Every Inch a King

VI

Now, don’t get me wrong. We have sea serpents in the Suebic Gulf, too. But the northern seas, the seas I grew up with, are cold. That stunts the serpents’ growth. They’ll eat the occasional fisherman, sure, but they hardly ever eat his boat, too.

This one…Well, I’ve spent a lot of time down in southern climes. Who wouldn’t, once he finds out it doesn’t have to be cold and nasty and miserable half the year? In Schlepsig, most people don’t believe snow can come as a surprise. Poor bastards. I’ve spent a lot of time in southern climes, like I say, and I’ve crossed the Middle Sea often enough and then some. I know the nice, warm water grows nice, big (well, big-they aren’t nice) sea serpents. But there’s big, and then there’s big.

And then there was this one.

When it stuck its head out of the water, the tip of its snout was up about as far as the top of the Gamemeno’s mainmast. Now, the smuggler wasn’t the biggest ship in the world, and that mainmast wasn’t one of the tall firs or spruces that do mainmast duty for all the men-of-war in the world. Neverthenonetheless…If that much sea serpent was above the water, think how much had to be below to hold it up.

I did, and I got seasick, or near enough.

Tasos turned green as an unripe olive, so I have to believe he was making the same unhappy calculation. He said something to Stagiros. The weatherworker was minding his own business, which was making the Gamemeno go as if somebody’d goosed her. I don’t even think he noticed the sea serpent till Tasos told him about it.

Then it hissed. That would have got anybody’s attention. The lookout screamed again. Can’t say I blame him. Not many live people have ever heard that noise. The ones who did hear it mostly didn’t stay alive long, anyhow. Take a bronze statue-a heroic bronze statue, twice as tall as a man. Heat it red-hot. Use some special-and very stupid-sorcery to fly it out over the ocean. Drop it in. The sea serpent sounded a lot like that, only more so.

It was, in its own way, a beautiful creature. Its belly was pale yellow, its back a darker greenish gold. Those back scales were softly iridescent, and the sun also sparkled off the seawater that dripped from it. Like most of its kind, it had a crest of long scales-almost feathers, really, as if serpents were somehow related to birds-along the top of its head. That crest was raised, which meant the sea serpent was interested in something. Probably us, worse luck.

How old was a sea serpent that size? When it was young, had it watched Lakedaimonian and Palladian galleys ram one another in the unpronounceable war that ruined both Lokrian city-states and set up the rise of Fyrom? Had it feasted on philosophers, dined on dramatists, snacked on scholars? I had no way of knowing, and neither does anyone else. What I did know was that those eyes, as big as dinner plates or maybe shields, were more knowing than a serpent’s eyes had any business being.

Out shot its tongue, long as a pennant. It was tasting the air, wondering what sort of dainties it might find. Unfortunately, I had a pretty good notion where the closest available sea-serpent dainties were.

Even more unfortunately, I was one of them.

That enormous head, graceful as a spearpoint and ever so much more deadly, swung towards us. Tasos said something else to Stagiros. No, let me put that down exactly as it happened: Tasos shrieked at the weatherworker. Stagiros said something in return. Tasos shrieked again, even louder. I don’t speak Lokrian, but I didn’t need to be philosopher, dramatist, or scholar to translate this dialogue.

Make us go faster!

I’m already doing everything I can.

Make us go faster anyway! Lots faster!

If I were Tasos, that’s what I would have said to Stagiros, and you can take it to the bank. The weatherworker went right on raising his wind. The Gamemeno skimmed along faster than anything I’ve ever seen on sails. But were sails faster than scales? I had the feeling we were going to find out. I also had the feeling I might not like the answer. And if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t like any that came afterwards, either.

The sea serpent’s tongue shot out again, long and pink and questing. When it did, I got a glimpse-just a glimpse, mind you-of the serpent’s fangs. I could have done without that, really, thank you very much. Max must have got a glimpse, too, for he said, “Nice to know we’re not in a little bit of trouble, isn’t it?” Max is always so reassuring.

