Shen sat on the floor in the corner, watching Cecily sleep.

He watched as she quietly breathed. He watched as the guards stood in silence, occasionally eyeing him with an unnerved expression. He watched as the lights glowed, and the shadows of the room subtly shifted as the world turned outside. He watched as ten years of memory sat heavy on his mind, slowly melting and thinning and trickling away under its surfacial shell like a high blanket of snow. He watched as his heart clung to certain pieces of it. He watched as his priorities and loyalties bore themselves out.

Unmoving, he watched the queen. Of all of his companions, she felt the most balanced in his gague, and given his state of mind, this was something he could respect. Fletcher was confident; while wrong at times, he was never in doubt, and never regretful, so therefore never afraid of false course. Stark was nearly the opposite; her intuition and skill seemed firm and true, but experience had left her full of regret and doubt, a burden which often slowed her hand. Griffin was deft and amicable; his capabilities were impressive and his means of execution clever, but his ends, like Shen's, were largely determined by the needs of the whole, and his own intentions seemed forever allayed.

Cecily, however, seemed well-blended. She was not foolishly secure in her actions, but also not so equivocal as to myre herself in quesion. She was not hungry for the responsibility of her role, but had enough faith in her internal guidance to take on the challenge when it fell to her. She was Griffin's adeptness with Stark's compassion. She was Shen's holisticism with Fletcher's precision. She was, in a way, balanced on all sides; she was the center of the wheel.

Shen watched the outplay of recent events in his memory, and he was aware of his role in this balance, but he also watched himself continue to charge with anticipation. They say one can see the leaves of a tree rise and energize when lightning is about to strike. Like the lone bamboo in the coming storm, Shen felt the coming strike, and he watched himself.

He watched as he offered to walk the pattern to seek Hakthla, ready to ask unreal feats of himself for swift resolution's sake. He watched as the threw himself on the Pattern in the dream, risking his life on the rules of a multiple universe that everyone was struggling to understand. Toward which spoke of the wheel was he bending?

He watched the guard shift their weight uncomfortably. He could not help but feel they were performing their duty a little less comfortably than they might otherwise do so, and he felt assured that his presence was at least a small part of this. He was consciencious of this, but not sympathetic. The situation was grim.

He watched the unconscious Regent, cut and bloody, beaten and betrayed, but in the slow rising and falling of her chest he saw an amazing peace. She drew her body's wind with slow and deliberate intention, released it upon the world with controlled determination. In her sleeping recooperation, there was an autonomous meditation, a gathering of power, like the sea readying to mercilessly punish the shore, or like the mindful strongweaver preparing to jump.

He watched the day to come. He watched her rise tired. He watched her rise in pain. He watched her rise to the distant eyes that celebrated her humiliation. But he watched her rise, and she rose as ever swift, as ever deliberate, as ever readied to stand her ground. He watched her hold the wheel upon her stance, he watched her balance.

Shen watched himself one last time. "Stand before me, cowerer in dreams," he wanted to scream. "Come before me Osric, and let me devote myself to your disgrace. Let me destroy myself to show you my loathing of your ignorant and vengeful way, if nothing else."

Shen watched himself one last time. He could run to the Rheari, he thought, walk the Pattern of this strange place, this Amber, one last time, and leave the universe to its fate, and share that fate with his people, whatever it may be. He could submerge himself in thought, leave the Ni to its ways, and watch them from the point in it where he was born. He could vanish, as his mother did, and let it all be.

Shen watched himself one last time. He could learn from his cousin about action and contemplation, and about their sum.

'The winds rise, and the time draws nigh,' he thought, 'let me take motion from my place, and let it be toward the center.'

Shen watched Cecily sleep, and watched her secretly prepare. He watched the waters rise to be unleashed, and he smiled.