There is a strangled-sounding chuckle from the Exarch at that. "I believe," he says, slowly, "that 'closure'... is yet beyond me. My troubles... shall remain unresolved, for as long as I am here."

He spies Parsee looking away, and turns his own gaze downward to the lake, watching the surreal shapes of the sky reflected in the water's surface.

"There is something I must do... and the cost of failure is far greater than my people know. There is so much that they do not know."