Harry Turtledove: Every Inch a King

After he gulped, he coughed. This time, I didn’t fret about him. For one thing, he didn’t have a foot and a half of honed steel down his throat. For another, a good slug of slivovitz will make anybody cough.

Ilona let out a screech like a cat with its tail in a pencil sharpener. A moment later, I heard running feet. One of the locals must have been peeking into the wagon while she changed. Her window scraped open. What sounded like a bottle shattered on the ground-or possibly on the local’s head. The window slammed shut. Ilona said something in Yagmar that had to mean, That’ll teach him!

Ludovic brought in a copy of the Thasos Chronicle, the journal for foreigners in town. It’s written in Narbonese, not because more foreigners in Thasos know Narbonese but because Narbonensis used to have closer ties to the Hassockian Empire than any of the other great powers did. Now that Thasos belongs to Lokris (unless Plovdiv takes it away), who knows how long the arrangement-or the journal-will last?

“Any news about the show?” three people asked at the same time. A natural question-and a dumb one. I don’t care how fast the law of similarity lets you turn out copies. A scribe wouldn’t have had time to write his piece, get back to the office or send it by crystal ball, and get it to the wizards. Not only that, the news-sellers wouldn’t have had time to get it on the street. Magic is one thing. Miracles are something else altogether.

The ringmaster shook his beefy head. “I was looking for war news, for when we leave town. It’s still sputtering to the north and west. The Hassocki aren’t giving up there.” He paused and turned to an inside page. “And it says Essad Pasha and the Shqipetari have asked the Hassockian Empire to send them Prince Halim Eddin to be their new king.” He paused again. “There’s a picture of the prince, copied by crystal from the original portrait in Vyzance.” He held out the journal so we could all see.

It was my face.

Oh, the resemblance wasn’t exact. Halim Eddin waxed his mustachios into points, where I let mine stay bushy. He plucked his eyebrows, the way Hassocki nobles do. I’d never let tweezers get near mine in my life. My hairline receded a little more than his. When I went up for a closer look, I saw that his eyes were bright blue, where mine are gray.

But we were about the same age. We both had brown hair. We both had long faces with strong chins and formidable noses. We both had high, proud cheekbones and wide mouths. We certainly could have been brothers. We might well have been twins. They say every man has his double. I never expected to meet mine staring at me off a journal page with a pound and a half of Hassocki medals on his chest.

Everybody in Dooger and Cark’s Traveling Emporium of Marvels hurried up to gape at the picture-and at me. Now I know how the freaks and demons in the sideshow feel. Everybody started talking at once, using several different languages. Ilona-by then she’d come out of her wagon-looked at me sidelong and said, “There were things you weren’t telling me, darling.”

“There were things I wasn’t telling me, darling,” I answered.

Max bowed deeply. He looks like a carpenter’s rule with big ears when he does that. “What is your command, your Highness?” he asked, sounding more like an undertaker than a courtier.

“Why don’t you go soak your head?” I told him.

He bowed again. “With pleasure, your Highness.” He grabbed another bottle-it was genever this time, I think-and got a long start on soaking, anyway.

All the rest of the night, the troupe called me your Highness and your Majesty. They wouldn’t let it alone, even after the joke got stale. For a while, it annoyed me and made me angry. Then I started to accept it as nothing less than my due. That put some new life in the joke-except by that time I wasn’t joking any more.

No, I’m not ashamed to admit it. That was how the idea caught fire in me: there at a drunken party for third-rate circus performers in a second-rate town that had just changed hands between a senile empire and a kingdom that wanted to revive an empire not just senile but centuries dead. Strokes of genius are where you find them.

I’ve acted on the stage, as I say. I’ve won applause in cities far grander than Thasos ever dreamt of being. Why I wasn’t still doing that then…is a long story, and not altogether my fault. You can ask anyone who was there when things went sour. You’ll hear the same thing-or perhaps you won’t. Some people are nothing but natural-born liars.

But never mind that now. A role onstage is one thing. A role on the stage of the world, on the stage of history-that’s something else again. The role of a lifetime! Liable not to be a very long lifetime if something went wrong, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. If only I could bring it off, I’d drink out on it for the rest of my days.

If. I couldn’t do anything about it that evening. I couldn’t do anything about anything, not as drunk as I got. An acrobat with a hangover is the most pitiful thing the Two Prophets ever saw, the only problem being that no one will pity him. Try doing flips and spinning through the air high above the ground when your head wants to fall off. Try not losing your lunch on the audience-it will get you talked about if you do. Try…Never mind. Try drawing your own unpleasant pictures.

Yes, I knew it was going to happen if I drank much more. And I drank much more anyhow. It was my own fault. I knew that, too. Come the next morning, knowing didn’t help.

I staggered out of my wagon wishing I were dead. My mouth tasted the way the gutters in Thasos smell. A demon drummer twenty feet tall pounded the top of my head every time my heart beat. If I opened my eyes too wide, I was sure I would bleed to death through them. It might have been a relief.

Right at that moment, I probably didn’t look much like Prince Halim Eddin. As I say, followers of the Quadrate God don’t drink, or at least they’re not supposed to. There are exceptions-oh, indeed there are-but I couldn’t have told you if the prince was one of them.

Thinking of him, though, helped steady me on my feet. I ate some raw cabbage: the Lokrian hangover cure. I ate some tripe soup: the Hassocki hangover cure. I had the hair of the dog that bit me: my personal hangover cure. Put them all together and I was at least within screaming distance of my old self-if a bit on the flatulent side-by the time Max emerged.

He looked as bad as I’d felt a little earlier. He had his head in his hands, as if afraid he’d lose it. He didn’t just have the hair of the dog. He had the tail and the ears and one of the hind legs, and a little tripe soup to go with it.

Everybody has to find his own cure for the morning after. Max of Witte’s worked for him, and faster than mine worked for me. One of the things that proved is, his liver is made of sterner stuff than mine. He gave me a sepulchral smile-almost the only kind he owns-and said, “And how are you this morning, your Majesty?” He was joking, the way everybody had been the night before.

I took a deep breath. “Max,” I said, “how would you like to be the aide-de-camp to the new King of Shqiperi?”

He looked at me as if he thought I’d gone smack out of my mind. “I think you’ve gone smack out of your mind,” he said.

“Why?” I grabbed the copy of the Thasos Chronicle Ludovic had brought in. I opened it to the story about how the Shqipetari were looking for a new king. Sure as sure, that was-or might as well have been-my face looking out from the page. I tapped it with my forefinger. Then I tapped the end of my own nose. “They’re looking for Prince Halim Eddin, the Hassockian Atabeg’s nephew. And, by the Two Prophets, we’ll give them Halim Eddin!” I tapped my nose again.