Every Inch a King Read online

  It had better be tomorrow, I thought. But the best way to hatch anxiety in others is to show you feel it yourself. Ask a lion-tamer if you don’t believe me, not that you’re likely to be able to ask a lion-tamer who let his beasts know he was nervous. I inclined my head to Essad Pasha: regally, I hoped. “Until evening, then, your Excellency,” I said.

  Essad bowed and took his leave. A moment later, two elderly attendants came into the room. One carried an enormous cotton Hassocki towel-large enough for an ancient Aenean to have wrapped himself in it for a mantle. The other bore a tiny basin of water ever so slightly warmer than its surroundings.

  “More water. Hotter water,” I told him in Hassocki. He looked blank. I tried Schlepsigian. Nothing. I didn’t want to admit to speaking any other tongues, and the attendant probably wouldn’t, either. So I turned to Max and said, “Captain Yildirim?”

  By Eliphalet’s holy toenails, the sweet wheep! of Max’s sword leaving its scabbard was a sound I was coming to know and trust, a sound that promised all in the world would soon be made right. The world is sometimes a peculiar place, I grant. Had Max not been the putative aide-de-camp to a putative sovereign and crowned head, that wheep! would have been the sound of a man about to be arrested for assault with intent to maim. But things are as they are, not as they might be, so I smiled when the sword sprang free. I felt confident good things were about to happen, and they did.

  “Thou!” Max snarled at the water-bearer. “Thou shalt fetch us more of thy stock in trade, and quickly, lest we use it to seethe thy worthless bones for stew!” He rounded on the other gray-mustached lout, the one with the towel. “Thy partner in sloth shall be hostage against thy speedy return.”

  “’Twill do you no good, for he likes me not,” the towel-bearer said, apparently despairing of his life.

  “Thou speakest our tongue!” I exclaimed. The towel-bearer bit his lip in shame and mortification; this was something he should never have admitted, yet fear of death unmans the best of us. I went on, “Put our words into Shqipetari, then. Tell thine accomplice and partner in crime what we require of him.”

  He spoke in Shqipetari. The water-bearer replied volubly, and with considerable warmth. Giving a guest in the hostel what he actually wanted and required must have violated some basic Shqipetari commandment. Sometimes, though, there is no help for a situation. With a sigh that spoke volumes about the abomination he was committing, the water-bearer withdrew, to return only a little more slowly than he should have with only a little less water than we needed, water only a little less hot than it might have been.

  Having done so, he hung about with an expectant look on his face. “How now?” I inquired, hoping against hope that…

  But no. “My tip?” he said in perfectly intelligible Hassocki.

  “Oh, of course,” I told him, and turned to Max. “Captain Yildirim, if you would be so kind…?”

  The water-bearer left in some haste after that, so he didn’t get the tip of Max’s sword after all. Too bad. Not even a king, I discovered, can have everything he wants all the time: in the confusion, the towel-bearer also made good his escape.

  “Well,” I said, “let’s wash.” And we did.

  Evening approached. Someone knocked on the door. When I opened it, Essad Pasha stood in the hallway, his uniform almost gaudy enough to have come from the Dual Monarchy. “Your Highness.” He gave me a most proper bow.

  “Your Excellency.” I returned it, not quite so deeply.

  “I hear from the good Hoxha that you have shown yourself to be every bit as, ah, masterful here as you, ah, did in Fushe-Kuqe,” he said.

  “The good Hoxha?” I raised an eyebrow. “The only man by that name I know is the villain who runs this hostel.”

  Essad Pasha wheezed laughter. “North and south, east and west, you will find worse,” he said, which was probably true. “Will you accompany me to the reception in your honor?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” I replied. The last reception in my honor I remembered was arranged by the father of a nicely curved little blond girl I’d been seeing. That one involved a horsewhip, among other tokens of his esteem. I hoped this occasion would prove more, ah, festive.

  When we first left the Metropolis, I must confess I wondered. In Peshkepiia, evening is the time when the flies go in and the mosquitoes come out. Now, I have met a good many mosquitoes in a good many miserable places. Shqipetari mosquitoes, however, are in a class by themselves. I think some of their grandmothers must have cavorted with the dragons of the mountain peaks. If they didn’t breathe fire when they bit, it wasn’t from lack of effort.

