"...And Mariko?"

Alda inclined her head just slightly. "The girl has been assigned to her rooms, under the appropriate supervision. Her guardians have come and gone with the last of the transfer forms."

Cyrene nodded, silver clinking against fine porcelain as she stirred her morning tea. The sweet aroma of jasmine drifted from the dark liquid, calming the edge of her already taut nerves. "Has she been supplied with the correct amenities? And the uniforms?"

"The uniforms will be delivered today; the rest is taken care of."

"That's all then, I suppose." She tapped the spoon the free it of any excess liquid and placed it on the saucer, lifting the cup to her lips. "You will be needed later, but for now you are free to go."

Alda inclined her head again - a knowing smile beginning to quirk her lips - and turned from Cyrene toward the door. "As you wish, my Queen." There was a decidedly saucy tilt to the honorary, but before Curene could call her on it, however amused she was, her aide was already excusing herself and pulling the doors shut in her wake.

Rumors. Gossip. Unruly servants... when would it end? //When hell freezes over, I'm sure...// The thought held no heat - or not much, anyway. But why couldn't she have /normal/, obedient servants, rather than the circus she was surrounded with now? Surely other rulers didn't have to put up with it.

Then again... life-long retainers were an advantage in themselves. And if she couldn't always see that through the winks and grins and half-spoken innuendos, well... they would get theirs. She was their employer, after all; and there were plenty of nasty, unpleasantjobs available in the palace, if she so desired them to be done by her personal retinue.

Now /that/ was an interesting thought...

"You don't /have/ to put up with that you know, Cyrene." Synclair graced her with a smile much the same as Alda's, if more subtle, over his own cup of jasmine tea. "Assign a few of them to cleaning the prison cells, and I guaranttee their insolence will be... dampened."

Just how /did/ he do that? "Oh, I'm considering it. It would give me some peace, for a few hours at the very least." Her eyes flickered over the stack of reports and folders at his elbow, and she suppressed a wince. It was /far/ too early in the day, in her opinion. Too bad the Parliament didn't feel the same way. "I'm thinking of sending you to join them..."

His answering chuckle held the same note of insolence. "Don't kill the messanger..." He shrugged, depositing his cup upon its saucer. "In any case, more work for you means twice as much for me. Consider me punished."

She cracked a smile finally, though she thought it must be very faint. /Very/ faint. Diabalos, Solaris, the girl and her father... Esari, the Court, the premiers of the Parliament... She felt as if all were resting on her back, weighing her down, pushing her into the ground little by little. And there was more, would always be more... and more...

"Cyrene?"

She sighed, setting her tea down in favor of a slim manilla folder. "What sort of exciting material would be in this one, may I ask?"

His smirk faded, somewhat, and his voice grew a tad more sharp. "The usual. Trade petitions, requests for asylum, and a report here and there from the builders in the city." He flipped through a folder, yanking a page out. "And... we have received a letter from the Kaiser of Kislev."

Cyrene shrugged, giving the document only a cursory glance. "That isn't anything unusual." She shrugged, letting the sheet of paper fall to her desk and rifling through her folder. "At least he's learned the lesson of encryption... Solaris's knowledge of our alliance hasn't exactly done us any favors."

He shook his head, the humor draining from his eyes. "This time... I think it's a little more important. Read it..."

Her fingers froze over the folder and its contents, and she raised her eyes to search his expression. From amused to deadly serious... Syncalir rarely broke stride like that. Even in the most official of situations, he managed to tinge his respect with that wry sense of humor...

... And when he didn't, she learned to listen. She trusted his judgement... and she knew him well enough to know he wouldn't blow matters out of proportion. Though how a letter from Kislev could mean something so dire was beyond her... Solaris didn't even bother with them unless they were on the war front, after all.

But... that was politics, as her predecessor used to say. And a queen was always prey to politics. She took the letter, with a bit of distaste, and tilted it so the light pouring through the windows of her study would illuminate the creamy paper without a glare.

It didn't say much; considering that the ambassador usually wrote three pages before finally clearing his throat so to speak, it was rather short, and sweet. She read it twice, without seeing anything particulary alarming - it was a simple thank-you note, for their aid in revealing the presence of --

Her eyes caught the phrase, and riveted upon the words; after a moment she read it through yet again, the same sentences almost echoing in her mind:

'We thank you most humbly for your help in this war; Your intelligence reports regarding the new class of gears Gebler has supplied to Aveh proved invaluble during the scouting and taking of Bledavik. Your agent was kind and informative, and we look forward to our continued alliance...'