Then the great beast lowered its head so that about half the upthrust neck, maybe more, went back down into the sea. It started swimming after the Gamemeno. It started gaining on the Gamemeno, too.

As soon as we were sure about that-which didn’t take long, curse it-Tasos wasn’t the only one shrieking at poor Stagiros. He was one of the best in the world. So what? If he wasn’t good enough to keep us ahead of this mother of all sea serpents (which, given its size and likely age, it might have been), he wasn’t good enough. Period. Exclamation point, even.

And he wasn’t. He did everything he knew how to do, and he knew how to do more than any other weatherworker I’ve ever seen. The serpent kept on sliding closer anyhow. The effort Stagiros was putting out, he looked on the point of falling over dead. If he did, we’d all die in short order. And if he didn’t…we’d all die in short order anyway. That was sure how it looked.

The sea serpent’s head came up again. Its tongue flicked in and out, in and out. It was tasting dinner before it even got a bite. The two Klephts started to take out their crossbows and load them with bolts from their bandoliers. The sailors persuaded them not to by sitting on their heads. I would have done more than that-I would have cleft them in twain if I had to. The most they could do, I thought, was annoy the sea serpent, which was just what we needed then.

I wondered if it would come up astern of us and snatch Stagiros off the poop deck. That would have left the Gamemeno with nothing but the world’s wind, of which there wasn’t much just then. The serpent could have snacked on the rest of us at its leisure.

But, however many ancient philosophers the sea serpent had digested, it hadn’t digested their wisdom. Or maybe its tongue told it that what it wanted most wasn’t back at the poop. So it swam alongside us instead of taking us from behind. Perhaps it wasn’t a Lokrian sea serpent after all.

Out went that tongue. In. Out. In. They say small serpents can charm birds so they’ll just sit still and be swallowed. Watching that tongue almost charmed me. If I’d had any sense, I would have run below. Then the serpent would have had to smash the ship to get me. Not that it couldn’t, mind you. Not that it wouldn’t. But it would have taken longer.

Those enormous eyes lit with a cold reptilian satisfaction. Fast as a striking serpent-well, yes, exactly that fast-the great head darted forward. That terrible mouth gaped wide, wider, widest. I can testify that sea serpents have never heard of mouthwash.

And the serpent seized…the vampire’s coffin. Down that maw it went: wooden box, chains, roses, garlic, and all. Garlic! Maybe that was what the titanic tongue tasted on the air. If it was, I owed the sea serpent an apology for thinking it wasn’t Lokrian.

I also spent a moment wondering what would happen to the vampire when the serpent’s stomach juices ate through the coffin. How much did being undead matter if you were being dissolved? I didn’t have the faintest idea, and I’d bet nobody else does, either. Not even the maddest, most intrepid natural philosopher could arrange an experiment like that.

The vampire would know pretty soon. How long it would know was another question-the other question.

How long I would be able to go on worrying about it was another question, too. One vampire, even with coffin, chains, and condiments, was only a bonbon to a sea serpent like that. Its tongue did some more flicking. Then its horrible head descended-toward Max.

Maybe he was just the biggest man on the Gamemeno’s deck. Or maybe the sea serpent scented the garlic from our mutton sausage. Never having been a sea serpent, I can’t say. But that tongue flicked out right in front of Max’s face.

He wasn’t charmed, and you can take the word in any of its senses. I must have seen him draw his sword half a dozen times since we set out for the Land of the Eagle. He hadn’t done anything but draw it, not up till now. But a sea serpent is even less inclined to see reason than Dooger and Cark, which is saying something.

