Harry Turtledove - Every Inch a King

That was the good side. I’d savored every instant of it.

The bad side was, once things started falling apart, everybody else in Peshkepiia savored the notion of killing me in as many ingenious ways as possible. Even Essad Pasha showed a regrettable tendency not to stay browbeaten. I certainly regretted it, let me tell you.

He came to the palace while I was still eating breakfast. Given the general greasiness of Shqipetari breakfasts, most of the time I wouldn’t have minded having mine interrupted. Most of the time. This particular morning, though, he came with a sorcerous copy of the portrait of Halim Eddin, the very portrait that had launched me on my kingly career.

He looked at me. He looked at the portrait. He looked at me some more. He looked at the portrait again. Apparently, I was expected not to notice this. If I’d played by the rules, I wouldn’t have been sitting in the royal palace of Shqiperi eating an indifferent breakfast in the first place. “Is something troubling you, your Excellency?” I inquired.

Essad Pasha looked at me. He looked at the portrait. This could have grown tedious. It could also have given him a crick in the neck if he’d kept it up much longer. “You look like his Highness,” he said grudgingly.

“And what do you suppose the most likely reason for that is?” I said. “A man often resembles his portrait-if the artist has half a notion of what he’s doing, anyway.”

“But is that the most likely reason?” Was Essad Pasha asking himself or me? Himself, for he went on, “The Atabeg says you are not Halim Eddin.”

“I’ve already explained to you why he has to do that,” I said with such patience as I could muster. A man does get tired of telling the same lie over and over.

And a man does get alarmed when the fellow who most needs to believe that lie starts wondering about it. “Yes, but the Atabeg seemed quite emphatic, even impassioned, in his latest denial,” Essad Pasha said. “I shall have to investigate further.”

He didn’t really disbelieve me, or he never would have let me hear that last. “Investigate all you please,” I told him. “You will find it is just as I say.” The only sure way he could find it wasn’t was by sailing to Vyzance and looking at the veritable Halim Eddin there with his own eyes. If he was determined enough to do that, at least he would give me plenty of time to make my getaway.

Or so it seemed to me. But once things started unraveling, they came unknotted and unknitted faster than a cheap mitten. “Where are Colonel Kemal and Major Mustafa?” Essad Pasha asked.

If he didn’t hear it from me, he would from someone else. That would only make him more suspicious, if such a thing was possible. “In the dungeon here,” I answered. “They presumed to doubt my royal status, too.” I couldn’t very well jug Essad Pasha, no matter how good an idea that might seem. Without him, I had no hold at all on the Hassocki troops in Peshkepiia and the rest of Shqiperi.

Before Essad Pasha could say anything, Skander bustled up to me. “Your Majesty, Zogu the mage would speak to you.”

I sighed. I wouldn’t have enjoyed my breakfast even alone, not as oily as it was. I might as well not enjoy it in company, then. “Go fetch him,” I told Skander, and away he went. He still thought I was king.

“If we are going to fight the Belagorans, your Majesty, I need to speak to these officers,” Essad Pasha said. “I should like to have them released, if at all possible. They are excellent commanders.”

He waited. I wondered if he wanted to persuade them I was the king or if he wanted them to persuade him I wasn’t. But I had to act as if I trusted him, or he wouldn’t trust me at all. “You may see them,” I told him as Skander brought Zogu up to my table. “If they pledge their loyalty to me-and if they make me believe it-they may be released.”

“Very well, your Majesty.” Essad Pasha bowed and took his leave. He didn’t need to ask Skander where the dungeons were. Plainly, he already knew.

He would.

And he hadn’t even got to the dining-room door before I realized how many different flavors of fool I was. Colonel Kemal and Major Mustafa weren’t the only ones languishing in the dungeons. Josй-Diego was sitting in one of those cells, too. And Josй-Diego knew enough about Max and me not just to cook our goose but to incinerate it.

“Zogu!” If fate was kind enough to throw me a straw, I’d try to grab it. “How would you like to put another chunk of the Shqipetari royal treasury in your own pocket?”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind,” Zogu answered. Somehow, I hadn’t thought he would. “What do you need me to do?” He didn’t ask about a fee, not right then. I figured that meant he figured he had me by the short hairs. I also figured he was right.

I pointed after Essad Pasha. “Can you arrange it so his Excellency thinks he’s hurrying toward the dungeons but he’s really not moving very fast at all?”

A light gleamed in the wizard’s dark eyes. For all piratical porpoises, I’d just told him I wasn’t the rightful King of Shqiperi. If he felt like denouncing me, I’d probably end up envying my breakfast. But he only bowed. “As your Majesty wishes, so shall it be.”

If Zogu had to withdraw to his sorcerous lair, Essad Pasha would already have got to the place where I didn’t want him to go by the time the wizard set out to stop him. That struck me as an impractical solution to the difficulty in which I found myself. I cast about for one more timely. Tackling the military governor sprang to mind.

But Zogu proved himself a man of parts. And he had all the parts he needed right there with him. He took from his belt something that resembled both a curiously mottled fingernail and a much smaller version of the dragon’s scale I now wore under my tunic.

“As tortoises grow,” he remarked, “they shed the outer layer of the scutes that armor their backs. These come in handy now and again.”

I didn’t know whether this was now or again. I did know Zogu had better hurry if he was going to take care of what I needed from him. I also knew that, the more nervous I seemed, the more he would charge me when he finished-if he finished in time. I’m not the least accomplished actor in the world. I wouldn’t have succeeded even for five days in the role I was playing without a share of the true gift. But staying calm, or seeming to stay calm, while Zogu went through the rest of his pouches and pockets was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

After what felt like forever and might have been half a minute, he let out a small, satisfied grunt. The bit of dried, withered greenery he held up put me in mind of nothing so much as…a bit of dried, withered greenery. But he seemed pleased with it. “Henbane,” he explained-he was an inveterate explainer, was Zogu. “It has the property of blurring that which is and that which seems to be.”

“Very good,” I said, and could not help adding, “Can you make it seem to move faster?”

His smile told me his price had just gone up. Well, I was past worrying about that. What could I buy with the gold and silver in that multiply locked treasure chamber more precious than my own neck and its continuing attachment to my shoulders?

Zogu rubbed the henbane to powder between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He let the powder drizzle down over the shed tortoise scute, which he held in his left palm. As he did so, he chanted in nasal, braying Shqipetari: an unmusical language at the best of times, which this was not.

I thought I caught Essad Pasha’s name in that flood of incomprehensible syllables. I also thought I caught mine. No, not Halim Eddin’s-mine. If Zogu didn’t say Otto of Schlepsig in there-well, then he said something else, that was all. But I sure thought he did. For a moment, I was offended. How could he presume to know who I really was? But he was a wizard, after all. If he set his mind to it, how could he not know?