Every Inch a King

XIX

As we neared the Torinan coast, the skipper of the fishing boat-his name was Hysni-asked, “You won’t want to come right into a regular port, will you?”

I looked at Max. Max looked at me. We both shook our heads, the motions so nearly identical we would have got a big laugh on any stage. “Well, now that you mention it, no,” I said.

Hysni smiled a thin smile. “Didn’t think so,” he said. A few minutes later, he added, “Bugger customs men, anyway.” Since Max and I were carrying as much of the Shqipetari royal treasury as we could, I sympathized with Hysni’s enlightened attitude. Officials might have found some really tedious questions about the money; best to avoid all those unpleasant possibilities if we could.

And we could. Hysni put us ashore towards evening on a beach not too far from a town-but not too close to one, either. I happily paid him the other half of our fee. He was so forthrightly mercenary, he made doing business with him a pleasure.

“Good luck,” he said. “North and south, east and west, good luck.”

“North and south, east and west, may good luck sail with you,” I said. He smiled. So did the other fishermen, who were his sons and his nephew.

Max and I splashed up onto the sand. The fishing boat smartly put about and started back to Shqiperi. Watching Hysni and his kinsfolk sail west into the setting sun, Max murmured, “Poor bastards.” Max always was so sentimental.

I poked him in the ribs. “Now,” I said.

“Now what?” he answered irritably. “And what the demon was that for, anyhow?”

“We went into Shqiperi,” I said. “I bloody well ruled as King of Shqiperi. We screwed ourselves silly-sillier-and we got out of Shqiperi. Not only that, we got out of Shqiperi with more than we came in.” I nudged my leather sack with the toe of my boot. It clinked softly, as if to remind Max how right I was. “Now I get to say I told you so, that’s what, and now you get to admit that I told you so, too.”

I waited. I folded my arms across my chest so I could wait in the proper royal style. I still felt like the King of Shqiperi, even if I’d had my reign unfortunately cut short.

“You told me so,” Max agreed. Being Max, he couldn’t just leave it at that. Oh, no. “And I told you you were out of your mind right from the start, and Eliphalet turn his back on me if I was wrong.”

I thought about that. “Well, maybe,” I said, “but I got away with it.” I poked him in the ribs again. “I had some pretty good help, too, Captain Yildirim.”

He poked me back. “Yes, your Majesty.” We both started to laugh. No, I’m not making that up. Max really and truly started to laugh. Twice in the space of a few days! What was the world coming to?

After a while, I asked, “Do you want to find a town now, or do you want to spend the night on the beach and find one in the morning?”

“I’d just as soon sleep here,” Max answered. “I’m not what you’d call hungry or anything.”

Neither was I. Hysni had fed us well on-inevitably-fried fish. “Suits me,” I said. “This will do well enough-better than well enough-for tonight. Our clothes will dry out, too.”

“We’ll need new ones,” Max said. “They don’t wear this kind of stuff here, and I won’t miss it a bit, either. You speak Torinan, don’t you?”

“Sure-enough to get by with, anyhow,” I said. “They won’t think I’m a native or anything, but they’ll understand me. How about you?”

“Maybe enough to get my face slapped,” Max replied. And how much more of a language than that do you really need, anyhow? We lay down and stretched ourselves out. The sand made a fine mattress, my sack of silver a perfectly lovely pillow.

“More Shqipetari riffraff,” the clothier muttered, peering at Max and me around the promontory of his nose. Torinans like Shqipetari about as well as Lokrians do, and for about the same reasons: men come from the Land of the Eagle looking for work, and they steal if they don’t find it (or sometimes even if they do).

I wanted to curse the fellow in Hassocki, but he wouldn’t have understood me. The Hassockian Empire never got to Torino, so its oaths and obscenities never got there, either. Torinans have to make do with their own set, which is distinctly impoverished by comparison.

“Do you always try to run customers out of your shop?” I inquired in my best-indifferent-Torinan.

“Customers?” He laughed as if I’d said something funny. “Customers have money. Shqipetari have-” I wasn’t quite sure what he said then, but I believe it involved irreverent affection for a donkey.

“No, that was your mother,” I said. While he was still gaping, I set enough silver on the counter to make him gape in a whole new way. “Now-are we customers, or do we give our business to an honest man instead?”

