Every Inch a King

XV

There are people who believe Eliphalet and Zibeon personally presided over the discovery of crystallography. (Quite a few of them work for Consolidated Crystal.) Me, I don’t belong to that school. In case you hadn’t noticed, I also can’t stand scribes. Yes, my story deserved to be in the journals-do you think I became King of Shqiperi just for the sake of the Shqipetari? But I didn’t need all the trouble the story got me.

Scribes in the Nekemte Peninsula, like scribes everywhere, are out for the splashiest stories they can find. And so the sensation-stealers who’d followed me from Fushe-Kuqe to Peshkepiia wrote the loudest, gaudiest reports of my coronation that they could. For them, my story was a found feast, you might say. They sent their blitherings off to their journals, which duly ran them. Nothing else nearly so interesting was coming out of the Nekemte Peninsula just then, if I do say so myself.

Why am I so unhappy? you ask. Didn’t I want my name-well, Halim Eddin’s name-on everyone’s lips?

Almost everyone’s. Almost, but not quite.

The trouble was, before long the story of Halim Eddin’s coronation got to Vyzance. The Hassocki are backward, but they aren’t that backward. Consolidated Crystal has offices in Vyzance. Consolidated Crystal has offices everywhere. I sometimes think that, if wizards ever figure out how to master apportation and let men rise to the moon, the first travelers there will walk over to a CC office so a crystallographer can send word back to a waiting world.

In Vyzance, then, word of the coronation naturally came to the Hassockian Atabeg. Why couldn’t he have been disporting himself with his harem when it did? And, I supposed, word of the coronation also reached the authentic, the veritable, the actual, the genuine Prince Halim Eddin, who was sitting by the Silver Trumpet-for such they style the main harbor of Vyzance-innocently smoking his long, picturesque Hassocki-style pipe.

I can imagine the scene. In spite of the chaos gripping the Hassockian Empire on account of the Nekemte Wars, in spite of everything else that was wrong with the Empire-a subject on which I could write volumes (and many men have)-the whole business must have seemed something past a joke to the Atabeg.

He would have sent a message to the real Prince Halim Eddin: “North and south, east and west, what the demon are you doing in Shqiperi?”

And the real Halim Eddin would have sent a message back: “North and south, east and west, your Most Sublime and Magnificent Awfulness, the last time I looked I was right here. As far as I can tell, I still am.”

And the Hassockian Atabeg would have said, “Well, those Schlepsigian and Narbonese and Torinan journalists-to say nothing of Bob, the half-witted Albionese-all put you in Shqiperi.”

“If Bob has me there, that’s the best proof in the world that I’m really here,” Halim Eddin would have replied.

Now, the Hassockian Atabeg is not the brightest and most perceptive of men; Eliphalet knows that’s so. But even he would perceive that his nephew had advanced an argument of weight. He would have said, “Why don’t I come over to your little palace and have a look at you for myself?”

“Come ahead, your Most Supreme and Appalling Splendor,” Halim Eddin would have told him. “If you discover that I’m not here, I will confess to being very surprised.”

And the Hassockian Atabeg would have gone to look. And, I daresay, he would have seen the authentic, the veritable, the actual, the genuine Prince Halim Eddin with his very own eyes. They might even have innocently smoked together a couple of long, picturesque Hassocki-style pipes.

In due course, the Atabeg would have returned to the imperial palace in Vyzance. And, in due course (just how due the course depending on the precise mix those long, picturesque Hassocki-style pipes were charged with), he would have issued a statement of his own, saying no one in Vyzance had thought at all about sending Prince Halim Eddin-or any other Hassocki prince-to Shqiperi. Since neither Prince Halim Eddin nor any other Hassocki prince was in Shqiperi, no such worthy could possibly have become King of Shqiperi. The news to the contrary, then, had to rest on an error. And it was probably Bob’s fault for getting things wrong.

You will please understand I was not in Vyzance while all this was going on. I was in beautiful (Eliphalet, no!), picturesque (Eliphalet and Zibeon, no!) Peshkepiia, much more pleasantly occupied. I cannot prove how the Hassockian Atabeg came to make his unfortunate statement. I can only imagine, as I say, and reconstruct.

But I can prove that he did make the statement. And I can prove it was unfortunate. For me, worse luck.

