"Fools. Do they think Gebler will stay away just because they've decimated Aveh's forces?"

Cyrene smiled wryly, eyeing Synclair over her wine glass. The fluted crystal was filled with plain water of course, but it still reflected candlelight beautifully. "I spent half an hour trying to hammer that idea into the ambassador's skull when he notified me of Kislev's plans and called for support. I think his head was solid bone."

"Typical." Then Synclair grimaced. "Listen to us -- we sound like a couple of Solarian nobles chuckling over evening tea."

She shook her head in response, smile turning grim. "They're going to call again...... and if we refuse too often......" She set the glass down and stared into the candle flame, watching him carefully, as always. Just because she trusted him didn't mean she should be too free with her opinions. Or her fears. "We put a lot of effort into keeping this an obscure alliance. If it fails......"

"You work yourself too hard, my Queen." He leaned forward a bit, and her eyes focused on him of their own accord. His irises morphed, chameleon-like, into a deep grey -- like the color of the oceans below. "I know you don't trust the others...... but you have to let me help you. I didn't pledge my allegiance to you so I could sit in the corner like a pet. I mean to do everything I can to make sure you emerge victorious here."

Cyrene averted her eyes, twisting the napkin in her lap. The dinner itself had long since finished, but she had kept the thing for this very reason -- to hide her nervousness from the man sitting across from her.

This wasn't...... She didn't know what to think about this. It had been her idea, to invite him in for dinner while they discussed state matters, but now...... now, he should have been gone, and she at her desk finishing off more paperwork, or passing time wondering about that Mariko girl she had met the other day.

**...... "I mean to do everything I can to make sure you emerge victorious here......"**

Why not just 'Shevat'?

"I know that......" She sighed, forcing her hands to release the napkin and lay flat on the table, in an open gesture. "But you must understand...... it is difficult to trust. I trusted my Ministers with Nisan, and look what it got me." Her voice softened. "We're still paying for that mistake. I vowed never to make it again."

Suddenly, she wished there was more light. She didn't understand why, or what good it would do, but sitting there under Synclair's penetrating gaze was harder than simply making conversation with him. It almost seemed as if he knew what she was thinking when he looked at her like that -- but of course, he had not been classified as a telepath.

He reached across the table and covered her left hand with his own -- covering her signet ring. Cyrene jumped at the contact, and nearly jerked away. No one ever, ever touched her...... especially not in such a setting. "Sometimes...... you should think like a person, instead of a nation. Even you need time to be human."

A long pause, in which she -still- could not meet his eyes. "And mistakes are a part of being human, Cyrene."

Didn't she know it......

But that did not excuse her from making them. Her nation depended on her for their very lives sometimes, and if she failed them again...... What would she do, if another thirty percent of the population died, due to one lapse in judgement? The Diabalos attack couldn't be directly blamed on her of course, nor did she take the blame for it, but what about the incidents afterward?

What about her abandonment of the Lambs in Bledavik? She was supposed to be -better- than Solaris......

Too many questions....... and not enough satisfactory answers. "I can't afford the luxury of being myself, Synclair." It was the mantra she had taken to reciting to herself every now and then, since the last incident with Lacan, all those years ago. Oh, how lucky had -that- been? "Someone must bear the responsibility of the people, and that person is me. Sophia knew this, and......"

"Sophia also knew that she had to make space for herself too. She said the very same thing to me, before the last invasion forces marched to Nisan." His fingers tightened around her wrist in a grip almost painful. "But she still made the mistake of disregarding her own feelings. And she died for it."

"She died because --"

"I'm not talking about her physical death and you know it." Cyrene was silent. "You vowed not to make the same mistakes of five hundred years ago. Will you fail that vow by making -her- mistakes?"

She shook her head, withdrawing her hand. "That was unfair."

Few people had the power to make her cry. Fewer yet were still alive. Lacan, Sophia, Irany, Arron, her mother...... All dead. Yet this one man was enough to bring them all to the surface, and all of her tears to the surface.

And they were there, waiting to fall.

"Please leave me, Synclair."

The silence between them stretched. But then, after what seemed an eternity, he rose from his chair and bowed deeply -- more deeply than she could ever remember, from him -- and strode away. The soft click of her door reached her ears moments later, signaling his departure.

It wasn't his fault...... Cyrene sighed heavily. Her lungs, her entire chest, seemed constricted somehow, tightening more and more as she held her tears back.

**Now...... Why now, of all times?** She pulled herself out of the chair and shuffled to her sliding doors, open to let Aquavy's ocean breeze clear the stuffiness of the air inside the palace. With only a slight hesitation, she continued on, through the doors and out into her private garden at the edge of the city's inner rim. The vast gulf of empty space seemed to sdtretch forever into the night, though in reality, Aphel Aura was only a mile or so away across the "hole" in the city.

It was here she stopped, at the waist-high metal rail, to lean over and gaze into the sparkling ocean below, amid the silence of her peaceful city.

She was gazing down the center of Babel Tower, in reality, but the moonlight and ocean waters alike still flowed through at the bottom of the monsterous construction, visible to her through the center shaft upon which the tram used to run. But it was dark, almost like a pathway to hell......

And it was eminently suitible, tonight.

"Of all things....." Her soft whisper seemed loud to her, almost as if it were echoing from the tower itself. "Of all things to say...... why Sophia? Why......?"

Why bring her memory back yet again, when it already haunted her dreams at night, and her thoughts during the day? She almost never really acknowledged the presence of those memories......

Until now.

The shimmer of the waves blurred into a mass of light before her eyes.

**I'm a fool. As much a fool as that Kislev ambassador. If I were not, we wouldn't be here today. -Solaris- wouldn't be here today.** Cyrene closed her eyes against the blur, eyes growing hot. **Maybe she would have lived...... And Mordon......**

How long had it been? Nearly...... five hundred years......

The tears of half a millennia slid down her cheeks, searing her skin like acid. How long had it been......? So much suffering, hidden in these tears......

Falling....... falling down upon the earth......