He started to reach for the silver. I started to reach for my sword. Max started to reach for his. The clothier’s hand suddenly had second thoughts. “You are customers,” he allowed, and said nothing more about donkeys. “What is it you want?”

“Civilized clothes,” I answered, and said nothing more about his mother. “We went into Shqiperi and we got out again, and now we don’t have to look like we live there any more.”

“You I can fit with no trouble,” he said, and then eyed Max with the dismay clothiers have eyed him with since he was fourteen years old. “Your friend, I am afraid, will take a little longer.”

“My friend is a little longer,” I agreed.

“He will cost extra, too,” the clothier said.

“A little extra, I suppose,” I said. “Not a lot.”

Torinans think they’re good hagglers. Put them next to Schlepsigians or Albionese, who hardly haggle at all, and they’re right. In the Nekemte Peninsula, they’d be picked to skin and bones before they knew what hit them. I was used to playing a tougher game than the clothier. I got the price I wanted without even coming close to mentioning his mother again.

By that afternoon, Max and I looked like a couple of men who’d just bought new clothes in a Torinan provincial town. It could have been worse. We could have gone on looking like Shqipetari.

People gawked at Max when we bought fares on a northbound stage. But people gawk at Max’s inches even in Schlepsig, though he did seem to have more of them in Torino, where the folk are mostly shorter. And the fellow who sold us our tickets smiled at my accent. “You are from the north, eh?” he said. “You speak dialect up in that part of the kingdom.”

He didn’t think I was a foreigner, mind. He just thought I talked funny. Well, I thought he-and the clothier, and everybody else down there-talked funny, too. It’s true that the lovely and talented lady (and she was both, dear Annaluisa was) from whom I learned most of my Torinan did come from the north. I was happy enough to follow her lead in whatever she did-you’d best believe I was.

She didn’t slap my face, either. I was luckier with her than Max was with the girl from whom he’d learned his little bits of the language.

And I was luckier when it came to the coach. Max eyed it with distaste. “Crammed into another bloody shoebox,” he said.

“Would you rather stay in Torino?” I asked him.

“Weather’s better,” he said, which is true. After you’ve sailed the Middle Sea, you can never look at the weather in Schlepsig the same way again. But in the end, he shook his head. “No, I’ll go home, too.”

An hour later than it should have, the coach rattled north. Even though a small woman sat across from him, Max didn’t have much legroom. I didn’t, either. I don’t think anyone else on the coach did. But Max had it worse than the rest of us.

We were all glad to stretch our legs when we got to the next town. This one boasted a Consolidated Crystal office across from the depot. I stretched my legs by walking over there. The crystallographers inside wore turbans. I smiled, seeing myself back in a civilized kingdom.

I sent my message to several leading Schlepsigian journals. The exiled King of Shqiperi returns to his homeland, it said. I hoped that would pique some interest. Scribes had helped bring my reign to a premature end, but I couldn’t make my bid for fame without them now. It was like sitting down to supper with a dragon: you know you may be the next course, but if you’re hungry enough you have to take the chance.

When I got back to the depot, one of the clerks recognized that my accent was foreign, not just northern. “Your passport, please, sir,” he said. Seeing that Max was traveling with me, the clerk asked for his, too. He looked up from them a moment later, his face a dark cloud. “I am afraid you two gentlemen do not have proper Torinan entry stamps. This is a matter of some importance, since flouting our regulations can lead to a fine or imprisonment or both, at the judge’s discretion.”

“I am devastated!” I cried, and clapped a hand to my heart-Torinans love melodrama. “What can we do?”

After a bit of dickering, we did it. From that time forward, our passports did boast proper Torinan entry stamps. Well, they boasted proper-looking Torinan entry stamps, anyhow. A forensic wizard might have expressed a different opinion, but how likely was it that a forensic wizard would examine the proper-looking passports of a couple of obviously respectable, obviously innocent travelers?

Not very. I hoped.

When we got up into the north of Torino, I sent the journals in Schlepsig another message, this one letting them know where and when I was likely to come up into Schlepsig. I hadn’t wanted to do that before, since travel in Torino is tardy and inefficient enough to come right out of the Nekemte Peninsula, and things in the Dual Monarchy aren’t always better.

The turbaned crystallographer who sent my message said, “So you’re the fellow who pretended to be the Hassocki prince, are you?”

