“Yes, your Majesty!” All at once, the sergeant sounded enthusiastic. He nodded to his troopers. “Grab the monster, boys!” I have no doubt that members of the Society for the Advancement of the Rights of Individuals with Multiple Necks will be distressed by the crudity, prejudice, and discriminatory nature of his language, and I apologize for the infliction of any such distress. I do not editorialize here; I merely report.

Apparently untroubled by higher feelings of brotherhood, the Hassocki soldiers grabbed the monster. Josй-Diego tried to fight back. In less time than it takes to tell, he-they-had three black eyes and two bloody noses. If it wasn’t pretty obvious that I wouldn’t have approved, he would have lost two heads.

“For Eliphalet’s sake, Otto, call the authorities!” Josй howled.

“You don’t seem to understand. I am the authorities,” I said, and then, to the sergeant, “Take him away!” If you’re going to be a tyrant, be a tyrant!

“Yes, your Majesty!” Away Josй-Diego went. He was still making a dreadful racket. Fortunately, he was doing most of it in Leonese, which the bystanders couldn’t follow. Now that I look back on it, that might have been lucky for him as well as for me. If they had understood some of the things he was calling them, he might not have made it to the dungeon.

“Keep him away from Mustafa and Kemal,” I called after the soldiers. “They don’t need to listen to his ravings.” Could you hold a two-headed man in solitary confinement? A nice grammatical and philosophical question, isn’t it?

The sergeant waved to show he heard me. I wasn’t sure whether the Hassocki officers spoke Schlepsigian. I wouldn’t have been surprised, though. If they did, they would have found out some things I didn’t want them knowing. They would have been able to tell the palace guards about them, too. That could have proved…awkward.

As things were, Take him away! worked just fine. No wonder tyrants enjoy being tyrannical. Not many bigger thrills than telling people what to do and actually having them do it. Some, yes (I wondered if Zogu’s aphrodisiac preparation was good for one more night), but not many.

The market square slowly went back to normal-which is to say, dull. I turned to Max. “Well, I’m glad that’s over with,” I said. “We don’t want any more two-faced dealing around here.”

My esteemed minister for special affairs looked revolted if not outright rebellious. But he said, “I guess you did about as well with that as you could. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Josй-Diego is out of his mind-minds-even when he’s in sight.”

Max didn’t try to tell me I was wrong-a good thing, since I was right. “I wonder what he was doing in Peshkepiia,” he said.

I shrugged. “This is a place for losers. Where else would somebody like Josй-Diego show up?” There aren’t many like him-and a good thing, too, I say.

“What are we doing here, in that case?” Max inquired.

“Don’t be difficult,” I told him. “I’ll say this-what we’re doing here is a lot more profitable than haggling for vegetables in the market square. More fun, too. By tonight we’ll have tried out the whole harem.”

“A point,” Max said. When Max doesn’t argue, you know it’s a good point, too.

Peshkepiia, royal harem and royal treasury excepted, was rapidly running out of good points. Chief among the not so good points was the Consolidated Crystal office. Given any encouragement from me, Max would have haunted the place like a jilted ghost in one of those castles on the crags above the river that are so beloved of Schlepsigian romance-writers of the female persuasion.

Even without encouragement from me, the intrepid Captain Yildirim went back to the CC office. When he returned to the market square, his face was longer than the road between Dooger and Cark’s and a good circus.

“Well, what is it this time?” I asked. Maybe if he got it out of his system all at once, as if from a purgative…

“It’s the Hassockian Atabeg, that’s what,” said my minister for special affairs. “Really bellowing like an angry dragon now. He says the fellow who has the unmitigated gall to pretend to be his Highness, Prince Halim Eddin, should get exactly what he deserves, and another twenty piasters’ worth besides.”

Now, I’ve always thought of my gall as being on the mitigated side. “Twenty piasters piled together aren’t worth a good Schlepsigian kram,” I said.

Somehow, this observation failed to calm Max. “That still leaves you getting what you deserve,” he said. “It leaves me getting what you deserve, too, for which I thank you so very much. What the Atabeg thinks you deserve would keep a team of torturers busy for weeks.”

“You’ve been getting what I deserve the past three nights, too, or half of it, anyway,” I said. “When you thank me for that, you can sound like you mean it.”

Max ignored that thrust, despite all the thrusting he’d done on those three memorable nights. “Wait till this fireball gets to Essad Pasha,” he said dolefully. “Just wait. He can’t pretend he doesn’t believe it, the way he did with the last one.”

“No. He really didn’t believe that one,” I said. I had a certain amount of trouble believing Essad Pasha would disbelieve the Atabeg’s latest. Since I had trouble believing it, I didn’t waste my time trying to persuade Max. Trying to persuade Max of anything good is commonly a waste of time. I did want to persuade him to keep quiet, so I added, “Essad Pasha hasn’t complained about my jugging Colonel Kemal and Major Mustafa.”

“Not yet,” Max said. “No, not yet. But he hasn’t heard the latest, either. When he does, he’ll probably complain about your jugging Josй-Diego, too.”

Now he’d gone too far. “Nobody could possibly complain about jugging Josй-Diego,” I said with great certainty. “North and south, east and west, even Josй thinks Diego wants jugging, and conversely.”

“And perversely, you mean,” Max said. “Curse it, we’re in trouble, Ot-uh, your Majesty.”

“You worry too much,” I said. “For all you know, this latest mumble from Vyzance won’t even get to Essad Pasha. Why should it?”

“Your Majesty!” That was Bob, the bewigged Albionese attempt at a scribe. Who else would shout at me in a language he didn’t think I spoke? Still in Albionese, he went on, “What do you think of the Atabeg’s latest statement, your Majesty?”

“That’s why,” Max said, fortunately in a low voice.

“Oh, shut up,” I told him, also quietly. I nodded to the scribe with Bob, a man possessed of some sense. The other newshounds, I noted, made a point of not letting Bob wander around by himself. I suppose none of them was really eager to be the one who had to identify his body. “What does he say?” I asked in Schlepsigian.

The other scribe translated something I understood into something I admitted understanding. “I also would like to know this, your Majesty,” he told me.

I’ll bet you would, I thought. No matter how foolish Bob was, not all of his questions were. Perfect idiocy, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, seemed beyond him. “I am afraid the Atabeg feels acknowledging my presence here would be an embarrassment,” I told the other scribe, and embroidered on that theme for some little while-the same story I’d given my dear Max and my not so dear Essad Pasha.

As I talked, Bob hopped up and down in an agony of impatience. He tugged at the other scribe’s sleeve like a little boy with no manners. “What does he say?” he asked, as I had. But he did it over and over again. “What does he say? What does he say?”

Had I been that other scribe, I would have hauled off and decked him. But the other man showed admirable patience-what was he doing in his line of work, anyway? He even did a good job of translating what I’d told him. When he finished, Bob nodded, as if in wisdom. “Well,” he said, “that makes sense.”