ALAS, LIRETTE

KENDRA KNEW WITH EVERY pulse of her blood what the people of Liadhe remembered best about Sharadon Brent: his steady eyes and pale hair and shining medals, hero of battles past… the scandal when he left Liadhe after the war to become a mercenary, wandering among foreign stars. Warmonger, they called him now, the man who loved bloodshed so deeply he abandoned his home in peacetime.

It was different for her. She remembered instead his strong hands drawing chord after chord, descant after shimmering descant, from his lute. An anachronism, that lute, requiring human hands to sing. Years ago Kendra had listened drowsily while Sharadon Brent tuned the seven strings, adjusted the frets, serenaded the night. His voice haunted her, too: as quiet in song as in speech, yet she had ached for it later, after they called him to the war against Veretys. Even today, in her faltering and tuneless way, she could hum his oldtime ayres and ballads.

Sometimes, while flying patrol with her taciturn ghost Falcon in the unvanquished night between Liadhe’s burning stars, she wondered what it would have been like to serve military duty during wartime. At crossover points, where her wing’s circuit met another’s, they still danced the pointwise duel: ship against nimble ship, lances dimmed to a caress of coherent light, to third strike rather than destruction. She found a beauty in the duello, challenge-without-bloodshed, and told herself that killing had no place in this pleasure. Yet Kendra wondered if her father had felt differently. Her father, called Warmonger. He had not come home after the war’s end, and so she had never had a chance to ask.

When last you lingered by the burning city,

When you saw my eyes were parched of pity,

I thought that you surely should depart;

I thought I no longer held your heart.

They pulled her from patrol duty unexpectedly, without warning; and so Kendra left her ship, the Nightcry, at the starport Spindance, making her way past the sleek, silent cradles of docked needleships to the scarred Mirror’s Edge. She swallowed her apprehension long enough to say, “Sharadon Kendra reporting for duty.” Most veterans had left military service after the war, and Kendra had met few of those who remained, let alone a legend.

The hatch slid open. “Edge acknowledges. Pleased to have you, Kendra,” replied the ship’s ghost in a surprisingly mild tenor. Then again, an Al could choose any voice it pleased. “We’re to receive orders shortly.”

Kendra nodded her thanks and entered, setting down her duffel when she reached her quarters. They were spartan, stripped of personality or luxury, as befitted a wartime vessel. “Do you know what this is about?” she asked Edge. She did not need to mention that she had originally been assigned with Falcon of the Nightcry to border patrol; Edge had access to the records. Highly unusual, that a young wingsecond should be promoted or requested to partner such an experienced ship. Kendra thought with a pang of Falcon, now obliged to accustom itself to a new partner, but she must follow where duty led her.

“Not precisely,” said Edge, “but one might find some significance in the fact that I once partnered your father.”

She frowned, studying the instrument panels, the deck; they stared back blandly. Sharadon Brent had left Liadhe twelve years ago, as time was measured on a world called Liadhe’s-heart, with nary a visit home. Kendra remembered envying the ghosts who had spent time with him, bound by battlefield necessity, and the old bitterness threatened to drown her again. “If I may ask — how well did you know him?”

“Well enough, before he was transferred to the Doppelganger.” After an uneasy pause, the ghost said, “Incoming call.”

Kendra made her way to the command console and its communications array. “I’m ready.”

A woman’s face blazed into color on the screen. She raised a hand in greeting. “Carredas Maro,” she said without stating rank or position.

“Edge, ship’s ghost.”

Kendra raised her hand as well. “Sharadon Kendra —” Her voice faltered.

“Wingsecond on special duty,” Edge filled in.

“Fortunate that you chose to continue military service last year, Kendra,” said Maro, lowering her hand. “Had you not —”

Kendra followed suit. “Had I not, you would have sought me out, and I would still be here.”

The woman smiled faintly. “True. As you may have guessed, this involves your father.”

“I thought he was exiled a long time ago.”

“Given an exile’s status two days after they discovered he left,” Edge corrected politely, with a ghost’s concern for accuracy.

Maro nodded. “Yes. He has put us in a difficult situation.”

“‘Us’?” asked Kendra.

“Liadhe, then. If there’s a difference.”

She was silent. Then: “On what authority did you pull me into this?”

This time it was the woman’s turn to pause, and she picked her words carefully. “Even exiles are, in the end, children of Liadhe. It doesn’t matter how far they stray, how long they stay in foreign space. There are those of us charged with watching over them. They are Liadhen, and we don’t abandon our own.”

