen languages, only two of which I was supposed to understand. I glanced over to Max, who stood behind and to the left of the throne. “Captain Yildirim,” I said.

Out came the sword, the blade glittering in the torchlight. “Show respect for the royal dignity!” Max bawled in Hassocki.

Not many scribes knew Hassocki. That was all right. When a very large man bares his blade and shouts angrily, even some journalists will pay attention-enough to lessen the racket, anyhow.

Bumbling Bob of Albion wouldn’t have noticed the sword if it cut off his head, and probably would have gone right on talking afterwards. Losing his head wouldn’t have affected his brainpower much. In Albionese-of course-he asked, “Why did you declare war on Belagora?”

He didn’t know I spoke Albionese. He thought I didn’t, in fact. But, poor sap, he didn’t speak anything else. Eventually someone translated the question into Schlepsigian, which I could admit I understood. Because Barisha wears silly uniforms and ridiculous medals. No, I didn’t say it. It was true, but I didn’t say it. Ah, diplomacy.

“Because Belagora does not respect Shqiperi’s northern border. Because Belagora has soldiers on our territory”-my very first royal we!-“and refuses to remove them.” That was also true. It had the added virtue of being polite, or as polite as you can be when you declare war on somebody. It had the vice of being dull.

The scribes didn’t care. They solemnly wrote it down. One of them asked, “What will you do if Vlachia declares war on you?”

“Why should I care about the Vlachs?” I said grandly.

“Because they just beat the stuffing out of the Hassockian Empire?” the scribe suggested. “Because most of your soldiers are Hassocki leftovers?”

As a Schlepsigian, I had nothing but scorn for Vlachs. As I’d pointed out to Barisha, they’re born chicken thieves. They also have a certain talent for murdering their betters from ambush. But the idea that I should take them seriously struck me as absurd.

As a Schlepsigian…I had to remember that, to these hovering vultures, I was no Schlepsigian. I was Halim Eddin, prince of a folk who, as the scribe was blunt enough to remind me, had just got ignominiously beaten by the Vlachs. How should I-I as Halim Eddin-react to that?

I decided that neither I as myself nor I as Halim Eddin could stomach knuckling under to the Vlachs. “If they want a fight, let them come. We will give them all they ask for, and more besides. They didn’t beat our army here in Shqiperi during the Nekemte Wars, and they won’t beat it now.”

More furious scribbling from the scribes. “Do you trust Essad Pasha as a general?” one of them called.

Now there was an interesting question. I didn’t trust Essad Pasha to empty my Chambers pot. Deceit was his middle name. I’d put the fear of the Quadrate God-or at least of Captain Yildirim-in him, but how long would that last? Long enough for me to let him command an army when he wasn’t right under my eye? Max’s cough said he didn’t like the idea. Neither did I. But if he let the Vlachs beat him, he wasn’t just risking my neck. He was risking his own even more.

“Essad Pasha is a very valiant warrior,” I said after those calculations swallowed perhaps two heartbeats. I might not even have been lying. And I knew that, whatever I told the scribes, Essad Pasha would hear of it in short order. I went on, “Thanks to his courage and brilliance, Vlachian aggression in Shqiperi went nowhere during the late wars.”

I might not have been lying about that, either. I didn’t say anything about my new kingdom’s impossible geography. You can’t make a hero out of swamps and mountains. Yes, I admit that making a hero out of Essad Pasha is just about as unlikely, but all the same…

I also hadn’t said whether I trusted him. I wondered if the scribes would notice. There went some wasted worry. Scribes get paid to write down the obvious, and to try not to put their readers to sleep while they do it. The better ones can more or less manage that. The rest? Well, if someone like Bob can still get work, the standards of the trade could be higher.

“How did you like your harem, your Majesty?” somebody asked.

All the scribes leaned forward. There was the sort of story they were made to cover. They didn’t have to think, which was lucky for most of them. They only had to be sensational. They could handle that, all right. Some semipornographic drivel their editors could tone down-or spice up, if they were Narbonese-later on was just what they had in mind.

As Otto of Schlepsig, I might have given it to them. As Halim Eddin? No. In the matter of harems, Halim Eddin was a worldly-wise man of experience, where the scribes were panting boys with drool running down their chins. So I said, “The girls seem pleasant enough. They fully measure up to the ones I knew in Vyzance.”