On the third day of my reign I appointed Captain Yildirim minister for special affairs. The title seemed fitting to us both. Aside from a round dozen-a very nicely round dozen-of the harem girls, we were the only ones who knew just why it fit so well. To the outside world, it was just one of those mostly meaningless handles by which officials so often come to be known.

I also announced I would name the rest of my cabinet the following week. Alas! The full administration of the Kingdom of Shqiperi under the rule of that brilliant and enlightened potentate, King Halim Eddin I-otherwise Otto of Schlepsig-will never be known. I’m sure it would have performed better than any has since in that unhappy realm. I’m just as sure it could scarcely have performed worse.

Having made the initial appointment, then, I sent the intrepid minister for special affairs out to wander through Peshkepiia and learn what he could in the bazaar and the fortress. “Be inconspicuous,” I told him.

For some reason or other, he chose that moment to suffer one of his coughing fits.

I threw my hands in the air. Some people will insist on being unreasonable. “Oh, all right!” I said. “Be as inconspicuous as a six-foot-eight man in a fancy uniform can be, then.”

“Yes, your Majesty.” The intrepid minister for special affairs, Captain Yildirim-otherwise Max of Witte-nodded in somber satisfaction (not at all the sort he’d shown the past two nights). “Always nice to get orders I have some hope of following.”

“Heh,” I said, and then, “Heh, heh. As if you ever cared about following orders!”

“I do,” he said with dignity. “If I’m not going to follow an order, I want to have fun not following it.”

If he hadn’t been having about as much fun as a man could without falling over dead right afterwards, he disguised it very well. But then, Max was always good at disguising enjoyment, even from himself. “Just go,” I said. “Come back in the afternoon and tell me what you hear.”

While he was going up and down in the city doing his job, Skander announced a caller who surprised me: Count Rappaport, from the Dual Monarchy. “Send him in. By all means, send him in,” I said. “What do you suppose he wants?”

“Something that will do him good,” Skander replied. “Whether it will do Shqiperi any good is bound to be a different question.” He might have made a good foreign minister. Being able to see the obvious put him quite a few lengths ahead of several men holding the post in older, larger kingdoms.

Into the throne room strode Count Rappaport. The phalanx of medals on his narrow chest outshone the (I admit it) tawdry show of finery we’d been able to arrange on short notice. The Dual Monarchy had centuries of practice at that kind of thing. They were good at it. It is, I often think, the only thing they were good at. Count Rappaport bowed. “Your Majesty,” he said.

“I thought you didn’t believe in me,” I replied.

“Your de facto Majesty,” he said with legalistic precision, and bowed again. Some of the metalwork pinned to his shirtfront clanked. “Since you’ve declared war on Belagora, I find myself willing to be agnostic, at any rate. Our interests may march in the same direction.”

“You’re trying to tell me you want my interest to march with yours,” I said.

His narrow mouth got narrower. They didn’t much like obvious truths in the Dual Monarchy. They had reason not to like them, too, for one most obvious truth was that the Dual Monarchy had no business stumbling on into the modern era. But he knew the right words to say here: “We are no more enamored of Belagora than you are, and we do not love Vlachia, either.”

“How dangerous is Vuk Nedic when the moon comes full?” I murmured.

“An interesting question,” said Count Rappaport. “Did you try to cross his palm with silver? Is rumor true?”

“Yes, your Excellency, it is.” I told him how the Vlach handled his money with kid gloves.

“Well, well,” said the nobleman from the Dual Monarchy. “I still have no idea who you are, your Majesty. My opinion remains the same: you are no more Halim Eddin than my grandmother’s cat is. But I do believe Shqiperi and the Dual Monarchy can do business all the same. We have enemies in common, and the enemy of my enemy is…”

Is like as not another enemy, for different reasons, I thought. That’s how it works in the Nekemte Peninsula, anyhow. I almost laughed out loud, there on my foil-wrapped throne. Barisha of Belagora and Vuk Nedic of Vlachia were sure I was Halim Eddin, sent from Vyzance to rule Shqiperi. Yes, they were sure I was the genuine article, and they hated me on sight. But, though Count Rappaport knew I was a fraud-damn him!-he was ready to act as if I were authentic, and to help me poke the Vlachian kingdoms in the eye. Even for this part of the world, that struck me as perverse.

