You will please understand I was not in Vyzance while all this was going on. I was in beautiful (Eliphalet, no!), picturesque (Eliphalet and Zibeon, no!) Peshkepiia, much more pleasantly occupied. I cannot prove how the Hassockian Atabeg came to make his unfortunate statement. I can only imagine, as I say, and reconstruct.

But I can prove that he did make the statement. And I can prove it was unfortunate. For me, worse luck.

On the third day of my reign I appointed Captain Yildirim minister for special affairs. The title seemed fitting to us both. Aside from a round dozen-a very nicely round dozen-of the harem girls, we were the only ones who knew just why it fit so well. To the outside world, it was just one of those mostly meaningless handles by which officials so often come to be known.

I also announced I would name the rest of my cabinet the following week. Alas! The full administration of the Kingdom of Shqiperi under the rule of that brilliant and enlightened potentate, King Halim Eddin I-otherwise Otto of Schlepsig-will never be known. I’m sure it would have performed better than any has since in that unhappy realm. I’m just as sure it could scarcely have performed worse.

Having made the initial appointment, then, I sent the intrepid minister for special affairs out to wander through Peshkepiia and learn what he could in the bazaar and the fortress. “Be inconspicuous,” I told him.

For some reason or other, he chose that moment to suffer one of his coughing fits.

I threw my hands in the air. Some people will insist on being unreasonable. “Oh, all right!” I said. “Be as inconspicuous as a six-foot-eight man in a fancy uniform can be, then.”

“Yes, your Majesty.” The intrepid minister for special affairs, Captain Yildirim-otherwise Max of Witte-nodded in somber satisfaction (not at all the sort he’d shown the past two nights). “Always nice to get orders I have some hope of following.”

“Heh,” I said, and then, “Heh, heh. As if you ever cared about following orders!”

“I do,” he said with dignity. “If I’m not going to follow an order, I want to have fun not following it.”

If he hadn’t been having about as much fun as a man could without falling over dead right afterwards, he disguised it very well. But then, Max was always good at disguising enjoyment, even from himself. “Just go,” I said. “Come back in the afternoon and tell me what you hear.”

While he was going up and down in the city doing his job, Skander announced a caller who surprised me: Count Rappaport, from the Dual Monarchy. “Send him in. By all means, send him in,” I said. “What do you suppose he wants?”

“Something that will do him good,” Skander replied. “Whether it will do Shqiperi any good is bound to be a different question.” He might have made a good foreign minister. Being able to see the obvious put him quite a few lengths ahead of several men holding the post in older, larger kingdoms.

Into the throne room strode Count Rappaport. The phalanx of medals on his narrow chest outshone the (I admit it) tawdry show of finery we’d been able to arrange on short notice. The Dual Monarchy had centuries of practice at that kind of thing. They were good at it. It is, I often think, the only thing they were good at. Count Rappaport bowed. “Your Majesty,” he said.

“I thought you didn’t believe in me,” I replied.

“Your de facto Majesty,” he said with legalistic precision, and bowed again. Some of the metalwork pinned to his shirtfront clanked. “Since you’ve declared war on Belagora, I find myself willing to be agnostic, at any rate. Our interests may march in the same direction.”

“You’re trying to tell me you want my interest to march with yours,” I said.

His narrow mouth got narrower. They didn’t much like obvious truths in the Dual Monarchy. They had reason not to like them, too, for one most obvious truth was that the Dual Monarchy had no business stumbling on into the modern era. But he knew the right words to say here: “We are no more enamored of Belagora than you are, and we do not love Vlachia, either.”

“How dangerous is Vuk Nedic when the moon comes full?” I murmured.

“An interesting question,” said Count Rappaport. “Did you try to cross his palm with silver? Is rumor true?”

“Yes, your Excellency, it is.” I told him how the Vlach handled his money with kid gloves.

“Well, well,” said the nobleman from the Dual Monarchy. “I still have no idea who you are, your Majesty. My opinion remains the same: you are no more Halim Eddin than my grandmother’s cat is. But I do believe Shqiperi and the Dual Monarchy can do business all the same. We have enemies in common, and the enemy of my enemy is…”

Is like as not another enemy, for different reasons, I thought. That’s how it works in the Nekemte Peninsula, anyhow. I almost laughed out loud, there on my foil-wrapped throne. Barisha of Belagora and Vuk Nedic of Vlachia were sure I was Halim Eddin, sent from Vyzance to rule Shqiperi. Yes, they were sure I was the genuine article, and they hated me on sight. But, though Count Rappaport knew I was a fraud-damn him!-he was ready to act as if I were authentic, and to help me poke the Vlachian kingdoms in the eye. Even for this part of the world, that struck me as perverse.

Which didn’t mean I wouldn’t take advantage of it if I could. Perversions can be enjoyable; they wouldn’t be so popular if they couldn’t. A couple of nights with the harem girls and the redoubtable minister of special affairs had proved remarkably instructive on that score. Count Rappaport was offering a different pleasure, but not one to be despised on that account.

“The enemy of my enemy,” I said, “can share his short ribs. With pepper sauce.”

Count Rappaport…smiled.

Max-Captain Yildirim-my new minister for special affairs-the sword-swallower-my old friend-came back to the palace looking like a man who’d seen a ghost: his own ghost. Now, Max is not one of the more gleeful-looking people in the world. He never has been. He never will be. Even when he’s happy, he mostly seems sad. When he’s sad, he seems appalled. And when he’s appalled…

When he’s appalled, he looks a lot more cheerful than he did just then.

He was doing his best not to seem horrified, too, the way a man who’s just lost an arm will tell you it’s only a flesh wound. The arm is still gone; Max’s best was miles from being good enough. He staggered into the throne room a few minutes after Count Rappaport departed.

“Could we speak in your chambers, your Majesty?” He sounded as bad as he looked, which is saying something.

Skander saw and heard it, too. “Shall I send for a healer, your Majesty?” he asked.

I had the feeling a Shqipetari healer does to health what a Shqipetari cook does to food. I also had the feeling I needed to hear what Max had to say. So I told Skander, “Maybe later,” before turning back to the minister for special affairs and saying, “Of course, your Excellency. Come with me.”

Even in his state of poleaxed dismay, Max raised an eyebrow at that. He’d never been your Excellency in his life before; I’m sure of that. You deadbeat son of a whore was much more his usual style. (And mine, oh yes-and mine. But I was learning how to play the king.)

We chased a sweeper out of my bedchamber. I barred the door behind us. Then I said, “Well, what is it?” Even behind a closed door, I spoke Hassocki, not Schlepsigian: the sound of my voice might get out into the hallway even if words didn’t.

“I-” Max paused to try to gather himself-without much luck, I’m afraid.

I handed him a jug of plum brandy. He didn’t bother flicking away a drop before he drank. His throat worked: worked overtime, in fact. After he’d poured down a good slug, he seemed a new man. The new man wobbled a bit on his pins, but you can’t have everything.