“No, but what if they abandon you? She had not meant to reveal so much of her heart in one question, but she strove to keep her face calm even so.

“Would that it were so easy,” said Maro. “What they do concerns us all.”

“Details, madam,” Edge said. “Details.”

Kendra searched the woman’s serene face. She knew Maro must stand very high indeed, if she was authorized to deal with exiles yet shrouded herself in obscurity. For the first time Kendra contemplated the idea of authority whose limits depended only on its wielder’s restraint; who could check power that was silent and unseen? She shook away the thought. There must be silent, unseen levels of restraint as well.

“Since the treaty we have been at peace with Veretys,” said Maro, “and there has been no trouble between our peoples. Not long ago, however, several mercenary companies — and mercenary independents — were hired by the governors of the Faienga League.”

Kendra frowned, trying to remember where she had heard of Faienga. “That’s border space, isn’t it?”

“Yes, under the dominion of Veretys. Or was, the last I heard,” the ghost said.

Maro sighed. “It shouldn’t have affected you, or any other Liadhen. An internal matter, really: after an odd decade of agitating, the Faiengis finally revolted.”

“One of the independents was Sharadon Brent, then,” said Kendra.

“Yes.”

“And Veretys is unhappy that a Liadhen, exiled though he be, is in Faienga’s hire,” Edge said flatly.

Maro’s eyebrows quirked. “A conservative estimate of the situation. The Veretane contend — not entirely without justification — that Sharadon Brent’s interference constitutes a violation of the treaty.”

Kendra studied the space between the woman’s brows, where there was no wrinkle of worry. Even so, she knew there were communications protocols that smoothed expressions and tones into unbroken composure or carefully calculated concern before transmission. There was no way to tell from her end. “They know he’s an exile.”

“They also know that Liadhe never abandons her own.”

“Even when it’s wiser?”

“He would have been wiser to refuse the contract, no matter what Faienga offered.”

Reluctantly, Kendra nodded: best the hattie never set ablaze, said one of her father’s favorite ballads. Favorite no longer, she feared.

“You’re assuming he was an ordinary mercenary with ordinary motives,” Edge pointed out. “No matter what else he was, what else he became, Brent was rarely…ordinary. Besides, he must be making a difference, or the Veretane would hardly bother pointing to the treaty.”

“What are our orders?” Kendra asked.

“Find him,” Maro said, lips pressing tight. “Find him and convince him to stop. Whatever it takes.”

“By ourselves?” The ghost sounded startled.

“Who other?” A sigh escaped her. “You have both known him as a man, not a legend. A brilliant one, true, known for testing his tactics in blood — and winning. But a man all the same.”

“Too true,” it said slowly.

Kendra realized she had leaned forward and clasped her hands behind her back, bone straining against bone despite the barrier of flesh. “I will find him,” she said, “if he is willing to be found.”

Maro nodded. “Fair enough. The necessary data will be transmitted to you.” Her image erased itself, leaving the blank screen to gaze at Kendra like a sleepless eye.

Lirette, my love, the war is distant flame --

It taught us how to murder, how to maim.

But you were right when you said we'd not learned

That those who kill become the ones worst burned.

The needleship was fleet, like all her kind; Liadhe soon became a scatter of past radiation in the sensors, a hope of starlight to come. Kendra and Edge threaded past outposts with dubious credentials, past battered prospectors’ ships that haunted graveyard moons, and through territory no one but rogues had bothered to claim, all the while heading for the neutral space known as the Vein. Alone, bereft of wingmates, they had no safer trajectory toward Faienga.

Kendra worried about electromagnetic pulse weapons, which were capable of killing ghosts and which the Liadhen called exorcists. They were forbidden in Liadhe and Veretys, but what of those who lived in the Vein, bound by no honor but their own wants — who saw ghosts as lifeless patterns in a computer rather than comrades? Finally, two days from the Vein, she asked Edge.

“Don’t worry,” it said calmly. “EMP weapons are forbidden in the Vein. Having one in your armament is grounds for detainment or worse. Astrogation, communications, shipyard repairs and medical care — all these are only possible because of computers strung like beads of water on a net between the stars. Exorcists are an obvious terrorist’s weapon. Besides, the cost of EMP that is reliable against generation after generation, genus after genus of electronics, is prohibitive in itself. Something for which I am grateful. It is not a lawless place, the Vein, despite what you may think.”

“How do you know this?” Kendra wondered.

“The war against Veretys went further afield than most people realize,” Edge answered, and said no more on the subject.