Which didn’t mean I wouldn’t take advantage of it if I could. Perversions can be enjoyable; they wouldn’t be so popular if they couldn’t. A couple of nights with the harem girls and the redoubtable minister of special affairs had proved remarkably instructive on that score. Count Rappaport was offering a different pleasure, but not one to be despised on that account.

“The enemy of my enemy,” I said, “can share his short ribs. With pepper sauce.”

Count Rappaport…smiled.

Max-Captain Yildirim-my new minister for special affairs-the sword-swallower-my old friend-came back to the palace looking like a man who’d seen a ghost: his own ghost. Now, Max is not one of the more gleeful-looking people in the world. He never has been. He never will be. Even when he’s happy, he mostly seems sad. When he’s sad, he seems appalled. And when he’s appalled…

When he’s appalled, he looks a lot more cheerful than he did just then.

He was doing his best not to seem horrified, too, the way a man who’s just lost an arm will tell you it’s only a flesh wound. The arm is still gone; Max’s best was miles from being good enough. He staggered into the throne room a few minutes after Count Rappaport departed.

“Could we speak in your chambers, your Majesty?” He sounded as bad as he looked, which is saying something.

Skander saw and heard it, too. “Shall I send for a healer, your Majesty?” he asked.

I had the feeling a Shqipetari healer does to health what a Shqipetari cook does to food. I also had the feeling I needed to hear what Max had to say. So I told Skander, “Maybe later,” before turning back to the minister for special affairs and saying, “Of course, your Excellency. Come with me.”

Even in his state of poleaxed dismay, Max raised an eyebrow at that. He’d never been your Excellency in his life before; I’m sure of that. You deadbeat son of a whore was much more his usual style. (And mine, oh yes-and mine. But I was learning how to play the king.)

We chased a sweeper out of my bedchamber. I barred the door behind us. Then I said, “Well, what is it?” Even behind a closed door, I spoke Hassocki, not Schlepsigian: the sound of my voice might get out into the hallway even if words didn’t.

“I-” Max paused to try to gather himself-without much luck, I’m afraid.

I handed him a jug of plum brandy. He didn’t bother flicking away a drop before he drank. His throat worked: worked overtime, in fact. After he’d poured down a good slug, he seemed a new man. The new man wobbled a bit on his pins, but you can’t have everything.

“I went down to the Consolidated Crystal office to see what I could find out,” he said. “A lot of the scribes don’t know I can understand ’em, so they just blather away like nobody’s business.”

Most scribes blather away regardless of whether anybody understands them, but that’s a different story. “Good thinking,” I told Max. “Might as well find out how the journals are looking at us. Until the reviews come in, who knows how the show will do?”

“So I was mooching around listening to all their foolishness, but then a message came in instead of going out.” Max paused portentously. “A message from Vyzance.”

“Oh,” I said. A ship can sail along happy as you please, the weatherworker filling the sails with wind, everything calm, everything serene-and if it tears out its belly on a rock lurking just under the surface, everybody on board will drown. And it will strike all the harder because it was going so well before. I had to gather myself to get out more than the one word, which is not like me at all. “What-what did it say?”

“What would you expect a message from Vyzance to say?” Max answered. “It says the Atabeg’s bloody surprised to find out his nephew’s King of Shqiperi when good old Halim Eddin’s really back there being useless the way a proper Hassocki prince is supposed to. And what do you think about that, good old Halim Eddin?”

“The message was for Essad Pasha?” I asked. Max nodded, then reached for the jug of brandy again. I grabbed it first-I needed it, too. Once I got a healthy snort inside me, I felt better, or at least number. I pointed an accusing finger at my minister for special affairs. “Why didn’t you waylay the messenger?”

“I tried,” he said morosely. “Little bastard gave me the slip. It’s his town, and it isn’t mine. What are we going to do, O sage of the age? I mean, besides getting our heads cut off and spears rammed up our backsides, probably not in that order?”

I had to think fast. I took another slug of brandy. Maybe it would lubricate my wits. If it didn’t, maybe I wouldn’t care. Something worked in there. “It’s a lie,” I told Max.

“What’s a lie? That the Atabeg sent the message? That Essad Pasha’s cursed well got it? Don’t I wish it was, your Majesty.” Max made my title positively poisonous. “I was there, I tell you.”