“That’s me.” I strutted a little, even sitting down. “So you’ve heard of me, eh?” Maybe the scribes in Shqiperi were good for something after all. And sure enough, the crystallographer nodded. I showed off a little more. Then I asked, “What do you think of me? What does the world think of me?”

“You must have been out of your mind to try it, and you’re lucky you got away with your neck,” he answered without the least hesitation.

One good thing, anyhow: Max wasn’t along to hear him say it.

Our passports passed muster when we passed from Torino to the Dual Monarchy. The customs official at the border checkpoint added more stamps. “Why were you in Torino?” he asked. Like most officials in the Dual Monarchy, he was of Schlepsigian blood. Like some other Schlepsigian officials I’ve known, he liked to throw his weight around just because he could.

“I’d just escaped from Shqiperi,” I answered.

“And what were you doing in Shqiperi?” he asked, as if I’d just confessed to some horrible depravity. In his eyes, no doubt I had.

“I was being King of Shqiperi,” I said, not without pride.

And his whole attitude changed. He pounded me on the back. He clasped my hand. He gave me a knock of cherry brandy from a flask on his belt. He gave Max a knock, too, when he found out I’d had an enormous aide-de-camp. Max drank only with the greatest suspicion. Now that you mention it, so did I. Who ever heard of a customs official acting like a human being?

But this one had his reasons. “You’re the fellow who turned the dragons loose on the Belagorans!” he exclaimed. “By Eliphalet’s toes, they’ve been screeching like a bunch of cats with their tails under rocking chairs for the past week!”

I looked at Max. Max was looking at me. Zogu’s magic had worked again. He was no lightweight wizard, not Zogu. He was wasted there in Peshkepiia, the way Stagiros the weatherworker was wasted aboard the Gamemeno. Both of them-and how many others?-could have done so much more with themselves if only they’d got the chance.

All of a sudden, nothing was too good for Max and me. The Dual Monarchy hated and feared Belagora and Vlachia because even then they were doing their best to lure their relatives inside the Monarchy away from Vindobon and the King-Emperor and into some kind of kingdom with them. The Vlachs weren’t fussy over how they went about it, either. And so anybody who’d given the Belagorans a good tweak was a friend of the Dual Monarchy’s.

Max and I rode in government coaches fit for a grand duke-which, I suppose, made them more or less fit for a king, too. We feasted at every stop. We got put up at the grandest hostels. No one asked for a thaler from us-or even for a copper thent. I was almost sorry to cross the border into Schlepsig. Oh, and we got there ahead of schedule, which, in the Dual Monarchy, is as near unheard-of as makes no difference.

Crossing into Schlepsig ahead of schedule complicated things for me. I wanted to tell my story, and the stupid scribes hadn’t got there to hear it. You just can’t rely on those people. They’re there when they shouldn’t be, they stir up trouble when you don’t want them to-and when you really need them, where are they?

And then, at last, they finally did show up. Took them bloody long enough, that’s all I’ve got to tell you. But they listened as I told my tale. They listened as Max told his, too. One enterprising journal sent along a sketch artist as well as a scribe. He did my portrait-I still have the original, as a matter of fact. That outfit ran the picture of me next to the one of Prince Halim Eddin that had started my adventure. ONE MAN OR TWO? it said below them.

I was a nine days’ wonder. I might have been an eleven days’ wonder, except…Well, we’ll get to that soon enough. Because of all the stories about me, I got offers from three or four of the biggest circus companies in Schlepsig-and, later, after some of the stories were translated, from troupes in Narbonensis and Albion and even Tver, where they take the circus very seriously indeed.

Max also got his share of offers. He got inducted into the Sword-Swallowers’ Hall of Fame, too. If you didn’t know there was such a thing as the Sword-Swallowers’ Hall of Fame, well, neither did I. And, as Max confessed after a few beers one night, neither did he.

The Circus of Dr. Ola has to be the best company in all of Schlepsig. Max and I both signed on there. With what they paid-and with what we’d brought back from Shqiperi-we wouldn’t have to worry about money again, as long as we stayed anywhere close to careful. Dooger and Cark’s Traveling Emporium of Marvels? I’ve spent a lot of time-a lot of time-trying to forget Dooger and Cark’s. I haven’t done it yet, but every year I gain a little.