  Max must have been thinking the same thing I was-rather an alarming notion most of the time-for he said, “I wish I had a teeny-tiny crossbow.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he slapped at the back of his neck.

  I did some slapping of my own, then wiped the palm of my hand on my trouser leg. “It wouldn’t help,” I said mournfully. “They can bite faster than you can reload.” The buzzes and whines all around us were nearly as frightening as those from near misses by crossbow bolts.

  Essad Pasha stolidly stumped along ahead of us. The mosquitoes didn’t seem to bother him at all. At the time, I put this down to professional courtesy. Now I wonder if the odor of camphor that wafted from him might not have had something to do with it.

  Most Shqipetari were off the streets and out of the square. Whatever their flaws, they had sense enough to stay behind netting after it got dark. As for me, I’d set out from the hostel a prince, but I wondered if I’d get to the fortress as anything more than a perambulating lump of raw, bloody meat.

  Torches blazed by the entrance. Hassocki sentries came to stiff attention as we approached. “Your Excellency!” they called to Essad Pasha. “Your Highness!” they called to me. They didn’t call anything to Max, but their staring eyes took his measure-and quite a lot of it there was to take, too. As befit a prince’s aide-de-camp, he looked through them rather than at them.

  They smelled of camphor, too. That might explain how they could stand out there without being reduced to boots and uniforms by the time the morning came. Something had to. Otherwise Essad Pasha would have used up an uncommon number of sentries, enough for the duty to have become even less popular than it usually is.

  “This way, your Highness,” Essad Pasha said, pointing toward the only brightly lit building inside the fortress. I think-I hope-I would have figured out all by myself that that was where the reception would take place, but Essad Pasha counted on no man’s intelligence but his own.

  We passed through seven veils on our way into the reception hall. Some mosquitoes passed through them with us, but not too many. Inside, people could mostly talk without leaping into the air with a curse or rubbing their ears as if those had begun to ring. Mostly.

  “I have the high honor and distinct privilege,” Essad Pasha said in a booming voice, “of presenting his Highness, Prince Halim Eddin of the Hassockian Empire, soon to become his Majesty, King Halim Eddin of Shqiperi. Long may he reign!”

  I took a bow. I don’t know how else to describe it. Everyone applauded-well, almost everyone. Count Rappaport sent me another of his cold gray stares. The Dual Monarchy does like to dress its functionaries in comic-opera uniforms. They often have comic-opera manners, too, bowing and smirking till you’re tempted to think they couldn’t possibly conceal a working brain anywhere about their person. This is a mistake, as the other Powers have often found to their sorrow.

  With so many people cheering me, though, I could afford to ignore the iron-faced count-or so I thought, anyhow. Afford it or not, ignore him I did. And so did Essad Pasha, who waved for the small band in one corner of the room to strike up a sprightly tune.

  Over the years, I’ve grown used to Hassocki music. To those accustomed to the styles of Schlepsig and Torino-or even to those of Narbonensis and Albion-Hassocki music sounds like what happens when you throw two cats, a chicken with a head cold, and a small, yappy dog into a sa
ck, tumble the sack down a flight of stairs, and then set it on fire. As a matter of fact, it sounds that way to me, too. But I’ve learned to distinguish the notes each tormented animal-er, musician-makes, if not always to appreciate them.

  This, however, was Hassocki music as played by Shqipetari-I suppose in honor of my impending coronation. Far more than Count Rappaport’s menacing gaze, it made me wonder just how big a mistake I’d made in coming here. I had never heard sounds like that before; nor, except once when a crowded coach overturned on an icy road, have I since.

  One of the song butchers thumped irregularly on a drum. One sawed and scraped at a fiddle. One plucked away on what might have been a lute if it hadn’t had too many strings and too long a neck-it looked like a lute the way a camel looks like a horse, in other words. And if the mustachioed villain cradling it in his lap had been plucking a camel instead, more melodious noises might have emerged from it.

  A small chorus accompanied the alleged instrumentalists. The men’s voices were too high. The women’s voices, on the other hand, were too low. No two of them seemed to my untrained and startled ear to be perpetrating the same tune at the same time. Each one was trying to out-shout all the others, too.

  Essad Pasha beamed. “Is it not marvelous?” he said.