“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently. “There’s a real message, but it’s a real lie, too.”

“In a pig’s posterior!” Max said. “You’re as much a Hassocki prince as I am a camel.”

“The way you’ve been humping the last two nights, you might be,” I said. “Shut up and listen to me. The Hassockian Atabeg has to deny that I’m really his nephew-even though I am, of course.”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” Max gives the most disagreeable agreement I’ve ever known.

I ignored him. It’s not easy, but I have practice. “He has to deny that I’m Halim Eddin. What just happened to the Hassockian Empire? It just got the snot kicked out of it in the Nekemte Wars. If it hadn’t, Shqiperi wouldn’t be a kingdom. It would still be a Hassocki province, right?”

“I suppose so,” Max said. “But what’s that got to do with-”

I went right on ignoring him. Brandy helps. “Listen, I tell you. The Hassocki tried to sneak a fast one past their neighbors and the Great Powers by sending me here. I’m their stalking horse. I’m the key to their holding on to influence in the eastern part of the Nekemte Peninsula.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Max said. “I knew it all along. You really are.”

“You’re just jealous,” I said, which had the distinct virtue of making him shut up. That accomplished, I went on, “What other choice have we got? We’ve jumped on the dragon-we can’t let go of its ears now.”

“Of course we can’t. Dragons haven’t got ears. And you haven’t got any brains.”

“This is not the time to revoke my poetic license. You know what I mean,” I said. “What do we do if this crystal message from Vyzance isn’t a stinking lie, eh? Do we paste on sheepish grins and go, ‘Sorry, we were just playing a little joke on you people. I guess we’ll be running along now’?”

“Don’t I wish!” Max exclaimed. “I’d love to. Only thing is, I don’t think Essad Pasha’s laughing right now.”

I didn’t think so, either. Essad Pasha is one of those people who will laugh till the tears come while he’s watching his enemies’ beards burn after he’s soaked them in oil and touched a match to them. His sense of humor does go that far. When it comes to seeing a joke on himself, though…“If you want to live to spend any of the money in the treasury, if you don’t want to wind up envying Rexhep-”

“What’s the eunuch got to do with it?” Max broke in.

“Well, for one thing, if they find out we’re just a couple of performers from Schlepsig, they may want to cut our balls off on general principles,” I said. “But they may not need general principles, not when they’ve got specific ones. How many Shqipetari maidens have you debauched the past two nights?”

“Debauched, my left one. They loved every minute of it.” But Max looked worried about his left one, and his right one, too.

“To the Shqipetari, that only makes things worse. They aren’t supposed to enjoy it here. You’re not supposed to enjoy anything here except the cursed blood feuds.” Now that I think on things, that made Essad Pasha a pretty fair governor for Shqiperi, didn’t it? I had more urgent worries just then, or I would have seen it sooner. I went on, “So that message has to be a lie. The best thing we can do is make everyone think it is. The worst we can do is buy some time.”

“Time to get out of here,” Max said. “Eliphalet’s beard, it is time to get out of here!”

“Don’t talk about Eliphalet, even in Hassocki,” I told him. That proved good advice, because a moment later someone knocked on the door. Max jumped like a cornered sword-swallower pretending to be an aide-de-camp to a cornered acrobat pretending to be a king. Quite a bit like that, in fact. As calmly as he could, the cornered actor pretending to be a king opened the door. There stood Skander, not pretending to be a majordomo-and not even knowing he was cornering us. “Yes?” I said-regally.

“Excuse me, your Majesty, but his Excellency Essad Pasha is here. He would like to see you for a moment,” Skander said.

Max didn’t jump again, but he definitely twitched. Skander already suspected my minister for special affairs of being in two places at once. Now Max seemed not to want to be any place at all. I felt a certain sympathy for that; I didn’t much want to be any place in Peshkepiia myself. But if I had to be any place in Peshkepiia, the palace was the best one.

“Tell his Excellency I will meet him in the throne room in a quarter of an hour,” I said. Skander bowed and scurried away.

You’d be surprised how much brandy you can drink in fifteen minutes. Or maybe you wouldn’t, in which case the Two Prophets have mercy on your liver.

