“Of course, your Majesty,” he said, stone-faced. “I trust everything went well?”

“Oh, yes!” That wasn’t me. That was Lutzi and Maja and Bjeshka and Varri and Zalli and Shkoza. They sounded so convincing-and so convinced-that Skander retreated in disorder.

Rexhep came and took the girls away without a word. Did he hate me more because I’d satisfied them? For that matter, did he hate me more because I’d satisfied myself? I didn’t inquire. Yes, some few things are better left unknown.

Max emerged from the closet neatly sheveled (the opposite of disheveled, yes?) once again. “How do you propose to get back into your room if it’s barred from the inside?” I asked. That, I did want to know.

“I’ll pull strings,” he said. The reply made no sense to me, but then, a fair amount of what Max says makes no sense to me. The only thing saving him from complete incomprehensibility is that, unlike a lot of people I could name, he doesn’t talk too much.

On the way to Max’s room, we passed Skander in the hallway. Skander gave one of the better double takes I’ve seen on noting the redoubtable Captain Yildirim out and about. Put it on the stage in Schlepsig or Albion or even Narbonensis and it would stop the show for a couple of minutes: it was that good.

I wondered if my majordomo would follow us. That could have been awkward. But he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t trust his own eyes. If not, he was foolish: if you think you see something Max’s size, you probably do.

When we got to Max’s door-also tall-he reached up and yanked on a bit of string up near the top. No one less uncouthly tall would have noticed it or could have reached it. “I put the bar on a pivot,” he murmured. “All I need to do is pull down here, and up it comes.” And it did. He opened the door and went into the room where Skander thought he’d been all along. “Sweet dreams, your Majesty.”

Well, I obliged him there. Oh, didn’t I just!

Sorry-no Chapter XIII. It’s unlucky.

Yes, I know this is the thirteenth chapter. But it’s not Chapter XIII. There’s a difference. If you don’t believe me, ask the next tall building you happen to meet.

When I woke in the morning, I had some trouble remembering where I was and who I was supposed to be. But I didn’t have any trouble at all remembering what I’d been doing. I smiled. Traces of cinnamon and rosewater and sandalwood still lingered in the air. My smile got wider.

Had it been only the morning before when I was crowned King of Shqiperi? By Eliphalet’s curly whiskers, so it had! This would be my first whole day as a sovereign among sovereigns, equal in rank (if not in might) to the lords of Schlepsig and Torino and Leon.

In something over half a day’s worth of kinging it, I’d started a war and started an orgy. I wondered what I could do to top that, given a day with the full complement of hours.

First things first. I looked under the bed. Zogu’s stuffed eagle stone was still there. He’d warned me about overusing it, but he had said I could get a few days out of it. You never know how much till you try. It would, I told myself, be purely in the pursuit of knowledge. Can you deny that carnal knowledge is knowledge like any other kind? Can you deny it’s more fun than any other kind?

Didn’t think so.

I walked over to the closet to see what all was in it when it wasn’t holding Max. Besides those incandescent robes, it turned out to have some specimens of Shqipetari national costume. What Shqipetari wear is more attractive than, say, Lokrian clothes: no short skirts, no pompoms on the shoes. Past that, I don’t have much to say for it. One of these days, I might have to put it on anyway, to show I was at least pretending to be a jolly Shqipetar like the jolly Shqipetari I ruled. (More often than not, a jolly Shqipetar either has something wrong with him or he’s just killed someone, but that’s another story.)

Along with the white shirts and tight trousers and clumsy cloaks and horrid headgear (and those robes, which even Count Rappaport would have disdained), the closet held several sensible, comfortable Hassocki caftans. Evidently I was allowed to recall the land I came from as well as the one I now inhabited. A caftan and a crown go together oddly, but I donned them both. Maybe I would start a new trend.

The faithful-I hoped-Skander wasn’t far from the door when I came out. If he saw anything odd about my outfit, he didn’t mention it. “Good morning, your Majesty,” he said. “How may I serve you today?”

“Coffee,” I said. “Breakfast.” A king has to have his priorities straight. I thought about asking for another helping of harem girls, too, just to see the look on Skander’s face. But I couldn’t do them justice right then, and my mother always taught me not to ask for anything I couldn’t use. So I tried a different question instead: “Who wants to see me this morning?”

“Several scribes, your Majesty-they seemed quite insistent,” the majordomo replied. “And Essad Pasha-he seemed quite upset. And Untergraf Horst-Gustav-he seemed quite…well, quite hung over.”

“I’ll deal with all of them,” I said, though the prospect of dealing with scribes made me wish I were hung over, too. Considering some of the katzenjammers I’ve had, that tells you how much I love scribes. I couldn’t face them on an empty stomach. “Coffee,” I repeated. “Breakfast.”

The coffee was Hassocki-style, thick and sweet and muddy, the way it always is in the Nekemte Peninsula. It was also strong enough to pry my eyelids apart despite my sweaty exertions the night before. If I had been hung over, the curses and clashing cutlery in the kitchens would have driven me to despair. As things were, they helped wake me up.

Fried eggs. Fried blood sausages. Fried mush, which looks like something from the wrong end of a cow but actually tastes pretty good. The cooks didn’t fry the strawberries. If they had, I might have ordered my first executions.

Max staggered into the dining room when I was about halfway through breakfast. He looked even more bedraggled, or possibly bed-raggled, than I felt. “Coffee,” he croaked in piteous tones.

“Yes, your Excellency.” Skander bowed deeply. “At once, your Excellency.” He acted a lot more deferential toward Max than he had the day before. He must have decided Captain Yildirim was a powerful wizard along with being my aide-de-camp. How else could the redoubtable captain have got out of a locked room? Not for anything would I have told Max’s secret.

I lingered over coffee, and smoked a cigar to stretch things out still further. It seemed to distress Skander. Shqipetari, I learned later, reckon anything but a pipe unmanly. This doesn’t keep some of them from smoking cigars and cigarettes. It does give the rest an excuse to sneer at the ones who do. And Skander couldn’t very well think me unmanly, not after the night before.

Bless the girls, anyhow!

At last, though, I had to face the evil moment. Captain Yildirim at my side, I went to the throne room to do it. Maybe the royal trappings would impress the foreign scribes (there were no Shqipetari scribes, proving the kingdom did have something going for it after all). Or maybe not-the trappings didn’t much impress me.

In swarmed the scribes, pens poised above notebooks. They shouted questions in half a dozen languages, only two of which I was supposed to understand. I glanced over to Max, who stood behind and to the left of the throne. “Captain Yildirim,” I said.

Out came the sword, the blade glittering in the torchlight. “Show respect for the royal dignity!” Max bawled in Hassocki.

Not many scribes knew Hassocki. That was all right. When a very large man bares his blade and shouts angrily, even some journalists will pay attention-enough to lessen the racket, anyhow.