“Well, how are you supposed to do that with all this going on?” he said.

I tucked the eagle stone stuffed with Zogu’s, ah, condiments under the bed. “I have hopes of finding out,” I told him. “And you may rely on it that there are plenty of girls in the eunuch’s care for both of us.”

“Ah.” Max brightened, as much as Max ever brightens. “You mean you didn’t ask me here to help you figure out how to fight your stupid war against Belagora?”

“If I ever need a general bad enough to look to you, my kingdom is in more trouble than it knows what to do with,” I said with dignity.

“If it’s got you for a king, your kingdom’s already in more trouble than it knows what to do with,” Max retorted.

“Thou cowardly hind, thou art the veriest varlet that ever chewed a tooth,” I said. I love Hassocki…endearments.

“Oh, be still, thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou!” Max said. Oh, yes, I love Hassocki endearments-except when they come back at me.

We slanged each other for a while. Then we smoked pipes together: the long Hassocki-style pipes called chubuks. After we’d smoked a bit, I stopped caring whether we’d been throwing darts back and forth. Whatever we were smoking, I don’t think it was just tobacco. In the Hassockian Empire and other western lands, they will sometimes mix hemp or hashish in with their smokables. I resolved to ask Skander if he’d done that for me. Somehow, I never did.

I kept forgetting.

I didn’t forget the harem girls, though. Whatever we were smoking, it didn’t bother that side of things at all. On the contrary, in fact-or maybe Zogu’s magical stone, now that it was in place in a bedchamber-was starting to do its job. After some searching in that garish room, I found a closet. Right behind the door, it held half a dozen iridescent silk robes, which clashed with one another and with everything around them-not easy, but they did it.

The closet also held Max, even if he had to duck to get in. “Now stay there till I let you out,” I told him.

“All right,” he said, “but if you think you can get away with diddling the girls while I listen, your Majesty, forget it.”

Yes, I’d thought about that again, but I tossed it aside the same way I did the first time it crossed my mind-I can’t imagine a better excuse for an assassination. So I said, “No, no,” as if the idea had never once-let alone twice-occurred to me. “I didn’t bring you here to screw you, Max.” That seemed to mollify him. I closed the closet door, which all but disappeared, and I called for Skander.

“Yes, your Majesty?” As he had in the throne room, he seemed to come out of nowhere. One thing I will say: when you wanted him, you didn’t have to wait around for him.

“Go to the harem door. Tell Rexhep to bring me Lutzi and Maja and Bjeshka and Varri and Zalli and Shkoza.”

“Certainly, your Majesty. Are you sure they’ll be enough for one evening?”

If I’d ever thought Skander a man without sarcasm, I had to revise my opinion. The only way to top him was to pretend I didn’t notice he didn’t mean what he said. In my blandest tones, I answered, “Well, if they’re not, Rexhep can always bring me a few more, eh?”

Now Skander had to figure out whether I meant it. He couldn’t. I was a performer in front of an audience, and that was all I needed to hold up a mask to the world. Balked there, Skander started a new hare: “Where is Captain Yildirim, your Majesty? Did he leave your chambers?”

Just when you wish things would be simple once in a while…“Of course he did. He’s not here, is he? He must be back in his own rooms by now.”

“I’d better check,” said the conscientious-the much too bloody conscientious-Skander. “You wouldn’t want him sneaking into the harem while Rexhep brings you your ladies, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t want that.” I want to share them with him right here. “But I don’t think he’d do anything like that.”

“You never know,” Skander said darkly. “Let me go see. I’ll be back directly.” And away he went.

I couldn’t even tell him no. He would wonder why if I did. No proper Hassocki gentleman, let alone a high Hassocki nobleman like Halim Eddin, would have protested even for a moment. Those who follow the Quadrate God take the harem seriously. If I was going to be Halim Eddin, I had to…pretend, anyhow.

The much too bloody conscientious Skander returned almost as fast as he’d promised. “I am glad to be able to tell you, your Majesty, that you seem to be right,” he said. “Captain Yildirim did not respond to my knock, but, as his door is barred from the inside, I have no doubt he is indeed in the room. After all he ate at supper, he must have decided to turn in early.”

Barred from the inside? Max is a resourceful man, but how the demon had he managed that? “All right, then,” I said, a remark that means nothing but bought me a heartbeat or two to think. Even after whatever I’d smoked, I knew what I was supposed to be thinking about, too. “Go speak to the eunuch. You do remember the women I asked for, don’t you?”

“Lutzi and Maja and-” He bogged down. “I am so sorry, your Majesty.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I could afford to be magnanimous, because I was showing I was smarter than he was. “Lutzi and Maja and Bjeshka and Varri and Zalli and Shkoza.” I brought out the string of names with no hesitation. I’m not in the same league with the memorious Funes, but I’m pretty good.

“Bjeshka and Varri and Zalli and Shkoza. Bjeshka and Varri and-” Skander repeated the names over and over to himself as he walked down the hallway. I hoped he wouldn’t forget Lutzi and Maja. I especially hoped he wouldn’t forget Lutzi. She wouldn’t have been a sovereign’s mistress in the Dual Monarchy or Narbonensis, but she might well have been a duke’s.

Nothing to do but wait and hope Zogu’s spell lived up to my anticipation. Not knowing just when Rexhep would appear, I couldn’t go to the cleverly concealed closet and ask Max what he’d done and how he did it. A time for everything, I thought.

When Rexhep led the girls to my room, they were veiled and cloaked against men’s prying eyes. “Here you are, your Majesty,” he said in that cool, sexless voice. “Do you require anything else of me?”

I wondered what he was thinking. No, looking into his eyes, I didn’t wonder-I knew. The question wasn’t whether he hated me, but how much. “No, that will be all for now,” I told him. “I’ll summon you when I need you to take them back.” I just wanted him to go away. Can you blame me? Thinking about eunuchs at a time like that? Thanks, but I’d rather not.

Rexhep didn’t want to be there as much as I didn’t want him there, maybe more. “Very well, your Majesty,” he said, and withdrew. It wasn’t very well, not for him. Nothing would ever make it very well, either. Away he went, tall and thin and proud-and damned, or as near as makes no difference.

I closed the door to the bedchamber and barred it from the inside. (How had Max done that?) Then I bowed to the girls. “No one here will have to do anything she doesn’t enjoy doing,” I promised. “The idea is for us to have a good time-for all of us to have a good time. Do you understand?”

“Yes, your Majesty,” chorused Lutzi and Maja and Bjeshka and Varri and Zalli and Shkoza.

“Good.” I smiled at them. They had to be nervous. The only way they had to my heart wasn’t through my stomach, but by a more direct route. They didn’t know what strange tastes I might have. For that matter, they might not know which tastes were strange and which weren’t. Had Essad Pasha recruited a couple of dozen true maidens for me? I’d find out. I smiled again. “You may unwrap yourselves, my dears. Nobody”-well, almost nobody-“here but us.”

And so they did. What they had on under those cloaks was a good deal skimpier and more transparent than what they’d worn when I called on them in the harem. Maja and Zalli were either natural blondes or thorough. I didn’t care which, not a bit.