At the appointed time, I sat myself down on the cheap, tawdry throne. The two-headed Shqipetari eagle (made in Albion) hung on the wall in back of me, looking symbolic or absurd, depending on your attitude toward such things. Behind me and to the left of the throne stood the mostly faithful Max, otherwise Captain Yildirim, otherwise my new minister for special affairs.

If Max swayed as he stood there, if my eyes were glassy, you can blame the fifteen minutes just past. And if Max seemed steady enough, if I looked the way I usually do-well, you can blame a lot of other sessions with a lot of other jugs and bottles. In which case, the Two Prophets have mercy on our livers.

“His Excellency, Essad Pasha!” Skander cried, as if the Kingdom of Shqiperi were as venerable as Albion or the Dual Monarchy.

In stumped the man who was the former military governor of Shqiperi, the man who’d decided Shqiperi needed a king, the man who’d decided he knew exactly which king Shqiperi needed, and the man who’d thought he’d got the king he’d decided on. Made quite a procession for one fellow, didn’t he?

He stopped at the prescribed distance from the throne. He bowed the prescribed bow. “Your Majesty,” he said: the prescribed phrase. Except he didn’t say, “Your Majesty.” He said, “Your Majesty?” He admitted the possibility of doubt that I was his Majesty.

Doubt is not a good thing. Doubt subverts faith. If you don’t have faith in me on this score, ask a priest. It doesn’t matter whether he’s a sedate Eliphilatelist, a wild-eyed Zibeonite, or a votary of the Quadrate God. He will tell you the same thing. Doubt does subvert faith. If you could find a priest who serves the old Aenean gods nowadays, he would tell you the same thing, too. But you can’t find one of those priests any more. They’re as extinct as unicorns (or is it virgins?). Doubt has subverted their faith.

“Your Excellency,” I said. I didn’t sound like a man who had doubts. Well, I daresay the brandy helped. “What brings you here today, your Excellency?”

Like I didn’t know! Scribes!

“Your Majesty?” There it was again, that cursed question mark, hanging in the air. And if Essad Pasha didn’t get his punctuation revised, Max and I might end up hanging in the air, too-by our necks, or perhaps in some fashion even less pleasant than that.

“Yes?” I said, as portentously as a sozzled sovereign could. I didn’t doubt that I was King Halim Eddin-or if I did, no one else ever knew it.

Essad Pasha gathered himself. I was glad to see he needed to gather himself. He wasn’t sure I was Halim Eddin. But he wasn’t sure I wasn’t Halim Eddin, either. Good. That gave me something to work with. After coughing a couple of times (which made me stare at him to see if he’d suddenly turned tall and lean: he hadn’t), he said, “Your Majesty, I have received a peculiar, a most peculiar, report from the offices of Consolidated Crystal.”

“Have you?” I said indifferently-or maybe I was just drunk. “Well, what report is this?”

He sounded hesitant. He sounded apologetic-better that than sounding apoplectic, I suppose. But I heard from him what I’d already heard from Max: that the Hassockian Atabeg, Eliphalet smite his scrawny arse with boils, had the infernal gall to deny that I was the authentic Prince Halim Eddin, just because I wasn’t.

“Oh, that,” I said, more indifferently still. “Well, weren’t you expecting that?”

“Your Majesty?” Now Essad Pasha sounded like he doubted which end was up, and, unlike some people in the throne room I could name, he wasn’t even pie-eyed-or I don’t think he was. “I don’t understand, your Majesty.”

“Obviously.” I piled on the scorn the way Shqipetari cooks pile on the grease.

It worked, too. I could all but hear the gears grinding inside Essad Pasha’s head. An impostor who knew he’d been found out should have trembled like an aspen leaf in fall. I didn’t act the way a terrified fraud should have. I acted every inch a king, or at least a prince.

“Perhaps your Majesty would be gracious enough to explain?” Cautious wasn’t a bad way for Essad Pasha to sound, either.

“Perhaps he would.” I don’t think I’d ever talked about myself in the third person before. It’s even more fun than the royal we. “Perhaps he wouldn’t have to if he were served by men who could see past the end of their nose.”

Behind me, Max coughed. Well, it might have been the two-headed eagle on the wall, but I suspected the doubtable-to say nothing of redoubtable-Captain Yildirim. Essad Pasha looked wounded. He wouldn’t have bothered with an expression like that for a man he didn’t believe in. He would have gone about wounding the pretender instead. “North and south, east and west, my ignorance is wide as the sky, deep as the sea, black as blackest midnight,” he said. “Would your Majesty grant his slave the boon of enlightenment?”