“How many of them do you know?” someone shouted.

“I made a point of introducing myself to all of them yesterday afternoon,” I replied. “Summoning women I had not met would be most impolite.”

“How many of them did you summon?” a scribe asked, while another one called, “Did you summon them all at once or one at a time?”

I looked severe. At least, I hoped I didn’t just look exhausted. “Gentlemen, I don’t ask you what you did in the nighttime.”

Once that was translated for Bob, he said, “I did nothing in the nighttime.”

“Thou lying dog,” Max said behind me in Hassocki. I don’t think any of the scribes heard him, which was probably just as well.

“We’re not the King of Shqiperi,” a journalist said. “We haven’t got a harem.”

“And you don’t want your wives hearing what you did do?” I suggested. That produced laughter and nudges and winks. Nobody denied it.

Well, next to nobody. “I did nothing in the nighttime,” Bob repeated plaintively. He was an old man. It might even have been true.

“You will have to draw a veil of silence around the harem,” I told the scribes, “for I do not intend to think of it further.” The real Halim Eddin would have been proud of me. The real Halim Eddin might even have assumed that, since I didn’t say anything more about the harem, the scribes wouldn’t write any more about it.

If so, the real Halim Eddin would have proved himself a naive, innocent Hassocki. I knew better. If I didn’t talk about the harem, the scribes would put words in my mouth. If they didn’t, their editors back in Albion or Narbonensis or Schlepsig or Torino would. They had to sell journals, after all. If the King of Shqiperi wouldn’t give them the copy they wanted, they’d come up with it some other way. After all, what could he do about it?

Declare war?

What a tempting thought! But Belagora lay within my reach. The idiot scribes of Narbonensis and Albion? I’m afraid not. If I could have marched a Shqipetari army through the streets of Lutetia and sacked the editors one by one, dividing all of their gall into three parts…Even more a fantasy on my part than the journalists’ slavering visions of a harem were on theirs.

“Anything else, gentlemen?” I asked, stretching a point.

There wasn’t. After war and women, they weren’t very interested in other matters. Now that I think about it, they had a point.

After the scribes trooped out, gabbling among themselves, Skander brought Essad Pasha into the improvised throne room. The former governor of Shqiperi bowed low to the master he had summoned. “Your Majesty,” he murmured.

“Good morning, your Excellency,” I said. “How are you today?”

“I am well, thank you.” Essad Pasha’s heavy features worked. “Your Majesty, did you really declare war on Belagora?”

“I’m not making this up, you know,” I said. “I most assuredly did. Why?”

“Because they’ll slaughter us!” he said.

“I doubt it. They didn’t slaughter you in the Nekemte Wars. Why should they start now? They’re only Belagorans, after all,” I said. “North and south, east and west, are there any greater cowards in all the world?”

“Well, there are the Shqipetari,” Essad Pasha said with a laugh.

Skander, hearing this, did not laugh. He quivered like a hound taking a scent and then aimed himself at Essad Pasha like that same hound getting ready to spring. Shqiperi is the land of the blood feud. Any little insult can bring it on. Essad Pasha had just insulted all the people in the land, and not in any little way. I wondered if he would get out of the palace alive. I wondered if I wanted him to.

With some reluctance, I decided I did. “Perhaps you might think about rephrasing that,” I said.

“Why should I?” Essad Pasha fleered. Then he noticed the tension in Skander’s body and the terrible intensity in the majordomo’s eyes. Like a pricked bladder, Essad Pasha’s bravado collapsed. He realized he’d stepped over a line. Now the problem was to step back without making himself out to be a worse coward than he’d called the Shqipetari.

“You might have been hasty,” I suggested.

“Mmm.” That wasn’t a word, just a noise in the back of Essad Pasha’s throat, as if to suggest he needed oiling. “Mmm.” He made it again. This time, it turned into a word: “Mmmaybe. I suppose I put it badly. If the Shqipetari were properly drilled and led and disciplined, they would be brave enough. As things are, with all their quarrels and ambushes, they don’t really get the chance to show what they could do.”

He waited. I waited. Behind me and to my left, Max waited. Skander hadn’t said a word before. He didn’t say anything now. He’d tensed all in a moment. He didn’t relax the same way. Instead, the tautness left his body inch by inch. At last, he stopped staring at Essad Pasha as if about to fling himself at the older man in the next instant.

