Harry Turtledove - Every Inch a King

Or I could, anyway. I am a good-sized man, but neither enormously tall nor enormously wide. The second tailor we visited had exactly what I needed, right down to the boots and the belt buckle and the epaulets. We haggled for a while. He even knocked off another piaster and a half when I noticed a very neatly repaired tear in the back of the jacket. It was about what a rapier would have made going in.

No sign of a bloodstain around it, even on the inside of the material. Cold water will soak them out if you’re patient, and who ever heard of an impatient tailor?

But when I asked about a captain’s uniform for Max, this fellow bowed and shook his head. “My liver is wrung, O most noble one,” he said in Hassocki, which we’d been using, “but I have none fit for a man of his, ah, altitude.”

“No, no.” Max shook his head. “Otto is his Highness here.”

The tailor scratched his head. I made as if to kick Max. Without moving a muscle, he let me know that wouldn’t be a good idea. I turned back to the tailor. “Know you, my good man, if any of your colleagues might have attire suitable to his stature?”

“I know not, I fear me. It is written, Seek and ye may find.”

I’d always heard it as Seek and ye shall find. Considering how Max is put together, the tailor’s version made better sense. “Verily, it is so written, or if it be not written so, so should it be written,” I said. He was chewing on that as Max and I left his shop. Max looked as if he was also chewing on that, or possibly on his cud. By the time we’d walked into the next tailor’s shop, I was chewing on it myself. It certainly sounded as if it ought to mean something, whether it did or not.

We ended up walking into every tailor’s establishment on Threadneedle Street. Every tailor without exception took one dismayed look at Max, rolled his eyes, shook his head, and threw up his hands. “I’m not cut out to be an aide-de-camp,” Max said. “Maybe I should go as your stepladder instead.”

“Did Eliphalet lose heart when he faced the Tharpian King of Kings?” I demanded. “Keep your chin up, man.”

He did. It made him look even taller. He must have known as much, too, for he said, “Eliphalet wasn’t six feet eight.”

“Not on the outside,” I said, and cribbed from a hymn: “In spirit he was ten feet tall.”

“Nobody ever tries to put your spirit in a uniform,” Max said, which was true but so resolutely unhelpful that I pretended not to hear it.

Right next to Threadneedle Street is Copperbottom Alley. That’s not where the tinkers and potmakers work; their establishments are along the Street of the Boiled Second Stomach-a Hassocki delicacy that loses something in the translation and even more, I assure you, in the ingestion. No, Copperbottom Alley houses secondhand shops and houses of the three gold globes and other not quite shady, not quite sunny enterprises. I was sure we could buy Hassocki captain’s uniforms there; I was fairly sure we could buy ourselves a couple of Hassocki captains, if for some reason we happened to need them.

Whether we could find a uniform to fit Max…Well, I wasn’t so sure about that, but I wasn’t about to admit I wasn’t so sure, either.

When we walked into the first secondhand shop, the proprietor, a round little Hassocki, shook his head. “I am wounded to the very heart of me that I find myself unable to aid my masters,” he said, “but perhaps they will seek the place of business of Manolis the Lokrian. North and south, east and west, by the strength of my bowels no one else in Thasos is more likely to possess that which, should you acquire it, would make your spirits sing.”

Manolis the Lokrian proved to run a house of the three gold globes halfway along Copperbottom Alley. Luckily, he wrote his name on the window in Hassocki characters as well as his own. A bell above his door jangled when Max and I went in.

“Gentlemen, I am at your service. Ask of me what you would,” he said. He bowed and straightened and bowed again.

I didn’t ask him anything at once. I was too busy staring. I saw at once why the roly-poly Hassocki had sent us to him. He had to be an inch or two taller even than Max. The two of them were also staring at each other. Very tall men aren’t used to running into people their own size. They need to decide who’s bigger and how surprised they’re going to be about it.

“Have you by any chance a Hassocki captain’s uniform to fit my friend?” I asked.

He broke out laughing. “I do,” he said. “I do. By Zibeon’s forelock, I do. I have the very thing.” I reminded myself he was a Lokrian, and so unlikely to know better. I also reminded myself how big he was. Taller than Max! Who would have believed it? He went on, “During the, ah, late unpleasantness I purchased this from an officer desirous of decamping in such secrecy as he might-though when a man is of his stature, or mine, or your friend’s, secrecy is hard to come by. Later”-he preened his mustaches between thumb and forefinger-“I had occasion to wear it, to personate the fled Hassocki and lure his comrades out of a strong and safe position. This I accomplished.” He stood even straighter than usual.

So the uniform had already been used in one masquerade, had it? A paltry scheme next to mine-but still, I took it for a good omen. I said, “May we see this famous outfit?”

Manolis bowed once more. “Certainly, my master. Certainly. But what ails your friend? Can he not speak for himself?”

“No,” Max croaked. “I never learned how.”

The Lokrian broker scratched his head, tugged at his mustaches again, and disappeared into a back room. He returned with a neatly folded dust-brown uniform. Unfolded, it did indeed prove suitable for a man of Max’s inches. The sleeves and trouser legs were slightly too short, but only slightly. It fit Max a good deal better than it would have Manolis, who was not only taller but wider through the shoulders and had the beginnings of a paunch. Imagining Max with a paunch is like imagining a nightingale with a bagpipe. I doubted the Hassocki who saw Manolis in disguise were inclined to be critical. Anyone who could wear that uniform without turning it into a tent had to carry conviction.

I spoke next with a certain amount of worry: “Ah, how much might you want for such an item, O most heroic and valiant one?”

“Well, I had not really purposed selling it at all,” Manolis replied. “My thought was to save it for my grandchildren, a token of the time when Thasos passed out of slavery and into freedom.” Half the city’s populace would have juggled nouns and prepositions there, but never mind. He continued, “If I were to sell it, I should need to be suitably compensated for the future loss to my heirs and assigns.”

“What do you reckon suitable compensation?” I inquired, more cautiously yet.

He named a price. I did not faint. I do not know why I did not faint. I merely state the fact. He added, “I suspect you may encounter a certain amount of difficulty finding such a uniform here or elsewhere.”

I suspected he was right. No, I knew too well he was right. Nevertheless, I said, “And I suspect you are a saucy robber. Dust-brown cloth is cheap as pistachios in Thasos right now. I could have a tailor make me a uniform for half what you ask.” That would still cost too much and take too long, something Manolis did not need to know.

He scowled down at me. A fearsome scowl from such a giant would have put most men of ordinary size in fear for their lives. I, however, am bold beyond the mean-and used to Max scowling down at me. Again, the hair of the dog that now could not bite me. Seeing me unafraid and unabashed, Manolis named a more reasonable figure. I named one in return. “Why, thou brazen son of a poison-tongued serpent!” he cried.