Every Inch a King Read online

  “May it be so,” I answered. At last, at last, I was coming into my own!

  IX

  Yes, I was coming into my own. And, once I had come into it, I found it was my own…dump. Oh, the site is pleasant enough. Peshkepiia sits at the foot of the Dajti Mountains, near the edge of the most fertile plain in Shqiperi. It sits there, yes, rather like something your horse might leave behind.

  Peshkepiia may boast ten thousand souls. Then again, it may not: an inauspicious beginning for a town aspiring to be the capital of the free and independent kingdom. To make up for its small size, it is very ugly. Most of the houses are one-story boxes of mud brick. The shops are built of mud brick and sticks and stones and whatever else the proprietor found to throw together and hope it would stand. The goods they sell are every bit as fine as the shops themselves.

  The main street-Shqyri Berxholi, it’s called-is cobbled, quite badly. When I rode into town with Max and Essad Pasha and my retinue, we splashed through puddles nearly deep enough to drown our horses. A dead cat floated in one of them. Without a word, it said as much to me as that snooty beast back at Essad Pasha’s shooting box. And what it said was, What the demon are you doing here?

  Peshkepiia does boast one four-domed fane to the Quadrate God that is said to be rather fine. I suppose it is. Still, to anyone used to the sky-leaping grandeur of temples dedicated to the Two Prophets, any fane belonging to the Quadrate God will seem…well, squashed. I shouldn’t complain about this one, though, not when I was crowned in it.

  But, as the writers of cliffhanger stories are fond of saying, I anticipate.

  When I rode in, Peshkepiia gave me a typical Shqipetari greeting. It yawned. Of course, what it saw was a troop of Hassocki horsemen riding in-only that and nothing more. Hassocki horsemen Peshkepiia was used to. A large fort with thick walls of dun mud brick stood across the square from the Quadrate God’s fane. Hassocki sentries paced along the top of the wall.

  I’ve seen sentries pace where pacing is just routine. I’ve been a sentry on that kind of duty. You might as well be asleep. Even though you walk their beat, anybody could sneak past you. Not these fellows. They were on their toes. They knew that for half a counterfeit copper some Shqipetar would knock them over the head and steal everything they owned, right down to their bootlaces.

  If Essad Pasha thought he was going to stow me in that fortress till he plopped a crown on my head, he would have to do some fresh thinking. I’d spent more time in Hassocki fortresses than I ever wanted to. Amazing what a hungry man will do to keep eating, isn’t it?

  But I was spared that quarrel, anyhow. He took me to the Metropolis, purportedly a hostel. In any town in Schlepsig, the Municipal Board of Health would close the place at once. In Thasos or Lakedaimon, it would be a dreadful dump. In Peshkepiia, it’s the fanciest place in town. For all I know, it might be the only place in town.

  “You will want to make the acquaintance of the diplomatic community, eh, your Highness?” Essad Pasha said.

  I was surprised he thought I would want to do any such thing. I was even more surprised to learn there was a diplomatic community in Peshkepiia. Service in Shqiperi has to be the diplomatic world’s equivalent of performing in Dooger and Cark’s Traveling Emporium of Marvels. Since I’d been doing exactly that, I decided these so-called diplomats deserved me. After I met them, I wondered what I’d done to deserve them. But, again, I anticipate.

  At the time, all I said was, “I’d be happy to, your Excellency.” As happy as a blizzard is black-you can use that proverb several ways.

  Max looked back over his shoulder. “By-the four directions”-a hasty save; he must have barely swallowed something like, By Eliphalet’s beard-“we’ve been followed.”

  I looked back over my shoulder, too, with a certain amount of apprehension. There have been times in my life when hearing a sentence like that would send me diving headlong out the nearest window. There have been times when hearing a sentence like that did send me diving out a window-and a good thing, too. I needed a moment to realize nobody in Shqiperi knew me well enough to follow me for reasons like that. It had to be something much less important.

  It was the pack of scribes from Fushe-Kuqe, which proved me right.

  Bob the Albionese called out, “How does it feel, now that the crown of Shqiperi is about to descend on your head?” I’d never heard anyone this side of Max make a coronation sound so much like an execution. Bob called out the question in Albionese, forgetting I was pretending not to speak that language.

