Breve fell back against the wall. It was as if he had been punched. ‘You’re kidding,’ he whispered, but Kavik wasn’t one for jokes.

Tears came unbidden. Breve sniffed and wiped them away. His heart ached.

All of them, he thought. I’m not supposed to be here. I should have died with them.

Breve turned his back as Kavik pinned the thought for the day onto the noticeboard.

Death is Honour, it declared.

Breve wept outside on the steps of the barracks-block. Everywhere he looked he saw Minka or Baine, or even quiet Karni. His throat ached. He pursed his lips and he started crying again.

You fool, he told himself, and sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve.

He’d never liked Kavik.

Breve found Colonel Sparker in his office with Colour Sergeant Tyson and medic Banting. Banting had just finished daubing Sparker’s grazes with iodine and was now packing his kit up in his leather satchel when Breve knocked on the open door.

Sparker looked up and Breve stepped in. He was too grief-stricken to go through formalities.

‘Sorry, sir,’ he said in a rush. ‘I just heard that Sergeant Lesk did not make it off the island. Is that true?’

Sparker nodded. ‘Afraid so.’

He was clearly busy. Breve swallowed. ‘Do you know what happened?’

Sparker shook his head. ‘She never made it to the evacuation vessels.’

‘How could that be?’

Sparker knew a hundred reasons, but there didn’t seem much point in listing them all. She was the rearguard and that was a dangerous place to be. ‘War,’ he said simply. ‘People die. It happens.’

Prassan was another who could not believe that Minka was dead.

It was one of his duties to go through the casualties list each day, highlight any consequential losses to Mere, and then go and visit the wounded and pass on the compliments, best wishes, or commiserations of the general. He’d spent three days visiting all the medicae facilities with wounded Cadians within them, and in the three days since the evacuation he’d seen all the casualties and ticked them off his list.

On the fourth day, in Medicae 27, he made his way to the canteen for a drink of water and was greeted at the end of Ward 17 by a grey-haired medic with bright eyes and a slight stoop.

She was reading a chart as he approached, but she heard his boots on the flakboard floor and looked up as he approached. ‘Cadian?’ she said.

He nodded.

‘There’s one of yours down here,’ she said. She nodded into the ward she’d just come out of. ‘Don’t think any of your lot have been in to see her.’

Prassan’s heart leapt. ‘No?’