Cyrene tossed the paper across the desk to Synclair, her expression stiffening into the mask she had grown all too accustomed to over the years. It had, for a moment, seemed she had been reading letters etched in fire... She may not have been up to date on every nuance of her Intelligence Service, but she knew when and where they send their agents on the surface, and why. Always why.

And they had never sent an agent to Kislev, with that information.

Never.

"What is this? Not a joke, I hope; we don't have time for that sort of thing." But she knew, from the look in his eyes, that it was no joke. "When did that letter arrive?"

"Just this morning." Synclair grimaced, taking the paper and slipping it back into its folder. "Apparently the messanger was detained by the Ethos on his way to the tower... He's lucky to have arrived without any further trouble."

"No more trouble for /him/, no..." She snorted, rubbing her fingers together as if she had touched something filthy, rather than a simple printout. "For /us/? A ship load..."

Synclair, in his usual untactful manner, nodded in agreement. "If we didn't send this message - and I assure you we did not - then someone else did. And not many people would know this much about our situation with the Mother Country... or /their/ doings, for that matter."

Cyrene closed her eyes, rubbing her temples with her index fingers. //please, not another headache already...// She couldn't just let this go; not something this important. Matters of national security were her duty, after all. "Then it's either Solaris, or a Gebler traitor... I'm more inclined to believe the former, personally. It isn't as if they've never tried this before."

"No... but for whatever reasons, they've turned their attention away from us and to the surface. That isn't unusual in itself, but the fact that they stopped attacking when they had to know we were about to break under their advances..." He let the sentence hang in the air, pausing for a sip of tea.

"Mordon." There was no question in Cyrene's voice. "He has something planned, something up his sleeve... I don't care how long he's been in power over Solaris, I know him well. And he was ever one to let his obsessions get the better of him, in the end. I can't believe he would just let us go, after coming so close to blowing us out of the sky..."

"I agree..." Synclair pulled forth another folder with the markings of his Wing, and she suppressed a wince. "And I do believe I know what it is..." His eyes grew distant for a moment, as he trailed off, fixed upon whatever documents he was holding. After a moment of hesitation - something she didn't quite understand - he placed the documents over her folder, careful to avoid her tea.

She understood immediately why he had hesitated in revealing them to her. They were not documents at all, at least not of the normal sort; they were photographs, both taken in BLedavik, if in significantly different areas.

Different uniforms, different companions... they were obviously two different people. But it was the same face, the face that had haunted her nightmares for what seemed to be time unending. /Her/ face.

Sophia.

There was no mistaking it now; where they had once only had distant recordings, blurred almost to the point of uselesness, they now had crisp, clear images. Whoever the girls were... they seemed, to Cyrene, to be the Mother Sophia incarnate... in twain. Had either of the two walked into Nisan, they would have created on uproar of religious zealots that would have drawn the dead inhabitants of Elru out of their graves.

Could it be true? Could what Mordon had said, that day, after the war... "Do you think it was true, Syncalir?" She realized, distantly, that her hand was clutching the pendant around her neck tightly enough to draw blood if she wasn't careful. "Do you think Mordon..."

"I don't know." His voice was soft, strained as he thought it over. "It certainly looks like it, doesn't it? And if it is true... then they must be protected. Somehow."

'Somehow'. Wasn't that the story of their lives, since the end of the war in Nisan? Make do, somehow... /survive/, somehow... Atone, somehow.

If Mordon had been right, if this was somehow the reincarnation of their old friend, of Sophia... then they had before them the chance of a lifetime. Of fifty lifetimes!

/If/ the man hadn't been spouting out gibberish, as they had thought when he told her the first time about his 'revelation'. Yet even still... well, that was Synclair's area of expertise... if there was any information to be found...

Cyrene tore her eyes from the photographs, forcing her fingers to release their death grip on the Nisan pendant. She didn't have to say anything; the minute their eyes met, he understood.

"Already done, my Queen..." He bowed in his chair, forehead nearly touching her desk. Though he hid it well, she thought the images were haunting his as well. "The search has already begun..."

(Summary: Cyrene and Synclair discuss a letter from Kislev's Kaiser, and fear an intelligence leak. Later, Synclair reveals the presence of the Elly twins in Aveh, and they begin their search for information.)