As things worked out, I would have been glad to hire on with the Circus of Dr. Ola if they hadn’t paid me a kram. The proprietor’s real name is Gunther, by the way, and he’s no more a doctor than I am-less, if anything, because I’ve bandaged wounds on the battlefield. But I don’t want to talk about Gunther, however admirable he may be. He is a good fellow, but not so good that I would have been willing to work for him for nothing…except for Kдthe.

If you can imagine Ilona even better-looking, even better-shaped, and-!-even-tempered, you have a good start on Kдthe. And I’m glad-and everyone’s glad-she is even-tempered, too, because she does trick shooting with a crossbow the likes of which the world has never seen the likes of.

That’s what the barker says about it, and Eliphalet smite me if he’s not right. She’ll shoot doves on the wing-behind her back, aiming with a mirror. Yes, I know it’s impossible. She does it anyway. Once, before I knew her, she shot a lighted cigar out of the King of Schlepsig’s mouth from twenty yards.

“What would you have done if you missed?” I asked when I heard about that, meaning, What would they have done to you?

“I didn’t even think about it then,” she answered, and I believe her-you don’t think about what can go wrong when you’re doing a stunt, or else it will. You just make sure you do it right. “Afterwards…” She didn’t go on for a little while. Then she said, “I only did that once.”

“Eliphalet! I bet you did,” I said.

We didn’t fall for each other right away, but it didn’t take too long, either. One afternoon when we were getting ready for a show, she said, “We’ve both done a lot of things, and we’ve both done them with a lot of other people.” I nodded. I already knew she wasn’t a maiden, or anything close to a maiden. As if I minded! But she went on, “That was fine then. If we’re going to get along from now on, though, we probably shouldn’t do those things with anybody else any more.”

And I nodded again. And we didn’t. And we haven’t. And it’s a boy and two girls and a fair number of years later, and I haven’t missed the variety a bit…except every once in a while. And Kдthe’s never once-never once, mind you-said a word about shooting a crossbow quarrel in one ear and out the other (to say nothing of shooting one through some even more tender spots) if I slipped.

I told you she was even-tempered. As for me, I have sense enough to know when I’m well off. Yes, I really do-now. You need to keep a sense of proportion.

Speaking of a sense of proportion, Max fell for a little trapeze artist named Rita. And when I say little, I mean little: she’s got to be two feet shorter than he is. Of course, all girls are short to Max. I wondered if they could enjoy more postures because of the difference in size, or if it closed some off for them. Before I met Kдthe, I probably would have just asked him. Now…I’m still wondering. She’s-civilized me.

She has. Believe it or not.

Max and I did fine in the Circus of Dr. Ola. We were billed as King Halim Eddin and Captain Yildirim, and performed in costumes garish enough to embarrass Barisha, let alone Count Rappaport.

As I say, we might have been eleven days’ wonders in Schlepsig instead of just nine. We might have been, but we weren’t. The second round of the Nekemte Wars crowded us out of the journals.

Not a kingdom in the Nekemte Peninsula was happy about what it had stolen from the Hassockian Empire the first time around. Plovdiv wanted Thasos (which Lokris was holding on to) and more of what used to be Fyrom just north of there. Lokris wanted southern Shqiperi and more of Fyrom. Vlachia wanted northern Shqiperi and more of Fyrom. Belagora wanted northern Shqiperi, too. Belagora doesn’t come close to bordering Fyrom, but probably wanted some of it anyhow.

Essad Pasha kept hanging on in Shqiperi, even without a king to call his own. He didn’t lose any to Belagora, not least thanks to my dragons (and thank you, Zogu!). He didn’t lose any to Vlachia, not least thanks to the Dual Monarchy. And he didn’t lose any to Lokris, not least thanks to, well, the Lokrians.

Farther west, Plovdiv tried to chase Lokris and Vlachia out of the part of Fyrom the Plovdivians thought should belong to them (which is to say, most of it). How do I put this politely? It didn’t work. Lokris and Vlachia thrashed Plovdiv in Fyrom. Dacia, which hadn’t even been in the first round of the Nekemte Wars, jumped Plovdiv from the north. And even the Hassocki sallied forth and took back the fortress of Edirne.

So when the dust settled, Plovdiv had to cough up its chunk of Fyrom to Lokris and Vlachia, and some land in the northwest to Dacia, and the territory up to and even past Edirne to the Hassocki again, which must have been even more embarrassing than everything else that happened to her. Now there’d been two rounds of war down there, and everybody-except possibly Dacia-was still unhappy. Of course, the only way to make anybody in the Nekemte Peninsula really happy is to slaughter all his neighbors out to the horizon. They were still working up to that, but they hadn’t got there yet.