Strangers hailed them several times: Here is hire, should you wish it, as escort, as scout, as wardancer. The terms they offered varied little and were, Kendra came to realize, highly flattering by their standards. Edge declined each one courteously, and Kendra was ashamed that she had never learned the protocols common to the Vein or the ways of people other than her own and the Veretane.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” the ghost told her while she patiently checked the sensor readings after one such encounter, in case of ambush. “A common thing, to withdraw from other people’s ways after a war and seek comfort in your own.”

Kendra did not look up, knowing no eyes would meet hers and that Edge, like all ghosts, monitored her subtler reactions. “But childish, to think of the. Veretane as the only other people in the sea of stars. Even when they are so different —”

“Not as different as you’ve been led to believe.” Edge performed the glissade-and-arpeggio that she had learned to interpret as a sigh: a quote from one of Brent’s own lute pieces. “Kendra, you’ve never left Liadhe before, and since the war’s end patrols have been a formality. In the ways of battle the Veretane are very like us. Here, there is no duello, and our best hope would be to flee. There are other war paradigms, few of them so graceful.”

She shivered, wondering at the non sequitur. “I have never been in battle, either.”

“No, but you were trained to the duello, as were the Veretane. Here, in the Vein, the only grace is survival.”

“A brutal place.”

“A necessary one.” Its tone became matter-of-fact “There must be a place to which the unwanted can escape and live by their own laws; and their laws are more strictly enforced because nothing else holds them together. Which means we must be careful.”

This time Kendra did look up, seeking the memory of a man’s face awaiting her gaze. But years had passed and that man must no longer be as she remembered him, either as the father who had raised her after his wife’s untimely death or the war hero Liadhe had honored. “The unwanted. Like mercenaries, who perform a distasteful service. What the people of the Vein take us to be as we pass through.”

“We are Liadhen.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked sharply.

“Exiles. Our exiles have come this way before and made for themselves a reputation. A good one, I should say, as these people might reckon it.”

Hastily, she returned to the sensor displays, colors cool and unthreatening under her eyes, metal cool and unyielding under her hands.

You were hope when all I had was hate.

No longer could I beg of you to wait

Until the war was over for all time.

There never comes an end: our greatest crime.

Kendra had not realized, before this, how she depended on her wingmates’ presence in the sensors, familiar patterns that said, Here is friendship past the need of words. From the chains of information, speculation, and gossip strung across the Vein’s networks, Edge gathered word of Liadhe — however sparse — and of the Faienga League’s rebellion. They spent the lonely hours sifting through their gleanings.

“I wonder what the Veretane ambassadors mean to do,” Kendra said while scanning the news summaries. “Wouldn’t it be unwise to threaten war with Liadhe when they must already deal with dissent in their own territory?”

“Perhaps,” said the ship’s ghost, “what Liadhen help Faienga has received is significant enough that they haven’t much choice. As I told Maro.”

She laughed incredulously, though doubts upon doubts stirred her darker thoughts; so far the Faiengis had held off the Veretane fleet sent to subdue them. “Other independents? Exiles? Maro mentioned nothing of others whom the Veretane considered to be breaking our treaty. Surely one man couldn’t make such a difference, alone and away from his people?”

“He became a legend for a reason.” It played a phrase from “Lirette, My Love,” melody pitted against melody upon a single lute’s strings. “They forgot his skills as a musician, great as they were, because his skill in war was even greater.”

And yet, Kendra thought, was Brent so wrong? Edge had summarized Faienga’s history for her: a confederation of sectors that became a Veretane protectorate after the War of Shrouds, yearning toward independence ever since. In battle against Liadhe, Veretys had honored the duello and its conventions, but in putting down the Faiengis claim they denied the right to challenge. Even now the league sought support, and in the Vein the call for mercenaries still circulated.

She said softly, “Warmonger, who troubles us yet.” Oh, Father. Kendra had discovered that parents rarely were as you saw them in childhood, but a thread of disbelief still wove through her thoughts of Brent. Disbelief, and hope.

“There is the treaty.” The ghost’s voice gave no indication of its opinion, if any. “He knew about it and he chose to take the risk that Veretys would object.”

“He had to have a reason,” she insisted. “My father may be the Warmonger” — her voice nearly broke — “but he wouldn’t have done this without reason. Even if that reason were the glory to be had in such a fight. What if the Faiengis are right?” Kendra shook her head, shoulders drooping. “And surely he would have known that someone would come to stop him.”

“Or try.”

“Is that why Maro sent us? Because he knew us once and might have mercy?”

