An hour later than it should have, the coach rattled north. Even though a small woman sat across from him, Max didn’t have much legroom. I didn’t, either. I don’t think anyone else on the coach did. But Max had it worse than the rest of us.
We were all glad to stretch our legs when we got to the next town. This one boasted a Consolidated Crystal office across from the depot. I stretched my legs by walking over there. The crystallographers inside wore turbans. I smiled, seeing myself back in a civilized kingdom.
I sent my message to several leading Schlepsigian journals. The exiled King of Shqiperi returns to his homeland, it said. I hoped that would pique some interest. Scribes had helped bring my reign to a premature end, but I couldn’t make my bid for fame without them now. It was like sitting down to supper with a dragon: you know you may be the next course, but if you’re hungry enough you have to take the chance.
When I got back to the depot, one of the clerks recognized that my accent was foreign, not just northern. “Your passport, please, sir,” he said. Seeing that Max was traveling with me, the clerk asked for his, too. He looked up from them a moment later, his face a dark cloud. “I am afraid you two gentlemen do not have proper Torinan entry stamps. This is a matter of some importance, since flouting our regulations can lead to a fine or imprisonment or both, at the judge’s discretion.”
“I am devastated!” I cried, and clapped a hand to my heart-Torinans love melodrama. “What can we do?”
After a bit of dickering, we did it. From that time forward, our passports did boast proper Torinan entry stamps. Well, they boasted proper-looking Torinan entry stamps, anyhow. A forensic wizard might have expressed a different opinion, but how likely was it that a forensic wizard would examine the proper-looking passports of a couple of obviously respectable, obviously innocent travelers?
Not very. I hoped.
When we got up into the north of Torino, I sent the journals in Schlepsig another message, this one letting them know where and when I was likely to come up into Schlepsig. I hadn’t wanted to do that before, since travel in Torino is tardy and inefficient enough to come right out of the Nekemte Peninsula, and things in the Dual Monarchy aren’t always better.
The turbaned crystallographer who sent my message said, “So you’re the fellow who pretended to be the Hassocki prince, are you?”
“That’s me.” I strutted a little, even sitting down. “So you’ve heard of me, eh?” Maybe the scribes in Shqiperi were good for something after all. And sure enough, the crystallographer nodded. I showed off a little more. Then I asked, “What do you think of me? What does the world think of me?”
“You must have been out of your mind to try it, and you’re lucky you got away with your neck,” he answered without the least hesitation.
One good thing, anyhow: Max wasn’t along to hear him say it.
Our passports passed muster when we passed from Torino to the Dual Monarchy. The customs official at the border checkpoint added more stamps. “Why were you in Torino?” he asked. Like most officials in the Dual Monarchy, he was of Schlepsigian blood. Like some other Schlepsigian officials I’ve known, he liked to throw his weight around just because he could.
“I’d just escaped from Shqiperi,” I answered.
“And what were you doing in Shqiperi?” he asked, as if I’d just confessed to some horrible depravity. In his eyes, no doubt I had.
“I was being King of Shqiperi,” I said, not without pride.
And his whole attitude changed. He pounded me on the back. He clasped my hand. He gave me a knock of cherry brandy from a flask on his belt. He gave Max a knock, too, when he found out I’d had an enormous aide-de-camp. Max drank only with the greatest suspicion. Now that you mention it, so did I. Who ever heard of a customs official acting like a human being?
But this one had his reasons. “You’re the fellow who turned the dragons loose on the Belagorans!” he exclaimed. “By Eliphalet’s toes, they’ve been screeching like a bunch of cats with their tails under rocking chairs for the past week!”
I looked at Max. Max was looking at me. Zogu’s magic had worked again. He was no lightweight wizard, not Zogu. He was wasted there in Peshkepiia, the way Stagiros the weatherworker was wasted aboard the Gamemeno. Both of them-and how many others?-could have done so much more with themselves if only they’d got the chance.
All of a sudden, nothing was too good for Max and me. The Dual Monarchy hated and feared Belagora and Vlachia because even then they were doing their best to lure their relatives inside the Monarchy away from Vindobon and the King-Emperor and into some kind of kingdom with them. The Vlachs weren’t fussy over how they went about it, either. And so anybody who’d given the Belagorans a good tweak was a friend of the Dual Monarchy’s.
