I thought I kept a rough hold on time during my first week in the dungeon, but after that I lost track. I believe we were taken up to the stadium for playtime every five or six days, but for the most part they were just practices and not bloody. The one exception was when Yanno （I’m sorry to keep throwing these names at you, but you have to remember there were thirty prisoners besides me） swung his fighting stick too hard at Eris. She ducked. He missed by a mile and dislocated his shoulder. This did not surprise me. Yanno, like the majority of my fellows, had never been what you’d call a Dwayne Johnson type to begin with, and being locked in a cell for the majority of the time hadn’t exactly built him up. I exercised in my cell; few of the others did.
Another prisoner, Freed, fixed Yanno’s shoulder when we were returned to the team room. He told Yan to hold still, grabbed him by the elbow, and yanked. I heard the clunk as Yanno’s shoulder went back into place.
“That was good,” I said as we were escorted back to Maleen.
Freed shrugged. “I used to be a doctor. In the Citadel. Many years ago.”
Only years wasn’t the word he used. I know I’ve said that before, you know I’ve said it before, but I need to explain—try, at least—why nothing ever quite fit in my mind. I always heard years, but when I asked questions about Empis and that word was used, it seemed to mean different things to different people. I got a picture of Empisarian history as the weeks （used advisedly） passed, but never a coherent timeline.
In Dad’s AA meetings, beginners were advised to take the cotton out of their ears and stick it in their mouths; learn to listen so you can listen to learn, they say. I sometimes asked questions, but mostly I kept my ears open and my mouth shut. They talked （because there was little else to do）， they argued about when thus-and-such had happened （or if it had happened at all）， they told stories their parents and grandparents had told them. A picture began to form, hazy but better than no picture at all.
Once upon a time, long ago, the monarchy had been a real monarchy with a real army, for all I know even a navy. Sort of like England was, I suppose, in the days of James, Charles, and the Henry with all the wives. These Empis kings of yore—I can’t say if there was ever a queen in charge, that’s one of many things I don’t know—were supposedly chosen by the high gods. Their rule was unquestioned. They were almost considered to be gods themselves, and for all I knew, they were. Is it so hard to believe that kings （and maybe members of their family） could levitate, strike enemies dead with a cross look, or heal sickness by touching, in a land where there were mermaids and giants?
At some point, the Galliens became the ruling family. According to my fellow prisoners, that was—you guessed it—many years ago. But as time passed, I’m guessing maybe five or six generations, the Galliens began to loosen the royal grip. In the time leading up to the gray, Empis was a monarchy in name only: the royal family still a big deal, but no longer the be-all and end-all. Take the Citadel. Doc Freed told me it was run by a Council of Seven, and the councilors were elected. He spoke of the Citadel as if it were this big important city, but the picture I got was of a small and wealthy town that prospered on trade between Seafront and Lilimar. Maybe other towns or principalities, like Deesk and Ullum （at least before Ullum went all gaga religious）， were about the same, each with its own specialty, the inhabitants of each just going about their business.
The prisoners, most of whom became my friends—complicated by their belief that I was, or might be, some magical prince—knew only a little of Lilimar and the palace, not because it was a big secret but because they had their own lives and towns to take care of. They paid tribute to King Jan （Double actually thought he was King Jam, like something you’d spread on bread）， because the amounts demanded were reasonable, and because the army—much reduced by then and renamed the King’s Guard—kept up the roads and bridges. Tribute also paid for some fellows Tom called the riding sheriffs and Ammit called the possemen （these were the words I heard）。 The people of Empis also paid tribute because Jan was—ta-da!—the king and because folks tend to do what tradition demands. They probably bitched a little, the way people always do about paying taxes, then forgot all about it until the Empisarian equivalent of April 15th came around again.
What about the magic, you ask? The sundial? The night soldiers? The buildings that sometimes seemed to change their shapes? They took it for granted. If you find that strange, imagine a time-traveler from 1910 being transported to 2010 and finding a world where people flew through the sky in giant metal birds and rode in cars capable of going ninety miles an hour. A world where everyone went bopping around with powerful computers in their pockets. Or imagine a guy who’s only seen a few silent black-and-white films plunked down in the front row of an IMAX theater and watching Avatar in 3-D.