The ghost paused, Kendra was sure, only for her benefit. “Perhaps it was also a kindness on her part. Have you never wondered what became of Brent?”

“I knew.”

“Parts of it, you mean.”

She bowed her head. “I would have liked to see him once, just once, before he left. He was the only one I had as kin-by-blood; he called me ‘little one’ even when I was not so little; and he decided to go away.”

“He was your father and he loved you. Perhaps he meant to avoid hurting you more.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was your father,” Edge repeated, “and parents do what they must, for their children’s sake.” The ghost turned the conversation to other topics, and Kendra questioned it no further.

Her dreams turned more and more often to the patrols she had left behind, the terse communications she had shared with her wingmates, the duello’s light-spindled displays; an instrument-crafter’s shop she had visited while on leave, running a finger along a silken string and wishing she had inherited her father’s gift for music; a null-g garden arranged as a three-dimensional labyrinth, the transparent pipes of water and nutrients glowing like a cat’s-cradle, where she and a lover had met; voices speaking Liadhe’s languages in dialects other than her own that were nonetheless familiar. Edge played music for her that it had learned from Brent or discovered on its own, which eased the ache within her: galliards and fantasias, Ras Niessa’s three syrinx concertos, a fractal symphony, preludes and pavanes.

When the Mirror’s Edge had nearly emerged from the Vein near Faienga, the ghost said, “Incoming transmission,” at the moment Kendra found massed starships in the sensors. The readings struck a chord of delight from her heart before she remembered that no Liadhen fleet would have ventured so far from home and that the ships were Veretane Tusk-class needle, ships, a postwar design. She did not bother scanning them; their heavy shielding — and their numbers — made the provocation inadvisable.

“Is this one of the times when abandoning the duello would be wise?” Kendra asked, only half in jest. Suddenly the thought of testing tactic against tactic, reflex against reflex, sent a glissade of ice along her skin. She had never sought to learn the dynamics of war, the rhythms of danger, the tempo of death. She had no desire to discover firsthand the perils that had drawn her father away from Liadhe.

“If we’re attacked.”

“Let us answer first, then.”

The Mirror’s Edge settled into a lazy roll, exposing its flank to Veretane fire: We are not here to fight. Two of the ‘Veretane ships broke formation to echo the gesture.

In duel against other patrols in Liadhe, Kendra and Falcon had only worried about their own opponent. But here she and Edge had no wingmates, no guarantee — as in the duello — that the other three-and-twenty ships would remain passive.

“Responding to transmission,” said Edge, then fell silent.

An image snapped onto the screen. Kendra raised her hand in greeting to the man, whose raptor insignia indicated that he commanded the Tusk fleet. He raised his own hand in response, then lowered it. “Are you affiliated with Liadhe, lady?” he asked in a tongue common to both their nations.

Mystified by his phrasing, she said, “We are Liadhen, yes,”

“Faienga is interdicted.”

From what she and Edge had learned through the Vein’s networks, Kendra knew that ways around the interdict existed. “Your government challenged ours because Sharadon Brent involved himself in your affairs.” She wished she knew how well she had chosen her words, but the commander was nodding, and Edge had not interrupted her. “We are here to deal with him.”

Whatever it takes, Maro had told them.

“Forgive the question,” he said, “but you are not a mercenary?”

Kendra drew in a breath, held it, set it free. “No. You challenged Liadhe and we are Liadhe’s response.”

“Pass, then,” said the commander, shaking his head slowly, “and if the Warmonger does not leave with you —” A smile like a knife’s edge thinned his lips. “Would you take an escort?”

It couldn’t have been so easy, Kendra thought. “An escort?” she repeated.

“It is advisable.”

“Required, you mean.”

“When the two are one, my lady Liadhen, why quibble over distinctions?”

“We accept,” Edge’s voice, stripped of inflection, intervened. “I presume the Faiengis will ask questions before firing upon us?”

The commander’s smile blunted but slightly. “Keep your reflexes well-honed. But you are Liadhen, both of you; that ought to be enough, where the Warmonger is concerned.” He saluted them Veretane-style, fist to shoulder — Kendra imagined that regret flickered in his eyes — and cut the transmission.

One of the Tusk ships detached from the fleet and invited them to follow. Their wingsecond, thought Kendra with a pang, tracking its motion and thinking of Falcon, of a simpler life on patrol. No names were given: a subtle discourtesy, but one she was not apt to protest. “We’re coming,” she said aloud, and the Mirror’s Edge accelerated to match course with the Tusk. Oh, Father, I’m coming.

