Essad Pasha stolidly stumped along ahead of us. The mosquitoes didn’t seem to bother him at all. At the time, I put this down to professional courtesy. Now I wonder if the odor of camphor that wafted from him might not have had something to do with it.

Most Shqipetari were off the streets and out of the square. Whatever their flaws, they had sense enough to stay behind netting after it got dark. As for me, I’d set out from the hostel a prince, but I wondered if I’d get to the fortress as anything more than a perambulating lump of raw, bloody meat.

Torches blazed by the entrance. Hassocki sentries came to stiff attention as we approached. “Your Excellency!” they called to Essad Pasha. “Your Highness!” they called to me. They didn’t call anything to Max, but their staring eyes took his measure-and quite a lot of it there was to take, too. As befit a prince’s aide-de-camp, he looked through them rather than at them.

They smelled of camphor, too. That might explain how they could stand out there without being reduced to boots and uniforms by the time the morning came. Something had to. Otherwise Essad Pasha would have used up an uncommon number of sentries, enough for the duty to have become even less popular than it usually is.

“This way, your Highness,” Essad Pasha said, pointing toward the only brightly lit building inside the fortress. I think-I hope-I would have figured out all by myself that that was where the reception would take place, but Essad Pasha counted on no man’s intelligence but his own.

We passed through seven veils on our way into the reception hall. Some mosquitoes passed through them with us, but not too many. Inside, people could mostly talk without leaping into the air with a curse or rubbing their ears as if those had begun to ring. Mostly.

“I have the high honor and distinct privilege,” Essad Pasha said in a booming voice, “of presenting his Highness, Prince Halim Eddin of the Hassockian Empire, soon to become his Majesty, King Halim Eddin of Shqiperi. Long may he reign!”

I took a bow. I don’t know how else to describe it. Everyone applauded-well, almost everyone. Count Rappaport sent me another of his cold gray stares. The Dual Monarchy does like to dress its functionaries in comic-opera uniforms. They often have comic-opera manners, too, bowing and smirking till you’re tempted to think they couldn’t possibly conceal a working brain anywhere about their person. This is a mistake, as the other Powers have often found to their sorrow.

With so many people cheering me, though, I could afford to ignore the iron-faced count-or so I thought, anyhow. Afford it or not, ignore him I did. And so did Essad Pasha, who waved for the small band in one corner of the room to strike up a sprightly tune.

Over the years, I’ve grown used to Hassocki music. To those accustomed to the styles of Schlepsig and Torino-or even to those of Narbonensis and Albion-Hassocki music sounds like what happens when you throw two cats, a chicken with a head cold, and a small, yappy dog into a sack, tumble the sack down a flight of stairs, and then set it on fire. As a matter of fact, it sounds that way to me, too. But I’ve learned to distinguish the notes each tormented animal-er, musician-makes, if not always to appreciate them.

This, however, was Hassocki music as played by Shqipetari-I suppose in honor of my impending coronation. Far more than Count Rappaport’s menacing gaze, it made me wonder just how big a mistake I’d made in coming here. I had never heard sounds like that before; nor, except once when a crowded coach overturned on an icy road, have I since.

One of the song butchers thumped irregularly on a drum. One sawed and scraped at a fiddle. One plucked away on what might have been a lute if it hadn’t had too many strings and too long a neck-it looked like a lute the way a camel looks like a horse, in other words. And if the mustachioed villain cradling it in his lap had been plucking a camel instead, more melodious noises might have emerged from it.

A small chorus accompanied the alleged instrumentalists. The men’s voices were too high. The women’s voices, on the other hand, were too low. No two of them seemed to my untrained and startled ear to be perpetrating the same tune at the same time. Each one was trying to out-shout all the others, too.

Essad Pasha beamed. “Is it not marvelous?” he said.

“That’s one word,” I more or less agreed. “I will remember it forever.” And so I have, most often in the small hours of the morning. Usually, though, the nightmare doesn’t come back when I fall asleep again.

A man in a wolfskin jacket suddenly appeared beside Essad Pasha. The newcomer’s face might have been a wolf ’s, too, with its hungry mouth, sharp muzzle, golden eyes, and rough-trimmed gray hair. Beaming no more, Essad Pasha said, “Your Highness, here is the Grand Boyar Vuk Nedic, Vlachia’s representative in Peshkepiia.”

“Your Excellency.” I bowed.

“Your Highness.” So did he, all the while eyeing me as a wolf might eye a juicy joint of beef in a butcher’s window. But it wasn’t me he was hungry for, it was my kingdom. In throatily accented Schlepsigian, he went on, “Fushe-Kuqe should be Vlachian. Vlachia should have-Vlachia must have-a port on the Tiberian Sea.”

I bowed. “I have two things to say to that. The first one is, the Powers have agreed that there is to be a Kingdom of Shqiperi, with Fushe-Kuqe as its port, and I am going to be King of Shqiperi. Of all of it, to be plain.”

Vuk Nedic had teeth almost as sharp as a wolf ’s, too. He bared them now, as if to prove it. A small strain of lycanthropy? Not unknown among Vlachs-no, indeed. I wondered how charming he would be when the moon came full.

“That agreement was not just-Is not just,” he growled. No Vlach will ever be persuaded that anything giving him less than his wildest desires is just. And since Vlachs’ desires are often wild indeed…They are a people whose charm is perhaps best appreciated at some distance.

I bowed again. “The second thing I have to say is, I suggest you take that up with Count Rappaport over there.”

Vuk Nedic’s eyes blazed so you could have lit a cigar at them. One of the reasons the agreement made sure Vlachia came away without a seaport was that the Dual Monarchy insisted on it. Since the Dual Monarchy has Vlachia on its southern border, it doesn’t enjoy the luxury of appreciating Vlachs at a distance. As a matter of fact, the Dual Monarchy doesn’t appreciate Vlachs at all. It’s mutual.

It would have made an interesting confrontation: the fop in the gaudy uniform and the hemidemisemiwerewolf. But Vuk Nedic was the one who had no stomach for it. Vlachia could huff and puff till it blew the Nekemte Peninsula down, but it would never be more than a third-rate kingdom. The Dual Monarchy was a Power: a Power that had seen better centuries, true, but a Power nevertheless. If reminded of that forcibly enough, it could make Vlachia very, very unhappy.

And Vuk Nedic knew it. He stomped away. Stomping isn’t easy on a rammed-earth floor, but he managed. He poured a tumbler full of brandy and knocked it back at a gulp. Vlachs follow the Two Prophets (even if they are benighted Zibeonites), so he didn’t have to not drink even a single drop.

“Nicely handled, your Highness,” Essad Pasha murmured.

“That bugger’ll scrag you if he gets even half a chance, your Highness,” Max murmured.

“Thank you,” I murmured to both of them. Why not? As far as I could see, they were both right.

I got some brandy of my own, and some fried meat. I had just begun to eat and drink when Essad Pasha introduced me to a certain Barisha, the royal commissioner from Belagora. Belagora has its own king, but it’s another kingdom full of Vlachs. Barisha fit the part, even if his outfit didn’t. If you can imagine a werewolf in a getup that probably made Count Rappaport jealous, you have him to perfection.