We eventually settled on a price that, I’m sure, made both of us want to scream: the proof of a hard-fought bargain. Then we started haggling all over again, over how much Zogu should get before he cast his spell and how much should wait till word of its effectiveness came back to Peshkepiia. Not surprisingly, he wanted to get it all in advance. Just as not surprisingly, I didn’t want to give it to him that way.
Reaching an agreement there that dissatisfied us both also took its own sweet time. Nothing in the Nekemte Peninsula happens as fast as a civilized person, or even a Narbonese, wishes it would. You haggle. You have coffee. You have spirits. You have little cakes, or possibly fried mutton on skewers. You smoke a pipe. In Schlepsig, by Eliphalet’s purse, a price is a price. You pay it or your don’t, and you go on either way. Hereabouts, a price is negotiable. Hereabouts, everything is negotiable (except a blood feud-a blood feud is serious business). And the dickering is as important as the price you finally settle on.
To a Schlepsigian or any other sensible person, this all seems utterly mad. I had to remind myself again and again that I was not a Schlepsigian. I was Prince Halim Eddin, and I was used to haggling for the fun of it. If I hadn’t done those tours in the Hassockian Army, and if I hadn’t spent more time than I ever wanted in the Nekemte Peninsula with outfits like Dooger and Cark’s, and if I weren’t a damned fine actor (Max to the contrary notwithstanding), I never could have brought it off.
Seeing the royal treasury again as I got the money to give Zogu his first installment helped cheer me up. Taking the money out of it didn’t. But there was still plenty left. I consoled myself with that. Zogu, no doubt, consoled himself with what I gave him.
Not an earth-shaking day, perhaps-of which there are too many in literal truth in those parts-but a right royal one even so.
And a right royal night as well. Once again, Max contrived to leave his room seemingly locked from the inside and to find himself a waiting place in the royal bedchamber. I ordered another half-dozen girls brought from the harem, and hoped Zogu’s spell wouldn’t, ah, let me down.
When Rexhep brought the girls, they were bubbly and giggly and eager, from which I concluded that Lutzi and Maja and Bjeshka and Varri and Zalli and Shkoza (you see?-I remember them all) had given me a good report. The eunuch looked as if he loathed me more than ever, from which I concluded the same thing. Poor fellow! I had a hard time blaming him.
After a few high-pitched grumbles, he went on his none too merry way. I closed the door behind Shinasi and Urani and Xharmi and Flisni and Kalla and Molle (yes, I remember them, too) and barred it. “And now, my sweets, the night is ours,” I said.
They were polite. I was the king, after all. Still, their newly unveiled faces fell. I think it was Xharmi who got up the nerve to ask, “But, your Majesty, where is the Thunderbolt we heard so much about?”
Lutzi and Maja and-well, you know the rest by now-hadn’t given just me a good report, then. Oh, well. I don’t suppose I should have expected anything different. You will recall that Thunderbolt, in Hassocki, is Yildirim.
I went to the closet and opened the door. “Will you join us, Captain?” I said sweetly. “Your presence-among other things-has been requested.”
Join us Max did. As he had been the night before, he was dressed, or undressed, for the occasion. The girls exclaimed in admiration or apprehension or possibly both at once. Max looked as smug as a man with a vinegar phiz can.
Well, I won’t bore you with the details. (And if the details of such things don’t bore you, I’m sure you can invent your own. They’ll probably be even juicier than what went on while the two of us and the six of them…But I wasn’t going to bore you with that, was I?) Suffice to say that if Zogu’s sorcery against the Belagorans worked half so well, the dragons would devour every man wearing that uniform by the morning after he launched that spell. And speaking of devouring-but no, that’s one of those details, I’m afraid.
By the time-a very pleasantly long time-Max and I couldn’t hold up our end of the bargain any more, everyone in that bedchamber was happy enough, or maybe a little more than happy enough.
“I was afraid they were fooling us,” said Molle-I think it was Molle, anyway. “But no. They meant it.” By the way she sighed, she was glad to be mollified, too.
Maybe even kings who follow the Two Prophets should be allowed harems. It might give them something to do besides starting wars. But then, considering how many the Hassockian Atabegs have started, and considering that I’d just started one myself, it might not, too. What a shame.
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 mig
ht 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?”
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