Actually, it had been Carson Clinkscales who’d discovered that fact. He’d turned up outside Honor’s quarters on their second morning on Styx and almost shyly extended a fresh head of celery, still damp with dew, and Nimitz had been in heaven. He’d always been fond of Clinkscales, but the ensign’s gift had moved the young Grayson officer into the select circle of his closest friends.

Honor smiled in memory, but then her smile faded. McKeon had finished whatever he’d been saying to LaFollet, and now he and Caslet walked into her office.

“Good morning, Alistair. Warner.” She greeted them calmly, allowing herself to show no trace of her reaction to the anxiety they radiated.

“Good morning, Ma’am,” Caslet said. McKeon only nodded, which would have been a sure sign of his worry even if she hadn’t been able to feel his emotions, and she waved at the chairs which faced her desk.

They sat at her silent invitation, and she tipped back in her own new, comfortable chair to study them briefly. Their sojourn on Hell had given both of them weathered complexions and leaned them down—McKeon, in particular, had lost a good two centimeters of waistline. Well, that was fair enough. Even Honor’s normally pale complexion had turned a golden bronze, and she’d actually begun getting back some of her muscle mass despite the awkwardness of exercising with only one arm. Which, a corner of her brain thought dryly, she had just discovered was nowhere near as awkward as trying to operate a console keyboard one-handed.

But the other thing Honor and McKeon had in common was the pulser each of them still wore… and which Caslet did not.

“You look unhappy about something, Alistair,” she said after a moment. “Why?”

“We found two more bodies this morning, Ma’am,” McKeon said flatly, and Honor winced at the bleak sense of helplessness behind his words. She quirked the eyebrow above her good eye, and his mouth twisted. Then he sighed. “It wasn’t pretty, Honor. Whoever did it took their time with both of them. It looks to me like there must have been five or six killers, and some of the mutilations were definitely sexual.”

“I see.” She leaned back once more and rubbed her face with her fingers. It seemed almost natural after all these months to feel nothing at all from the pressure on her left cheek, and at the moment she wished she could feel nothing at all deep inside, either. But only for a moment. Then she crushed the self-pitying thought under a ruthless mental heel and lowered her hand.

“Any idea at all who did it?”

“I don’t think it was any of our people from Inferno,” McKeon replied, and glanced at Caslet.

“I don’t think it was, either, Ma’am,” the Peep said. In some ways, he had become even more isolated since the capture of Camp Charon, for the flood of SS prisoners they’d taken regarded him with the bitter contempt reserved for traitors, while the island’s liberated slaves couldn’t have cared less how he came to be here. All they cared about was that he was a Peep officer… and that was why he had to be accompanied at all times by an armed guard.