silver. He had a table before him and, on it, a copper pot that he held inverted over some kind of spindle allowing him to rotate the pot, as he tapped at it with a tiny hammer. At their approach, he set the hammer down.
They drew up before him. “My lord,” said the man to the tinker.
“Yes, Archimago?” the old fellow replied.
“Our guests.” He gestured to Leodora and Diverus.
The tinker, hunched with age, stood stiffly, then shuffled forward with his hand out. “My lady,” he said to Leodora. “An honor to meet you. And you, sir.” Diverus gave an irresolute bow.
To Archimago the tinker said, “There’s going to be a feast, then, isn’t there?”
“Well, of course, of course.”
“Ah, and what’s it to be?”
“Boar,” replied the woman.
“Oh. Lovely. Brought back from—”
“Yes. From a hunt.”
“Brodamante, you fill me with rapture,” he told her, and she made a deep and formal bow, her red eyes focused on Diverus as if she was demonstrating to him that this was how one bowed.
She straightened, then asked Leodora, “Is there anything you would like to ask of our king?”
Leodora’s brow knitted. “Do you mean him?”
“Indeed.”
“Oh. Well. How did . . . how did—”
“How did you come to be king?” Diverus asked.
The tinker pressed his hands together. “That is a story. It was time for a new king and as I am sure you know, the old king sends out an army of advisers to find a successor. They have so many questions to ask, a list of them, and they go absolutely everywhere asking them. And it’s finally a matter of who gives the best answers.
“Well, I was here, right here at this table in fact, and was mending Miggins’s kettle, which had a hole in it because he had gone and cut himself and they’d needed a pot to catch the blood in, and wouldn’t you know they picked one that reacted badly to his blood, and it cracked open and so he bled all over the floor anyhow, and now his kettle was in need of mending to boot. And so while I’m staring at it, up comes this fellow in green pantaloons and waistcoat, and he says to me, ‘What do you know?’ And I tell him, ‘I don’t know anything at all for certain. Not a thing.’ And it just happens that was the best answer anyone gave them, and they proclaimed me king. That very same morning. I wasn’t even allowed to finish fixing Miggins’s kettle.”
“That’s mad,” Diverus responded.
“ ’Tis,” agreed Brodamante. “But it makes him the best king. As he knows nothing, he can but listen and decide, unprejudiced by strongly held opinions.”
“But what if his advisers lie to him?” asked Leodora.
The blue people looked puzzled. “Why would they do such a thing?” Brodamante said.
“Greed?” she suggested.
“What an uncommon idea.”
“Yes, unlikely,” Archimago concurred thoughtfully. “We would have to cut off their heads. For a time anyway.”
The old king shook his own head heavily. “Oh, I would hope never to have to decide such a matter as that. Life and death, what business is that of kings? No, no. I have my pots to fix. Much more important. You can’t have a feast without pots. Can’t eat without them.”
“I suppose not,” Leodora agreed.
“Of course not.” And he settled back on the stump beside his table again. “I’ll have to get this one repaired then.”
Archimago’s eyes shifted from the king to the guests. He pressed his hands together and said, “There, now you’ve met the king, we ought to . . .” He stopped as he turned about and found the lane choked with citizens as far as they could see. “Oh, dear. Should have known. We’ll never get through there again.”
Leodora looked back the way they’d come, and just for an instant way off in the background beyond the long and tightly packed crowd, she thought she saw a parade go marching by. She couldn’t be certain—not at that distance—but she thought it looked like the parade of monsters from Hyakiyako.
Archimago, apparently seeing no distant parade, said, “They’ll be wedged in for hours while they try to turn about and go home. Here, you two, follow me this way instead.”
He led them past the old king, who was so intent upon his pot repair that he didn’t seem to notice. Archimago opened a low door into the hovel. They had to crouch to enter. Straightening up on the far side, they found themselves in a large blue-tiled room as big as