THEY SENT a message hurtling before them into Veretys, into the unwilling part of Veretys that was Faienga: Liadhen vessel Mirror’s Edge and an escort. Liadhen vessel Mirror’s Edge and an escort. Request permission to speak with Sharadon Brent, exile. Liadhen vessel Mirror’s Edge and an escort ….

“Incoming transmission,” said Edge. One of the monitors blinked, displaying a course further along Faienga’s border. “We are required to follow this exactly. The Faiengis will hold their fire but no guarantee is made of safe passage.”

“They will be tracking us all the way.”

“Of course.”

Kendra’s eyes narrowed. “Might there be an ambush, once we are away from the Veretane fleet? By the time the Veretane become aware that something has happened, it will be too late for us…and our escort.”

“And what danger can we be?” the ghost asked reasonably. “We come to parley in response to a challenge, and dare not stray beyond that lest Liadhe embroil herself further in a civil conflict.”

The escort continued to pace them, sleek and inscrutable. Uneasily, Kendra wondered what weaponry lay concealed beneath its shielding. The Veretane upgraded their military ships regularly, despite the expense; she dared make only the vaguest assumptions about its capabilities.

Kendra’s heart hammered anticipation as they continued into Faienga even as she tried to untangle her thoughts. Do you still remember your music, Father? Through the years did you ever think of those you left behind?

Sharadon Brent, who threatened to bring war to Liadhe again.

Liadhe, which never abandoned her own, no matter the price.

Faienga, which sought a law of its own.

Veretys, which denied the Faiengis challenge and challenged Liadhe in turn.

“Who is right?” she asked Edge, her eyes tuned to the sensors and the flickering, constantly updated starmaps that told her they approached the Miello salient.

“What do you mean?”

“The rebellion. I know so little.”

“Would it help, knowing more?”

Kendra considered. “Yes. No. It would make things less simple. But I grow tired of not knowing.”

“You may tire less of it when you know more.” Its tone shifted from compassion to caution. “If this is an ambush, Kendra, we have no hope of escape.”

“Yes,” she said after a pause. The sensors spoke of a well-deployed fleet, for all that its ships were of every imaginable type: agile wardancers, battered cruisers, carriers with their accompanying drones, scouts and needleships and more. One of them leapt out at her from the display: a Liadhen needleship. “Father,” she breathed.

“I see that the Doppelgangeris here,” said Edge. “Several ships among the Faiengis fleet are targeting us.”

The display had come alight with amber warnings. The Veretane escort no longer echoed their movements but angled itself—protectively, Kendra would have said, had she not doubted its motives. “Request communications with Sharadon Brent and — Edge, what is the name of Doppelganger’s ghost?”

“Unknown.” Before she had time even to blink — ghosts recognized each other very well where human memory often failed — it continued, “Requesting parley.”

The sensors marked five Faiengis ships as being within range of their lances, two more within range of their missiles. Kendra realized she was holding her breath and let it go. The rebels and their mercenaries could scatter Mirror’s Edge into soulless particles before they returned a shot, and she knew it.

“Incoming response.”

The man on the viewscreen looked achingly familiar, achingly different, as though eleven years had burned away his memories of home. He had kept his Liadhen uniform but none of the medals were in evidence, and when he spoke, his voice was low and weary. “Kendra? Little one?” His eyes, very like Kendra’s own, searched her face. “The stars have mercy.” Jerkily, he raised his hand as though he might reach across the vacuum that separated them.

“Father,” she said, and then, self-consciously: “Sir.” She told herself that the burning behind her eyes had nothing to do with tears. Inanely, all she could think of to say was, “Do you still play the lute, Father?”

The man bowed his head. “I no longer have a lute, nor am I capable of playing. I would play you, sing you one last song, if I could. It has been so many years, little one.”

Blinking, she glanced down at the sensors to compose herself; wondered briefly as to the escort’s rationale in drawing away from them. Now, judging by the scans, the Faiengis were divided between targeting her and the Veretane ship. “Veretane challenged Liadhe, Father.” Her voice trembled. “The treaty —”

The Tusk’s power signatures came suddenly ablaze, preparing for a strike.

“Incoming —” Edge began to say.

“Watch out!” Kendra cried without knowing what the Tusk intended. She did not recognize the signature, did not know what weapon would be fired

“There’s no time.” Suddenly the man’s voice became cold and crisp. “Little one, little one, please forgive —” The transmission terminated.