Max and I rode in government coaches fit for a grand duke-which, I suppose, made them more or less fit for a king, too. We feasted at every stop. We got put up at the grandest hostels. No one asked for a thaler from us-or even for a copper thent. I was almost sorry to cross the border into Schlepsig. Oh, and we got there ahead of schedule, which, in the Dual Monarchy, is as near unheard-of as makes no difference.
Crossing into Schlepsig ahead of schedule complicated things for me. I wanted to tell my story, and the stupid scribes hadn’t got there to hear it. You just can’t rely on those people. They’re there when they shouldn’t be, they stir up trouble when you don’t want them to-and when you really need them, where are they?
And then, at last, they finally did show up. Took them bloody long enough, that’s all I’ve got to tell you. But they listened as I told my tale. They listened as Max told his, too. One enterprising journal sent along a sketch artist as well as a scribe. He did my portrait-I still have the original, as a matter of fact. That outfit ran the picture of me next to the one of Prince Halim Eddin that had started my adventure. ONE MAN OR TWO? it said below them.
I was a nine days’ wonder. I might have been an eleven days’ wonder, except…Well, we’ll get to that soon enough. Because of all the stories about me, I got offers from three or four of the biggest circus companies in Schlepsig-and, later, after some of the stories were translated, from troupes in Narbonensis and Albion and even Tver, where they take the circus very seriously indeed.
Max also got his share of offers. He got inducted into the Sword-Swallowers’ Hall of Fame, too. If you didn’t know there was such a thing as the Sword-Swallowers’ Hall of Fame, well, neither did I. And, as Max confessed after a few beers one night, neither did he.
The Circus of Dr. Ola has to be the best company in all of Schlepsig. Max and I both signed on there. With what they paid-and with what we’d brought back from Shqiperi-we wouldn’t have to worry about money again, as long as we stayed anywhere close to careful. Dooger and Cark’s Traveling Emporium of Marvels? I’ve spent a lot of time-a lot of time-trying to forget Dooger and Cark’s. I haven’t done it yet, but every year I gain a little.
As things worked out, I would have been glad to hire on with the Circus of Dr. Ola if they hadn’t paid me a kram. The proprietor’s real name is Gunther, by the way, and he’s no more a doctor than I am-less, if anything, because I’ve bandaged wounds on the battlefield. But I don’t want to talk about Gunther, however admirable he may be. He is a good fellow, but not so good that I would have been willing to work for him for nothing…except for Kдthe.
If you can imagine Ilona even better-looking, even better-shaped, and-!-even-tempered, you have a good start on Kдthe. And I’m glad-and everyone’s glad-she is even-tempered, too, because she does trick shooting with a crossbow the likes of which the world has never seen the likes of.
That’s what the barker says about it, and Eliphalet smite me if he’s not right. She’ll shoot doves on the wing-behind her back, aiming with a mirror. Yes, I know it’s impossible. She does it anyway. Once, before I knew her, she shot a lighted cigar out of the King of Schlepsig’s mouth from twenty yards.
“What would you have done if you missed?” I asked
when I heard about that, meaning, What would they have done to you?
“I didn’t even think about it then,” she answered, and I believe her-you don’t think about what can go wrong when you’re doing a stunt, or else it will. You just make sure you do it right. “Afterwards…” She didn’t go on for a little while. Then she said, “I only did that once.”
“Eliphalet! I bet you did,” I said.
We didn’t fall for each other right away, but it didn’t take too long, either. One afternoon when we were getting ready for a show, she said, “We’ve both done a lot of things, and we’ve both done them with a lot of other people.” I nodded. I already knew she wasn’t a maiden, or anything close to a maiden. As if I minded! But she went on, “That was fine then. If we’re going to get along from now on, though, we probably shouldn’t do those things with anybody else any more.”
And I nodded again. And we didn’t. And we haven’t. And it’s a boy and two girls and a fair number of years later, and I haven’t missed the variety a bit…except every once in a while. And Kдthe’s never once-never once, mind you-said a word about shooting a crossbow quarrel in one ear and out the other (to say nothing of shooting one through some even more tender spots) if I slipped.
