...Are you insane?

The words had echoed in her mind, ready to be thrown at the council. She was ready to spit into their self-satisfied faces, and damn propriety and order. They claimed subordination to her line; she was the last of the imperial children, the one who survived, who brought power to Shevat through alliance with Sophia.

"I will not sign that paper!" she grated out, eyes narrowed. The Grand Sage lifted a bushy white eyebrow, a challenge, but said nothing. "I will not allow this abomination to pass. You should be ashamed of yourselves."

The old man chuckled. "Perhaps another time, little queen." His smile wasn't reflected in his eyes. "I'm sad to inform you, Your Highness, that you do not have a choice in this matter. If you refuse to sign the decree, we will be forced to act without you."

It would have come down to this eventually. Everyone was aware of the conflict between the royal family and the Grand Council, but never before had they mustered the nerve to directly contradict the throne's decision. It was her father's death, she suspected, that had inspired such boldness. Zephyr was only a slip of a girl, barely eighteen, and only half-trained in the complexities of rule. Everyone knew... they knew the sages were the real rulers in Shevat, no matter what family they claimed to support.

It was the order of things in Shevat. She could scream all she wanted, or try to face this injustice with a scrap of dignity, but as she feared, they were finished with the old game. Now it was time to show the real power in Shevat, wherever it might lie.

Zephyr's fists clenched. A thousand replies sprang to mind, each more vulgar than the last, enhanced by years in the field with Sophia's troops, and the singular men of her bodyguard in particular. Her lips pressed together until they were white with the pressure; her gaze, locked with the glittering eyes of the Grand Sage, never wavered.

During her childhood, the old man - not so old, then, but for some reason he had always seemed to be aged, and grayed - had devoted himself to tutoring her in the art of politics. He was a good teacher and an excellent scholar, no matter what she wanted to think of him now, but his wise teachings had been overshadowed by propaganda so old she thought even he believed it: Solaris was the enemy. Solaris was contending for world rule, but unlike Shevat, they had no lofty ideals. No, Solaris simply wanted domination and oppression, with their precious master race at the top of the food chain.

Never negotiate. Never sympathize. Never turn your back to the enemy.

"How far you have fallen." Her face felt stiff, her lips did not want to form the words, but she had to say something. Silence was of no use to the young. "Your loyalty speaks louder than words."

Years of propaganda, and it seemed he was more Solarian than the Solarians. The irony of it was almost deadly.

Spearing him with one last glance, she turned on her heal, prepared to leave the room, and found herself confronted with two of her own guard, and their spears crossed without so much as a whisper across her path. Zephyr halted, turning her face up to examine one, then the other, but they steadfastly refused to look at her. She let the moment hang, then turned slowly again to face the Grand Sage. He had risen, and now looked down on her pityingly from his dais, and the light behind him left his features in shadow.

"I'm sorry, my queen, but I'm afraid we cannot allow you to leave. Not just yet."

You will have to remain in the city for your own safety. We can't allow our beloved monarch to fall prey to the enemy.

Which enemy? I'm surrounded by silver-tongued serpents. Deceivers, all of you.

The snow fell more thickly upon the ruins of her city, and Zephyr pulled her cloak tightly about her, fisting her hands in the thick wool to keep them warm and hold it closed. The memories were a bit faded around the edges now, but she could still see the old man's cold, glittering eyes, like dark stars in the shadows of the council chamber. The fire of Sophia's ship, projected to them via surveillence bots on the field, had seemed harsher, more hellish when reflected in their depth.

Her memory of him faded, pushed back, but it was replaced by others. The Fatima brothers holding back their tears; Krelian, allowing his own to run freely down his cheeks for the first and only time in her memory. Lacan, looking as if he had already been numbed by the cold northern reaches.

What else could she have done, but pretend? Back then, she had not had the heart to break the truth to them. Truth had a way of making itself known regardless of her wishes.

There were many things she could have done, in retrospect. They were clear to her now after five hundred years of thinking, mourning, and turning the problem over and over again in her mind, though she knew better than most that it was impossible to change the past. There was no going back.

Krelian was hundreds of miles away, locked in his silvery, divine chariot, exacting vengence on the world that had deprived him of Sophia. His arm was long; the life in her tired body was of his make, and every morning she woke to the cold and wondered when it would take his curse back and allow her to die. She had not supported the betrayal, no, but she was guilty anyway. Guilty by association.

Guilty for inaction.

She could have tried to escape from Shevat to warn him of the threat to Nisan's army. She could have attempted to send a message to them, by hacking through the communication system or simply finding a guard who still valued his oaths to her and sending him with her warning. And what had she done instead? Zephyr had gone to her room, as a good girl should when her mentor issued such a command. Night had fallen by then, and she remembered sitting in the moonlit darkness and staring out the window, willing Krelian to change his mind and choose another battle ground, or find a flaw in his excellent plan.

It would have worked. If Shevat had not betrayed them, it would have worked. She could see it clearly. Solaris would have been crushed, and they would not be in this situation right now.

The long and short of it was that the council, for all their supposed wisdom, were very short-sighted on military matters and could not bring themselves to trust the word of an outsider. If their own strategists couldn't solve the problem, how in the world would a young, inexperienced boy manage it?

Her breath steamed, and it seemed the cold grew deeper as the sun crept down, down, and began to sink below the snowy caps of the mountains to the west, staining them red. Zephyr considered going back inside, but moving would be too much effort, and she wasn't quite ready to return to the company of the living just yet. The dead were quieter, if not much for conversation.

Everything was blanketed in white now. Whatever fires had still burned in the morning were now extinguished, buried under the silent death of snow.

It had snowed on the day of Sophia's funeral. The trees along the procession route had glittered with crystallized moisture, shedding tears for their beloved mother and her long-overdue ceremony. The destruction that followed the war had not allowed for proper burials.

She'd felt like a hypocrite for attending, and for once hurried back to Shevat, though it meant submitting herself to the authority of the man who betrayed her. Krelian had disappeared shortly after that. But he'd returned not long after, when the Grand Sage had finally died, and the council was once again under her nominal authority. The old man had taught her well, though she despised his so-called wisdom.

Zephyr had taken to spending her nights in the gardens, and that was where Krelian found her. He moved silently, like an assassin, ghosting from one shadow to the next with only a flutter and rustle of cloth to give sign that he had been there at all. She had been sitting on a bench nestled among a cluster of roses, fiddling idly with the tassle of her sash and staring up at the sky.

Sophia was not a goddess, but she qualified as a saint in the old traditions, and Zephyr had taken to speaking to her every night, hoping that somehow, some way, the girl would hear her pleas for forgiveness. Krelian's elegant shadow had cut into her vision of the heavens, and then he had knelt to her, eyes bright, and taken her hands. He had only said one thing to her, before inflicting his silence on her forevermore.

I have a gift for you.


-----------------------

I would have completed this, but I lost the vision when I had to pause for a long series of phone calls.