When the serpent’s tongue shot out again, Max swung the sword. The sailors didn’t have time to sit on his head. The blade sliced right through one of those forked tonguetips. Blood spurted. The sea serpent let out a gigantic-sea-serpent-sized hiss of astonishment and pain. What could be worse than an uppity breakfast? Imagine you’ve bitten down on your roll, all nicely spread with honey-and discovered the hard way that a bee was as interested in the honey as you were.

No, I’ve never done that, either. I said imagine. If you have trouble with that, use some transcendental floss to clean some of the grime from your mind, then try again.

I wondered whether the sea serpent would smash the Gamemeno to pieces with its thrashing. It was annoyed-yes, just a bit. But, Eliphalet and Zibeon be praised, it didn’t. It swam off instead, looking for food less inclined to stand up for its rights.

Max turned to the closest sailor, who was staring at him all goggle-eyed. “May I please have a rag?” Max asked in Hassocki. “I want to clean the blade before the blood makes it rust.”

Moving like a man in a trance-and not one caused by the sea serpent-the man handed Max his pocket handkerchief. But Max didn’t have the chance to use it, not right away. Captain Tasos had been standing there on deck, as astonished as any of his sailors. Now he suddenly came back to life. He bellowed like a bull that was suddenly made into a steer and folded Max into an embrace that proved the difficulties of bathing at sea. He almost spitted himself on Max’s sword, but he didn’t notice that. I don’t think Max noticed, either, or he might have made the accident real, not potential.

Tasos bubbled and squeaked in Lokrian, which neither one of us understood. It sounds like sticky wine pouring out of a jug, glub glub glub. After a few paragraphs-like most Lokrians, he liked to hear himself talk-the skipper realized his mistake. He switched to Hassocki: “You are heroic! You are magnificent! You should have been born a Lokrian!”

Max’s editorial eyebrow said two out of three wasn’t bad. I wondered how long it would be, once Captain Tasos had dropped us off at Fushe-Kuqe, before he started claiming he’d wounded (or more likely killed) the fearsome sea serpent. If he needed more than ten days, he had more character than I gave him credit for. He was a character, but not the kind of character whose chief characteristic is character.

I went back to Stagiros. “You did everything you could,” I said quietly in Hassocki. “Everyone knows it.”

The weatherworker shrugged. “It would not have been enough,” he answered in his fluent Schlepsigian. He was a man of parts, was Stagiros. “Everyone also knows that. Your friend was very brave or very foolish.”

I glanced up the deck toward Max. He’d finally managed to disentangle himself from Tasos, with luck without getting his pocket picked in the process. Even the Klephts were congratulating him. This once, in honor of the moment, I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Lokris’ southern peninsula is shaped like a hand or a plane-tree leaf or anything else with a broad base and several projections sticking out from it. A few islands only mildly meddle with the simile. Down and around went the Gamemeno. We saw no other sea serpents. Even more to the point, no other sea serpents saw us.

We did see every little cove and inlet along the way, or so it seemed. Something would go off the ship-the Klephts got off at one little inlet. Something would come on. Some silver would stick in Tasos’ pockets, I had no doubts.

One thing-no more coffins came aboard. I don’t know whether other Lokrian vampires had some sharp (one might even say pointed) questions for our intrepid skipper. I would guess not, for they might have found an answer on the order of Well, look inside a sea serpent somewhat less than satisfying. But this is only a guess. All I do know is, no vampires bothered me or Max. That we ate garlic whenever we could, that we festooned our cabin door and porthole with it, that we carried a couple of peeled cloves wherever we went-all this could be merely a coincidence. That we were not inclined to take chances…is nothing but the truth. And can you blame us?

We rounded the last stubby finger or leaf lobe or whatever you please and started up the east coast of the peninsula. We did all this sailing around, remember, instead of just sailing through the canal. If we’d sailed through the canal, Tasos wouldn’t have been able to scatter contraband all over the Lokrian coastline. Max and I wouldn’t have had the chance to meet the vampire or the sea serpent. And we wouldn’t have run into the pirates, either.