Essad Pasha breathed then. So did I. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped till I started again. I hadn’t realized how long I’d stopped till I found out how much I needed that new breath. Life in Shqiperi is often squalid, sometimes downright nasty. It is rarely dull.

In Schlepsig, even in Narbonensis, you can go for years without being threatened with sudden and violent death. Is dullness one of the great unheralded virtues of civilization? I wouldn’t be surprised.

“Shall we get back to the northern frontier?” I asked, and Essad Pasha nodded jerkily. Since he’d just acted like a jerk, that seemed altogether fitting and proper. I went on, “Now that I’m King of Shqiperi, have the mountains up there flattened out? Have the roads got better? Have the dragons got friendlier?”

“Give me leave to doubt it, your Majesty. You are a great and mighty lord”-Essad Pasha had a certain low talent for sarcasm himself-“but you are not the Quadrate God. Or if you are, the incognito is remarkable effective.”

He could say that. If I agreed with it, even in jest, I blasphemed. I knew enough of the Quadrate God’s cult to understand as much. “No, no. I am only a man,” I said, and passed the test. “So what can the Belagorans do past making a nuisance of themselves? They’re already a nuisance, yes?”

“That they are.” Essad Pasha sighed. “I suppose the biggest worry is that Vlachia will jump into the fight, too. Vlachia lusts after Fushe-Kuqe, having no port of its own.”

Only people who’ve never seen Fushe-Kuqe could possibly lust after it. “You held them off before. I’m sure you can do it again,” I said, and Essad Pasha, no more modest than he had to be, nodded. So much for his worries, then.

One of Skander’s assistants came in and murmured to him in Shqipetari. Skander turned to me and raised an eyebrow, showing he wanted to be heard. I nodded. He spoke in Hassocki: “Your Majesty, his Excellency Vuk Nedic of Vlachia urgently requests an audience with you at your earliest convenience.”

“What about Horst-Gustav?” I asked.

More back-and-forth in Shqipetari. “He appears to have gone back to the Metropolis,” Skander reported. “He seemed unwell.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, you can send the werewolf in, then.” That sent Skander into gales, torrents, cloudbursts of laughter. He never explained why. Maybe he thought Vuk Nedic was one, too, but was too polite to say so out loud. Or maybe the idea hadn’t occurred to him till I used it. Wherever the truth lay there, he liked it. I asked Essad Pasha, “You can defend the kingdom a while longer?”

“A while longer, yes,” he replied. “Do please try not to declare war on Vlachia right this minute, though, if you’d be so kind.” Maybe Max’s coughs meant he thought that was a good idea. Maybe they just meant he had his usual catarrh. I didn’t inquire.

“I’ll try,” I told Essad Pasha. “North and south, east and west, he deserves it, though.”

“Most of us deserve a great many things, your Majesty,” he replied. “If we’re lucky, we don’t get all of them.”

Now there was a nice philosophical point. It almost made me wish I had time to discuss it. “Anything else?” I asked Essad Pasha. He shook his head. I gestured to Skander. “Show in the Vlachian.”

“Yes, your Majesty.” He’d got control of himself. Now he started giggling softly again.

Essad Pasha stumped out of the throne room as Vuk Nedic strode in. They glared in passing. Each man’s hand fell to the hilt of his sword, but they both kept walking. Looking more lupine than ever, Vuk Nedic bowed before me. “Your Majesty!” he barked.

“Your Excellency,” I said. “What can I do for you this morning?”

He ran his tongue across his lips. It seemed exceptionally long and pink and limber. When he reeled it back into his mouth, his teeth looked uncommonly large and sharp. No ordinary man should have had those golden-brown eyes. “You have declared war on Belagora,” he growled.

“That’s true,” I said. “So what?”

“Vlachia is Belagora’s ally,” he said. “Why should we not declare war on you?”

“Because you wouldn’t get very far?” I suggested. “Because if you could have got very far, you would have done it in the Nekemte Wars? Because there would be no point to it except killing soldiers who don’t urgently need killing?”

He blinked. With those odd-colored eyes, the effect was particularly startling. My guess was, he’d never imagined soldiers might not need killing. “We could tear the throat out of this miserable excuse for a kingdom,” he snarled.

