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"You, Aleksandra. They'll need you ."
"What is this?" she demanded bitterly. "Some kind of cheerleader speech? Did they pick you to hand me my walking papers because they figured you could sugarcoat the pill, Mavro?"
"I don't blame you for feeling that way," he said, meeting her gaze unflinchingly. "But I'm not sugarcoating anything. It's going to be ugly, and it's going to be humiliating. For a while-possibly even for two or three T-years-you're going to be, at best, a voice crying in the wilderness. But I'm dead serious. Eventually, what's left of the Centralists and Moderates are going to realize they need a leader of stature. And you, as the woman who became a political martyr trying to protect them from their own panic, will be the only logical choice. That's why you have to resign now , before the impeachment bill's voted out. While it's still your choice, and you can tell the people who've abandoned you that you're walking away, with your head high, until the day they realize what a dreadful mistake they've made."
He paused, then shook his head.
"I can't promise you it'll work out the way I'm predicting," he admitted. "But you always said I was one of the best political strategists you knew. Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not. But, in all honesty, what other choice to you have?"
She stared at him, listening to the su
y morning's wind popping the umbrella fringe like jubilantly clapping little hands, and tried to think of an answer to his question.