The pirates. I was just coming to them. I really was.

Now, the Mykonian Sea has islands the way a dog has fleas. They’re all over everywhere. The Tiberian Sea, between Lokris and Shqiperi and Belagora and the Dual Monarchy on the one hand and Torino on the other, isn’t like that. It has islands, yes, but they all cling to the coastline that runs north from Lokris. Hardly any at all on the Torinan side. I have no answer for why that’s so. Till I started talking about it, I didn’t even know I had a question.

I will say one thing for the islands in the Tiberian Sea. They’re shaggier than the ones farther west. They haven’t had all the trees chopped down, so their mountains have bearded cheeks. Laertes’ son came off one of those islands (Aiaia, it was) back in the ancient days-you know, the fellow whose wanderings were an odyssey in themselves. He was a man who could work wood: remember the bed back in his palace, and remember the boat he built with not much more than an axe and an adze.

Some people say he was a pirate, too. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised. The men who live on those islands nowadays can still work wood with the best of them. And the whoresons are still pirates, too.

Oh, the Lokrian Navy tries. Why, there must be three or four sloops and frigates along the east coast of Lokris that do nothing but hunt pirates…and go after smugglers and keep Shqipetari and Torinan fishing boats out of Lokrian coastal waters and help Lokrian fishermen who get in trouble and go after sea serpents and do a little fishing themselves (the tunny in those waters are very fine) and run cattle and sheep from the islands to the mainland and survey the rocks around the islands and show the Lokrian flag and look impressive.

So there we were, coming up alongside one of those islands-Aiaia itself, as a matter of fact, and making kind of heavy going of it, because the world’s wind lay dead against us. Stagiros was doing everything he could, but when the wind he called up had to fight something not far from a gale, the Gamemeno lost a lot of the speed she’d shown up till then.

We might have been the only ship on the Tiberian Sea trying to make headway against the world’s wind. Some fishing boats sat more or less in one place, their anchors out to hold them there. Others scudded south, using the wind instead of working against it. If they wanted to go north again, they could either tack into the teeth of the gale-which was even slower than what we were doing-or wait till the weather got better.

Tasos didn’t seem altogether displeased. “No one can chase us down,” he said. “The Lokrian Navy has no ship that could chase us down.” The Lokrian Navy certainly had none in those waters. But saying that the Lokrian Navy couldn’t do this or that was like saying a mouse couldn’t have built the wonderful buildings on Lakedaimon’s Fortress Hill. It was true, but so what?

And Tasos, who had such a fine weatherworker, was spoiled by having him. He’d forgotten there were other ways to win a race than by speed alone. He’d forgotten cheating, as a matter of fact, which is an odd thing to have to say about a smuggler. But then, I could say a lot of odd things about Tasos, most of them much less complimentary than that.

I was up at the Gamemeno’s bow, looking ahead toward what would be my kingdom. Oh, I couldn’t see Shqiperi yet, but the Lokrian coastline I could see wouldn’t be a whole lot different. It would have Lokrians and not Shqipetari living on it, but I couldn’t see that from however far out to sea we were.

The winds howled and swirled. I stood right where Stagiros’ wizardly wind faded and the world’s wind grew strong. They fought each other there, now one having the advantage, now the other, now a small twister forming as neither would give way. I hung on to the rail.

A southbound fishing boat darted past us, the four or five men in her staring at us as if amazed we could move in the opposite direction. One of the fishermen pointed back to the north and shouted something. The world’s wind blew his words away. It might almost have been jealous of Stagiros and his skill.

When I looked north, I saw another vessel speeding along with the world’s wind. This one was bigger than a fishing boat, though a little smaller than the Gamemeno. She seemed to be coming right down on us, swelling alarmingly as she closed.

Tasos shouted at her through cupped hands. He shouted at her through a megaphone. He could have shouted at her with Eliphalet’s great voice. The world’s wind would have flung his words back in his face all the same. The world’s wind didn’t like us that day.