  Fortunately, I didn’t forget I was pretending. “What does he say?” I asked in Schlepsigian. “Maybe I will be able to understand him better once he gets his hair on straight.”

  The other journalistic jackals smiled. Some of them snickered. A man with an ill-fitting toupee should not ride hard. Beneath that disarrayed mop of improbably black hair gleamed a wide expanse of improbably pink scalp. Bob himself was blissfully unaware he’d come undone, which only made it sweeter. I had the feeling Bob was blissfully unaware of quite a few things.

  Someone translated his foolish question into Schlepsigian, which I admitted to speaking-I spoke it like a native, in fact. It didn’t sound any less foolish than it had before. “It feels good,” I told him. “I wouldn’t have come to Shqiperi if I didn’t want to go through with this coronation ceremony.”

  That should have been obvious. But nothing is obvious to scribes. If things were obvious to them, they would have chosen a different line of work.

  When my reply was rendered into Albionese, Bob asked (still in that language), “What will you do after you are coronated?”

  Yes, he said that, in his own allegedly native tongue. It was, I suppose, logical, as scribes reckon logic. What happens at a coronation ceremony? Why, someone is coronated, of course. Someone is, I should say, if you don’t bother to think before you open your mouth.

  However much I felt like crowning Bob-Albionese can be a noble tongue when spoken well-I couldn’t even react till somebody turned his foolishness into Schlepsigian. The translation actually made sense. Any time a translation improves things, you have a pretty good notion how bad the original is.

  “What will I do? The best I can,” I answered; I wasn’t quite so foolish as Bob, but I did seem to be making an effort.

  “What will your policy be toward Vlachia and Belagora?” another scribe asked.

  I looked out at the swarm of them. “Why are you asking me the same questions you asked me in Fushe-Kuqe?”

  “Because you’re in Peshkepiia now,” they chorused. The frightening thing was, they meant it.

  “Well, I hope to be in the bathtub soon,” I said. “I probably won’t change my mind between now and then, but I promise you’ll be the first to know if I do.”

  Essad Pasha smiled; he enjoyed irony, especially when the sharp iron in it wasn’t piercing him. Max coughed, which could have meant anything. And the scribes, both Prophets pray for them, wrote it down.

  “To the bathtub,” I told Essad Pasha.

  “If the place has one,” Max said.

  There was a cheery thought. “We’ll find out,” I said.

  We found out. The Metropolis didn’t have a bathtub. The Metropolis, for that matter, didn’t even have a lobby. When we walked inside, we walked into the dining room-and into what seemed like a street fight. Waiters were screaming at one another in Shqipetari. When people start screaming in Shqipetari, you always have the feeling knives will come out any minute. Most of the time, you’re right.

  A fat man with an enormous mustache was screaming at a customer in Narbonese. The customer was screaming back in Schlepsigian. That by itself might have been enough to make knives come out. Narbonensis keeps trying to strangle Schlepsig’s legitimate political and territorial aspirations. Any good Schlepsigian patriot will tell you the same. Ignore Narbonese fanatics’ lies.

  A little farther back, behind a low counter that could double as a breastwork, the cooks were screaming, too. They already h
ad knives out. They also had serving forks big enough to skewer Max, red-hot frying pans full of sizzling oil, and, if all else failed, burning brands from their cookfires. I rather hoped they would start throwing those around. Burning down the Metropolis would have been the best thing that could happen to it.

  For some little while, everyone was so busy shrieking at everyone else, nobody bothered to notice us. I began to feel affronted-when would we get our fair share of abuse? Well, we didn’t have long to wait. The fat man must have got tired of screaming in Narbonese, for he came over to us and started screaming at me in Hassocki: “Who art thou, who pollutest the peace with thy presence?”

  “I am thy king, thou roasted ox with a pudding in thy belly!” I roared into his startled face. “Down on thy knees, wretch, and see if thou hast the strength to rise again thereafter.”

  He did go down on his knees, and got up brushing at his breeches. Among the other amenities the Metropolis lacked was any flooring fancier than rammed earth. When he arose, he was a different man: one who might possibly know something about keeping a hostel. “Oh, yeah-heard you were coming,” he said, his voice casual if still much too loud. “I’m Hoxha. I run this joint.”

