Bumbling Bob of Albion wouldn’t have noticed the sword if it cut off his head, and probably would have gone right on talking afterwards. Losing his head wouldn’t have affected his brainpower much. In Albionese-of course-he asked, “Why did you declare war on Belagora?”

He didn’t know I spoke Albionese. He thought I didn’t, in fact. But, poor sap, he didn’t speak anything else. Eventually someone translated the question into Schlepsigian, which I could admit I understood. Because Barisha wears silly uniforms and ridiculous medals. No, I didn’t say it. It was true, but I didn’t say it. Ah, diplomacy.

“Because Belagora does not respect Shqiperi’s northern border. Because Belagora has soldiers on our territory”-my very first royal we!-“and refuses to remove them.” That was also true. It had the added virtue of being polite, or as polite as you can be when you declare war on somebody. It had the vice of being dull.

The scribes didn’t care. They solemnly wrote it down. One of them asked, “What will you do if Vlachia declares war on you?”

“Why should I care about the Vlachs?” I said grandly.

“Because they just beat the stuffing out of the Hassockian Empire?” the scribe suggested. “Because most of your soldiers are Hassocki leftovers?”

As a Schlepsigian, I had nothing but scorn for Vlachs. As I’d pointed out to Barisha, they’re born chicken thieves. They also have a certain talent for murdering their betters from ambush. But the idea that I should take them seriously struck me as absurd.

As a Schlepsigian…I had to remember that, to these hovering vultures, I was no Schlepsigian. I was Halim Eddin, prince of a folk who, as the scribe was blunt enough to remind me, had just got ignominiously beaten by the Vlachs. How should I-I as Halim Eddin-react to that?

I decided that neither I as myself nor I as Halim Eddin could stomach knuckling under to the Vlachs. “If they want a fight, let them come. We will give them all they ask for, and more besides. They didn’t beat our army here in Shqiperi during the Nekemte Wars, and they won’t beat it now.”

More furious scribbling from the scribes. “Do you trust Essad Pasha as a general?” one of them called.

Now there was an interesting question. I didn’t trust Essad Pasha to empty my Chambers pot. Deceit was his middle name. I’d put the fear of the Quadrate God-or at least of Captain Yildirim-in him, but how long would that last? Long enough for me to let him command an army when he wasn’t right under my eye? Max’s cough said he didn’t like the idea. Neither did I. But if he let the Vlachs beat him, he wasn’t just risking my neck. He was risking his own even more.

“Essad Pasha is a very valiant warrior,” I said after those calculations swallowed perhaps two heartbeats. I might not even have been lying. And I knew that, whatever I told the scribes, Essad Pasha would hear of it in short order. I went on, “Thanks to his courage and brilliance, Vlachian aggression in Shqiperi went nowhere during the late wars.”

I might not have been lying about that, either. I didn’t say anything about my new kingdom’s impossible geography. You can’t make a hero out of swamps and mountains. Yes, I admit that making a hero out of Essad Pasha is just about as unlikely, but all the same…

I also hadn’t said whether I trusted him. I wondered if the scribes would notice. There went some wasted worry. Scribes get paid to write down the obvious, and to try not to put their readers to sleep while they do it. The better ones can more or less manage that. The rest? Well, if someone like Bob can still get work, the standards of the trade could be higher.

“How did you like your harem, your Majesty?” somebody asked.

All the scribes leaned forward. There was the sort of story they were made to cover. They didn’t have to think, which was lucky for most of them. They only had to be sensational. They could handle that, all right. Some semipornographic drivel their editors could tone down-or spice up, if they were Narbonese-later on was just what they had in mind.

As Otto of Schlepsig, I might have given it to them. As Halim Eddin? No. In the matter of harems, Halim Eddin was a worldly-wise man of experience, where the scribes were panting boys with drool running down their chins. So I said, “The girls seem pleasant enough. They fully measure up to the ones I knew in Vyzance.”

“How many of them do you know?” someone shouted.

“I made a point of introducing myself to all of them yesterday afternoon,” I replied. “Summoning women I had not met would be most impolite.”

“How many of them did you summon?” a scribe asked, while another one called, “Did you summon them all at once or one at a time?”

I looked severe. At least, I hoped I didn’t just look exhausted. “Gentlemen, I don’t ask you what you did in the nighttime.”

Once that was translated for Bob, he said, “I did nothing in the nighttime.”

“Thou lying dog,” Max said behind me in Hassocki. I don’t think any of the scribes heard him, which was probably just as well.

“We’re not the King of Shqiperi,” a journalist said. “We haven’t got a harem.”

“And you don’t want your wives hearing what you did do?” I suggested. That produced laughter and nudges and winks. Nobody denied it.

Well, next to nobody. “I did nothing in the nighttime,” Bob repeated plaintively. He was an old man. It might even have been true.

“You will have to draw a veil of silence around the harem,” I told the scribes, “for I do not intend to think of it further.” The real Halim Eddin would have been proud of me. The real Halim Eddin might even have assumed that, since I didn’t say anything more about the harem, the scribes wouldn’t write any more about it.

If so, the real Halim Eddin would have proved himself a naive, innocent Hassocki. I knew better. If I didn’t talk about the harem, the scribes would put words in my mouth. If they didn’t, their editors back in Albion or Narbonensis or Schlepsig or Torino would. They had to sell journals, after all. If the King of Shqiperi wouldn’t give them the copy they wanted, they’d come up with it some other way. After all, what could he do about it?

Declare war?

What a tempting thought! But Belagora lay within my reach. The idiot scribes of Narbonensis and Albion? I’m afraid not. If I could have marched a Shqipetari army through the streets of Lutetia and sacked the editors one by one, dividing all of their gall into three parts…Even more a fantasy on my part than the journalists’ slavering visions of a harem were on theirs.

“Anything else, gentlemen?” I asked, stretching a point.

There wasn’t. After war and women, they weren’t very interested in other matters. Now that I think about it, they had a point.

After the scribes trooped out, gabbling among themselves, Skander brought Essad Pasha into the improvised throne room. The former governor of Shqiperi bowed low to the master he had summoned. “Your Majesty,” he murmured.

“Good morning, your Excellency,” I said. “How are you today?”

“I am well, thank you.” Essad Pasha’s heavy features worked. “Your Majesty, did you really declare war on Belagora?”

“I’m not making this up, you know,” I said. “I most assuredly did. Why?”

“Because they’ll slaughter us!” he said.

“I doubt it. They didn’t slaughter you in the Nekemte Wars. Why should they start now? They’re only Belagorans, after all,” I said. “North and south, east and west, are there any greater cowards in all the world?”

“Well, there are the Shqipetari,” Essad Pasha said with a laugh.

Skander, hearing this, did not laugh. He quivered like a hound taking a scent and then aimed himself at Essad Pasha like that same hound getting ready to spring. Shqiperi is the land of the blood feud. Any little insult can bring it on. Essad Pasha had just insulted all the people in the land, and not in any little way. I wondered if he would get out of the palace alive. I wondered if I wanted him to.