He shouted again, this time to his sailors. The rudder and the sails took the Gamemeno out of the oncoming ship’s path. An instant later, that other ship swerved so we were back in her path again. I thought her skipper must have been a clumsy, bungling oaf.

Even I can be naive.

Tasos, who always infested these waters, should have known better. We should have turned away from the other vessel long since. With the world’s wind and Stagiros’ working together, we could have run away from anything. But we didn’t.

And then, when she was almost within crossbow range of us, that other ship ran up the white flag with the black hand. I don’t know how long pirates have been flying that flag. If the black hand would grab them all by the throat and choke them, I’d be a lot happier, and so would every honest sailor in the world. I do know that.

Tasos let out a bleat like a sheep that just found out where mutton comes from. He shouted to his sailors one more time. We couldn’t just turn around and run away. That takes time and room, and we had neither. All we could do was twist aside. If once we could get the pirate ship downwind of us, we’d be safe. Her weatherworker wouldn’t be able to beat back against the world’s wind the way Stagiros could. But she had the weather gage on us, and she wasn’t about to let go on us.

We zigged. She zigged with us. We zagged. So did she. Her captain made his not too poor but not too honest living outguessing other skippers. Tasos was a pretty good sailor, at least as long as he had Stagiros with him. Nobody, though, would ever have accused him of being long on brains-and there were good and cogent reasons why nobody would have accused him of it, too.

He did have the sense to send crossbowmen forward and to serve out a variety of lethal hardware to the rest of the sailors. My sword was belowdecks, so for my very own I got an iron rod about three feet long. Not an elegant weapon, but one good for a few fractures here and there. Max was already armed and presumed dangerous.

“Don’t swallow anybody else’s sword, mind you,” I told him.

He made as if to bow. “Let me write that down.” Eliphalet pickle me if he didn’t pull out a little notebook and do it, too.

Crossbow quarrels started to fly. The pirates opened up on us before they should have. The first few shafts fell in the sea. Then they thunked into our planking. Then one of them thunked into a man. He made the most appalling noises. People aren’t made to be pierced by sharp steel points traveling much too fast. It happens all the time, but it really shouldn’t. Something should be done.

I’d seen fighting with the Hassocki army. I knew what battle was like even then. Since those days, of course, we’ve seen the War of the Kingdoms, which made what I’d seen-and the Nekemte Wars, too-seem like playground games by comparison. Maybe that was enough to teach us all a lesson. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t. I wouldn’t bet anything I could afford to lose.

We started shooting back. Since we couldn’t run away, we bloody well had to fight. Pirates are not nice people. If they took us, they wouldn’t invite us aboard for tea. The chivalrous rogues of romance are murderous bastards for real. I cheered like a madman when one of them took a quarrel right between his beady eyes.

Much too soon, they lay right alongside us. Grappling hooks flew out and bit into our rail and our deck, locking the two ships in an unwelcome embrace. Our sailors cut a couple of ropes, but they got shot doing it, too. More hooks stuck fast. Pirates began leaping from their ship to ours. Gangplanks thrust out across the narrow strip of sea between us. More pirates crossed on them. I even wished the Klephts were still on board. The pirates had the same motley assortment of ironmongery as we did, but there were more of them and they looked meaner.

They reckoned without Stagiros.

There, by Eliphalet’s windy homilies, was a weatherworker in a million! He turned the gale that had been in the Gamemeno’s sails on the pirates. Sails are made to withstand such a storm. Pirates aren’t. Some of them went to their knees. Some of them got blown over the side. Since the Gamemeno and the pirate ship were smashing together and then pulling apart, in the drink between them was not a good place to be. I heard shrieks, a couple of them abruptly cut off as the ships came together again. I was too busy to waste much pity on the poor uninnocents.

