Every Inch a King Read online

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen…” Ludovic speaks more languages than I do, and speaks most of them better than I do. “…Now the amazing, the astounding, the magnificent Grand Duke Maximilian of Witte!”

  That was Max. I happen to know his father was a brewer. From an early age, Max showed himself much more enthusiastic about drinking ale than about making it-which is, no doubt, part of the reason he was making a poor but not too honest living with Dooger and Cark’s.

  Out he came, to more silence than I would have liked. Most places, his tall, thin, shambling frame stuffed into a general’s uniform with twenty pounds of epaulets and medals and cloth-of-gold threadwork and crisscrossing scarlet sashes (also gold-trimmed) and the gaudiest scabbard in the world is good for a belly laugh all by itself. I knew right away what was wrong. In Lokris and the Hassockian Empire, generals really do wear outfits like that. The locals couldn’t see the joke.

  Max’s face is one of those long, skinny ones that look sad even when the fellow who’s wearing it is happy and go downhill from there. He looked out to the audience, to the Lokrians on one side, to the Hassocki on the other. The more he looked, the more lugubrious he got. If not for his other talent, he would have made quite a clown.

  He made an extravagant gesture of farewell-so extravagant, he almost fell over. Then he made as if to cut his throat, but stopped halfway with another gesture, one that said that wasn’t good enough. And then, throwing his head back, he swallowed the sword instead.

  I’ve seen a lot of sword-swallowers, but Max of Witte is the best I know, or know of. Being so long and lean, he’s got a lot of space between his mouth and vital points south, so he can swallow more blade than anybody I’ve ever seen. He outdid himself this time, too. He was just about ready to swallow the hilt; that’s what it looked like, anyhow. Then he coughed.

  That cursed cough is one of the reasons Max performs for Dooger and Cark’s and not a circus really worthy of his talents. And those talents really are formidable. By then, people in both sets of stands were staring and pointing and shouting-and clapping like maniacs, too.

  What’s the other reason? Well, I don’t exactly know. Max tells it different ways on different days, depending on whether he’s drunk or sober or on which way the wind is blowing. Most of the time, it involves the wife of a prominent promoter. Sometimes, it’s his mistress. Sometimes, it’s his daughter. Once, it had something to do with the promoter’s dog-but Max was very drunk then.

  He coughed again. He’d joked about cutting his throat from the inside out. With that much steel still inside him, it wasn’t a joke any more. He drew out the blade-probably a lot faster than he’d had in mind at first-and brandished it like a professional duelist. He bowed almost double as the crowd went wild.

  Then, for good measure, Ilona came out again. She was carrying a long, thin loaf of bread. Max bowed to her, even more deeply than he had to the crowd. He kissed her hand, and kissed his way up her arm. The farther he got, the louder the audience squealed. No, you don’t do those things in public, not in Thasos you don’t.

  At last, when the squeals were turning to screams, Ilona clouted him over the head with the loaf of bread, using it like a clown’s brickbat. That seemed to make poor Max remember what he was supposed to be doing. He bowed to her again. She held out the loaf at arm’s length.

  And Max sliced it. Flash! Flash! Flash! went the sword. Slice after neat slice, every slice of bread flew off the loaf, till the blade paused about an inch from Ilona’s hand. More cheers from the crowd-loud ones. There are always your half-smart marks who go, “Oh, but that blade hasn’t got an edge on it anyway.” Oh, but that blade bloody well had.

  They cheered him then. He’d earned it, and he got it. He bowed himself almost double again, and had to make a wild grab to keep his hat from falling off. His hat? I haven’t said anything about his hat? Well, what would you say about something so garish, it made the rest of his outfit look normal by comparison? It didn’t glow in the dark, but I’m switched if I know why not. His ears stuck out from under it, too.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment and amazement, the king of acrobats!” Ludovic bawled. “Ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only, the magnificent…Otto of Schlepsig!”

  I was on. I bounded out there into the center of the ring and bowed every which way at once. I got polite applause. I hadn’t expected anything more-I hadn’t done anything yet, after all. But even that little spatter of handclapping gave me what the drunk gets from his brandy and the opium smoker from his pipe. I was out there. I was in front of people. They saw me. They liked me. I was alive.

