“Well, I suppose if you are to be of any use to me, then I had better start putting sense into your head before foolishness can blot the page.” Mye searched his pipe bowl for inspiration, and then thoughtfully fingered the dry weave of his manuscript. In it he had tried to make sense of the last thirty years of the Realm’s history. It was hardly a bedtime story for a child.

But perhaps, told another way . . .

“Perhaps . . . we had better start with a story.

“Once, in a day that some still remember, there was a king who spent a lot of time devising beautiful gardens and thinking clever thoughts about the stars. He meant very well, and ruled very badly, and in the end they cut off his head, and melted down his crown to make coins.

“The Parliament ruled the country after that, and all the people who still thought there should be a king went into hiding, or retreated to the hills, or fled to other countries. The Parliament’s leader ruled very like a king, but no one called him a ‘king,’ because names are important.”

Mosca, the newly named Housefly, offered no comment.

“The dead king had a son, whom loyal servants rescued and carried abroad. The boy prince traveled afar and became a man prince. He spoke with other kings, some of whom promised to help him win back his throne. He learned the etiquette of court, and found out which princesses were worthy to be his queen. And then, while he was visiting a far-distant king in a land of burning sands, his camel unexpectedly bit off his nose. The prince took a fever and died the next day, through surprise as much as anything else.

“Those who thought there should be a king or queen now argued among themselves. Some thought the old king’s daughter should rule, some his sister, some his cousin’s son.

“Twenty years passed in this way, and the Parliament fell out with one another as well. They were too busy squabbling to notice their power being stolen away by a clever new enemy.”

Mye hesitated. Like everyone else who had lived through that time, he carried his share of terrible memories, and once again he felt them stir, like the breath of a tiger against the back of his neck.

“A Bad Time came upon the Realm. For ten years . . .” Mye halted, looking up into his infant daughter’s face. There was still a great deal of blue in her eyes. A fancy struck him that if he spoke aloud of the tortures, the mass gibbets, the screams from the pyres, he would see inkiness flood his daughter’s eyes, to leave them as black as his own.

“Perhaps I . . . will wait until you are older before I talk to you about the Years of the Birdcatchers.