He was every bit as friendly as Vuk Nedic, too. “The borderline in the north of Shqiperi is mistaken,” he said without preamble. “That is really southern Belagora.”

“I intend to stick to the agreement as it is down on paper,” I said.

“The agreement may be down on paper,” he replied, “but Belagoran soldiers are on the ground. They will stay there, and they will take Tremist and the rest of the ground we claim.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” I told him.

“If you go looking for trouble in the north, I promise you will find it,” Barisha said. “And I promise it will find you.”

I switched from Schlepsigian to Hassocki: “Thou art as false as water. May thy pernicious soul rot half a grain a day!”

He understood me. I’d thought he would. Nearly everyone in the Nekemte Peninsula knows enough Hassocki to curse with. “As thine uncle was beaten, so shalt thou be, thou pus-filled carbuncle on the arse of mankind.”

I bowed. “Please to give my kindest compliments to thy father, should thy mother chance to know which of her customers he was.”

After the exchange of compliments, we parted company. “You have shown him you are not to be trifled with,” Essad Pasha said. “He will remember it, as I do.” He sent Max a furtive glance.

My aide-de-camp had a different prediction: “He’ll give you one in the ballocks, the second he figures he can.”

“Not if I give him one first,” I replied. This sentiment met Essad Pasha’s approval.

I met Sir Owsley Owlswick of Albion, who couldn’t possibly have been as clever as he looked (and wasn’t); Baron Corvo of Torino, who couldn’t possibly have been as effeminate as he seemed (and, again, wasn’t: his numerous bastards prove it); and Count Potemkin of vast and frozen Tver, who couldn’t possibly have got that drunk that fast every night (but, from everything I saw, did).

And I formally met Count Rappaport. His Schlepsigian had a whipped-cream-in-your-coffee, strudel-on-the-side juiciness that went with his uniform but not with his eyes. He looked me up and down, not once but twice. “By the Prophets,” he said, “I don’t believe you’re Halim Eddin at all.”

Have you ever stood too close to a lightning strike, so that your heart forgets to beat for a moment and every hair on your head-and in more intimate places than that-stands out at full length? If you have, you will know some small part of what I felt just then.

Whatever I felt, I showed none of it. I was born in a carnival wagon, and I’ve been exhibiting myself to make my living ever since I got big enough not to piddle on the stage. If Max coughed a couple of times, then he coughed, that was all. Count Rappaport didn’t know what it meant, even if I did.

“Go tell it to the scribes,” I told him. “They always need something new to write about, and I don’t think any of them has come up with that yet.” By Eliphalet’s curly whiskers, I hoped not!

“Scribes are donkeys,” Count Rappaport said, in three words proving himself a man of uncommon common sense. He raked me with those eyes again, chill and sharp as the edge of an iceberg. “What you are, on the other hand…”

“‘What you are, on the other hand, your Highness,’” I prompted.

I do believe Rappaport’s waxed and spiky mustaches gave his sneer a certain superciliosity it wouldn’t have had without them. Be that as it may, I’ve seldom seen one that could approach, let alone match, it. “If you were Halim Eddin-” he began.

“North and south, east and west, he is none other,” Essad Pasha broke in before the man from the Dual Monarchy could go further-and before I had to say a word. “On this, your Excellency, I will take my oath.”

Count Rappaport’s arctic stare swung his way. “Why?”

“By his looks, first of all. I have met his Highness before, as he doubtless will recall…” Essad Pasha raised an eyebrow in my direction. I inclined my head, as royally as I could. He went on, “Further, did my memory falter, he is the spit and image of the portrait of the veritable Halim Eddin. Or will you doubt that, too, your Excellency?”

“A tolerable resemblance-but only tolerable, in my view,” Rappaport replied. “And to my ear, he speaks Schlepsigian like a native and speaks Hassocki like a native-Schlepsigian.”

“Thou art a fool, an empty purse,” I said in my very best and sweetest Hassocki. “Not a catapult made could knock out thy brains, for thou assuredly hast none.”

“The liar paints the honest man with his own brush, which is his chiefest shield against the truth.” The count seemed to dislike speaking to me at all, and was plainly glad to turn back to Essad Pasha. “You said his looks were your first reason for accepting this man at the value of his face. A first reason implies a second, which is…?”

Before answering, Essad Pasha fortified himself with a glass of spirits. After disposing of the one drop he was not allowed to drink, he gulped the rest. It was a good-sized glass. He went red-not altogether from drink, as it proved. In a low, furious, embarrassed voice, he said, “He mastered me, your Excellency. Do you hear? Do you understand? He mastered me. He came to me in Fushe-Kuqe, set his will against mine, and prevailed. I obey him. I can do nothing else, sir, for he is a veritable Hassocki prince, and soon to be a king. North and south, east and west, did I reckon him some low Schlepsigian mountebank, I should have fed him to a dragon. Instead, I watched him slay one with as fine a feat of archery as ever I have been privileged to see.”

Max coughed again. To tell you the truth, I felt like coughing myself. I wondered how long I would have lasted inside a dragon. Not as long as that vampire lasted inside the sea serpent, I suspected. Of course, under those circumstances, not lasting seemed preferable.

Essad Pasha bowed to me. “Here, your Highness, set in silver and on a silver chain, is the scale of the great worm you slew.” I bowed in return, and slid it down under my tunic. I wear it to this day.

Count Rappaport made a noise down deep in his throat: a low growl I would have thought to hear from Vuk Nedic. Rappaport’s silly uniform and sugary voice said one thing, his eyes and his manner something else again. It is often so with officials of the Dual Monarchy. If they were as foolish as they seemed, their kingdom empire would have crumbled to dust long, long ago.

“I shall have to make out a full report for my government,” the count said, in the tones of a judge passing sentence.

“When you do, make sure you write in it that I will be crowned tomorrow,” I said. “By all means come to the ceremony, your Excellency.”

“I would not miss it.” Count Rappaport bowed stiffly. He clicked his heels (he did a much smoother job of it than Untergraf Horst-Gustav, too). And then he did the best thing he could have done: he went away.

“I am sorry you were subjected to that, your Highness,” Essad Pasha said. “Please accept my apologies.”

“Your Excellency, you did nothing wrong,” I told him. “As for the Narbo”-a word the Hassocki will use for anyone who follows the Two Prophets and believes Eliphalet more sacred than Zibeon, whether actually Narbonese or not-“I will tread the unbolted villain into mortar, and daub the wall of a jakes with him.”

“May it be so. North and south, east and west, may all his plans stumble and fall.” Essad Pasha’s fuming could hardly have been more visible if he’d puffed on a pipe. “You, a Schlepsigian! The very idea!” He threw back his head and laughed.

“A ridiculous notion,” Max agreed. He wouldn’t unbend far enough to seem relieved Essad Pasha thought so, but he did sound less ironic than usual.

“It is indeed, most valiant Yildirim,” Essad Pasha said. “One might as well suspect you of coming from Schlepsig, eh?”

“Me? I would sooner cut my throat.” Max drew his sword. Instead of slicing it across his neck, he swallowed a goodly length of the blade. Essad Pasha’s pouchy eyes bulged. All around the chamber, talk dried up as people turned to stare. Max might have created a bigger sensation by dropping his pants. On the other hand, he might not have.