“I doubt it,” I said.

He waited. Skander waited. Even Max seemed to be waiting, though I couldn’t see him. But I’d said everything I intended to say for the moment. It was Vuk Nedic’s turn. He bared those impressive teeth again. They weren’t impressive enough to scare me off my throne. After a pack of scribes, what was one possible werewolf?

And I hadn’t even begun to find out what fangs scribes have!

Vuk Nedic growled again, down deep in his throat. “Count Rappaport is a blundering fool,” he got out at last.

Well, well! We’d found something on which we could agree! Who would have imagined it? “Why do you say so?” I asked. Always interesting to hear someone else’s reasons for despising a man you also dislike.

“Because if you were not a proper king, you would never have the nerve to defy grand and mighty Vlachia,” Vuk Nedic replied.

I didn’t laugh in his face. I don’t know why not. I merely report the fact. Max didn’t cough, either. In an experimental mood, I pulled a coin from my pocket: a good, solid silver Schlepsigian kram. I tossed it to Vuk Nedic, saying, “This for your courtesy.”

Most of the time, if you toss a man a coin, he will automatically catch it. If you toss a man who is at least part werewolf a silver coin, he will automatically catch it-and will then be sorry he has. That was what I wanted to see: whether Vuk Nedic would be sorry he was holding a silver coin.

But I never found out. The Vlach made an awkward grab for the kram, but missed it altogether. It bounced off the front of his wolfskin jacket and fell to the floor, where it rang sweetly. Before bending to pick it up, he pulled from his pocket a pair of thin kidskin gloves, which he swiftly donned. Only then did he retrieve the coin.

“I take this as one man takes a present from another,” he said. “I do not take it to mean that Vlachia is in any way obliged to Shqiperi. If my king decides to go to war alongside Belagora, you may be assured I will fight at the fore.”

“I would not doubt it,” I said, and then, “As one man takes a present from another, yes.” I’d had my question answered, all right, if not quite in the way I thought I would. As soon as Vuk Nedic stowed away the kram, the kidskin gloves came off and likewise disappeared.

After that, we didn’t seem to have anything else to say to each other. The Vlach departed. I couldn’t help wondering if the skin from which his jacket was made came from anybody he knew.

“Your Majesty.” Zogu the wizard bowed before me. “I hope my little preparation gave, ah, satisfaction last night.” He was bold enough to tip me a wink.

“I’m not complaining,” I said dryly. Max coughed once or twice. Zogu’s clever eyes slid toward him for a moment. Did the wizard know my aide-de-camp had shared the bounty? More to the point, did Zogu know what a good idea keeping his mouth shut was? I suspected he did. Mages who blab only encourage their clients to turn other mages loose on them.

“I’m glad you were pleased,” he said now. “If you were, then I take it you summoned me for some other reason?”

“You might say so,” I told him. “You will have heard the kingdom has gone to war with Belagora?”

“I think everyone in Peshkepiia will have heard it by now,” Zogu replied. “It will not hurt your name in this kingdom. Shqipetari are always at war with Vlachs, whether they have fancy proclamations or not. But what has this got to do with me?”

“The mountains in these parts are full of dragons,” I said. “I haven’t been north to the Belagoran border, but I assume it’s the same up there. Am I right?”

“I should say you are, your Majesty,” Zogu said. “And so?”

“And so there will be columns of Belagoran soldiers marching through those mountains,” I said. “Dragons might find columns of soldiers tasty any which way. Can you use your art to make sure they find columns of Belagoran soldiers especially tasty?”

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he cocked his head to one side, studying me. “You don’t think small, do you, your Majesty?” he said at last.

“I wouldn’t be a king if I did,” I said, which was-I hoped-truer than he knew. “Can you do this?”

“Not right here in the throne room,” Zogu said. “I’ll need a dragon scale and a Belagoran uniform even to begin the spell. Compelling dragons is a dangerous business. No one does it without the greatest need. Hardly anyone gets the chance to do it more than once. Coaxing them is commonly wiser.”

“You will know your own business best, I’m sure,” I said. “But may I ask you a couple of questions before you go about it?”

Zogu smiled. “You are the king. How can I say no?”

“Easily enough, I suspect,” I said, which made the smile wider. “If you work this magic, dragons will look to columns of Belagoran soldiers on the far side of the border, not just on ours?”

