Harry Turtledove - Every Inch a King

“More Shqipetari riffraff,” the clothier muttered, peering at Max and me around the promontory of his nose. Torinans like Shqipetari about as well as Lokrians do, and for about the same reasons: men come from the Land of the Eagle looking for work, and they steal if they don’t find it (or sometimes even if they do).

I wanted to curse the fellow in Hassocki, but he wouldn’t have understood me. The Hassockian Empire never got to Torino, so its oaths and obscenities never got there, either. Torinans have to make do with their own set, which is distinctly impoverished by comparison.

“Do you always try to run customers out of your shop?” I inquired in my best-indifferent-Torinan.

“Customers?” He laughed as if I’d said something funny. “Customers have money. Shqipetari have-” I wasn’t quite sure what he said then, but I believe it involved irreverent affection for a donkey.

“No, that was your mother,” I said. While he was still gaping, I set enough silver on the counter to make him gape in a whole new way. “Now-are we customers, or do we give our business to an honest man instead?”

He started to reach for the silver. I started to reach for my sword. Max started to reach for his. The clothier’s hand suddenly had second thoughts. “You are customers,” he allowed, and said nothing more about donkeys. “What is it you want?”

“Civilized clothes,” I answered, and said nothing more about his mother. “We went into Shqiperi and we got out again, and now we don’t have to look like we live there any more.”

“You I can fit with no trouble,” he said, and then eyed Max with the dismay clothiers have eyed him with since he was fourteen years old. “Your friend, I am afraid, will take a little longer.”

“My friend is a little longer,” I agreed.

“He will cost extra, too,” the clothier said.

“A little extra, I suppose,” I said. “Not a lot.”

Torinans think they’re good hagglers. Put them next to Schlepsigians or Albionese, who hardly haggle at all, and they’re right. In the Nekemte Peninsula, they’d be picked to skin and bones before they knew what hit them. I was used to playing a tougher game than the clothier. I got the price I wanted without even coming close to mentioning his mother again.

By that afternoon, Max and I looked like a couple of men who’d just bought new clothes in a Torinan provincial town. It could have been worse. We could have gone on looking like Shqipetari.

People gawked at Max when we bought fares on a northbound stage. But people gawk at Max’s inches even in Schlepsig, though he did seem to have more of them in Torino, where the folk are mostly shorter. And the fellow who sold us our tickets smiled at my accent. “You are from the north, eh?” he said. “You speak dialect up in that part of the kingdom.”

He didn’t think I was a foreigner, mind. He just thought I talked funny. Well, I thought he-and the clothier, and everybody else down there-talked funny, too. It’s true that the lovely and talented lady (and she was both, dear Annaluisa was) from whom I learned most of my Torinan did come from the north. I was happy enough to follow her lead in whatever she did-you’d best believe I was.

She didn’t slap my face, either. I was luckier with her than Max was with the girl from whom he’d learned his little bits of the language.

And I was luckier when it came to the coach. Max eyed it with distaste. “Crammed into another bloody shoebox,” he said.

“Would you rather stay in Torino?” I asked him.

“Weather’s better,” he said, which is true. After you’ve sailed the Middle Sea, you can never look at the weather in Schlepsig the same way again. But in the end, he shook his head. “No, I’ll go home, too.”

An hour later than it should have, the coach rattled north. Even though a small woman sat across from him, Max didn’t have much legroom. I didn’t, either. I don’t think anyone else on the coach did. But Max had it worse than the rest of us.

We were all glad to stretch our legs when we got to the next town. This one boasted a Consolidated Crystal office across from the depot. I stretched my legs by walking over there. The crystallographers inside wore turbans. I smiled, seeing myself back in a civilized kingdom.

I sent my message to several leading Schlepsigian journals. The exiled King of Shqiperi returns to his homeland, it said. I hoped that would pique some interest. Scribes had helped bring my reign to a premature end, but I couldn’t make my bid for fame without them now. It was like sitting down to supper with a dragon: you know you may be the next course, but if you’re hungry enough you have to take the chance.

When I got back to the depot, one of the clerks recognized that my accent was foreign, not just northern. “Your passport, please, sir,” he said. Seeing that Max was traveling with me, the clerk asked for his, too. He looked up from them a moment later, his face a dark cloud. “I am afraid you two gentlemen do not have proper Torinan entry stamps. This is a matter of some importance, since flouting our regulations can lead to a fine or imprisonment or both, at the judge’s discretion.”

“I am devastated!” I cried, and clapped a hand to my heart-Torinans love melodrama. “What can we do?”

After a bit of dickering, we did it. From that time forward, our passports did boast proper Torinan entry stamps. Well, they boasted proper-looking Torinan entry stamps, anyhow. A forensic wizard might have expressed a different opinion, but how likely was it that a forensic wizard would examine the proper-looking passports of a couple of obviously respectable, obviously innocent travelers?

Not very. I hoped.

When we got up into the north of Torino, I sent the journals in Schlepsig another message, this one letting them know where and when I was likely to come up into Schlepsig. I hadn’t wanted to do that before, since travel in Torino is tardy and inefficient enough to come right out of the Nekemte Peninsula, and things in the Dual Monarchy aren’t always better.

The turbaned crystallographer who sent my message said, “So you’re the fellow who pretended to be the Hassocki prince, are you?”

“That’s me.” I strutted a little, even sitting down. “So you’ve heard of me, eh?” Maybe the scribes in Shqiperi were good for something after all. And sure enough, the crystallographer nodded. I showed off a little more. Then I asked, “What do you think of me? What does the world think of me?”

“You must have been out of your mind to try it, and you’re lucky you got away with your neck,” he answered without the least hesitation.

One good thing, anyhow: Max wasn’t along to hear him say it.

Our passports passed muster when we passed from Torino to the Dual Monarchy. The customs official at the border checkpoint added more stamps. “Why were you in Torino?” he asked. Like most officials in the Dual Monarchy, he was of Schlepsigian blood. Like some other Schlepsigian officials I’ve known, he liked to throw his weight around just because he could.

“I’d just escaped from Shqiperi,” I answered.

“And what were you doing in Shqiperi?” he asked, as if I’d just confessed to some horrible depravity. In his eyes, no doubt I had.

“I was being King of Shqiperi,” I said, not without pride.

And his whole attitude changed. He pounded me on the back. He clasped my hand. He gave me a knock of cherry brandy from a flask on his belt. He gave Max a knock, too, when he found out I’d had an enormous aide-de-camp. Max drank only with the greatest suspicion. Now that you mention it, so did I. Who ever heard of a customs official acting like a human being?

But this one had his reasons. “You’re the fellow who turned the dragons loose on the Belagorans!” he exclaimed. “By Eliphalet’s toes, they’ve been screeching like a bunch of cats with their tails under rocking chairs for the past week!”