The weatherworker’s gale affected his shipmates not a bit. He even remembered to include Max and me in that protection. I brought my iron bar down smartly on the head of a pirate who’d been blown to the deck. He groaned and let go of the cutlass he was carrying. Since he didn’t seem to need it any more, I picked it up myself. With it in my right hand and the bar in my left doing duty for a shield, I was a fairly formidable fellow.

Someone’s head rolled along the pitching deck. I wasn’t sorry to see it didn’t belong to anyone I knew. Whoever he was, he was making a mess on the timbers. I would have complained, but I didn’t think he was in a mood to listen.

Max examined his blade, which was red all the way to the hilt. “I really will have to clean this before I swallow it again,” he said, and then went back to the fight.

That didn’t last much longer. The pirates abruptly lost their enthusiasm for it. Instead of pushing forward, all of a sudden they were scrambling to get back aboard their own ship. They pulled the gangplanks away from the Gamemeno. They might have feared we would follow them. They cut the lines that bound their ship to ours. In fact, they cut them while a couple of their friends were still on our ship. Those friends didn’t stay there long, at least not in any state to complain about the accommodations we offered.

The pirate ship put on a full spread of canvas and sped off to the south before the world’s wind. Their weatherworker added whatever he could to it. They wanted to get away from us as fast as they could. We held in our grief at the parting.

Two or three of the pirates on our deck were still writhing and moaning. We put an end to that nonsense in short order. After a few whacks with an iron bar, no one moans any more. We threw the bodies into the sea. There were nine of them, not counting the ones who’d gone overboard. We’d lost two of our own, plus another three wounded.

Tasos scraped my face with his unshaven chin as he kissed me on both cheeks, a pleasantry I could have done without. “Thou art a lion!” he cried in Hassocki. “Thou art an eagle! Thou art a very dragon of bravery and might! My withers are wrung with sorrow that I might have lived my days without the boon of seeing thy valor on display!”

Then he pulled Max down to somewhere close to his level and delivered another set of kisses. He gave Max a set of endearments not the same as mine but cut from the same bolt of fabric.

As Max turned away, he spoke in Schlepsigian: “Well, that was fun.” I don’t know whether he meant the fight or Tasos’ congratulations. Either way, I thought I might have scented a whiff of irony in the air along with the iron stink of blood and the latrine reek of bowels loosed in death.

I went back to the poop deck. Whether Tasos knew it or not, Stagiros was the one who really deserved all the praise he could get. “I thought we were dead men,” I said. “And we would have been, too, if not for you.”

He shrugged. I got the idea praise made him nervous, which only proved him no ordinary Lokrian. “I did what I could,” he said. “I am no swordsman or archer. I used the only weapon I know.”

“You saved all of us,” I said, and I think that’s true. “Whatever Captain Tasos is paying you, it isn’t enough.” Would I have talked like that to somebody I was paying? I have my doubts, but it wasn’t my money.

And quite a bit of it evidently was the weatherworker’s. With a smile, he said, “I could buy and sell you.” From most Lokrians, that would have been bragging. The way he made it sound, he was sorry it was true, but it was anyhow. He was something special, all right.

“Yes, well, look what you’d have once you did.” I noticed I still had the pirate’s cutlass in my right fist. I had to do some serious talking to that hand before it would let go. “Want a souvenir?” I asked.

“Thank you, but no.” Stagiros tossed his head, the way Lokrians will. I wouldn’t have been surprised had he shaken it the way most people would. He was the most cosmopolitan Lokrian I ever met. Yes, a smuggler’s weatherworker. And he eyed me the way a natural philosopher will eye a nondescript beetle. “Why on earth are you going to Shqiperi? Why would anyone in his right mind go to Shqiperi?”

I struck a pose. The cutlass came in handy after all. “To become King of the Land of the Eagle,” I said grandly.

“The Shqipetari will kill you.” He could have been taking lessons from Max, except he didn’t sound quite doleful enough.

