As things were, I had on ordinary civilized clothes: tunic, cravat, jacket, trousers. My hat fell off, but that was about it. I walked around on my hands, and waved to the Lokrians with one foot. If they were confused enough, I figured, they might go on leaving us alone.

After I’d stopped waving-and it isn’t easy to do if you’ve got shoes-Max grabbed my feet. We impersonated a drunken wheelbarrow and its even more pixilated operator. I’ve never played a drunken wheelbarrow before. Putting your shoulder to the wheel is hard when your shoulder is the wheel, or at least the brace that holds the wheel on. But what’s the point of performing if you can’t improvise?

As well as a drunken wheelbarrow could, I kept an eye on the Lokrians. I knew I might have to play an all too sober sprinter any moment now. Some of the rioters were really fricaseed. But the sozzled ones stared with the others. Whatever they’d expected, a street show wasn’t it.

After eight or ten of the longest heartbeats I’ve ever had, they decided they liked us. They crowded closer, laughing and clapping their hands. Some of them even tossed coins into my hat, which had landed crown down. I bet they thought I planned it that way. If I were as smart as that…If I were as smart as that, wouldn’t I have been on my way to Shqiperi?

Hang around Max for a while and he starts to rub off on you.

Because they liked us, we had to play our parts longer than we’d planned on-not that we’d done much in the way of planning. Max took some liberties with me that a real wheelbarrow would have slapped his face for. I would have slapped him myself, except our audience thought he was the funniest thing in the world, and they would have done worse than slap us if they hadn’t. The customer is always right, especially when he’s armed and dangerous.

At last, the wheelbarrow got rebellious and started kicking in the traces like a restive mule. One of those kicks almost made a mule out of Max-trifle with my dignity, would he? The crowd ate it up. I wiggled myself free of him and flipped to my feet, and we both took our bows.

Instead of mutilating us, the Lokrians pounded our backs, clasped our hands, and gave us nips of what had inflamed them. Not only that, when I picked up my hat I found we’d made damn near five leptas in silver. One of the rioters spoke fragments of Schlepsigian. When I made him understand we were staying at Papa Ioannakis’, he and his pals undertook to escort us back there.

The hostel was closed up tight, with shutters over the ground-floor windows and an enormous padlock on the front door. Riots are a fact of life in Lakedaimon. People get ready for them, the way they get ready for earthquakes. They do less damage that way.

A clerk came out on a second-story balcony. He shouted down at the crowd. They shouted up at him. So did I-he spoke Narbonese. He came down the fire escape to the first-floor balcony, then lowered a cast-iron stairway to the ground. Max and I went up the stairs. None of our riotous friends followed. I don’t know what the clerk told them-maybe that he’d turn them into prawns if they tried. He would have needed something interesting and memorable to keep them down on the sidewalk. Whatever it was, it worked.

As soon as we got up to the first balcony, he hauled up the fire escape after us. Only then did he allow himself a sigh of relief. Cadogan the lion-tamer would have been proud of him. He hadn’t shown fear in front of the wild animals. They’ll turn on you every time if you do.

“Thank you,” I told him.

“Not at all,” he answered politely. “We would lose our reputation if we lost our customers.” Around the corner, a woman screamed and kept on screaming. The hostel clerk winced. “This uproar, it is a misfortune.” In Narbonese, things don’t sound so bad as they really are. Max knows several languages, but that isn’t one of them. It doesn’t fit in with the way he thinks.

“A misfortune, yes.” I admired the understatement, and the cool way he brought it out. “What will you do about the, ah, uproar?”

“Myself? Try to stay safe. In aid of which, shall we go up?” The clerk led Max and me to the second-story balcony, and then in through the window to the room it adjoined. As he did, he went on, “My kingdom? My kingdom will wait till things subside, then catch a few ringleaders and plunderers and hang them. And after that?” He shrugged a resigned shrug. “After that, we shall start getting ready for the next time things turn-lively.”

I nodded to the stout middle-aged woman whose room that happened to be. Max gave her one of his deep and startling bows. Then we were out in the hall, for all the world as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And so it seemed-except even there the air smelled of smoke.

“Tonight’s supper specialty”-the clerk took a certain somber pride in making five full syllables out of that-“is lamb with garlic and rosemary. I trust you will find it to your liking.” He was working hard to pretend everything was normal, too.

“I’m sure we will,” I said, and I was-nothing wrong with Papa Ioannakis’ kitchens. But I couldn’t ignore the riots, however much I wanted to. For one thing, that poor woman was still screaming, loud enough for me to hear her in the hallway through a closed door (and, by now, probably a closed window, too). For another…“How long do you expect the, ah, uproar to last? We have a ship to catch in a couple of days.”

“As for the uproar, one never knows. It could peter out tonight, or it could go on for a week. Such is life.” He shrugged again. “As for the ship…Which is it, and from which quay does it sail?” When I told him, he did more than wince: He blanched. “The Quay of the Poxed Trollop? Sir, even without the disturbances you would do better to stay away. That is no place for honest men.”

In that case, Max and I were better suited to the quay than he suspected. With a shrug of my own, I said, “We have to get to Shqiperi, and that seems to be the fastest way.”

“To Shqiperi?” Lokrians don’t like Shqipetari. I mean, they really don’t like Shqipetari. I’d just put us beyond the pale. “On your heads be it-and it will.” The clerk stalked off.

“What was that all about?” Max asked. I didn’t much want to give him the gist, but I didn’t see what choice I had. After I translated, he gave me one of those looks you should only get from a wife. “You didn’t listen to me when I told you we were putting our heads on the block. Will you listen to him?”

“If I didn’t listen to you, why should I listen to some clerk at a hostel?”

“Because he knows what he’s talking about?” Max is full of uncouth and unlikely suggestions.

“If he knew what he was talking about, he’d have too much money to be a clerk at a hostel,” I said firmly. “In fact, if he says something like that, it’s a pretty good sign he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” My logic impressed me.

For some unaccountable reason, it failed to impress Max. “Hmm,” he said. “And just what do you know about the Shqipetari that makes you such an expert?”

“I know they need a king,” I answered. “And I know their king needs an aide-de-camp. Are you coming or aren’t you?”

“Oh, I’ll come,” he said, doleful as usual. “If I didn’t, you’d just drag somebody off the street-though where you’d find anyone this side of that Manolis fellow to fit into that captain’s uniform is beyond me.” He shook his head. “If you went and got someone who didn’t know you’re a maniac killed, I’d feel bad about it afterwards.”

“How about if I went and got myself killed?”

“Well, that, too-a little.”

The riots eased off before we had to go looking for the good ship Gamemeno. From everything I’ve learned since, this was more luck than design. The constabulary didn’t help much, because half of them were on one side and half on the other. And the King of Lokris didn’t dare call out the army, because half of it was on one side and half on the other. Like I say, Lokrians form factions the way Schlepsigians form drinking clubs, the only difference being that Schlepsigian drinking clubs don’t usually go after one another with cutlery.