“Certainly, your Majesty,” the sorcerer said. Yes, indeed-amusement, or perhaps deviltry, danced in his dark eyes. “I presume that doesn’t disappoint you?”

“Not a bit. North and south, east and west, not a bit,” I answered. “The Belagorans are bad neighbors. One way to make a bad neighbor leave you alone is to convince him you’re a worse one. Which reminds me-do you suppose you can get your hands on a Vlachian uniform, too?”

Now Zogu laughed out loud. “I think I might be able to do that, yes.” But before I got too happy, he went on, “Most of the border with Vlachia is swamp country, not mountains. You won’t see dragons so often in those western parts.”

“Too bad,” I said, and then, “Could you make some arrangement with the leeches, maybe? They ought to be fond of Vlachs-like calls to like, after all.”

Zogu didn’t get it-and then, all at once, he did. As he wagged a forefinger at me, he made a choking noise that said he was holding in more than he was letting out. He bowed very low. “Ah, your Majesty, surely the imp of trouble dwells in your heart.”

“Surely,” Max murmured in back of me. I couldn’t even tread on his toes. The indignities a king must put up with sometimes!

“One matter we have not discussed, your Majesty,” Zogu said: “the price.”

“What?” I drew myself up straight on my rickety throne. “You would not undertake this as a patriotic duty to your kingdom?”

By the look in Zogu’s eye, if I wanted somebody to undertake something, I should talk to an undertaker-and I should talk to him about my own funeral as long as I was there. “Your Majesty,” he said in a voice all silky with danger, “wizards have to eat no less than other men.”

“Put your feathers down,” Max advised him. “He’s joking.”

Was I? Had I been? I couldn’t very well call my aide-de-camp a liar, not without starting an unseemly row. “Name your price, magical sir,” I said to Zogu, “and we’ll see how loud I scream.”

Zogu didn’t answer right away. His calculations, I daresay, were twofold: how much the magic would really cost him, and how much the traffic would bear. I, the traffic, waited apprehensively. Once he’d added up the numbers, he did name his price.

I screamed loud enough to bring not only Skander but half a dozen lesser flunkies to the throne room on the run. I hadn’t thought I could hit that high note without being treated the way poor Rexhep was. Some of the servitors had paused to snatch up implements of mayhem before they got there. Shqipetari are always ready for brawls. Sometimes, if they can’t find one, they’ll start one for the sport of it.

Skander looked around wildly-for spilled blood, I believe. “Are you all right, your Majesty?” he panted.

“I could be worse,” I said. “The only place I’m wounded is in the pocketbook. This optimist”-I scowled at Zogu-“thinks I bleed gold.”

“Ah.” Skander paused to digest that. By his expression, he didn’t find it especially digestible. “Your Majesty has…an odd way of haggling.”

“Thank you,” I said. He blinked. One more time: if you can’t confound them, confuse them. He and the other servitors withdrew-in confusion. I nodded to Zogu. “Where were we?”

“I believe we were trying to cheat each other.” The wizard was refreshingly frank. “What price would you consider reasonable, your Majesty?”

“About a quarter of yours,” I answered.

“I see.” Zogu bowed. “Well, if I were to scream now, it would only upset your servants twice in the space of a few minutes, and for no good purpose. You may, however, take the thought for the deed.”

“Try another price, then,” I said. “Try one that doesn’t make me want to shriek.”

He did. I opened my mouth again, melodramatically but, I confess, silently. Max coughed. Max always thinks I overact. This, from the greatest ham not sitting on a dinner plate! No one gets the respect he deserves.

Zogu appreciated my performance, and he was the intended audience. Mirth sparked in his eyes. “Your Majesty is not the common sort of king,” he said, something of which for one reason or another I was often accused during my reign.

I did my best to look regally severe. “And with how many kings have you consorted?” I asked.

“I’m not interested in consorting with them.” By the way Zogu said it, he could have had tea with monarchs every day if he cared to. He went on to explain why he didn’t: “The King of Belagora is a bore, and the King of Vlachia is a boor.”

“You left out the King of Lokris,” I said.

“Excuse me. You are correct. The King of Lokris is-a Lokrian. I shall say no more.” And Zogu didn’t, not about that. Shqipetari love Lokrians even more than Lokrians love Shqipetari. You think it couldn’t be done? Well, I thought so, too.

