“Like we never left,” said Mithos, cautious, as he stepped down from the carriage behind me.
“But we did,” I said. “Right? You’re not going to give me that ‘and-I-woke-up-and-it-was-all-a-dream’ bollocks, are you? Because that is the single worst ending to a story ever.”
“No,” said Orgos, wonderingly. “It was real. I can still feel the ache of my wounds.”
I felt my face, but the bruising Sorrail had given me had healed long before the ambassador had showed up in Phasdreille. I glanced wildly around, expecting to have lost some of the group, but they were all there, Garnet still sitting beside the driver with a dazed look, Renthrette sliding out of Tarsha’s saddle, Lisha stock still, her spear somehow ready.
“The same place,” said Orgos, still in an awed whisper, “and the same time.”
“What?” I said. “What do you mean?”
I was trying to sound defiant, dismissive, but a part of me knew what was coming and guessed he was right. He was staring at the corner of the sky where a quarter moon was beginning to rise.
“This is how it was when we left,” he said.
“Oh my God,” I said. “There will be Empire troops all over looking for us. We’re right back where we were!”
“Almost,” said the ambassador, stepping down from the carriage.
I had assumed he was gone, and his voice made me jump, but I recovered quickly.
“What do you mean, ‘almost’?” I said.
“Times change,” he answered. “See for yourself.”
As he was speaking, the door into the tavern had been thrown open and a bored-looking stable boy trudged out with a bag of oats. Orgos, ever stealthy, ducked behind the carriage, reaching for his sword. Mithos and Lisha followed. The boy, who was about fourteen, frowned at us.
“Oh,” he said to me. “I didn’t know anyone was here. I’ll get my master.”
“Wait,” I insisted. I had no idea how to proceed. “So,” I said. “How’s business? Busy night?”
He frowned again, then shrugged.
“Same as usual,” he said.
“Any excitement in town?”
“Excitement?”
“Commotion,” I said, speaking through a fixed and wholly unconvincing smile. “Tumult. Uproar. Hullabaloo. People running around and shouting. .”
“Sir?”
“Are the streets quiet?” said Renthrette, like she was wading in to save a man drowning in two feet of water. “Or is there a lot of Empire activity?”
Subtle, I thought, and waited for the boy’s face to cloud with suspicion. Instead, his bafflement seemed to increase.
“Empire?” he said.
“Empire,” repeated Renthrette. “The Diamond Empire. Are there more than the usual patrols, or?. .”
But the kid was shaking his head, brow still furrowed.
“What Empire?” he said. “What do you mean?”
“The people who run Stavis,” Garnet called, jumping down from the carriage.
“Run Stavis?” the boy repeated. “Not sure who runs Stavis. Depends who you ask, I suppose. The Merchants Guild control half the city council, my master says, but it’s supposed to be freely elected. .”
“But who controls the city?” I inserted. “Who polices it? Who makes the laws and suppresses rebellion? Who is the power here? Who are you scared of?”
The boy hesitated and something uneasy shot through his eyes.
“There’s the Fraternity,” he offered. “They are the police. They keep the bad people out.”
“And this Fraternity is an army? White cloaks with a diamond motif. .”
“There are twelve of them,” said the boy. “There is no army.”
“Wait,” I said. “Are you saying that the Diamond Empire has no presence in this city?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the boy. “I don’t know what the Diamond Empire is. Is it a trade league? There’s a Goldsmiths’ Guild. Maybe it’s part of that.”
“No,” I insisted. “I mean an army. A massive military and political presence which came south from Aeloria. They took Cresdon and Bowescroft, then Cherrathwaite, remember? Then they came here. They built a road across the Hrof and they took Stavis, which is now their easternmost frontier. There was a big troop buildup here a few months ago when there was fighting over in Shale and Graycoast. Right? The Empire. The Diamond Empire. Ring any bells?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the boy. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Cresdon was conquered by an army from the north? No chance! We might be a bit far afield, but we would have heard. When did that happen?”
“Almost twenty years ago!” I exclaimed.
“Oh,” said the boy, as if he was finally understanding a joke we had been making at his expense. “All right. I get it. Stavis is a long way from anywhere and we don’t know what’s going on in the world. A big army could take over the whole area and we wouldn’t notice because we’re too busy counting our money. Very funny. You know, if you’re going to be here long, I’d get that kind of humor out of your system quickly. People won’t like it. So, you need your horses stabled or what?”
“Yes,” said the ambassador, stepping forward. “Perhaps you could fetch the innkeeper. We may need rooms for the night.”
The boy, looking surly, returned to the inn and I got a brief glimpse inside: a few patrons at tables eating and drinking. No crowds. No soldiers. No Empire presence of any kind.
“What the Hell is this?” I said.
Orgos, Mithos, and Lisha emerged from the shadows behind the carriage.
“The boy is deluded,” said Garnet. “Or dim.”
He said it loudly, throwing out his chest as if defying the world to contradict him, but there was something in his eyes, a flicker of uncertainty. Even he knew there was more to it than that.
“Open the street door,” said Lisha.
“Lisha,” Renthrette cautioned, “if there are Empire troops on the road outside. .”
“Will,” Lisha said. “Open the door. Carefully.”
I wanted to ask why it had to be me, but I also wanted to know. I walked across the inn yard, lifted the bar across the door and cracked it open. It was dark out, but I could see all the way down the road. There were shops and houses, and taverns, mainly closed for the day, and a few people wending their way home to bed. There were no soldiers. I opened the door wider and realized that something was missing.
“There’s no tower,” I whispered into the night.
“What?” said Garnet, striding up behind me.
“There was a stone watchtower just down there,” I said, pointing. “It was a small fortress for the Stavis garrison. The Empire must have built it when they took the city. It’s not there anymore.”
“Maybe they pulled it down,” said Garnet.
“No,” I said. The beginnings of the truth had started to register. “They never built it. Did they?”
That last was aimed at the ambassador, who was watching us, smiling in his cryptic and unnerving way.
“That’s right,” he said simply.
“That’s not possible,” said Garnet. “It was there. I saw it. How can they have never built it?”
“Because the Empire isn’t here,” I said. “The Empire doesn’t exist.”
“What?” sputtered Garnet. “What are you talking about?”
“Where did we just come from?” I asked the ambassador.
“From the city which was once called Phasdreille,” said the ambassador.
“And when did we come from?” I asked.
Garnet started to protest but Lisha silenced him with a gesture.
The ambassador stood there saying nothing for a long moment and his eyes moved over us as if he was deliberating how much to say. When he finally spoke, it was in a low, even voice like someone delivering the epilogue to a play.
“You came from four hundred years in the past. You came from Phasdreille in the mountains of Aeloria, from a place where, once upon a time, a mighty Empire was born. The Arak Drül were conquerors who assimilated other cultures into their own through a combination of military might and sorcery. They drove out other peoples before them, though in time they became simply a war machine, funded by the natural resources they had taken from others, funded, in particular, by their control of the mining and trade of diamonds.”