“In what sport?”
“Bisexual heptathlon.”
She regarded him thoughtfully. He had the build for it, wiry and compact, and no doubt the energy for it, too, since he’d used it for nothing else. Or almost nothing. “I suppose they allow you women?” she said in a silky tone.
“Oh, Lord Fathom, yes,” he blurted, unthinking. “Women. Men. Animals, too, one supposes, if one liked. One’s father had an insatiable appetite for little girls. So far as one is aware, his desires never went unfulfilled. There are middle-aged women all over Kamir living on pensions from the government. One supposes that’s how the ministers managed it.”
“That and payment to the girls’ families, probably,” said Poracious.
He sighed. “I always had trouble imagining what kind of family would … would …”
“Many kinds,” she said dryly. “Believe me, Your Majesty.”
“Jiacare,” he said. “If I am to speak like a commoner, you must stop calling me Majesty. Call me … Call me Jickie.”
“Right. Jickie. As I was saying, I’ve seen families who would sell their children, their grandmothers, their husbands or wives. Sometimes out of desperation, sometimes out of greed, but I have seen it.”
“One’s own life has been more circumscribed,” he admitted. “One has only read of such things, and it is hard to know what is real and what is fiction.”
She nodded ponderously. “Most fictions turn out to be real. At least, such has been my experience. I no sooner hear some horrible story, told as a mere tale, than someone assures me it really happens, here or there. Sometimes it turns out the perpetrator heard the same tale and decided to copy it. Massacres, mutilations, murder, mayhem. There are worlds where all these things are everyday affairs. Asenagi, for example. From among whose people you did not hesitate to send an assassin after Leelson Famber. Surely Kamirian law does not countenance such activity.”
“Well,” he mused doubtfully, “in fact it does. Though only for kings. Kings customarily do anything they like so long as it can be hidden from the public. One’s father often said that public officials generally do so. People want to believe in their kings or presidents or procurators. They gild their leaders with brightest gold, as they do their idols, though both may be but clay. And so long as one does not rub our people’s noses in one’s filthier habits, one can lead them to the slaughter in war, one can squander their treasure for one’s own aggrandizement, one can give preference and immunity to one’s friends, children, and kin. One can let the poor starve and the sick die, and the people will still follow so long as they see one smile and wave and seem to be satisfied with the way things are going.”
“So long as taxes are kept low,” Poracious rumbled.
“That too. But mostly one has only to wear a kingly mask in public while seeming to be interested in the common man. It’s easy to do. One simply watches for occasions when common men do something uncommon, then one notifies the news sniffers that one is gratified at this example. One has one’s picture taken with the awed hero, who may, in fact, have done a very stupid thing. All his neighbors treat him with reverence for several days thereafter, and a holo of himself rests into perpetuity upon his altar shelf, along with the image of his god.”
“Your ministers cooperate in this effort?”
“Oh, yes. Aristocracies conspire to keep their reputation clean. Though they fuss at one for not begetting sons, one has heard them privately say that a bachelor king is less trouble than royal offspring, who are, however one trains them, beset by the passions, ambitions, and rebelliousness of youth. One’s own escapades have been minor. One was assured, for example, that word of the previous flight from Kamir never reached any further than the palace walls.”
“It reached the Fastigats,” she said. “Obviously. May I make a suggestion?”
“Of course.”
“It is not customary for commoners to refer to themselves as ‘one.’ If you are desirous of appearing less—”
“Oh, one takes the point. I, that is. Do.” He flushed. “It’s difficult. I keep forgetting. When I ran away, I had a role I’d planned on. I’d practiced my speech, my gait, the clothes I would wear. I haven’t practiced this.” He fell silent, nodding to himself, before saying, “About the Fastigats. I didn’t know that Famber’s finding me was merely an assignment. I’m afraid I attributed to him some degree of personal malice. To one being pursued, the pursuer may seem motivated by something more than mere duty, and once he had found one … that is me …”
“If you’d told him you didn’t want to come back, he’d have left you alone, as required by Fastigat ethics.”
The king flushed. “I didn’t ask. He didn’t say.”
“It’s of no consequence now,” she said. “So, tell me, do you have a favorite mistress or sweetheart?”
Jiacare smiled slightly. “I did. One or two.”
“But you didn’t bring anyone with you.”
“No encumbrances,” he said. “I wish to experience freedom. I’ve never had freedom before. The other time I was a fugitive, not a free man. By the Great God Fathom, madam, do you have any idea what it’s like, being born to royalty? Every action scrutinized. Every word assessed. Every royal bowel movement inspected. Every royal sneeze worried over. I cannot say with any certainty that there were not several pairs of eyes looking through holes in the wall during my acts of sexual congress. The best I could do was draw the bed curtains and stay beneath the sheets!”
“It would have a damping effect,” she admitted.
“Indeed. A very good word for it. All that attention put out one’s, that is, my fires very well, madam, both physical and spiritual. Believe it.”
“I can see why you wanted revenge against Famber.”
“Well, yes. But I shouldn’t have done it,
