Wattys shortlist 2021. One morning the sun rises a few hours early, striking levitating skyscrapers in Soliara ahead of schedule. People in the streets stop to look up at the sky and then down at their watches. Most of them, puzzled but disbelieving...
Cristo had to wait several seconds after he knocked for the door to open, each one of them an assault on his resolve.
Leander opened it and showed no sign of surprise, but with his signature ability to do exactly what was best for his boss without hesitating to decide what that was, he stepped backward into the room and gestured to Stephen to look who it was.
Stephen's jaw dropped and while he recovered Leander told the other occupants of the room to get out now. Cytheria, Vincent, Marcus and Calcus fled past Cristo. Cristo entered the office and could feel Nova's presence entering in his wake, an interruption waiting to happen once Stephen got out half of "Cristo, what are you doing he—" and Cristo moved out of the way so Stephen could see her — and Cristo could see how Stephen would react, other than to stop speaking in the middle of a word.
Nova Dasilva looked identical to Potestas's daughter, but Nova Potestas wouldn't be at the tower tonight — Cristo knew her well enough to know she would be at the capital, executing the last attempt at rebellion — and even if she weren't, an imposter could never have fooled her father.
Stephen was quick to put the pieces together: her clothes, a white suit he hadn't seen in one hundred years; her face shaped by a different life, cold, detached yet pained by loss, but not rough, calloused, disciplined and accustomed to hardship like that of his daughter; her stance, unfamiliar with everyone around her, Cristo and Leander being strangers and Stephen himself only narrowing qualifying as a friend, if a childhood one; not to mention Cristo mirroring her expression, demanding answers and explanations — now.
Stephen recovered quickly.
"Leander, escort Lady Dasilva from the room, please," he said.
He knew exactly what was going on and it was a possibility that had evidently even occurred to him.
"Cristo and I need to speak alone."
Cristo didn't object; the faster he got answers, the better, and he didn't break eye contact with Stephen while Nova protested and tried to argue with Leander, who escorted her with little trouble from the room using a combination of magic and muscle.
When the door magically closed behind them, and Nova firmly on the outside of it, Cristo dropped the aggressive stance and took the seat on the other side of Stephen's desk, his face placid, but still expectant. He didn't bother asking anything, just waited to see what Stephen wanted to tell him.
After a second he even stopped glaring at Stephen and had a look at the photographs on his desk in frames, almost all of them of his daughter, from an infant in a cradle to childhood, a curly haired girl with her nose in a book, a sullen adolescent caught only in school photos with what Cristo recognized as her forced smile but most no one else would, maybe not even her father — her graduation picture, and the only picture from which Cristo's own face peered back at him — her wedding day.
"You never should have brought her here," said Stephen, but it was resigned. He was a pragmatic man and not only did he know he would never win that argument, he knew there was no point wasting time trying. "What you have to understand is that you are only to change the specific events that I tell you to change. Leave the rest alone. Leave Aurelian Dasilva alone and let that part of history play itself out, Cristo. Please."
"I can do that, but you're going to tell me exactly what's going on, or I am not going back again. I quit."
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