When a Hassocki goes all poetical on you, he’s either being insulting or you’ve got him on the run. Essad Pasha wasn’t being insulting. I smiled…to myself. Then I fed him the same farrago of nonsense about why the Atabeg couldn’t publicly admit I was who I was that I’d rammed down Max’s throat.

Max did what any normal human being would do: he gagged. Essad Pasha swallowed the whole thing. He didn’t even choke. He must have been eating Shqipetari cooking for a long time.

“I see, your Majesty,” he breathed when I was through. “Indeed, that makes most excellent good sense.”

Yes, maybe it was the two-headed eagle that coughed. When I looked back at Max, he wasn’t doing it. I knew what he was thinking, though: that it made no sense at all. I was thinking the same thing. Then again, in the Nekemte Peninsula things that make no sense often prove perfectly sensible, while what would be sensible anywhere else turns out to be the height of folly.

An actor in a down-at-the-heels circus would be most unlikely to claim the crown of Albion, for instance. He would be even less likely to find it plopped on his head.

I graciously inclined my head to Essad Pasha. “Now that you see where the truth lies”-and the truth was lying as hard as it could, believe you me it was-“perhaps you will be so kind as to take it back to your junior officers, to avoid any unfortunate outbreaks of excessive zeal.”

To keep them from coming over here and murdering me, I meant. I happen to think it sounded much nicer the way I put it.

Essad Pasha bowed. “As your Majesty commands, so shall it be.” He did a smart about-turn and marched out of the throne room. I looked down at my hands. I felt like a successful surgeon. And so I was: I’d just amputated Essad Pasha’s question mark, and without even numbing him beforehand.

“My hat’s off to you, your Majesty,” Max said. May Eliphalet beshrew me if he hadn’t doffed it when I looked around.

“If a man knows the truth when he hears it, he will do what is right,” I said, which sounded good and had nothing to do with anything. Essad Pasha couldn’t tell the truth from saltwater taffy. As for doing what was right-he was doing what I wanted, which was even better.

Having removed or at least reduced Essad Pasha’s inflamed interrogative, I thought the world was my oyster. And maybe it was, but I forgot something essential: oysters don’t keep. No sooner had Essad Pasha departed than Skander bowed to me and said, “Your Majesty, a woman wishes to appeal her sentence as a witch.”

“Oh, she does, does she?” I wasn’t so sure that sounded appealing to me. “Can she do that?”

Skander shrugged. “It is for you to decide. You are the king.”

So I was. For the first time, I wondered if I wanted to be. Romping through the harem was fun. Declaring war on Belagora was fun, too. So was arranging things so the mountain dragons decided Belagoran soldiers made even better snacks than sheep (to say nothing of shepherds).

But hearing a possible-probably a probable-witch’s appeal? It sounded much too much like work. Worse, it sounded like boring work. I didn’t want to admit that to Skander. I didn’t much want to admit it to myself, either. Not wanting to admit it, I asked the majordomo, “What is the Shqipetari custom? I am not of your blood”-Eliphalet be praised!-“and I do not wish to offend by accident or ignorance.”

He only shrugged again. “We have not had a king for many, many years. The custom is what your Majesty chooses to make it. Once your Majesty makes it, we will uphold it with all our might.”

“What will they do with the woman if I don’t hear her appeal?” I asked.

“Burn her, I suppose. Or else stone her,” Skander said indifferently. “Give her what she deserves, anyhow.”

“I see.” And I did. So much for Skander’s faith in her innocence. Maybe I could enlighten the Shqipetari. By all appearances, they needed it. “Fetch her in. I will hear her,” I declared in ringing tones.

“Before you do, though, call Zogu the wizard to the palace,” Max put in. “Just on the off chance she is what everybody thinks she is.”

I thought that sentiment shockingly illiberal. Skander evidently thought it sensible. He bowed first to me, then to my minister for special affairs. “Yes, your Majesty. Yes, your Excellency.” He hurried away.

That Peshkepiia was a small town had its advantages. No more than a quarter of an hour later, Zogu stood before me. “At your service, your Majesty,” he said. “Which mangy trull has decided to try her luck with you?” He didn’t seem to have much faith in her innocence, either, did he?