  “That’s one word,” I more or less agreed. “I will remember it forever.” And so I have, most often in the small hours of the morning. Usually, though, the nightmare doesn’t come back when I fall asleep again.

  A man in a wolfskin jacket suddenly appeared beside Essad Pasha. The newcomer’s face might have been a wolf ’s, too, with its hungry mouth, sharp muzzle, golden eyes, and rough-trimmed gray hair. Beaming no more, Essad Pasha said, “Your Highness, here is the Grand Boyar Vuk Nedic, Vlachia’s representative in Peshkepiia.”

  “Your Excellency.” I bowed.

  “Your Highness.” So did he, all the while eyeing me as a wolf might eye a juicy joint of beef in a butcher’s window. But it wasn’t me he was hungry for, it was my kingdom. In throatily accented Schlepsigian, he went on, “Fushe-Kuqe should be Vlachian. Vlachia should have-Vlachia must have-a port on the Tiberian Sea.”

  I bowed. “I have two things to say to that. The first one is, the Powers have agreed that there is to be a Kingdom of Shqiperi, with Fushe-Kuqe as its port, and I am going to be King of Shqiperi. Of all of it, to be plain.”

  Vuk Nedic had teeth almost as sharp as a wolf ’s, too. He bared them now, as if to prove it. A small strain of lycanthropy? Not unknown among Vlachs-no, indeed. I wondered how charming he would be when the moon came full.

  “That agreement was not just-Is not just,” he growled. No Vlach will ever be persuaded that anything giving him less than his wildest desires is just. And since Vlachs’ desires are often wild indeed…They are a people whose charm is perhaps best appreciated at some distance.

  I bowed again. “The second thing I have to say is, I suggest you take that up with Count Rappaport over there.”

  Vuk Nedic’s eyes blazed so you could have lit a cigar at them. One of the reasons the agreement made sure Vlachia came away without a seaport was that the Dual Monarchy insisted on it. Since the Dual Monarchy has Vlachia on its southern border, it doesn’t enjoy the luxury of appreciating Vlachs at a distance. As a matter of fact, the Dual Monarchy doesn’t appreciate Vlachs at all. It’s mutual.

  It would have made an interesting confrontation: the fop in the gaudy uniform and the hemidemisemiwerewolf. But Vuk Nedic was the one who had no stomach for it. Vlachia could huff and puff till it blew the Nekemte Peninsula down, but it would never be more than a third-rate kingdom. The Dual Monarchy was a Power: a Power that had seen better centuries, true, but a Power nevertheless. If reminded of that forcibly enough, it could make Vlachia very, very unhappy.

  And Vuk Nedic knew it. He stomped away. Stomping isn’t easy on a rammed-earth floor, but he managed. He poured a tumbler full of brandy and knocked it back at a gulp. Vlachs follow the Two Prophets (even if they are benighted Zibeonites), so he didn’t have to not drink even a single drop.

  “Nicely handled, your Highness,” Essad Pasha murmured.

  “That bugger’ll scrag you if he gets even half a chance, your Highness,” Max murmured.

  “Thank you,” I murmured to both of them. Why not? As far as I could see, they were both right.

  I got some brandy of my own, and some fried meat. I had just begun to eat and drink when Essad Pasha introduced me to a certain Barisha, the royal commissioner from Belagora. Belagora has its own king, but it’s another kingdom full of Vlachs. Barisha fit the part, even if his outfit didn’t. If you can imagine a werewolf in a getup that probably made Count Rappaport jealous, you have him to perfection.

  He was every bit as friendly as Vuk Nedic, too. “The borderline in the north of Shqiperi is mistaken,” he said without preamble. “That is really southern Belagora.”

  “I intend to stick to the agreement as it is down on paper,” I said.

  “The agreement may be down on paper,” he replied, “but Belagoran soldiers are on the ground. They will stay there, and they will take Tremist and the rest of the ground we claim.”

  “Not if I have anything to do with it,” I told him.

  “If you go looking for trouble in the north, I promise you will find it,” Barisha said. “And I promise it will find you.”

  I switched from Schlepsigian to Hassocki: “Thou art as false as water. May thy pernicious soul rot half a grain a day!”

  He understood me. I’d thought he would. Nearly everyone in the Nekemte Peninsula knows enough Hassocki to curse with. “As thine uncle was beaten, so shalt thou be, thou pus-filled carbuncle on the arse of mankind.”