Then the Powers gave Shqiperi a king whether Essad Pasha-and the Shqipetari-liked it or not. Wilhelm the Weed, I think they called him: a Schlepsigian prince with time on his hands. He went down there, but he couldn’t make Essad Pasha or anyone else pay any attention to him. I had better luck than that, by Eliphalet’s strong right hand.

And then…And then…Well, how do you talk about the start of the War of the Kingdoms without breaking down and sobbing? How do you talk about the Vlach werewolf who tore out the throat of the Dual Monarch’s heir-and the poor prince’s wife’s, too-before a silver crossbow quarrel killed him? How do you talk about the Vlach werewolf who had friends at the court of the King of Vlachia?

Once upon a time, I said the Vlachs might huff and puff and blow the Nekemte Peninsula down. The Vlachs huffed and they puffed and they almost-almost-blew the world down.

When they didn’t do enough to show the Dual Monarchy they were sorry (if they were sorry instead of laughing behind their hands, which is more likely), the King-Emperor declared war on Vlachia. Then Tver declared war on the Dual Monarchy, because Tver was Vlachia’s ally. Then Schlepsig, my Schlepsig, declared war on Tver, because Schlepsig was the Dual Monarchy’s ally. Then Narbonensis declared war on Schlepsig, because Narbonensis was Tver’s ally.

Narbonensis had fortified its border with Schlepsig, clearly with evil intent. To get at the Narbonese, my kingdom had to march its soldiers north of Narbonensis through the little kingdom of Bruges. Yes, years ago an earlier King of Schlepsig signed a treaty promising not to do any such thing. But what’s a treaty? Only a scrap of paper! Because of a scrap of paper, Albion, perfidious Albion, declared war on Schlepsig.

All the same, everybody thought we’d beat Narbonensis in a hurry, turn around and give the Tverskis a couple of good ones in the slats, and go home again before the leaves fell. Only…it didn’t quite work out that way. With help from Albion, and with the Brugeoisie fighting like fiends, the Narbonese held us in front of Lutetia. And we did give the Tverskis a couple of good ones, but so what? Tver is so big, she can take more than anybody else can dish out.

The war dragged on…and on. The Hassockian Empire came in on our side. So did Plovdiv. Torino was supposed to, but decided to jump on the Dual Monarchy’s back instead. Dacia tried to do the same thing, and promptly got squashed for her trouble.

For a while, the Circus of Dr. Ola toured behind the lines, entertaining troops on leave. So did other troupes. Then more and more of the men started putting on pike-gray uniforms themselves. My own call came when the war was about a year old, just after Kдthe had our first.

I speak good Narbonese. They could have sent me east. I speak fluent Hassocki-do I ever! They could have sent me southwest. I speak pretty fair Torinan. They could have sent me south when Schlepsig gave the Dual Monarchy a hand down there. I would have been truly useful in any of those places.

They shipped me west to fight Tver. I have little bits of Vlachian, which is sort of like Tverski. In other words, in that fight I was no more useful than any other soldier, and less useful than quite a few. Did they care? Ha! I was a body. I could shoot a crossbow. That, they cared about.

We could beat the Tverskis whenever we set our minds to it. It did us less good than we hoped it would. I shot a few of the poor bastards. Some of them only had hunting bows. It hardly seemed fair. Then one of the lousy Zibeonites shot me in the arm, and I stopped caring whether it was fair or not.

Max? Max never never did get into pike-gray. Turns out they didn’t make uniforms-and especially boots-large enough to fit him. He went on swallowing his own sword all through the war, and never had to worry about anybody else’s. Just as well, I suppose. He would have been a demon of a big target.

Thanks to some good medical magecraft, the arm healed fine. I went back to the line-and got shot in the leg. I was evidently a demon of a big target myself.

We managed to knock Tver out of the war while I was laid up the second time, and no, I don’t call that cause and effect. But Vespucciland came in about then. The cursed Vesps were getting rich selling Albion and Narbonensis everything under the sun. They wanted to protect their investment, Eliphalet afflict them with carbuncles.

We fought for four years all told, till we couldn’t fight any more. Then we threw in the sponge. The king abdicated. There was a short civil war till we got a new one, who’s only distantly connected to the old royal house. We lost land. Worse, we lost face.

