I nodded my agreement, anxious to go along with anything that would get me away from this inn. But as for trust, he could forget it. William Hawthorne trusted no one, and wasn’t about to start with a handful of murderous rogues he knew little-all bad-about. I figured I would have them get me clear of the city. Nothing more.

My one anxiety-apart from the Empire, of course-was that they might feel obliged to do away with me to protect their precious identities before they headed for Stavis, the easternmost reach of the lands taken by the Diamond Empire armies. To seem keen to go with them might make me seem less of a security risk, though the journey itself, if it came to that, would probably kill me.

The Empire had come from the northern mountains of Aeloria, financed by the precious stones mined in their homeland. They had clad their legions in white, their pennants, banners, and cloaks over-laid with the blue diamond motif. So had they acquired their name: the Diamond Empire, wealthy, cold, hard, sharp, and smugly eternal. They had crushed the lands that bordered Aeloria and pushed south to the kingdom of Thrusia. We had fallen hard and taken the edge off the Diamond’s advance for a while. Then greed set their eyes across the virtual desert plains of the Hrof wastes-a land drier than Thrusian grain whiskey or the wit of an Empire centurion-to Stavis in the east, a sickeningly prosperous port. They extended a thin finger of their force, unable to feed and water a more smothering movement in so harsh a region, took Stavis, and held it. The Hrof remained a wild place to this day, and you’d need a rollicking good reason to cross it. There was little Empire presence on the road, though the bandits, scorpions, and vultures had their own plans for you. If you make it to Stavis, you are back in proper Empire territory, but once you get through the town and head east, you are free. That might be the rollicking good reason I needed.