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I was a nine days’ wonder. I might have been an eleven days’ wonder, except…Well, we’ll get to that soon enough. Because of all the stories about me, I got offers from three or four of the biggest circus companies in Schlepsig-and, later, after some of the stories were translated, from troupes in Narbonensis and Albion and even Tver, where they take the circus very seriously indeed.
Max also got his share of offers. He got inducted into the Sword-Swallowers’ Hall of Fame, too. If you didn’t know there was such a thing as the Sword-Swallowers’ Hall of Fame, well, neither did I. And, as Max confessed after a few beers one night, neither did he.
The Circus of Dr. Ola has to be the best company in all of Schlepsig. Max and I both signed on there. With what they paid-and with what we’d brought back from Shqiperi-we wouldn’t have to worry about money again, as long as we stayed anywhere close to careful. Dooger and Cark’s Traveling Emporium of Marvels? I’ve spent a lot of time-a lot of time-trying to forget Dooger and Cark’s. I haven’t done it yet, but every year I gain a little.
As things worked out, I would have been glad to hire on with the Circus of Dr. Ola if they hadn’t paid me a kram. The proprietor’s real name is Gunther, by the way, and he’s no more a doctor than I am-less, if anything, because I’ve bandaged wounds on the battlefield. But I don’t want to talk about Gunther, however admirable he may be. He is a good fellow, but not so good that I would have been willing to work for him for nothing…except for Kдthe.
If you can imagine Ilona even better-looking, even better-shaped, and-!-even-tempered, you have a good start on Kдthe. And I’m glad-and everyone’s glad-she is even-tempered, too, because she does trick shooting with a crossbow the likes of which the world has never seen the likes of.
That’s what the barker says about it, and Eliphalet smite me if he’s not right. She’ll shoot doves on the wing-behind her back, aiming with a mirror. Yes, I know it’s impossible. She does it anyway. Once, before I knew her, she shot a lighted cigar out of the King of Schlepsig’s mouth from twenty yards.
“What would you have done if you missed?” I asked when I heard about that, meaning, What would they have done to you?
“I didn’t even think about it then,” she answered, and I believe her-you don’t think about what can go wrong when you’re doing a stunt, or else it will. You just make sure you do it right. “Afterwards…” She didn’t go on for a little while. Then she said, “I only did that once.”
“Eliphalet! I bet you did,” I said.
We didn’t fall for each other right away, but it didn’t take too long, either. One afternoon when we were getting ready for a show, she said, “We’ve both done a lot of things, and we’ve both done them with a lot of other people.” I nodded. I already knew she wasn’t a maiden, or anything close to a maiden. As if I minded! But she went on, “That was fine then. If we’re going to get along from now on, though, we probably shouldn’t do those things with anybody else any more.”
And I nodded again. And we didn’t. And we haven’t. And it’s a boy and two girls and a fair number of years later, and I haven’t missed the variety a bit…except every once in a while. And Kдthe’s never once-never once, mind you-said a word about shooting a crossbow quarrel in one ear and out the other (to say nothing of shooting one through some even more tender spots) if I slipped.
I told you she was even-tempered. As for me, I have sense enough to know when I’m well off. Yes, I really do-now. You need to keep a sense of proportion.
Speaking of a sense of proportion, Max fell for a little trapeze artist named Rita. And when I say little, I mean little: she’s got to be two feet shorter than he is. Of course, all girls are short to Max. I wondered if they could enjoy more postures because of the difference in size, or if it closed some off for them. Before I met Kдthe, I probably would have just asked him. Now…I’m still wondering. She’s-civilized me.
She has. Believe it or not.
Max and I did fine in the Circus of Dr. Ola. We were billed as King Halim Eddin and Captain Yildirim, and performed in costumes garish enough to embarrass Barisha, let alone Count Rappaport.
As I say, we might have been eleven days’ wonders in Schlepsig instead of just nine. We might have been, but we weren’t. The second round of the Nekemte Wars crowded us out of the journals.
Not a kingdom in the Nekemte Peninsula was happy about what it had stolen from the Hassockian Empire the first time around. Plovdiv wanted Thasos (which Lokris was holding on to) and more of what used to be Fyrom just north of there. Lokris wanted southern Shqiperi and more of Fyrom. Vlachia wanted northern Shqiperi and more of Fyrom. Belagora wanted northern Shqiperi, too. Belagora doesn’t come close to bordering Fyrom, but probably wanted some of it anyhow.
Essad Pasha kept hanging on in Shqiperi, even without a king to call his own. He didn’t lose any to Belagora, not least thanks to my dragons (and thank you, Zogu!). He didn’t lose any to Vlachia, not least thanks to the Dual Monarchy. And he didn’t lose any to Lokris, not least thanks to, well, the Lokrians.
Farther west, Plovdiv tried to chase Lokris and Vlachia out of the part of Fyrom the Plovdivians thought should belong to them (which is to say, most of it). How do I put this politely? It didn’t work. Lokris and Vlachia thrashed Plovdiv in Fyrom. Dacia, which hadn’t even been in the first round of the Nekemte Wars, jumped Plovdiv from the north. And even the Hassocki sallied forth and took back the fortress of Edirne.
So when the dust settled, Plovdiv had to cough up its chunk of Fyrom to Lokris and Vlachia, and some land in the northwest to Dacia, and the territory up to and even past Edirne to the Hassocki again, which must have been even more embarrassing than everything else that happened to her. Now there’d been two rounds of war down there, and everybody-except possibly Dacia-was still unhappy. Of course, the only way to make anybody in the Nekemte Peninsula really happy is to slaughter all his neighbors out to the horizon. They were still working up to that, but they hadn’t got there yet.
Then the Powers gave Shqiperi a king whether Essad Pasha-and the Shqipetari-liked it or not. Wilhelm the Weed, I think they called him: a Schlepsigian prince with time on his hands. He went down there, but he couldn’t make Essad Pasha or anyone else pay any attention to him. I had better luck than that, by Eliphalet’s strong right hand.
And then…And then…Well, how do you talk about the start of the War of the Kingdoms without breaking down and sobbing? How do you talk about the Vlach werewolf who tore out the throat of the Dual Monarch’s heir-and the poor prince’s wife’s, too-before a silver crossbow quarrel killed him? How do you talk about the Vlach werewolf who had friends at the court of the King of Vlachia?
Once upon a time, I said the Vlachs might huff and puff and blow the Nekemte Peninsula down. The Vlachs huffed and they puffed and they almost-almost-blew the world down.
When they didn’t do enough to show the Dual Monarchy they were sorry (if they were sorry instead of laughing behind their hands, which is more likely), the King-Emperor declared war on Vlachia. Then Tver declared war on the Dual Monarchy, because Tver was Vlachia’s ally. Then Schlepsig, my Schlepsig, declared war on Tver, because Schlepsig was the Dual Monarchy’s ally. Then Narbonensis declared war on Schlepsig, because Narbonensis was Tver’s ally.
Narbonensis had fortified its border with Schlepsig, clearly with evil intent. To get at the Narbonese, my kingdom had to march its soldiers north of Narbonensis through the little kingdom of Bruges. Yes, years ago an earlier King of Schlepsig signed a treaty promising not to do any such thing. But what’s a treaty? Only a scrap of paper! Because of a scrap of paper, Albion, perfidious Albion, declared war on Schlepsig.