And at that, we were lucky. Tver had a peasants’ revolt, and councils of peasants and artisans are trying to run the place till someone steels himself to put a crown on his head. The Dual Monarchy fell to pieces. All the pieces declared themselves kingdoms of their own or else joined neighboring kingdoms-Great Vlachia got too big for its own britches in a hurry, but it’s still not big enough to be a Power. The old dynasty still hangs on in the Eastmarch, which isn’t much to hang on to. And the Hassockian Empire also fell apart. Their old imperial family had to run for its life. They’ve got a tough new Atabeg named Kemal (no, I don’t think he’s the one I jugged) who’s trying to whip what’s left of them into shape. We’ll see what comes of that, if anything ever does.

Shqiperi? Shqiperi’s a bloody mess, but then Shqiperi’s always been a bloody mess, so it hasn’t changed as much as most of the world has. Wilhelm the Weed didn’t last-he ran away during the war. Essad Pasha didn’t last, either-somebody murdered him right after the war. I wonder how many suspects there were. The whole population of Shqiperi minus about twelve, I suppose.

Last I heard, someone named Zogu claimed to be running things there. That Zogu? My Zogu? I don’t know. If it is, they could do worse. And they probably will.

After the War of the Kingdoms, I half hoped the Shqipetari would call me back to take over again. No doubt Wilhelm the Weed hoped the same thing. We’re both still waiting, I’m afraid. I don’t know about Wilhelm, but I’ve given up holding my breath.

“Just as well,” Kдthe said when I told her that. “Haven’t you got enough going on right here?” This was just after we had our third, so no denying she had a point.

Once I came home for good, I needed a while before I started performing again. That isn’t just, or even mainly, because I got wounded twice while I wore the pike-gray. Part of it’s because, like a lot of soldiers coming home from the war, I was too gloomy and disappointed to care about anything. We’d done so much, we’d suffered so much, and what did we have to show for it? Nothing. Nothing at all. I needed a while to get over that who gives a damn? feeling.

And part of it’s simply because I’d got out of practice. You don’t practice for a day or two and you notice you’re off when you go back to it. You don’t practice for a month or two and the audience notices you’re off. At the front, I didn’t practice for much longer than a month or two. If a lot of your performance involves going up there on a tightrope, the audience is like to notice because you fall off and go splat. Not good.

Little by little, I eased myself into it again. I wasn’t the only veteran coming back to the Circus of Dr. Ola, and I wasn’t the only one who had trouble picking up where he’d left off.

The circus wasn’t the same, either. The circuit was smaller, and so was the pay. After the war, they didn’t want to watch performing Schlepsigians in Narbonensis or Torino or Albion or Gdansk (yes, Gdansk has risen from the dead-till the next time her neighbors pound a stake into her heart). So we played in Schlepsig and the Eastmarch, with an occasional foray into Yagmaria (whose new king is an old admiral from the Dual Monarchy, which would make more sense if Yagmaria had a coastline).

I knew I wasn’t going on any more grand adventures. After you’ve been king, how can you top that? I found myself doing more behind the scenes than I ever had, too: arranging for coaches and wagons, booking halls and hostels, seeing that things ran smoothly for the circus. I still get out in front of the crowds every so often, but that’s mostly when the circus plays near Putzig, the little town where Kдthe and I settled down with the children.

You see? I ended up normal, which for me is an even bigger surprise than ending up king. I’m a good citizen. I’m a breadwinner. I’m the father of a family. Sometimes, when the bookings are more complicated than usual, I hurry down the street to the CC office carrying my papers in a briefcase. A briefcase! Me! Normal as you please, no more hijinks for me.

Well, hardly any.

Because I don’t tour much any more, I was at home when someone knocked on the front door one mild summer morning. I think I muttered a little as I got up from my desk. A hostel in the Eastmarch had just written to say they couldn’t take us after all, and I had to scramble to find the troupe some other place to stay next week. I didn’t fancy getting interrupted just then. If it was a peddler, I aimed to send him away with a flea in his ear.

The man at the door wasn’t a peddler. He wasn’t a neighbor, come to borrow a hammer or scrounge a cigar. I’d never met him before, but he looked familiar. And well he might have.

He was wearing my face.

Close enough, anyhow. After a nervous moment when we sized each other up, I managed a bow and spoke in Hassocki: “Won’t you please come in, your Highness?”

