He dismounted at Kero’s tent and handed the reins of his horse to one of the two sentries posted there, taking the saddlebag with him. When he pushed back the flap, and looked inside, Kero was bent over a folding table identical to his own, going over lists. The lantern beside her seemed unusually smoky, and the pungent odor it emitted made him sneeze. She looked up, smiled wanly, and nodded at a stool beside the table before going back to her task. Her eyes were dark-rimmed, and red; her cheekbones starkly prominent.

Dear gods, she looks like hell. Worse than I expected.

He got a good look at those lists before he sat down; lists of names, and he had a feeling that they were the lists of the dead. He had always left that task till last, and he didn’t think she’d be any different.

She was writing little notations after each name; most looked like other names, which made him think she was probably noting who inherited the dead fighter’s possessions. Before a very few of those names, she made a little mark—

Those must be the ones with relatives, the ones she has to write the letter for. He craned his neck a little, shamelessly curious. That was the single task he had hated the most. Still did hate, since he still had to write letters for the families of his officers, from Lieutenant upward.

There don’t seem to be a lot of those. He grimaced a little. Dear gods. What a sad life they must lead, that so many of them live and die with no one to mourn their loss except their fellows....

Kero sighed, and reached for a scrap of cloth to clean her pen. “Well, that’s done,” she said, tossing her long blonde braid over her shoulder. “All but the letters. Damn.” For a moment she was silent, chewing absently on the end of her pen, and he couldn’t help but notice that her nails had been chewed down to nothing. “At least most of my people don’t have anyone outside of the Company, and a damned good thing, too.”

Daren couldn’t help himself; he was so surprised to hear her voice an opinion so exactly opposite his that he blurted out the first thing that came into his mind. “Good?” he exclaimed. “You say that’s good? Demon-fire, Kero, how can you say something like that?”

He could have bitten his tongue, and waited in the next instant for her to snap some kind of angry reply. When she didn‘t, when she only gave him a raised eyebrow eloquent with unspoken irony, he was just as amazed as he had been by her initial bald statement. She’s changed, he thought numbly. She’s really changed, in deep ways, that don’t show... maybe that’s what’s wrong. She feels things even more now—