  Somebody yelled at his broad back in Torinan. He answered hotly in the same tongue. By all appearances, a hosteler in Peshkepiia must be able to revile anyone in any language at any time. In that respect, at least, Hoxha seemed perfectly suited to his job.

  “Could I trouble you to take me to my room, please, and to get me some hot water for washing?” I asked. I didn’t bother inquiring if the Metropolis boasted running water. The smell of sewage in Peshkepiia told me the only running water in town lived in the belly of a running man.

  Hoxha went right on yelling abuse in Torinan. I might have disappeared. Something told me politeness won few friends in Shqiperi.

  Very well, then: the direct approach. I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him back toward me. “Thou poxed and scrofulous knave!” I screamed at him from a distance of perhaps two inches. “Thou unlicked whelp of a rabid jackal bitch! A room! Hot water! Or thy head answers for it!”

  “All right already,” he said, as if I’d asked him the way I had the first time. Then he yelled, “Enver!” Enver looked like Hoxha back in the days when Hoxha was half as old and half as wide. Hoxha crackled out something in Shqipetari. Since I don’t speak Shqipetari, I can’t prove it was inflammatory, but I wouldn’t have wanted anybody saying anything that sounded like that to me.

  Enver took it in stride. He’d surely heard worse. “You come with me please, your Highness,” he said in passable Hassocki.

  Before I could, the Schlepsigian gentleman who’d been shouting at Hoxha came over to me. So did another man, a dapper, clean-shaven fellow with a hairline black mustache: surely a Narbonese. They eyed each other with perfect mutual loathing. The Narbonese spoke first; Narbonese, in my experience, generally speak first. In nasally accented Hassocki, he said, “Your Highness, I am Sous-vicomte Jean-Jacques-Pierre-Roland.” He had more names and titles than ruffles on his shirt, which is saying something. “I have the distinct honor and high privilege to be the Kingdom of Narbonensis’ commissioner in Shqiperi. I look forward with great eagerness to your coronation.”

  Of course he did. There would be a feast afterwards, to which he would be invited. And he would be able to write a report that said something besides, Sat here today gathering dust again. Please let me come home! Whatever I did, I promise not to do it again-or if I do, I promise not to get caught.

  I gave him my second-best bow. “Honored to meet you, your Excellency.” I extended my hand. He took it. A corpse has a limper handclasp, but not much.

  When Jean-Jacques-Pierre-Roland started to say something more (as Narbonese will, and will, and will), the Schlepsigian who’d been waiting there with exemplary patience got leave to speak with an expedient elbow to the pit of the sous-vicomte’s stomach. Clicking his heels, he said, “Hail victory! I am told you speak Schlepsigian, your Highness,” in his own language, which also happened to be mine.

  I nodded. “I do,” I said.

  “Good. Then we will continue to use it,” he declared, with the decisiveness typical of our countrymen. “I am Untergraf Horst-Gustav of Wolfram, the mighty King of Schlepsig’s representative to this…place. I present myself.” He bowed stiffly from the waist and clicked his heels again.

  “Honored, Your Excellency,” I said. With Schlepsigian exuberance, Horst-Gustav tried to crush my hand.

  “You will please note, Your Highness, that the Schlepsigian son of a sow is too ignorant to speak Hassocki,” Jean-Pierre-Jacques-Roland said. “You will also notice that the mighty King of Schlepsig did not think it worthwhile to send a man here who understood either Hassocki or Shqipetari.” To show he spoke the latter, he said something to Hoxha. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone saying anything that sounded like that to me. By the gesture the gracious hosteler used, he didn’t want anyone saying it to him, either.

  Untergraf Horst-Gustav’s scarred face reddened as the Narbonese and I conversed in a language he couldn’t follow-the sous-vicomte was right about that. “We must make alliance, Schlepsig and Shqiperi,” he burst out in Schlepsigian. “Each of our kingdoms will gain room to live and will take its natural place in the sun.”

  “When a Schlepsigian says he will take his natural place in the sun, he means he will take yours, too, and then blame you for mislaying it.” Jean-Jacques-Pierre-Roland wasn’t shy about slandering my birth-kingdom.