“Brace for acceleration!” Edge told Kendra a moment before the Mirror’s Edge came about sharply.

Blood swam across her vision until the acceleration leveled off. “We’re being jammed,” she managed to say between gasps. “We received a final databurst from Doppelganger. What’s happening?” The Faiengis had fired on the Tusk, whose signature grew steadily brighter.

“I unscrambled the databurst. I am following the given evasive maneuvers.”

A wardancer and two corvettes had detached themselves from the fleet to accompany the Mirror’s Edge on her flight, shielding them. For a sickening second, Kendra thought the Faiengis meant to destroy them. Before she could sort out anything else, the sensors caught a sudden vicious flare: a ship’s swansong in frequencies of radiation rather than sound.

“Exorcist,” she whispered. Had they moved a second later and in the wrong direction, the pulse would have killed Edge and left her stranded among strangers.

Tears conspired to hide the display from her before she even knewwho had died. She wiped them away, unnerved by Edge’s silence as much as anything else. A battle was unfolding, the Faiengis mobilizing to greet the Veretane waiting past the Miello salients and the Veretane escort, not Doppelganger, failed to appear in the sensors. The Warmonger’s ship itself moved unthinkingly in a line against the backdrop of stars and dust.

She fought with the tears without understanding why; the tears won.

My hands hold nothing but the blood and dust

Of dying soldiers, blood and dark bloodlust.

Lirette, I left you for a war I rue --

Alas, Lirette, I've no songs left for you.

“Will he be coming, then? Coming back to Liadhe?” asked Kendra when the tears had stopped, though a terrible foreboding gripped her heart.

“He can’t. He’s dead. That’s a dead ship, Kendra.”

She caught her breath. “No. The Veretane couldn’t have.” Desperately, Kendra checked the logs for an account of the blood-blurred moments she had missed. She froze, trying to deny what they told her. “No,” she repeated, more softly. “The Tusk destroyed itself for that pulse. And Brent knew. He knew and warned us instead of getting out of the way, and it cost him the Doppelganger’s ghost.” He had chosen to make himself a target for the Tusk rather than giving it time to redirect the pulse and cause more damage.

EMP weapons are forbidden in the Vein, Edge had told her. But not, it appeared, forbidden in Veretys or the space they called their own.

Silently, the wardancer and corvettes accompanied them, leading the way — where, she could not guess. Edge chose to follow them, and she had no strength to protest.

“He’s dead,” the ghost said again. “Do you remember the battles he won, Kendra? Impossible battles that became victories under his leadership?”

Dry-eyed, she looked down at her hands. Not a musician’s hands, hers. “I heard about them after they happened, yes. He should not have survived.”

“He didn’t. Sharadon Brent died in his eighth battle. It was after that he was transferred to Doppelganger, or so they said.”

“That’s impossible.” She had seen him, had she not? Seen him barely minutes ago, for all that the years had separated them. But it would be a trivial matter for a ghost to imitate a man, to manipulate images and vocal recordings, in ship-to-ship communications.

I no longer have a lute, nor am I capable of playing.

“I was there,” said Edge.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Sharadon Brent died — and he lived again, as the Doppelganger’s ghost. Do you understand, Kendra? It was a desperate measure. He was too well-known, too well-regarded, for Liadhe to lose him. War needs its heroes. And so they brought him back, what they could salvage of him, but he could never go home…and so he left. Warmonger. Do you understand?”

“An exorcist,” she said numbly. And the ghost had called her little one. Had asked her forgiveness before warning them away.

Edge played a strain from a dirge. “Yes. Because the Veretane must have found out, and fools that we were, we gave them the opening they had set up. We were meant to die as well and none would be the wiser. Brent’s death would have satisfied Liadhe’s honor in the treaty.”

For a long time Kendra sat there, silent, thinking of shipmates she had known only during patrol, people — like Maro? — she had met only indirectly, people who might pose as human if they avoided face-to-face contact. People who were ghosts and braved battle alone, partnerless. People like her father; ghost or human, it hardly mattered to her.

“Do we return home, Kendra?” said Edge. “Or do we stay? Because if word reaches Liadhe, she will have no choice but to respond, with Brent our first casualty. Or we can leave Liadhe ignorant and avoid another war.”

Warmonger. But perhaps some battles were worth fighting. “We return,” she said. If her father had sacrificed himself for their sake, she could do no less than bring word of his death back to Liadhe.

“I miss him, too,” said the ghost, responding to her tone, and then they were speeding past the Miello salient, away from the slaughter and toward their home.

for Paul Urayama

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