I told you she was even-tempered. As for me, I have sense enough to know when I’m well off. Yes, I really do-now. You need to keep a sense of proportion.
Speaking of a sense of proportion, Max fell for a little trapeze artist named Rita. And when I say little, I mean little: she’s got to be two feet shorter than he is. Of course, all girls are short to Max. I wondered if they could enjoy more postures because of the difference in size, or if it closed some off for them. Before I met Kдthe, I probably would have just asked him. Now…I’m still wondering. She’s-civilized me.
She has. Believe it or not.
Max and I did fine in the Circus of Dr. Ola. We were billed as King Halim Eddin and Captain Yildirim, and performed in costumes garish enough to embarrass Barisha, let alone Count Rappaport.
As I say, we might have been eleven days’ wonders in Schlepsig instead of just nine. We might have been, but we weren’t. The second round of the Nekemte Wars crowded us out of the journals.
Not a kingdom in the Nekemte Peninsula was happy about what it had stolen from the Hassockian Empire the first time around. Plovdiv wanted Thasos (which Lokris was holding on to) and more of what used to be Fyrom just north of there. Lokris wanted southern Shqiperi and more of Fyrom. Vlachia wanted northern Shqiperi and more of Fyrom. Belagora wanted northern Shqiperi, too. Belagora doesn’t come close to bordering Fyrom, but probably wanted some of it anyhow.
Essad Pasha kept hanging on in Shqiperi, even without a king to call his own. He didn’t lose any to Belagora, not least thanks to my dragons (and thank you, Zogu!). He didn’t lose any to Vlachia, not least thanks to the Dual Monarchy. And he didn’t lose any to Lokris, not least thanks to, well, the Lokrians.
Farther west, Plovdiv tried to chase Lokris and Vlachia out of the part of Fyrom the Plovdivians thought should belong to them (which is to say, most of it). How do I put this politely? It didn’t work. Lokris and Vlachia thrashed Plovdiv in Fyrom. Dacia, which hadn’t even been in the first round of the Nekemte Wars, jumped Plovdiv from the north. And even the Hassocki sallied forth and took back the fortress of Edirne.
So when the dust settled, Plovdiv had to cough up its chunk of Fyrom to Lokris and Vlachia, and some land in the northwest to Dacia, and the territory up to and even past Edirne to the Hassocki again, which must have been even more embarrassing than everything else that happened to her. Now there’d been two rounds of war down there, and everybody-except possibly Dacia-was still unhappy. Of course, the only way to make anybody in the Nekemte Peninsula really happy is to slaughter all his neighbors out to the horizon. They were still working up to that, but they hadn’t got there yet.
Then the Powers gave Shqiperi a king whether Essad Pasha-and the Shqipetari-liked it or not. Wilhelm the Weed, I think they called him: a Schlepsigian prince with time on his hands. He went down there, but he couldn’t make Essad Pasha or anyone else pay any attention to him. I had better luck than that, by Eliphalet’s strong right hand.
And then…And then…Well, how do you talk about the start of the War of the Kingdoms without breaking down and sobbing? How do you talk about the Vlach werewolf who tore out the throat of the Dual Monarch’s heir-and the poor prince’s wife’s, too-before a silver crossbow quarrel killed him? How do you talk about the Vlach werewolf who had friends at the court of the King of Vlachia?
Once upon a time, I said the Vlachs might huff and puff and blow the Nekemte Peninsula down. The Vlachs huffed and they puffed and they almost-almost-blew the world down.
When they didn’t do enough to show the Dual Monarchy they were sorry (if they were sorry instead of laughing behind their hands, which is more likely), the King-Emperor declared war on Vlachia. Then Tver declared war on the Dual Monarchy, because Tver was Vlachia’s ally. Then Schlepsig, my Schlepsig, declared war on Tver, because Schlepsig was the Dual Monarchy’s ally. Then Narbonensis declared war on Schlepsig, because Narbonensis was Tver’s ally.
Narbonensis had fortified its border with Schlepsig, clearly with evil intent. To get at the Narbonese, my kingdom had to march its soldiers north of Narbonensis through the little kingdom of Bruges. Yes, years ago an earlier King of Schlepsig signed a treaty promising not to do any such thing. But what’s a treaty? Only a scrap of paper! Because of a scrap of paper, Albion, perfidious Albion, declared war on Schlepsig.
