To a Schlepsigian or any other sensible person, this all seems utterly mad. I had to remind myself again and again that I was not a Schlepsigian. I was Prince Halim Eddin, and I was used to haggling for the fun of it. If I hadn’t done those tours in the Hassockian Army, and if I hadn’t spent more time than I ever wanted in the Nekemte Peninsula with outfits like Dooger and Cark’s, and if I weren’t a damned fine actor (Max to the contrary notwithstanding), I never could have brought it off.

Seeing the royal treasury again as I got the money to give Zogu his first installment helped cheer me up. Taking the money out of it didn’t. But there was still plenty left. I consoled myself with that. Zogu, no doubt, consoled himself with what I gave him.

Not an earth-shaking day, perhaps-of which there are too many in literal truth in those parts-but a right royal one even so.

And a right royal night as well. Once again, Max contrived to leave his room seemingly locked from the inside and to find himself a waiting place in the royal bedchamber. I ordered another half-dozen girls brought from the harem, and hoped Zogu’s spell wouldn’t, ah, let me down.

When Rexhep brought the girls, they were bubbly and giggly and eager, from which I concluded that Lutzi and Maja and Bjeshka and Varri and Zalli and Shkoza (you see?-I remember them all) had given me a good report. The eunuch looked as if he loathed me more than ever, from which I concluded the same thing. Poor fellow! I had a hard time blaming him.

After a few high-pitched grumbles, he went on his none too merry way. I closed the door behind Shinasi and Urani and Xharmi and Flisni and Kalla and Molle (yes, I remember them, too) and barred it. “And now, my sweets, the night is ours,” I said.

They were polite. I was the king, after all. Still, their newly unveiled faces fell. I think it was Xharmi who got up the nerve to ask, “But, your Majesty, where is the Thunderbolt we heard so much about?”

Lutzi and Maja and-well, you know the rest by now-hadn’t given just me a good report, then. Oh, well. I don’t suppose I should have expected anything different. You will recall that Thunderbolt, in Hassocki, is Yildirim.

I went to the closet and opened the door. “Will you join us, Captain?” I said sweetly. “Your presence-among other things-has been requested.”

Join us Max did. As he had been the night before, he was dressed, or undressed, for the occasion. The girls exclaimed in admiration or apprehension or possibly both at once. Max looked as smug as a man with a vinegar phiz can.

Well, I won’t bore you with the details. (And if the details of such things don’t bore you, I’m sure you can invent your own. They’ll probably be even juicier than what went on while the two of us and the six of them…But I wasn’t going to bore you with that, was I?) Suffice to say that if Zogu’s sorcery against the Belagorans worked half so well, the dragons would devour every man wearing that uniform by the morning after he launched that spell. And speaking of devouring-but no, that’s one of those details, I’m afraid.

By the time-a very pleasantly long time-Max and I couldn’t hold up our end of the bargain any more, everyone in that bedchamber was happy enough, or maybe a little more than happy enough.

“I was afraid they were fooling us,” said Molle-I think it was Molle, anyway. “But no. They meant it.” By the way she sighed, she was glad to be mollified, too.

Maybe even kings who follow the Two Prophets should be allowed harems. It might give them something to do besides starting wars. But then, considering how many the Hassockian Atabegs have started, and considering that I’d just started one myself, it might not, too. What a shame.

There are people who believe Eliphalet and Zibeon personally presided over the discovery of crystallography. (Quite a few of them work for Consolidated Crystal.) Me, I don’t belong to that school. In case you hadn’t noticed, I also can’t stand scribes. Yes, my story deserved to be in the journals-do you think I became King of Shqiperi just for the sake of the Shqipetari? But I didn’t need all the trouble the story got me.

Scribes in the Nekemte Peninsula, like scribes everywhere, are out for the splashiest stories they can find. And so the sensation-stealers who’d followed me from Fushe-Kuqe to Peshkepiia wrote the loudest, gaudiest reports of my coronation that they could. For them, my story was a found feast, you might say. They sent their blitherings off to their journals, which duly ran them. Nothing else nearly so interesting was coming out of the Nekemte Peninsula just then, if I do say so myself.

Why am I so unhappy? you ask. Didn’t I want my name-well, Halim Eddin’s name-on everyone’s lips?

Almost everyone’s. Almost, but not quite.

The trouble was, before long the story of Halim Eddin’s coronation got to Vyzance. The Hassocki are backward, but they aren’t that backward. Consolidated Crystal has offices in Vyzance. Consolidated Crystal has offices everywhere. I sometimes think that, if wizards ever figure out how to master apportation and let men rise to the moon, the first travelers there will walk over to a CC office so a crystallographer can send word back to a waiting world.

In Vyzance, then, word of the coronation naturally came to the Hassockian Atabeg. Why couldn’t he have been disporting himself with his harem when it did? And, I supposed, word of the coronation also reached the authentic, the veritable, the actual, the genuine Prince Halim Eddin, who was sitting by the Silver Trumpet-for such they style the main harbor of Vyzance-innocently smoking his long, picturesque Hassocki-style pipe.

I can imagine the scene. In spite of the chaos gripping the Hassockian Empire on account of the Nekemte Wars, in spite of everything else that was wrong with the Empire-a subject on which I could write volumes (and many men have)-the whole business must have seemed something past a joke to the Atabeg.

He would have sent a message to the real Prince Halim Eddin: “North and south, east and west, what the demon are you doing in Shqiperi?”

And the real Halim Eddin would have sent a message back: “North and south, east and west, your Most Sublime and Magnificent Awfulness, the last time I looked I was right here. As far as I can tell, I still am.”

And the Hassockian Atabeg would have said, “Well, those Schlepsigian and Narbonese and Torinan journalists-to say nothing of Bob, the half-witted Albionese-all put you in Shqiperi.”

“If Bob has me there, that’s the best proof in the world that I’m really here,” Halim Eddin would have replied.

Now, the Hassockian Atabeg is not the brightest and most perceptive of men; Eliphalet knows that’s so. But even he would perceive that his nephew had advanced an argument of weight. He would have said, “Why don’t I come over to your little palace and have a look at you for myself?”

“Come ahead, your Most Supreme and Appalling Splendor,” Halim Eddin would have told him. “If you discover that I’m not here, I will confess to being very surprised.”

And the Hassockian Atabeg would have gone to look. And, I daresay, he would have seen the authentic, the veritable, the actual, the genuine Prince Halim Eddin with his very own eyes. They might even have innocently smoked together a couple of long, picturesque Hassocki-style pipes.

In due course, the Atabeg would have returned to the imperial palace in Vyzance. And, in due course (just how due the course depending on the precise mix those long, picturesque Hassocki-style pipes were charged with), he would have issued a statement of his own, saying no one in Vyzance had thought at all about sending Prince Halim Eddin-or any other Hassocki prince-to Shqiperi. Since neither Prince Halim Eddin nor any other Hassocki prince was in Shqiperi, no such worthy could possibly have become King of Shqiperi. The news to the contrary, then, had to rest on an error. And it was probably Bob’s fault for getting things wrong.