We eventually settled on a price that, I’m sure, made both of us want to scream: the proof of a hard-fought bargain. Then we started haggling all over again, over how much Zogu should get before he cast his spell and how much should wait till word of its effectiveness came back to Peshkepiia. Not surprisingly, he wanted to get it all in advance. Just as not surprisingly, I didn’t want to give it to him that way.

Reaching an agreement there that dissatisfied us both also took its own sweet time. Nothing in the Nekemte Peninsula happens as fast as a civilized person, or even a Narbonese, wishes it would. You haggle. You have coffee. You have spirits. You have little cakes, or possibly fried mutton on skewers. You smoke a pipe. In Schlepsig, by Eliphalet’s purse, a price is a price. You pay it or your don’t, and you go on either way. Hereabouts, a price is negotiable. Hereabouts, everything is negotiable (except a blood feud-a blood feud is serious business). And the dickering is as important as the price you finally settle on.

To a Schlepsigian or any other sensible person, this all seems utterly mad. I had to remind myself again and again that I was not a Schlepsigian. I was Prince Halim Eddin, and I was used to haggling for the fun of it. If I hadn’t done those tours in the Hassockian Army, and if I hadn’t spent more time than I ever wanted in the Nekemte Peninsula with outfits like Dooger and Cark’s, and if I weren’t a damned fine actor (Max to the contrary notwithstanding), I never could have brought it off.

Seeing the royal treasury again as I got the money to give Zogu his first installment helped cheer me up. Taking the money out of it didn’t. But there was still plenty left. I consoled myself with that. Zogu, no doubt, consoled himself with what I gave him.

Not an earth-shaking day, perhaps-of which there are too many in literal truth in those parts-but a right royal one even so.

And a right royal night as well. Once again, Max contrived to leave his room seemingly locked from the inside and to find himself a waiting place in the royal bedchamber. I ordered another half-dozen girls brought from the harem, and hoped Zogu’s spell wouldn’t, ah, let me down.

When Rexhep brought the girls, they were bubbly and giggly and eager, from which I concluded that Lutzi and Maja and Bjeshka and Varri and Zalli and Shkoza (you see?-I remember them all) had given me a good report. The eunuch looked as if he loathed me more than ever, from which I concluded the same thing. Poor fellow! I had a hard time blaming him.

After a few high-pitched grumbles, he went on his none too merry way. I closed the door behind Shinasi and Urani and Xharmi and Flisni and Kalla and Molle (yes, I remember them, too) and barred it. “And now, my sweets, the night is ours,” I said.

They were polite. I was the king, after all. Still, their newly unveiled faces fell. I think it was Xharmi who got up the nerve to ask, “But, your Majesty, where is the Thunderbolt we heard so much about?”

Lutzi and Maja and-well, you know the rest by now-hadn’t given just me a good report, then. Oh, well. I don’t suppose I should have expected anything different. You will recall that Thunderbolt, in Hassocki, is Yildirim.

I went to the closet and opened the door. “Will you join us, Captain?” I said sweetly. “Your presence-among other things-has been requested.”

Join us Max did. As he had been the night before, he was dressed, or undressed, for the occasion. The girls exclaimed in admiration or apprehension or possibly both at once. Max looked as smug as a man with a vinegar phiz can.

Well, I won’t bore you with the details. (And if the details of such things don’t bore you, I’m sure you can invent your own. They’ll probably be even juicier than what went on while the two of us and the six of them…But I wasn’t going to bore you with that, was I?) Suffice to say that if Zogu’s sorcery against the Belagorans worked half so well, the dragons would devour every man wearing that uniform by the morning after he launched that spell. And speaking of devouring-but no, that’s one of those details, I’m afraid.

By the time-a very pleasantly long time-Max and I couldn’t hold up our end of the bargain any more, everyone in that bedchamber was happy enough, or maybe a little more than happy enough.

“I was afraid they were fooling us,” said Molle-I think it was Molle, anyway. “But no. They meant it.” By the way she sighed, she was glad to be mollified, too.

Maybe even kings who follow the Two Prophets should be allowed harems. It might give them something to do besides starting wars. But then, considering how many the Hassockian Atabegs have started, and considering that I’d just started one myself, it might not, too. What a shame.