Yes, I was coming into my own. And, once I had come into it, I found it was my own…dump. Oh, the site is pleasant enough. Peshkepiia sits at the foot of the Dajti Mountains, near the edge of the most fertile plain in Shqiperi. It sits there, yes, rather like something your horse might leave behind.

Peshkepiia may boast ten thousand souls. Then again, it may not: an inauspicious beginning for a town aspiring to be the capital of the free and independent kingdom. To make up for its small size, it is very ugly. Most of the houses are one-story boxes of mud brick. The shops are built of mud brick and sticks and stones and whatever else the proprietor found to throw together and hope it would stand. The goods they sell are every bit as fine as the shops themselves.

The main street-Shqyri Berxholi, it’s called-is cobbled, quite badly. When I rode into town with Max and Essad Pasha and my retinue, we splashed through puddles nearly deep enough to drown our horses. A dead cat floated in one of them. Without a word, it said as much to me as that snooty beast back at Essad Pasha’s shooting box. And what it said was, What the demon are you doing here?

Peshkepiia does boast one four-domed fane to the Quadrate God that is said to be rather fine. I suppose it is. Still, to anyone used to the sky-leaping grandeur of temples dedicated to the Two Prophets, any fane belonging to the Quadrate God will seem…well, squashed. I shouldn’t complain about this one, though, not when I was crowned in it.

But, as the writers of cliffhanger stories are fond of saying, I anticipate.

When I rode in, Peshkepiia gave me a typical Shqipetari greeting. It yawned. Of course, what it saw was a troop of Hassocki horsemen riding in-only that and nothing more. Hassocki horsemen Peshkepiia was used to. A large fort with thick walls of dun mud brick stood across the square from the Quadrate God’s fane. Hassocki sentries paced along the top of the wall.

I’ve seen sentries pace where pacing is just routine. I’ve been a sentry on that kind of duty. You might as well be asleep. Even though you walk their beat, anybody could sneak past you. Not these fellows. They were on their toes. They knew that for half a counterfeit copper some Shqipetar would knock them over the head and steal everything they owned, right down to their bootlaces.

If Essad Pasha thought he was going to stow me in that fortress till he plopped a crown on my head, he would have to do some fresh thinking. I’d spent more time in Hassocki fortresses than I ever wanted to. Amazing what a hungry man will do to keep eating, isn’t it?

But I was spared that quarrel, anyhow. He took me to the Metropolis, purportedly a hostel. In any town in Schlepsig, the Municipal Board of Health would close the place at once. In Thasos or Lakedaimon, it would be a dreadful dump. In Peshkepiia, it’s the fanciest place in town. For all I know, it might be the only place in town.

“You will want to make the acquaintance of the diplomatic community, eh, your Highness?” Essad Pasha said.

I was surprised he thought I would want to do any such thing. I was even more surprised to learn there was a diplomatic community in Peshkepiia. Service in Shqiperi has to be the diplomatic world’s equivalent of performing in Dooger and Cark’s Traveling Emporium of Marvels. Since I’d been doing exactly that, I decided these so-called diplomats deserved me. After I met them, I wondered what I’d done to deserve them. But, again, I anticipate.

At the time, all I said was, “I’d be happy to, your Excellency.” As happy as a blizzard is black-you can use that proverb several ways.

Max looked back over his shoulder. “By-the four directions”-a hasty save; he must have barely swallowed something like, By Eliphalet’s beard-“we’ve been followed.”

I looked back over my shoulder, too, with a certain amount of apprehension. There have been times in my life when hearing a sentence like that would send me diving headlong out the nearest window. There have been times when hearing a sentence like that did send me diving out a window-and a good thing, too. I needed a moment to realize nobody in Shqiperi knew me well enough to follow me for reasons like that. It had to be something much less important.

It was the pack of scribes from Fushe-Kuqe, which proved me right.

Bob the Albionese called out, “How does it feel, now that the crown of Shqiperi is about to descend on your head?” I’d never heard anyone this side of Max make a coronation sound so much like an execution. Bob called out the question in Albionese, forgetting I was pretending not to speak that language.

Fortunately, I didn’t forget I was pretending. “What does he say?” I asked in Schlepsigian. “Maybe I will be able to understand him better once he gets his hair on straight.”

The other journalistic jackals smiled. Some of them snickered. A man with an ill-fitting toupee should not ride hard. Beneath that disarrayed mop of improbably black hair gleamed a wide expanse of improbably pink scalp. Bob himself was blissfully unaware he’d come undone, which only made it sweeter. I had the feeling Bob was blissfully unaware of quite a few things.

Someone translated his foolish question into Schlepsigian, which I admitted to speaking-I spoke it like a native, in fact. It didn’t sound any less foolish than it had before. “It feels good,” I told him. “I wouldn’t have come to Shqiperi if I didn’t want to go through with this coronation ceremony.”

That should have been obvious. But nothing is obvious to scribes. If things were obvious to them, they would have chosen a different line of work.

When my reply was rendered into Albionese, Bob asked (still in that language), “What will you do after you are coronated?”

Yes, he said that, in his own allegedly native tongue. It was, I suppose, logical, as scribes reckon logic. What happens at a coronation ceremony? Why, someone is coronated, of course. Someone is, I should say, if you don’t bother to think before you open your mouth.

However much I felt like crowning Bob-Albionese can be a noble tongue when spoken well-I couldn’t even react till somebody turned his foolishness into Schlepsigian. The translation actually made sense. Any time a translation improves things, you have a pretty good notion how bad the original is.

“What will I do? The best I can,” I answered; I wasn’t quite so foolish as Bob, but I did seem to be making an effort.

“What will your policy be toward Vlachia and Belagora?” another scribe asked.

I looked out at the swarm of them. “Why are you asking me the same questions you asked me in Fushe-Kuqe?”

“Because you’re in Peshkepiia now,” they chorused. The frightening thing was, they meant it.

“Well, I hope to be in the bathtub soon,” I said. “I probably won’t change my mind between now and then, but I promise you’ll be the first to know if I do.”

Essad Pasha smiled; he enjoyed irony, especially when the sharp iron in it wasn’t piercing him. Max coughed, which could have meant anything. And the scribes, both Prophets pray for them, wrote it down.

“To the bathtub,” I told Essad Pasha.

“If the place has one,” Max said.

There was a cheery thought. “We’ll find out,” I said.

We found out. The Metropolis didn’t have a bathtub. The Metropolis, for that matter, didn’t even have a lobby. When we walked inside, we walked into the dining room-and into what seemed like a street fight. Waiters were screaming at one another in Shqipetari. When people start screaming in Shqipetari, you always have the feeling knives will come out any minute. Most of the time, you’re right.

A fat man with an enormous mustache was screaming at a customer in Narbonese. The customer was screaming back in Schlepsigian. That by itself might have been enough to make knives come out. Narbonensis keeps trying to strangle Schlepsig’s legitimate political and territorial aspirations. Any good Schlepsigian patriot will tell you the same. Ignore Narbonese fanatics’ lies.