A little farther back, behind a low counter that could double as a breastwork, the cooks were screaming, too. They already had knives out. They also had serving forks big enough to skewer Max, red-hot frying pans full of sizzling oil, and, if all else failed, burning brands from their cookfires. I rather hoped they would start throwing those around. Burning down the Metropolis would have been the best thing that could happen to it.

For some little while, everyone was so busy shrieking at everyone else, nobody bothered to notice us. I began to feel affronted-when would we get our fair share of abuse? Well, we didn’t have long to wait. The fat man must have got tired of screaming in Narbonese, for he came over to us and started screaming at me in Hassocki: “Who art thou, who pollutest the peace with thy presence?”

“I am thy king, thou roasted ox with a pudding in thy belly!” I roared into his startled face. “Down on thy knees, wretch, and see if thou hast the strength to rise again thereafter.”

He did go down on his knees, and got up brushing at his breeches. Among the other amenities the Metropolis lacked was any flooring fancier than rammed earth. When he arose, he was a different man: one who might possibly know something about keeping a hostel. “Oh, yeah-heard you were coming,” he said, his voice casual if still much too loud. “I’m Hoxha. I run this joint.”

Somebody yelled at his broad back in Torinan. He answered hotly in the same tongue. By all appearances, a hosteler in Peshkepiia must be able to revile anyone in any language at any time. In that respect, at least, Hoxha seemed perfectly suited to his job.

“Could I trouble you to take me to my room, please, and to get me some hot water for washing?” I asked. I didn’t bother inquiring if the Metropolis boasted running water. The smell of sewage in Peshkepiia told me the only running water in town lived in the belly of a running man.

Hoxha went right on yelling abuse in Torinan. I might have disappeared. Something told me politeness won few friends in Shqiperi.

Very well, then: the direct approach. I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him back toward me. “Thou poxed and scrofulous knave!” I screamed at him from a distance of perhaps two inches. “Thou unlicked whelp of a rabid jackal bitch! A room! Hot water! Or thy head answers for it!”

“All right already,” he said, as if I’d asked him the way I had the first time. Then he yelled, “Enver!” Enver looked like Hoxha back in the days when Hoxha was half as old and half as wide. Hoxha crackled out something in Shqipetari. Since I don’t speak Shqipetari, I can’t prove it was inflammatory, but I wouldn’t have wanted anybody saying anything that sounded like that to me.

Enver took it in stride. He’d surely heard worse. “You come with me please, your Highness,” he said in passable Hassocki.

Before I could, the Schlepsigian gentleman who’d been shouting at Hoxha came over to me. So did another man, a dapper, clean-shaven fellow with a hairline black mustache: surely a Narbonese. They eyed each other with perfect mutual loathing. The Narbonese spoke first; Narbonese, in my experience, generally speak first. In nasally accented Hassocki, he said, “Your Highness, I am Sous-vicomte Jean-Jacques-Pierre-Roland.” He had more names and titles than ruffles on his shirt, which is saying something. “I have the distinct honor and high privilege to be the Kingdom of Narbonensis’ commissioner in Shqiperi. I look forward with great eagerness to your coronation.”

Of course he did. There would be a feast afterwards, to which he would be invited. And he would be able to write a report that said something besides, Sat here today gathering dust again. Please let me come home! Whatever I did, I promise not to do it again-or if I do, I promise not to get caught.

I gave him my second-best bow. “Honored to meet you, your Excellency.” I extended my hand. He took it. A corpse has a limper handclasp, but not much.

When Jean-Jacques-Pierre-Roland started to say something more (as Narbonese will, and will, and will), the Schlepsigian who’d been waiting there with exemplary patience got leave to speak with an expedient elbow to the pit of the sous-vicomte’s stomach. Clicking his heels, he said, “Hail victory! I am told you speak Schlepsigian, your Highness,” in his own language, which also happened to be mine.

I nodded. “I do,” I said.

“Good. Then we will continue to use it,” he declared, with the decisiveness typical of our countrymen. “I am Untergraf Horst-Gustav of Wolfram, the mighty King of Schlepsig’s representative to this…place. I present myself.” He bowed stiffly from the waist and clicked his heels again.

“Honored, Your Excellency,” I said. With Schlepsigian exuberance, Horst-Gustav tried to crush my hand.

“You will please note, Your Highness, that the Schlepsigian son of a sow is too ignorant to speak Hassocki,” Jean-Pierre-Jacques-Roland said. “You will also notice that the mighty King of Schlepsig did not think it worthwhile to send a man here who understood either Hassocki or Shqipetari.” To show he spoke the latter, he said something to Hoxha. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone saying anything that sounded like that to me. By the gesture the gracious hosteler used, he didn’t want anyone saying it to him, either.

Untergraf Horst-Gustav’s scarred face reddened as the Narbonese and I conversed in a language he couldn’t follow-the sous-vicomte was right about that. “We must make alliance, Schlepsig and Shqiperi,” he burst out in Schlepsigian. “Each of our kingdoms will gain room to live and will take its natural place in the sun.”

“When a Schlepsigian says he will take his natural place in the sun, he means he will take yours, too, and then blame you for mislaying it.” Jean-Jacques-Pierre-Roland wasn’t shy about slandering my birth-kingdom.

Horst-Gustav looked more and more worried that all this talk in what he thought was my native tongue would seduce me. Had it really been my native tongue, he might even have been right. “Narbonensis is Vlachia’s patron!” he burst out. “The Vlachs in Vlachia and Belagora oppress Shqipetari every chance they get. You can never trust Narbonensis-never!”

Jean-Jacques-Pierre-Roland yawned. “This man does not speak. He merely breaks wind with his mouth.”

The King of Schlepsig’s representative really didn’t know any Hassocki, or he would have broken the Narbonese commissioner in half. “I should like to rest and to bathe,” I said. “Matters of state can wait until I wear the crown. Enver, please take me to my room.” Hoxha’s probable son seemed not to hear me. “Enver!” I shrieked, and that got his notice.

Another man came into the dining room at the same time as Max and I were leaving. He had slicked-back hair, a mustache waxed into spikes, and a shirtfront covered with enough medals to make a pretty fair set of scalemail. As soon as I saw that blinding refulgence, I knew he had to come from the Dual Monarchy. They pin a medal for steadfastness on you if you get out of bed on time three days running, a medal for valor on you if you swat a fly, and a medal for heroism on you if you cut yourself shaving.

What with all the brasswork and glass paste and ribbons on the fellow’s chest, I almost didn’t notice that he had the coldest gray eyes I’ve ever seen. He looked at me as if he’d just found me on the sole of his patent leather boot: yes, a man of the Dual Monarchy, sure as sure.

“Take no notice of Count Rappaport, your Highness,” Essad Pasha said. “You may rest assured no one else does.”

But that wasn’t quite true. When Count Rappaport shouted at Hoxha, he, like Jean-Jacques-Pierre-Roland, shouted at him in Shqipetari. And the hosteler, though he shouted back, didn’t scream back, which, I thought, betokened a certain unusual respect.

“Your room, your Highness,” Enver said after we’d walked down the hall a bit.