Every Inch a King Read online

  Once I came home for good, I needed a while before I started performing again. That isn’t just, or even mainly, because I got wounded twice while I wore the pike-gray. Part of it’s because, like a lot of soldiers coming home from the war, I was too gloomy and disappointed to care about anything. We’d done so much, we’d suffered so much, and what did we have to show for it? Nothing. Nothing at all. I needed a while to get over that who gives a damn? feeling.

  And part of it’s simply because I’d got out of practice. You don’t practice for a day or two and you notice you’re off when you go back to it. You don’t practice for a month or two and the audience notices you’re off. At the front, I didn’t practice for much longer than a month or two. If a lot of your performance involves going up there on a tightrope, the audience is like to notice because you fall off and go splat. Not good.

  Little by little, I eased myself into it again. I wasn’t the only veteran coming back to the Circus of Dr. Ola, and I wasn’t the only one who had trouble picking up where he’d left off.

  The circus wasn’t the same, either. The circuit was smaller, and so was the pay. After the war, they didn’t want to watch performing Schlepsigians in Narbonensis or Torino or Albion or Gdansk (yes, Gdansk has risen from the dead-till the next time her neighbors pound a stake into her heart). So we played in Schlepsig and the Eastmarch, with an occasional foray into Yagmaria (whose new king is an old admiral from the Dual Monarchy, which would make more sense if Yagmaria had a coastline).

  I knew I wasn’t going on any more grand adventures. After you’ve been king, how can you top that? I found myself doing more behind the scenes than I ever had, too: arranging for coaches and wagons, booking halls and hostels, seeing that things ran smoothly for the circus. I still get out in front of the crowds every so often, but that’s mostly when the circus plays near Putzig, the little town where Kдthe and I settled down with the children.

  You see? I ended up normal, which for me is an even bigger surprise than ending up king. I’m a good citizen. I’m a breadwinner. I’m the father of a family. Sometimes, when the bookings are more complicated than usual, I hurry down the street to the CC office carrying my papers in a briefcase. A briefcase! Me! Normal as you please, no more hijinks for me.

  Well, hardly any.

  Because I don’t tour much any more, I was at home when someone knocked on the front door one mild summer morning. I think I muttered a little as I got up from my desk. A hostel in the Eastmarch had just written to say they couldn’t take us after all, and I had to scramble to find the troupe some other place to stay next week. I didn’t fancy getting interrupted just then. If it was a peddler, I aimed to send him away with a flea in his ear.

  The man at the door wasn’t a peddler. He wasn’t a neighbor, come to borrow a hammer or scrounge a cigar. I’d never met him before, but he looked familiar. And well he might have.

  He was wearing my face.

  Close enough, anyhow. After a nervous moment when we sized each other up, I managed a bow and spoke in Hassocki: “Won’t you please come in, your Highness?”

  Prince Halim Eddin courteously returned the bow. “Thank you very much-your Majesty,” he said in excellent Schlepsigian. His voice wasn’t really much like mine; it was a bit higher and a lot more musical. I can’t carry a tune in a sack, but you could tell just by listening to him talk that he’d be able to sing.

  I got him settled on the sofa. I brought him coffee: the thinner brew we make in Schlepsig, but it was what I had. I fixed myself a cup, too. I also brought out a bottle of Narbonese brandy and set it on the table in front of him. “For improving the coffee, if you care to,” I said. He did. I did, too. I needed it. He didn’t bother flicking away the ritual drop; he just drank. “It’s a great privilege to make your acquaintance at last, sir,” I told him.

  He raised an eyebrow. He didn’t pluck them any more. “I was going to say the same thing to you,” he answered. “Now that I see you, I see how you brought it off. The resemblance is remarkable, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” I agreed. We looked all the more like each other because he had on a homburg and a sack suit I might have worn myself, even if the suit was cut more conservatively than I favor. I took a big swig of that improved coffee and said, “I daresay I’ve owed you an apology for a good many years. For whatever it’s worth to you now, you have it.”

  “I don’t want it. I don’t need it.” He was still studying me. “North and south, east and west, how did you have the nerve? Do you know what Essad Pasha would have done to you if he’d realized you weren’t me? Have you got any idea?”

  “I tried not to think about that,” I said.

  “I believe it.” Halim Eddin poured more brandy into his coffeecup. He took another sip, then eyed me again. “Why?”

  “Because it was the grandest role I’d ever have the chance to play,” I said. “I was a king. I really was a king. For five days, I was. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you…”

  “Oh, yes,” he said softly. “Oh, yes. You must remember, you had five more days as king than I ever did. You had five more days as king than I ever would have, even if the dynasty survived. My dear uncle told me he would take a month killing me if I tried to go to Shqiperi. He thought I would rise against him if I did. He thought everyone would rise against him.” He let out a harsh chuckle. “And in the end, he was right. Everyone did-not that he hadn’t earned it.”

  I’d never thought my going to Shqiperi might endanger the real Halim Eddin. Truth to tell, I hadn’t cared. “What did he do when he heard you-I mean I-was there after all?”

  “He came to my home. He had to see me with his own eyes-he had to hit me with his own fist-before he would believe I wasn’t in Peshkepiia,” Halim Eddin said. “It was…an unpleasant afternoon.”

  I didn’t think I wanted to ask him any more about that. Instead, I said, “What do you do these days?”

  “I teach Hassocki. I buy and sell. I do well enough. I’m not rich, but I’m not poor, either,” he replied. “I live by your customs here. I have one wife, three children. What of you?”

  “One wife and three children also,” I said. “I’m slowly easing out of performing. After I played your part, none of the others seemed to matter so much. I help keep the circus running smoothly, and I do some gardening out back of the house-I grow herbs and flowers.” I shrugged. “It’s a hobby.”

  “We twist the arm of coincidence again,” Halim Eddin said, “for I am a gardener, too.”

  “Would you like to see what I’m up to, then?” I asked.

  “Nothing would please me more,” he said. As we walked out to my plot, he found a question of his own: “And how did you like your harem?”

  “It was a lot of fun for a little while,” I answered. “But do you know what? One woman is plenty, as long as she’s the right one.”

  I more than halfway thought he would laugh at me, but he only said, “I have found the same thing. The right one is worth any number of wrong ones.” I opened the back door for him. He stepped out, then paused to look at what I was doing. His nod of approval was worth gold to me. “Ah, this is fine. This is fine indeed.”

  “I’m so glad it pleases you,” I told him. Inside a border of roses, some red, some yellow, I grew neat rows of sweet basil and rocket and anise. I was particularly proud of the last, which is not easy to raise in Schlepsig because of the cold winters. Rocks with hollows underneath-placed north and south, east and west-sheltered grass snakes and smooth snakes; every so often, I would find a cast skin. Those crushed blue pills Zogu used…I do manage without them. Yes I do.

  Halim Eddin nodded again. “Very much. Had you started it when you were younger, it would have been wilder, I think, and I might have liked it that way myself then. Now I prefer things neater and tidier, too,” he said candidly. “As we go through our lives, we all must cultivate our gardens as best we can.”

  “Yes,” I said, and we stood there together in the warm sunshine.

&nbs
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