  I waved again. I bowed again. I ran up to one of the two big poles that supported the tent canopy and hurried up the rope ladder attached to it-big tents are rigged as elaborately as men-of-war. About two-thirds of the way up, there’s a tiny platform. A tightrope stretches from it to the one just like it on the far tent pole.

  As soon as I stepped out onto the rope, I heard the gasps. Some came from women’s throat’s, some from men’s. I teetered, deliberately, just to hear them again and make them louder. “He’s going to fall!” somebody exclaimed in Hassocki.

  “Yeah!” Several voices said that. They sounded eager-hungry, even. There are always people who want to see the sword-swallower cut his throat, who want to see the acrobat fall down and smash himself to strawberry jam, who want to see the demon get loose, who want to see the lion maul the tamer. It happens everywhere you go. You can’t do a thing about it-and if you could, and you did what you wanted to do, wouldn’t you be just like them? Better not even to think about that.

  And better not to think about falling down, too. If it’s in your mind, it’s liable to be in your muscles, too. Actually, though, a tightrope is more forgiving than a slack one. And I wasn’t trying anything new. Only the same old things I’d done ten thousand times in practice. Don’t think. Just do.

  Anyone who’s known me for a while will tell you I’m pretty good at not thinking. Ask either of my ex-wives, for instance. Trudi and Jane don’t agree on much, but they wouldn’t argue with that.

  So. Leap, right foot forward. Leap, left foot forward. Handstand rolling into a somersault, coming down on my feet. The rope was good and tight. I’d made sure of that beforehand. You don’t trust the roustabouts when it’s your own personal, private, irreplaceable neck. Not more than once, you don’t, assuming you live through the once.

  Out to the middle of the tightrope. Bounce up and down once or twice. Listen to them ooh and ahh down below. Listen to them scream when you spring out into nothing but empty air. Then listen to them ooh and ahh again, three times as loud, when you catch the glass trapeze rod. I live for that.

  From down below, they can’t see the trapeze at all. Magic kills the reflections. Magic also strengthens it-having it snap from my weight could be downright embarrassing. The first time I hit it in any show always worries me. The wizards Dooger and Cark use have the same sorts of troubles as everybody else in the troupe. One of them drinks. One of them built a bridge that didn’t stand up. One of them-well, never mind about him. I don’t let him have anything to do with the trapeze rod, that’s all, and you can take it to the bank.

  Once I was on the first trapeze, swinging and twirling from it to the next to the next was easy, in the sense that anything is easy if you’ve practiced it long enough. If I do say so myself-and I do-I showed the locals some moves they wouldn’t have seen anywhere else this side of a forest ape.

  My last flip was from the last trapeze to the tightrope. I caught the rope, used my momentum to swing up into another handstand, and went from that back to the upright. Some people would have cut more capers on the rope then. Me, I figured enough was enough. I went across to the far pole, took one bow on the little platform up there, and then came back down to the ground. The hand I got as I descended and when I finished my bows in the center of the ring said I’d gauged it right.

  “That was the magnificent Otto of Schlepsig!
” Ludovic boomed. I took one more bow. Who wouldn’t feel magnificent with applause washing over him like sweet, pure rain? The ringmaster went on, “And now, Ibrahim the Wise conjures spirits from the vasty deep!”

  Ibrahim the Wise is the twit I won’t let near my trapeze rod. He’s a fat little Torinan. His real name is Giuseppe; backstage, we mostly call him Joe. He dresses in robes that look vaguely Hassockian, to go with his alias. He does look wise, or at least impressive, when he wears them, which proves clothes really do make the man.

  If only he’d stick to the handful of things he knows how to do, he’d be fine. But he’s one of those mages who never saw a new spell they didn’t like. He half learns them, and trots them out before he’s got them under control. One of these days, he’ll summon up a water elemental and drown us all. Did I tell you he smokes hashish? That doesn’t do anything to make him think he’s less powerful, believe you me it doesn’t.

