Then there was Count Rappaport. The less said about him, the better. So I won’t.

Inside the harem, the air smelled of sandalwood and cinnamon and rosewater and spikenard and musk. Just breathing was enough to make your heart race. Poor Rexhep! Even if his heart did race, much good it did him. We turned a corner. There on couches set in a grassy courtyard waited the women Essad Pasha and his underlings had chosen for their king.

Before I set eyes on them, I thought they might be beauties who would dazzle me with their exotic loveliness. Then again, they were Shqipetari. The old joke goes, first prize is a week in Shqiperi; second prize is two weeks in Shqiperi. Maybe they wouldn’t be worth seeing at all.

Truth dwelt in the middle. Truth usually does. One end or the other, those are the places where madness lies. Think of the fools who conjured up a bolt of lightning to murder the last Poglavnik of Tver but one. They thought that would somehow set the peasants free. Or think of some of Count Rappaport’s colleagues, who figured the best way to keep the Dual Monarchy safe was by slaughtering all the Vlachs. From the Vlachs I’ve known, the sentiment has its points, but most of those people haven’t done anything to anybody. So…the middle.

I wouldn’t have minded a couple of dozen ravishing beauties. I wouldn’t even have minded ravishing them. But a couple of dozen hags? I could have done without that.

Some of these women were very pretty indeed. Some weren’t much above plain. I think any man who saw them would have said the same. Some other man might not agree which ones were pretty and which ordinary, though. No doubt about it, there was something here for every taste, or for everyone to taste, or-well, you get the idea.

All of them, pretty and plain alike, wore silk blouses and the baggy bloomers stage shows call harem trousers. In the stage shows, those are as transparent as the tailor can arrange and as the local laws allow. Here, they were of plain cotton-not a smooth thigh or a rounded rump on display. Such is life.

I stood among them and bowed in the four directions. “North and south, east and west, I greet you, my ladies,” I said. “I hope you all speak Hassocki?”

“Yes, your Majesty.” Their voices made a sweet chorus. I looked around to make sure they’d all answered. As far as I could tell, they had. Some of them had strong accents, but that was all right.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rexhep gesture. I don’t think I was supposed to. All the harem girls got down from their divans and prostrated themselves before me. They were a lot more graceful than Essad Pasha. Saying that doesn’t do them enough credit. A few days with a dancemaster and they could have earned their keep in any theater in Schlepsig or Narbonensis or Albion.

“Get up, get up,” I told them. “No need to stand on ceremony here, or even to fall down for it.”

Some of them smiled as they straightened. Others looked puzzled. I needed a moment to figure out why. When I did, it made me sad. You’ll always find people who want other people to shout at them and tell them what to do. That way, they don’t have to figure it out for themselves. I’d be lying if I said I understood this-I’ve been making my own way ever since I got old enough to ignore what my mother and father told me, which didn’t take long. I don’t understand it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. Some of the girls wanted a king who’d roar at them the way a mean taverner keeps his barmaids in line.

I wouldn’t have minded roaring at the minister from Belagora. As a matter of fact, I intended to-what else was Barisha for? But I have better things to do with pretty girls (or even with girls not much above plain) than roar at them.

“What are your names?” I asked them.

“Strati.” “Lutzi.” “Hoti.” They rained down on me. I was once in a troupe with a memorious man-Funes, his name was, from Leon. He taught me a few of his tricks: only a few, mind you. I don’t have a memory like his-Eliphalet’s whiskers, who does?-but I’m good with names.

Inside a few minutes, I had them all straight. Pick something about the person and associate it with the name and you won’t go wrong. Strati had straight hair. Lutzi stirred up lust in me-I think she was the prettiest of them. Hoti seemed hot; she dabbed at her forehead with a handkerchief. And so on. It isn’t magic, not the kind that uses the laws of similarity and contagion, but it seems sorcerous to people who don’t know how it’s done. Funes was a master. With any kind of stage presence at all, he would have been rich and famous, not a sideshow performer. I don’t have a quarter of his skill, but I can sell what I do.

And the harem girls had to be the easiest audience I ever faced. If I’d roared at them, they would have thought they deserved it. Since I didn’t, they thought I was sweet. They’d never dreamt I would bother learning their names, let alone that I could do it so fast. They crooned and sighed and stared at me as if I’d fallen from heaven.

Sometimes-too often, most of the time-you can’t get one woman to fall in love with you. Here I had a couple of dozen all doing it at once. It would have been embarrassing if I hadn’t enjoyed it so much.

Every once in a while, I glanced over at poor Rexhep. Once, he caught me doing it. That was embarrassing. “May I speak with you a moment, your Majesty?” he asked in that strange, epicene voice.

“Of course,” I said, and then, to the harem girls, “I’ll be with you in a moment, my sweethearts.” I was sporting with them. Some of them, I think, realized as much. To others, the play was real. The Shqipetari sequester their women in Hassockian fashion-how not, when they learned it from the Hassocki? That only makes it easier for the girls to grow up naive and trusting.

Rexhep drew me far enough aside to keep the harem girls from overhearing-and don’t think they didn’t want to, the little snoops! “Are you a wizard, your Majesty?” the eunuch asked.

“Not a bit of it,” I answered. “I’ve only been a king for a couple of hours. Wizardry will have to wait. Why do you ask?” Maybe the girls weren’t the only naive ones; maybe he thought those tricks of memory were real magic, too.

That turned out to be close to the mark, but not on it. “Because you’ve ensorcelled your harem, that’s why,” he said. “Before you came in, half of them were angry at being plucked from their homes, and the other half were frightened. Now look at them! They want to have more to do with you.” He sounded as if that were the nastiest perversion he could think of. All things considered, it probably was.

“I don’t want them angry. I don’t want them frightened. I want them friendly. I’ll want them very friendly tonight,” I said. “So I try to make them like me. What’s so strange about that?”

He couldn’t see it. He thought it was a trick if it wasn’t magic. I wondered what sort of harem he’d kept before, and what kind of hellhole it was. By the look of sour bafflement on his face, he knew no more of affection than a blind man knows of sunsets. A pity, no doubt, but I couldn’t give him what he’d lost.

I went back to jollying the girls along. Rexhep went back to trying to figure out what I was up to. He wouldn’t believe what I told him, even when it was true. He needed complications, poor soul, whether they were real or not.

After a while, I turned to go. The girls sighed in disappointment. Rexhep looked relieved and suspicious at the same time-an expression only a eunuch’s face could manage. I told the girls, “Some of you will be summoned to my chamber tonight. If you aren’t summoned to my chamber tonight, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I’m only one man, and not quite so young as I wish I were.” Some of them giggled. Others had no idea what I was talking about. They really do raise them innocent in Shqiperi. I went on, “If I don’t summon you tonight, I will summon you another night, and one not long from now. I know you will all delight me, and I’ll try to please you, too. Meanwhile…”