  Horst-Gustav looked more and more worried that all this talk in what he thought was my native tongue would seduce me. Had it really been my native tongue, he might even have been right. “Narbonensis is Vlachia’s patron!” he burst out. “The Vlachs in Vlachia and Belagora oppress Shqipetari every chance they get. You can never trust Narbonensis-never!”

  Jean-Jacques-Pierre-Roland yawned. “This man does not speak. He merely breaks wind with his mouth.”

  The King of Schlepsig’s representative really didn’t know any Hassocki, or he would have broken the Narbonese commissioner in half. “I should like to rest and to bathe,” I said. “Matters of state can wait until I wear the crown. Enver, please take me to my room.” Hoxha’s probable son seemed not to hear me. “Enver!” I shrieked, and that got his notice.

  Another man came into the dining room at the same time as Max and I were leaving. He had slicked-back hair, a mustache waxed into spikes, and a shirtfront covered with enough medals to make a pretty fair set of scalemail. As soon as I saw that blinding refulgence, I knew he had to come from the Dual Monarchy. They pin a medal for steadfastness on you if you get out of bed on time three days running, a medal for valor on you if you swat a fly, and a medal for heroism on you if you cut yourself shaving.

  What with all the brasswork and glass paste and ribbons on the fellow’s chest, I almost didn’t notice that he had the coldest gray eyes I’ve ever seen. He looked at me as if he’d just found me on the sole of his patent leather boot: yes, a man of the Dual Monarchy, sure as sure.

  “Take no notice of Count Rappaport, your Highness,” Essad Pasha said. “You may rest assured no one else does.”

  But that wasn’t quite true. When Count Rappaport shouted at Hoxha, he, like Jean-Jacques-Pierre-Roland, shouted at him in Shqipetari. And the hosteler, though he shouted back, didn’t scream back, which, I thought, betokened a certain unusual respect.

  “Your room, your Highness,” Enver said after we’d walked down the hall a bit.

  It had a door with enough bars and locks and bolts to keep out a horde of invading Kalmuks. Of course, there were no Kalmuks for several hundred miles; they’ve finally been bundled back onto the steppes of Tver, and a good thing, too, says I. Whether the door would keep out your average, ordinary, everyday burglar was liable to be a different question.

  Enver had enough keys on his belt to make a pretty fair pianoforte. He used six or eight of them, and had another in his hand when the door swung open, seemingly of its
own accord. He sidestepped smartly so it didn’t clout him in the head, and turned the sidestep into a gesture of invitation. Enver would go far, probably with the gendarmerie in hot pursuit.

  Before stepping in, I held out my hand. He set those six or eight keys in my hand. When Max coughed and dropped his own large hand to the hilt of his sword, Enver added the key he’d been about to use. That struck me as a good idea. You never could tell.

  Oh, yes. The room. Well, it had that door, a window with stout iron bars across it, four walls, and a ceiling. It also had the same rammed-earth floor as the dining room, though a profusion of brightly patterned Hassocki rugs and cushions covered most of it. Hoxha no doubt saved on furniture that way. Since I was playing a Hassocki-style prince, however, I could scarcely object to Hassocki-style quarters.

  The only non-Hassocki article in plain sight was the homely thunder-mug in one corner. That, like most such from Caledonia to Vyzance and beyond, was of Albionese manufacture. One family has made what must be a sizable fortune from our earthiest needs, and tied its name to them forever. Or haven’t you used a Chambers pot any time lately?

  “I hope all is well.” Enver turned to go.

  “Hot water and towels,” I said. When he took a step away from me without replying, I seized an arm to prevent his escape and bellowed in his ear: “Hot water and towels!” I was learning.

  “Just as you say, your Highness,” he promised, and I let him go. He took it in good part. That is simply how people do business in Peshkepiia. Imagine the most charming characteristics of Lokrians and Torinans blended together. Now make everyone carry knives-and swords, and crossbows-and revel in using them.

  Now multiply by a dozen or two. You commence to have the beginning of a start of an inkling of a notion of what Shqiperi is like. My very own kingdom!

  “I shall leave you to your own devices here for the time being, your Highness,” Essad Pasha said. “Towards evening, I shall escort you to the fortress for a reception, and the coronation ceremony should be tomorrow.”