“I went down to the Consolidated Crystal office to see what I could find out,” he said. “A lot of the scribes don’t know I can understand ’em, so they just blather away like nobody’s business.”

Most scribes blather away regardless of whether anybody understands them, but that’s a different story. “Good thinking,” I told Max. “Might as well find out how the journals are looking at us. Until the reviews come in, who knows how the show will do?”

“So I was mooching around listening to all their foolishness, but then a message came in instead of going out.” Max paused portentously. “A message from Vyzance.”

“Oh,” I said. A ship can sail along happy as you please, the weatherworker filling the sails with wind, everything calm, everything serene-and if it tears out its belly on a rock lurking just under the surface, everybody on board will drown. And it will strike all the harder because it was going so well before. I had to gather myself to get out more than the one word, which is not like me at all. “What-what did it say?”

“What would you expect a message from Vyzance to say?” Max answered. “It says the Atabeg’s bloody surprised to find out his nephew’s King of Shqiperi when good old Halim Eddin’s really back there being useless the way a proper Hassocki prince is supposed to. And what do you think about that, good old Halim Eddin?”

“The message was for Essad Pasha?” I asked. Max nodded, then reached for the jug of brandy again. I grabbed it first-I needed it, too. Once I got a healthy snort inside me, I felt better, or at least number. I pointed an accusing finger at my minister for special affairs. “Why didn’t you waylay the messenger?”

“I tried,” he said morosely. “Little bastard gave me the slip. It’s his town, and it isn’t mine. What are we going to do, O sage of the age? I mean, besides getting our heads cut off and spears rammed up our backsides, probably not in that order?”

I had to think fast. I took another slug of brandy. Maybe it would lubricate my wits. If it didn’t, maybe I wouldn’t care. Something worked in there. “It’s a lie,” I told Max.

“What’s a lie? That the Atabeg sent the message? That Essad Pasha’s cursed well got it? Don’t I wish it was, your Majesty.” Max made my title positively poisonous. “I was there, I tell you.”

“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently. “There’s a real message, but it’s a real lie, too.”

“In a pig’s posterior!” Max said. “You’re as much a Hassocki prince as I am a camel.”

“The way you’ve been humping the last two nights, you might be,” I said. “Shut up and listen to me. The Hassockian Atabeg has to deny that I’m really his nephew-even though I am, of course.”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” Max gives the most disagreeable agreement I’ve ever known.

I ignored him. It’s not easy, but I have practice. “He has to deny that I’m Halim Eddin. What just happened to the Hassockian Empire? It just got the snot kicked out of it in the Nekemte Wars. If it hadn’t, Shqiperi wouldn’t be a kingdom. It would still be a Hassocki province, right?”

“I suppose so,” Max said. “But what’s that got to do with-”

I went right on ignoring him. Brandy helps. “Listen, I tell you. The Hassocki tried to sneak a fast one past their neighbors and the Great Powers by sending me here. I’m their stalking horse. I’m the key to their holding on to influence in the eastern part of the Nekemte Peninsula.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Max said. “I knew it all along. You really are.”

“You’re just jealous,” I said, which had the distinct virtue of making him shut up. That accomplished, I went on, “What other choice have we got? We’ve jumped on the dragon-we can’t let go of its ears now.”

“Of course we can’t. Dragons haven’t got ears. And you haven’t got any brains.”

“This is not the time to revoke my poetic license. You know what I mean,” I said. “What do we do if this crystal message from Vyzance isn’t a stinking lie, eh? Do we paste on sheepish grins and go, ‘Sorry, we were just playing a little joke on you people. I guess we’ll be running along now’?”

“Don’t I wish!” Max exclaimed. “I’d love to. Only thing is, I don’t think Essad Pasha’s laughing right now.”

I didn’t think so, either. Essad Pasha is one of those people who will laugh till the tears come while he’s watching his enemies’ beards burn after he’s soaked them in oil and touched a match to them. His sense of humor does go that far. When it comes to seeing a joke on himself, though…“If you want to live to spend any of the money in the treasury, if you don’t want to wind up envying Rexhep-”

“What’s the eunuch got to do with it?” Max broke in.

“Well, for one thing, if they find out we’re just a couple of performers from Schlepsig, they may want to cut our balls off on general principles,” I said. “But they may not need general principles, not when they’ve got specific ones. How many Shqipetari maidens have you debauched the past two nights?”

“Debauched, my left one. They loved every minute of it.” But Max looked worried about his left one, and his right one, too.

“To the Shqipetari, that only makes things worse. They aren’t supposed to enjoy it here. You’re not supposed to enjoy anything here except the cursed blood feuds.” Now that I think on things, that made Essad Pasha a pretty fair governor for Shqiperi, didn’t it? I had more urgent worries just then, or I would have seen it sooner. I went on, “So that message has to be a lie. The best thing we can do is make everyone think it is. The worst we can do is buy some time.”

“Time to get out of here,” Max said. “Eliphalet’s beard, it is time to get out of here!”

“Don’t talk about Eliphalet, even in Hassocki,” I told him. That proved good advice, because a moment later someone knocked on the door. Max jumped like a cornered sword-swallower pretending to be an aide-de-camp to a cornered acrobat pretending to be a king. Quite a bit like that, in fact. As calmly as he could, the cornered actor pretending to be a king opened the door. There stood Skander, not pretending to be a majordomo-and not even knowing he was cornering us. “Yes?” I said-regally.

“Excuse me, your Majesty, but his Excellency Essad Pasha is here. He would like to see you for a moment,” Skander said.

Max didn’t jump again, but he definitely twitched. Skander already suspected my minister for special affairs of being in two places at once. Now Max seemed not to want to be any place at all. I felt a certain sympathy for that; I didn’t much want to be any place in Peshkepiia myself. But if I had to be any place in Peshkepiia, the palace was the best one.

“Tell his Excellency I will meet him in the throne room in a quarter of an hour,” I said. Skander bowed and scurried away.

You’d be surprised how much brandy you can drink in fifteen minutes. Or maybe you wouldn’t, in which case the Two Prophets have mercy on your liver.

At the appointed time, I sat myself down on the cheap, tawdry throne. The two-headed Shqipetari eagle (made in Albion) hung on the wall in back of me, looking symbolic or absurd, depending on your attitude toward such things. Behind me and to the left of the throne stood the mostly faithful Max, otherwise Captain Yildirim, otherwise my new minister for special affairs.

If Max swayed as he stood there, if my eyes were glassy, you can blame the fifteen minutes just past. And if Max seemed steady enough, if I looked the way I usually do-well, you can blame a lot of other sessions with a lot of other jugs and bottles. In which case, the Two Prophets have mercy on our livers.

“His Excellency, Essad Pasha!” Skander cried, as if the Kingdom of Shqiperi were as venerable as Albion or the Dual Monarchy.

In stumped the man who was the former military governor of Shqiperi, the man who’d decided Shqiperi needed a king, the man who’d decided he knew exactly which king Shqiperi needed, and the man who’d thought he’d got the king he’d decided on. Made quite a procession for one fellow, didn’t he?