Prince Halim Eddin courteously returned the bow. “Thank you very much-your Majesty,” he said in excellent Schlepsigian. His voice wasn’t really much like mine; it was a bit higher and a lot more musical. I can’t carry a tune in a sack, but you could tell just by listening to him talk that he’d be able to sing.

I got him settled on the sofa. I brought him coffee: the thinner brew we make in Schlepsig, but it was what I had. I fixed myself a cup, too. I also brought out a bottle of Narbonese brandy and set it on the table in front of him. “For improving the coffee, if you care to,” I said. He did. I did, too. I needed it. He didn’t bother flicking away the ritual drop; he just drank. “It’s a great privilege to make your acquaintance at last, sir,” I told him.

He raised an eyebrow. He didn’t pluck them any more. “I was going to say the same thing to you,” he answered. “Now that I see you, I see how you brought it off. The resemblance is remarkable, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I agreed. We looked all the more like each other because he had on a homburg and a sack suit I might have worn myself, even if the suit was cut more conservatively than I favor. I took a big swig of that improved coffee and said, “I daresay I’ve owed you an apology for a good many years. For whatever it’s worth to you now, you have it.”

“I don’t want it. I don’t need it.” He was still studying me. “North and south, east and west, how did you have the nerve? Do you know what Essad Pasha would have done to you if he’d realized you weren’t me? Have you got any idea?”

“I tried not to think about that,” I said.

“I believe it.” Halim Eddin poured more brandy into his coffeecup. He took another sip, then eyed me again. “Why?”

“Because it was the grandest role I’d ever have the chance to play,” I said. “I was a king. I really was a king. For five days, I was. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you…”

“Oh, yes,” he said softly. “Oh, yes. You must remember, you had five more days as king than I ever did. You had five more days as king than I ever would have, even if the dynasty survived. My dear uncle told me he would take a month killing me if I tried to go to Shqiperi. He thought I would rise against him if I did. He thought everyone would rise against him.” He let out a harsh chuckle. “And in the end, he was right. Everyone did-not that he hadn’t earned it.”

I’d never thought my going to Shqiperi might endanger the real Halim Eddin. Truth to tell, I hadn’t cared. “What did he do when he heard you-I mean I-was there after all?”

“He came to my home. He had to see me with his own eyes-he had to hit me with his own fist-before he would believe I wasn’t in Peshkepiia,” Halim Eddin said. “It was…an unpleasant afternoon.”

I didn’t think I wanted to ask him any more about that. Instead, I said, “What do you do these days?”

“I teach Hassocki. I buy and sell. I do well enough. I’m not rich, but I’m not poor, either,” he replied. “I live by your customs here. I have one wife, three children. What of you?”

“One wife and three children also,” I said. “I’m slowly easing out of performing. After I played your part, none of the others seemed to matter so much. I help keep the circus running smoothly, and I do some gardening out back of the house-I grow herbs and flowers.” I shrugged. “It’s a hobby.”

“We twist the arm of coincidence again,” Halim Eddin said, “for I am a gardener, too.”

“Would you like to see what I’m up to, then?” I asked.

“Nothing would please me more,” he said. As we walked out to my plot, he found a question of his own: “And how did you like your harem?”

“It was a lot of fun for a little while,” I answered. “But do you know what? One woman is plenty, as long as she’s the right one.”

I more than halfway thought he would laugh at me, but he only said, “I have found the same thing. The right one is worth any number of wrong ones.” I opened the back door for him. He stepped out, then paused to look at what I was doing. His nod of approval was worth gold to me. “Ah, this is fine. This is fine indeed.”

“I’m so glad it pleases you,” I told him. Inside a border of roses, some red, some yellow, I grew neat rows of sweet basil and rocket and anise. I was particularly proud of the last, which is not easy to raise in Schlepsig because of the cold winters. Rocks with hollows underneath-placed north and south, east and west-sheltered grass snakes and smooth snakes; every so often, I would find a cast skin. Those crushed blue pills Zogu used…I do manage without them. Yes I do.

Halim Eddin nodded again. “Very much. Had you started it when you were younger, it would have been wilder, I think, and I might have liked it that way myself then. Now I prefer things neater and tidier, too,” he said candidly. “As we go through our lives, we all must cultivate our gardens as best we can.”

“Yes,” I said, and we stood there together in the warm sunshine.