  Today, though, everything went all right. I recognized his spell right away. He’s called up that golden-winged monkey-griffin fairly often-often enough to get the hang of it, anyway. The green smoke that flared when the demon appeared was new, but it wasn’t a bad effect. And the monkey-griffin put on a show, rearing up on its hind legs till it was twice as tall as a man and roaring like a lost soul.

  Its tongue was long and green, too-so long that it almost stole the hat from a fat Lokrian in the first row who looked like an olive-oil merchant. The fat man let out a yelp even louder than the monkey-griffin’s roars. His fellow Lokrians were sympathetic. The Hassocki in the other set of stands laughed at him.

  To close things out, of course, Ibrahim the allegedly Wise had to de-manifest his demon. He did it, to my relief, and even threw in another cloud of smoke, this time red. He bowed. People cheered.

  I got a better hand, though. You’d better believe it.

  Afterwards, we did what people do afterwards: we unwound. And while we unwound, we kept a wary eye on Dooger and Cark as they counted the take. If they said we didn’t bring in much, they’d be setting us up to cheat us. Like I said, it wasn’t anything they hadn’t done before.

  We were all a little more nervous than usual this time. If we squawked, they were liable to sack the noisy ones and leave us stuck in Thasos. With the Nekemte Wars still sputtering behind us, with soldiers and brigands and pirates prowling the routes back to civilization, this wasn’t really a place where we wanted to get stuck.

  And the real pisser is, Dooger and Cark are rich. They don’t worry about where their next copper’s coming from. Screwing the people who work for them is like a game, as far as they’re concerned. Or maybe they’ve been doing it so long, they can’t not do it.

  There are always signs. When they start muttering and sighing and shaking their heads, when they look like a coal wagon just ran over poor old Aunt Griselda, that’s the time to start worrying for real.

  When they didn’t start doing any of that stuff, we all breathed easier. When Cark actually smiled, we broke out the arrack and the slivovitz and the schnapps and the genever and the cognac and the water of life. Joe-excuse me, Ibrahim the Wise-got a pipe going and probably doesn’t remember any of the next three days.

  Dooger? Dooger didn’t smile. But that didn’t bother us, because Dooger never smiles. Never. I don’t want him to, either. I’m not ready for the world to end.

  I washed off most of my makeup. I left a little on, so people would know I’m a performer. That always impresses local girls, or some of them, anyhow. A bottle of arrack came by. I took a swig and passed it on.

  “Pretty good show,” somebody said. Eliphalet’s holy whiskers! That was Max. He’s usually as cheerful as the Hassockian Atabeg’s strangler. He must have been pleased-either that or he’d sucked in some smoke from Joe’s pipe.

  Trying to make the moment stretch, I said, “You did a nice job playing up the gloom when the people didn’t laugh at your getup.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” Max looked surprised. He also looked ridiculous. He still had on his Grand High Supreme Exalted Marshal’s tunic, and under it his skinny, hairy legs stuck out from drafty drawers that needed mending. “Most of the marks, they’re too dumb to laugh at funny. Give ’em something pathetic and they’ll laugh themselves sick.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” I said, and told him my thought about the ghouls in the crowd.

  Max gravely considered it. Max considers everything gravely. At last, he gave me a nod. “Well, I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong,” he said. “Some of those people, after I swallow the sword, they want to see it come out my-” A bottle of slivovitz interrupted him. After a show, a bottle of slivovitz will interrupt almost anybody. He gulped and sent it my way.

  After he gulped, he coughed. This time, I didn’t fret about him. For one thing, he didn’t have a foot and a half of honed steel down his throat. For another, a good slug of slivovitz will make anybody cough.

  Ilona let out a screech like a cat with its tail in a pencil sharpener. A moment later, I heard running feet. One of the locals must have been peeking into the wagon while she changed. Her window scraped open. What sounded like a bottle shattered on the ground-or possibly on the local’s head. The window slammed shut. Ilona said something in Yagmar that had to mean, That’ll teach him!

