It had a door with enough bars and locks and bolts to keep out a horde of invading Kalmuks. Of course, there were no Kalmuks for several hundred miles; they’ve finally been bundled back onto the steppes of Tver, and a good thing, too, says I. Whether the door would keep out your average, ordinary, everyday burglar was liable to be a different question.

Enver had enough keys on his belt to make a pretty fair pianoforte. He used six or eight of them, and had another in his hand when the door swung open, seemingly of its own accord. He sidestepped smartly so it didn’t clout him in the head, and turned the sidestep into a gesture of invitation. Enver would go far, probably with the gendarmerie in hot pursuit.

Before stepping in, I held out my hand. He set those six or eight keys in my hand. When Max coughed and dropped his own large hand to the hilt of his sword, Enver added the key he’d been about to use. That struck me as a good idea. You never could tell.

Oh, yes. The room. Well, it had that door, a window with stout iron bars across it, four walls, and a ceiling. It also had the same rammed-earth floor as the dining room, though a profusion of brightly patterned Hassocki rugs and cushions covered most of it. Hoxha no doubt saved on furniture that way. Since I was playing a Hassocki-style prince, however, I could scarcely object to Hassocki-style quarters.

The only non-Hassocki article in plain sight was the homely thunder-mug in one corner. That, like most such from Caledonia to Vyzance and beyond, was of Albionese manufacture. One family has made what must be a sizable fortune from our earthiest needs, and tied its name to them forever. Or haven’t you used a Chambers pot any time lately?

“I hope all is well.” Enver turned to go.

“Hot water and towels,” I said. When he took a step away from me without replying, I seized an arm to prevent his escape and bellowed in his ear: “Hot water and towels!” I was learning.

“Just as you say, your Highness,” he promised, and I let him go. He took it in good part. That is simply how people do business in Peshkepiia. Imagine the most charming characteristics of Lokrians and Torinans blended together. Now make everyone carry knives-and swords, and crossbows-and revel in using them.

Now multiply by a dozen or two. You commence to have the beginning of a start of an inkling of a notion of what Shqiperi is like. My very own kingdom!

“I shall leave you to your own devices here for the time being, your Highness,” Essad Pasha said. “Towards evening, I shall escort you to the fortress for a reception, and the coronation ceremony should be tomorrow.”

It had better be tomorrow, I thought. But the best way to hatch anxiety in others is to show you feel it yourself. Ask a lion-tamer if you don’t believe me, not that you’re likely to be able to ask a lion-tamer who let his beasts know he was nervous. I inclined my head to Essad Pasha: regally, I hoped. “Until evening, then, your Excellency,” I said.

Essad bowed and took his leave. A moment later, two elderly attendants came into the room. One carried an enormous cotton Hassocki towel-large enough for an ancient Aenean to have wrapped himself in it for a mantle. The other bore a tiny basin of water ever so slightly warmer than its surroundings.

“More water. Hotter water,” I told him in Hassocki. He looked blank. I tried Schlepsigian. Nothing. I didn’t want to admit to speaking any other tongues, and the attendant probably wouldn’t, either. So I turned to Max and said, “Captain Yildirim?”

By Eliphalet’s holy toenails, the sweet wheep! of Max’s sword leaving its scabbard was a sound I was coming to know and trust, a sound that promised all in the world would soon be made right. The world is sometimes a peculiar place, I grant. Had Max not been the putative aide-de-camp to a putative sovereign and crowned head, that wheep! would have been the sound of a man about to be arrested for assault with intent to maim. But things are as they are, not as they might be, so I smiled when the sword sprang free. I felt confident good things were about to happen, and they did.

“Thou!” Max snarled at the water-bearer. “Thou shalt fetch us more of thy stock in trade, and quickly, lest we use it to seethe thy worthless bones for stew!” He rounded on the other gray-mustached lout, the one with the towel. “Thy partner in sloth shall be hostage against thy speedy return.”

“’Twill do you no good, for he likes me not,” the towel-bearer said, apparently despairing of his life.

“Thou speakest our tongue!” I exclaimed. The towel-bearer bit his lip in shame and mortification; this was something he should never have admitted, yet fear of death unmans the best of us. I went on, “Put our words into Shqipetari, then. Tell thine accomplice and partner in crime what we require of him.”

He spoke in Shqipetari. The water-bearer replied volubly, and with considerable warmth. Giving a guest in the hostel what he actually wanted and required must have violated some basic Shqipetari commandment. Sometimes, though, there is no help for a situation. With a sigh that spoke volumes about the abomination he was committing, the water-bearer withdrew, to return only a little more slowly than he should have with only a little less water than we needed, water only a little less hot than it might have been.

Having done so, he hung about with an expectant look on his face. “How now?” I inquired, hoping against hope that…

But no. “My tip?” he said in perfectly intelligible Hassocki.

“Oh, of course,” I told him, and turned to Max. “Captain Yildirim, if you would be so kind…?”

The water-bearer left in some haste after that, so he didn’t get the tip of Max’s sword after all. Too bad. Not even a king, I discovered, can have everything he wants all the time: in the confusion, the towel-bearer also made good his escape.

“Well,” I said, “let’s wash.” And we did.

Evening approached. Someone knocked on the door. When I opened it, Essad Pasha stood in the hallway, his uniform almost gaudy enough to have come from the Dual Monarchy. “Your Highness.” He gave me a most proper bow.

“Your Excellency.” I returned it, not quite so deeply.

“I hear from the good Hoxha that you have shown yourself to be every bit as, ah, masterful here as you, ah, did in Fushe-Kuqe,” he said.

“The good Hoxha?” I raised an eyebrow. “The only man by that name I know is the villain who runs this hostel.”

Essad Pasha wheezed laughter. “North and south, east and west, you will find worse,” he said, which was probably true. “Will you accompany me to the reception in your honor?”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” I replied. The last reception in my honor I remembered was arranged by the father of a nicely curved little blond girl I’d been seeing. That one involved a horsewhip, among other tokens of his esteem. I hoped this occasion would prove more, ah, festive.

When we first left the Metropolis, I must confess I wondered. In Peshkepiia, evening is the time when the flies go in and the mosquitoes come out. Now, I have met a good many mosquitoes in a good many miserable places. Shqipetari mosquitoes, however, are in a class by themselves. I think some of their grandmothers must have cavorted with the dragons of the mountain peaks. If they didn’t breathe fire when they bit, it wasn’t from lack of effort.

Max must have been thinking the same thing I was-rather an alarming notion most of the time-for he said, “I wish I had a teeny-tiny crossbow.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he slapped at the back of his neck.

I did some slapping of my own, then wiped the palm of my hand on my trouser leg. “It wouldn’t help,” I said mournfully. “They can bite faster than you can reload.” The buzzes and whines all around us were nearly as frightening as those from near misses by crossbow bolts.