“I’ll have fun till they do,” I declared.

He looked at me. He looked through me. He might have been the sensible, staid man of Schlepsig, I the wild, excitable Lokrian. “Madness,” he murmured.

I bowed. “But a great madness,” I said.

We put in at Vravron the next day. Vravron is the Lokrian port nearest the border to Shqiperi. It has other things wrong with it, too. It isn’t one of Tasos’ regular stops. He went into the harbor for a couple of reasons-to pick up sailors to replace the men he’d lost and because Max and I asked him to.

If it hadn’t been the day after the fight with the pirates, I’m sure this strange fit of gratitude would have worn off. Tasos was not a man much afflicted by such sentiments. But he folded both of us into a sweaty embrace and said, “My valiant ones, I can deny you nothing!” To prove he could deny us nothing, he swigged from a flask of anise-flavored spirits and handed it to me.

I would like to know which foundry copper-plated Tasos’ gullet and stomach. I’d give them my business any time-they do good work. My own innards, being mere flesh and blood, commenced to smolder when I poured that poison down them. “Delicious,” I wheezed, amazed I hadn’t incinerated my vocal cords. I passed Max the flask.

He’d lit a cigar. That alarmed me; I feared he’d turn into a human blowtorch. But he survived and gave the flask back to Tasos. Later I found out he’d held his tongue against the mouth of the flask and hadn’t drunk at all. I wish I would have thought of that. It would have saved my plumbing some serious abuse.

When we came into Vravron harbor, customs men started buzzing around the Gamemeno like flies around a five days’ dead rabbit. Like the flies, they scented a feast. None of them ever came aboard, though, and I never saw Tasos hand out even a hemidemilepta. His hand may have been quicker than my eye, of course.

My eye saw Shqipetari-my subjects, though they knew it not. Most of the longshoremen at Vravron harbor, and all of the sweepers and trash haulers, were men who’d come down from the north after more work, and better, than they could find in their mountains. More work they got. Better? Not likely!

In Schlepsig, quite a few miners and quarrymen and busboys and barbers and the like are Lokrians. They do work few Schlepsigians care to do, and they do it for less money than most Schlepsigians would take. They’re convenient, even if hotheads do rant about dirty foreigners.

In this corner of Lokris, the Shqipetari were doing work few Lokrians cared to do, and I had no doubt they were doing it for less money than most Lokrians would take. They were…convenient. I don’t speak Lokrian, but the looks and the tone of voice the locals gave them said they thought the Shqipetari were a bunch of dirty foreigners.

They stood out. Eliphalet knows that’s so. They were tall men, most of them, long and lean-half a head taller than the Lokrians, more or less. Some had faces like falcons, narrow and fierce. Others looked more like horses. They let their mustaches droop down past the corners of their mouths, which made them look like brigands, even if, by some chance, they weren’t.

They wore white headwraps-not quite turbans because their hair stuck out in the middle, an odd effect. I found out later that they shaved part or all of the scalp that didn’t show, which made them look even odder without the wraps. Their shirts had all started out white, too. Over them they wore short fringed cloaks. Tight black breeches embroidered in red and rawhide sandals completed the outfits.

Well, almost. Shqipetari wouldn’t be Shqipetari without weapons. On their home grounds, they festooned themselves with swords-curved and straight-and crossbows and boar spears and pikes and morningstars and whatever other charming tools their imagination and their smiths could come up with. They tricked themselves out with silver chains, too, those who could afford them, so they jingled when they walked. To my mind, that made them seem less bloodthirsty, but they didn’t seem to care.

Lokrian law frowned on flaunting murder quite so openly. In Vravron, they were limited to one knife apiece. Some-most-of those knives could have done duty for ancient Aenean shortswords. Their hilts and scabbards were chaised (chased?) with silver. If a Shqipetar was somebody, he wanted you to know it.