  I bowed. “Please to give my kindest compliments to thy father, should thy mother chance to know which of her customers he was.”

  After the exchange of compliments, we parted company. “You have shown him you are not to be trifled with,” Essad Pasha said. “He will remember it, as I do.” He sent Max a furtive glance.

  My aide-de-camp had a different prediction: “He’ll give you one in the ballocks, the second he figures he can.”

  “Not if I give him one first,” I replied. This sentiment met Essad Pasha’s approval.

  I met Sir Owsley Owlswick of Albion, who couldn’t possibly have been as clever as he looked (and wasn’t); Baron Corvo of Torino, who couldn’t possibly have been as effeminate as he seemed (and, again, wasn’t: his numerous bastards prove it); and Count Potemkin of vast and frozen Tver, who couldn’t possibly have got that drunk that fast every night (but, from everything I saw, did).

  And I formally met Count Rappaport. His Schlepsigian had a whipped-cream-in-your-coffee, strudel-on-the-side juiciness that went with his uniform but not with his eyes. He looked me up and down, not once but twice. “By the Prophets,” he said, “I don’t believe you’re Halim Eddin at all.”

  X

  Have you ever stood too close to a lightning strike, so that your heart forgets to beat for a moment and every hair on your head-and in more intimate places than that-stands out at full length? If you have, you will know some small part of what I felt just then.

  Whatever I felt, I showed none of it. I was born in a carnival wagon, and I’ve been exhibiting myself to make my living ever since I got big enough not to piddle on the stage. If Max coughed a couple of times, then he coughed, that was all. Count Rappaport didn’t know what it meant, even if I did.

  “Go tell it to the scribes,” I told him. “They always need something new to write about, and I don’t think any of them has come up with that yet.” By Eliphalet’s curly whiskers, I hoped not!

  “Scribes are donkeys,” Count Rappaport said, in three words proving himself a man of uncommon common sense. He raked me with those eyes again, chill and sharp as the edge of an iceberg. “What you are, on the other hand…”

  “‘What you are, on the other hand, your Highness,’” I prompted.

  I do believe Rappaport’s waxed and spik
y mustaches gave his sneer a certain superciliosity it wouldn’t have had without them. Be that as it may, I’ve seldom seen one that could approach, let alone match, it. “If you were Halim Eddin-” he began.

  “North and south, east and west, he is none other,” Essad Pasha broke in before the man from the Dual Monarchy could go further-and before I had to say a word. “On this, your Excellency, I will take my oath.”

  Count Rappaport’s arctic stare swung his way. “Why?”

  “By his looks, first of all. I have met his Highness before, as he doubtless will recall…” Essad Pasha raised an eyebrow in my direction. I inclined my head, as royally as I could. He went on, “Further, did my memory falter, he is the spit and image of the portrait of the veritable Halim Eddin. Or will you doubt that, too, your Excellency?”

  “A tolerable resemblance-but only tolerable, in my view,” Rappaport replied. “And to my ear, he speaks Schlepsigian like a native and speaks Hassocki like a native-Schlepsigian.”

  “Thou art a fool, an empty purse,” I said in my very best and sweetest Hassocki. “Not a catapult made could knock out thy brains, for thou assuredly hast none.”

  “The liar paints the honest man with his own brush, which is his chiefest shield against the truth.” The count seemed to dislike speaking to me at all, and was plainly glad to turn back to Essad Pasha. “You said his looks were your first reason for accepting this man at the value of his face. A first reason implies a second, which is…?”

  Before answering, Essad Pasha fortified himself with a glass of spirits. After disposing of the one drop he was not allowed to drink, he gulped the rest. It was a good-sized glass. He went red-not altogether from drink, as it proved. In a low, furious, embarrassed voice, he said, “He mastered me, your Excellency. Do you hear? Do you understand? He mastered me. He came to me in Fushe-Kuqe, set his will against mine, and prevailed. I obey him. I can do nothing else, sir, for he is a veritable Hassocki prince, and soon to be a king. North and south, east and west, did I reckon him some low Schlepsigian mountebank, I should have fed him to a dragon. Instead, I watched him slay one with as fine a feat of archery as ever I have been privileged to see.”