All the same, everybody thought we’d beat Narbonensis in a hurry, turn around and give the Tverskis a couple of good ones in the slats, and go home again before the leaves fell. Only…it didn’t quite work out that way. With help from Albion, and with the Brugeoisie fighting like fiends, the Narbonese held us in front of Lutetia. And we did give the Tverskis a couple of good ones, but so what? Tver is so big, she can take more than anybody else can dish out.
The war dragged on…and on. The Hassockian Empire came in on our side. So did Plovdiv. Torino was supposed to, but decided to jump on the Dual Monarchy’s back instead. Dacia tried to do the same thing, and promptly got squashed for her trouble.
For a while, the Circus of Dr. Ola toured behind the lines, entertaining troops on leave. So did other troupes. Then more and more of the men started putting on pike-gray uniforms themselves. My own call came when the war was about a year old, just after Kдthe had our first.
I speak good Narbonese. They could have sent me east. I speak fluent Hassocki-do I ever! They could have sent me southwest. I speak pretty fair Torinan. They could have sent me south when Schlepsig gave the Dual Monarchy a hand down there. I would have been truly useful in any of those places.
They shipped me west to fight Tver. I have little bits of Vlachian, which is sort of like Tverski. In other words, in that fight I was no more useful than any other soldier, and less useful than quite a few. Did they care? Ha! I was a body. I could shoot a crossbow. That, they cared about.
We could beat the Tverskis whenever we set our minds to it. It did us less good than we hoped it would. I shot a few of the poor bastards. Some of them only had hunting bows. It hardly seemed fair. Then one of the lousy Zibeonites shot me in the arm, and I stopped caring whether it was fair or not.
Max? Max never never did get into pike-gray. Turns out they didn’t make uniforms-and especially boots-large enough to fit him. He went on swallowing his own sword all through the war, and never had to worry about anybody else’s. Just as well, I suppose. He would have been a demon of a big target.
Thanks to some good medical magecraft, the arm healed fine. I went back to the line-and got shot in the leg. I was evidently a demon of a big target myself.
We managed to knock Tver out of the war while I was laid up the second time, and no, I don’t call that cause and effect. But Vespucciland came in about then. The cursed Vesps were getting rich selling Albion and Narbonensis everything under the
sun. They wanted to protect their investment, Eliphalet afflict them with carbuncles.
We fought for four years all told, till we couldn’t fight any more. Then we threw in the sponge. The king abdicated. There was a short civil war till we got a new one, who’s only distantly connected to the old royal house. We lost land. Worse, we lost face.
And at that, we were lucky. Tver had a peasants’ revolt, and councils of peasants and artisans are trying to run the place till someone steels himself to put a crown on his head. The Dual Monarchy fell to pieces. All the pieces declared themselves kingdoms of their own or else joined neighboring kingdoms-Great Vlachia got too big for its own britches in a hurry, but it’s still not big enough to be a Power. The old dynasty still hangs on in the Eastmarch, which isn’t much to hang on to. And the Hassockian Empire also fell apart. Their old imperial family had to run for its life. They’ve got a tough new Atabeg named Kemal (no, I don’t think he’s the one I jugged) who’s trying to whip what’s left of them into shape. We’ll see what comes of that, if anything ever does.
Shqiperi? Shqiperi’s a bloody mess, but then Shqiperi’s always been a bloody mess, so it hasn’t changed as much as most of the world has. Wilhelm the Weed didn’t last-he ran away during the war. Essad Pasha didn’t last, either-somebody murdered him right after the war. I wonder how many suspects there were. The whole population of Shqiperi minus about twelve, I suppose.
Last I heard, someone named Zogu claimed to be running things there. That Zogu? My Zogu? I don’t know. If it is, they could do worse. And they probably will.
After the War of the Kingdoms, I half hoped the Shqipetari would call me back to take over again. No doubt Wilhelm the Weed hoped the same thing. We’re both still waiting, I’m afraid. I don’t know about Wilhelm, but I’ve given up holding my breath.
“Just as well,” Kдthe said when I told her that. “Haven’t you got enough going on right here?” This was just after we had our third, so no denying she had a point.
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