They eyed Max and me as we got off the Gamemeno. I could flatter myself and say it was my good looks, but more likely it was Max’s inches. They were big men, yes, but not many overtopped me and none came close to Max.

“You should have worn your sword,” I told him, even if wearing it would have been illegal. “Then they would think you were one of them.”

“Just what I always wanted,” he said.

Finding out where Vravron’s crystallography office was proved a trial. None of the Lokrians we ran into admitted to speaking any language but his own, which did us no good. When the Shqipetari talked among themselves, it sounded as if they were trying to choke to death. No country that calls itself something like Shqiperi can be all good.

But I discovered that some of the men from the mountains knew Hassocki, while others spoke bits and pieces of Vlachian. Since Vlachians border them where Lokrians don’t, that wasn’t too surprising. Thanks to my stints in the Hassocki army, I had Hassocki and bits and pieces of Vlachian myself. We managed. I spread around a few coins, too, to encourage memories. That also helped, and they didn’t have to be very big coins. Shqipetari come to Lokris because they’re hungry.

As in Thasos, the Consolidated Crystal office in Vravron was an island of efficiency in a sea of, well, Lokrianity. Max and I got in line to send our message, and the line moved. The clerks weren’t sitting around drinking little cups of strong, syrupy-sweet coffee or smoking cigars or gabbing about women or the rowing races or whatever they do for fun in Vravron (they must do something there, I suppose). They didn’t act all high and mighty, either. If CC gets complaints about its clerks, it gets new clerks, and in a hurry, too. The people who work in those offices know it. It keeps them on their toes.

The clerk we got spoke decent Schlepsigian but better Narbonese, so we used that. I filled out forms and paid the fee, and he took me back to a crystallographer. The sorcerer-like the one in Thasos, he wore a homburg-spoke Schlepsigian at least as well as I do, though his olive skin, broad forehead, large, dark, liquid eyes, and narrow, delicate chin said he was a Lokrian. “To whom are you sending your message?” he asked.

“To Essad Pasha, in Peshkepiia, in Shqiperi,” I answered.

His eyebrows were a raven’s wings. They fluttered in surprise. “Essad Pasha serves a kingdom at war with this one,” he said. He couldn’t have been listening to the crystallographer in Thasos. I know that. We danced around the same barn even so. He warned that Lokrian wizards would examine the message. I promised it held no hostile intent. This time, unlike in Thasos, I knew the steps to the dance; I wasn’t making them up as I went along. When the mage was satisfied, he poised a pen over a pad and asked, “And the message is?”

“You speak Hassocki?” I asked in that tongue.

“Certainly, sir,” he replied, also in Hassocki. I’m good with languages, but he was better. You have to be sharp to work for Consolidated Crystal, even in a place like Vravron. Still in Hassocki, he went on, “Please go ahead.”

“Here is the message, then,” I said. “‘Arriving soon at Fushe-Kuqe. Looking forward. Halim Eddin.’”

Those raven’s wings fluttered again. “Well, well,” he murmured. I hoped he wouldn’t gossip. CC discourages that, and not many people have the nerve to do anything CC discourages. I dared hope, anyhow. I also dared hope that by keeping my message simple I wouldn’t make any errors to draw suspicion my way.

He had to use a spell to find the eight-digit number that uniquely identified Essad Pasha’s crystal-being a prominent official, the Hassocki commandant in Shqiperi had a personal crystallographer attached to him. The man in Vravron murmured the charm and the number to connect his crystal to that one.

Light flared inside the crystal on the CC man’s desk. I got a glimpse of Essad Pasha’s crystallographer in the depths of the sphere: a plump Hassocki in a fez. With only one client, he didn’t need to dress to impress.

“It is accomplished,” my crystallographer said.

“I thank you very much,” I told him. “You don’t know what you’ve done for Shqiperi.”

“To Shqiperi,” Max said. I glared at him, but the crystallographer seemed to like his version better than mine.