“I didn’t hear who she was,” I confessed. “Skander?”

“She is called Shenkolle, your Majesty.” He pronounced the name with fastidious distaste, almost as if he were Rexhep.

Zogu laughed and laughed. “And she says she’s not a witch? Next you’ll tell me the joyhouse girls aren’t whores!”

“She is entitled to her appeal,” I said stiffly. Zogu thought that was funnier yet. I nodded to Skander. “Bring her in. I’ll listen to what she has to say.”

“Yes, your Majesty.” He sighed, but he obeyed.

When I got a look at Shenkolle, my first thought was, She sure looks like a witch. She was old. She was bent. She was homely. She had a long nose and a sharp chin with a wart on it. If she hadn’t been conjured straight from the pages of Hans Eliphalet Andersen and the Grim Brethren, she should have been.

“Do you speak Hassocki?” I asked her.

“Oh, yes, your Majesty.” She didn’t sound like a witch. She sounded the way you wish the girl of your dreams sounded. She turned your blood to sparkling wine.

Zogu was immune to that…purr. I don’t know how, but he was. If I hadn’t believed he was a strong wizard before, I would have now. “What do they say you were up to this time, you old she-devil?” he asked Shenkolle.

“I didn’t do anything, your Majesty.” She ignored Zogu and concentrated on me. Listening to her, I would have been putty-well, perhaps something than stiffer than putty-in her hands. She went on, “I am innocent. I am nothing but a poor woman wronged.”

“You’re the richest poor woman in Peshkepiia, that’s dead certain,” Zogu said. “How many big, fat silver shekels from Vespucciland did you bury in your garden week before last?”

“Why, you sneaky old crow!” Shenkolle screeched. When she wasn’t talking to me, or maybe when she was angry, she sounded the way she looked. Then her voice-magically?-softened again. She batted her red-tracked eyes at me. “It’s a lie, a foul, evil lie, your Majesty.”

When she spoke directly to me, I believed. Well, no: it wasn’t quite that. When she spoke directly to me, I didn’t care whether she was telling the truth or not, any more than I cared that she looked like my granny’s wicked cousin. I glanced over at Max. By the way he was staring at Shenkolle, she’d ensnared him, too.

But not Zogu. He laughed some more. By all the signs, he was having the time of his life. “Prove you’re not a liar, Shenkolle,” he said. “Swear by the Quadrate God that you’re telling the truth. Come on-you can do it. ‘North and south, east and west, I am telling the truth.’”

She tried. I watched her try. The words wouldn’t come. Her eyes snapped with fury. Her face turned as red as a drunkard’s nose. But the words would not come. All she could get out was, “Have mercy, your Majesty!”

She still sounded as seductive as ever. But if failing to take the oath didn’t break the spell, it did dent it. Max sighed, a sad little noise. That was just how I felt. I asked her, “Do you really have those shekels in your garden?”

“Why, yes, your Majesty,” she said sweetly, though the glare she sent Zogu was anything but sweet. Then she remembered she had to aim at me. “Do you want them? If you do, of course they are yours. Anything you want of me is yours.”

Even after looking at her, and even after two wild nights in the harem, the sheer promise in her voice tempted me to…I don’t know what. But, with her charm dented, I was able to say, “I don’t want them for myself. If you pay them to the people you wronged, will it buy you forgiveness?” Before she could answer, I turned to the majordomo and asked, “What do you think, Skander?”

“How much silver do we speak of?” Skander asked. Zogu told him. Shenkolle screeched, which had to mean Zogu knew what he was talking about. She sounded like a sawblade biting into a nail. Skander considered. “That much silver would settle a blood feud up in the mountains. It should be enough to atone for her crimes here. Settling is better than slaying-most of the time, anyway.”

“All right, then.” I pointed to Shenkolle. “Those shekels-all of them-to your accusers today will buy your life-this once. If you come before me again, though, nothing will save you. Do you understand?” She nodded. “Do you swear you will pay the price today, then?” I asked.

“North and south, east and west, I will pay it today.” She had no trouble with that oath. She seemed surprised. Zogu smiled to himself.

I sent Shenkolle away. “If she doesn’t…” I said to Zogu.

“Don’t worry, your Majesty,” the wizard said. “She will.” And she did.