  Ludovic brought in a copy of the Thasos Chronicle, the journal for foreigners in town. It’s written in Narbonese, not because more foreigners in Thasos know Narbonese but because Narbonensis used to have closer ties to the Hassockian Empire than any of the other great powers did. Now that Thasos belongs to Lokris (unless Plovdiv takes it away), who knows how long the arrangement-or the journal-will last?

  “Any news about the show?” three people asked at the same time. A natural question-and a dumb one. I don’t care how fast the law of similarity lets you turn out copies. A scribe wouldn’t have had time to write his piece, get back to the office or send it by crystal ball, and get it to the wizards. Not only that, the news-sellers wouldn’t have had time to get it on the street. Magic is one thing. Miracles are something else altogether.

  The ringmaster shook his beefy head. “I was looking for war news, for when we leave town. It’s still sputtering to the north and west. The Hassocki aren’t giving up there.” He paused and turned to an inside page. “And it says Essad Pasha and the Shqipetari have asked the Hassockian Empire to send them Prince Halim Eddin to be their new king.” He paused again. “There’s a picture of the prince, copied by crystal from the original portrait in Vyzance.” He held out the journal so we could all see.

  It was my face.

  II

  Oh, the resemblance wasn’t exact. Halim Eddin waxed his mustachios into points, where I let mine stay bushy. He plucked his eyebrows, the way Hassocki nobles do. I’d never let tweezers get near mine in my life. My hairline receded a little more than his. When I went up for a closer look, I saw that his eyes were bright blue, where mine are gray.

  But we were about the same age. We both had brown hair. We both had long faces with strong chins and formidable noses. We both had high, proud cheekbones and wide mouths. We certainly could have been brothers. We might well have been twins. They say every man has his double. I never expected to meet mine staring at me off a journal page with a pound and a half of Hassocki medals on his chest.

  Everybody in Dooger and Cark’s Traveling Emporium of Marvels hurried up to gape at the picture-and at me. Now I know how the freaks and demons in the sideshow feel. Everybody started talking at once, using several different languages. Ilona-by then she’d come out of her wagon-looked at me sidelong and said, “There were things you weren’t telling me, darling.”

  “There were things I wasn’t telling me, darling,” I answered.

  Max bowed deeply. He looks like a carpenter’s rule with big ears when he does that. “What is your command, your Highness?” he asked, sounding more like an undertaker than a courtier.

  “Why don’t you go soak your head?” I told him.

  He bowed again.
“With pleasure, your Highness.” He grabbed another bottle-it was genever this time, I think-and got a long start on soaking, anyway.

  All the rest of the night, the troupe called me your Highness and your Majesty. They wouldn’t let it alone, even after the joke got stale. For a while, it annoyed me and made me angry. Then I started to accept it as nothing less than my due. That put some new life in the joke-except by that time I wasn’t joking any more.

  No, I’m not ashamed to admit it. That was how the idea caught fire in me: there at a drunken party for third-rate circus performers in a second-rate town that had just changed hands between a senile empire and a kingdom that wanted to revive an empire not just senile but centuries dead. Strokes of genius are where you find them.

  I’ve acted on the stage, as I say. I’ve won applause in cities far grander than Thasos ever dreamt of being. Why I wasn’t still doing that then…is a long story, and not altogether my fault. You can ask anyone who was there when things went sour. You’ll hear the same thing-or perhaps you won’t. Some people are nothing but natural-born liars.

  But never mind that now. A role onstage is one thing. A role on the stage of the world, on the stage of history-that’s something else again. The role of a lifetime! Liable not to be a very long lifetime if something went wrong, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. If only I could bring it off, I’d drink out on it for the rest of my days.

  If. I couldn’t do anything about it that evening. I couldn’t do anything about anything, not as drunk as I got. An acrobat with a hangover is the most pitiful thing the Two Prophets ever saw, the only problem being that no one will pity him. Try doing flips and spinning through the air high above the ground when your head wants to fall off. Try not losing your lunch on the audience-it will get you talked about if you do. Try…Never mind. Try drawing your own unpleasant pictures.