Chapter 10: The Seven Stand

Maxine put the tablet down in the middle of the long galley table, and seven men read the order in silence.

Bram read it with his lips moving.

Isak read it once, and then pressed his fingers hard against his eyes.

Dax went on reading it long after he'd finished.

"It was not us," Silvan said.

He said it as if it were a word in a language he had never heard.

"It was never us."

"No," said Maxine.

Rhys was standing at the head of the table.

He had not read the screen.

He was looking at the doorway, where the sound of wind carried over the plain.

"Commander," Lucan said.

Rhys walked out of the galley, across the yard, and stopped in front of the six cairns.

He stood there, a tall, grey-templed man in a torn coat.

Then his legs gave way.

He went down on both knees in the dirt with his hands flat on the rust.

A sound came out of him that she had never heard from a man.

It was low and ragged and endless, four years of it.

Nobody went near him.

Maxine crossed the yard and knelt beside him, and put her hand on his back, between the shoulder blades.

He was shaking.

"I dug them," he said hoarsely. "I dug every one. I carried them out of the sickbay myself."

"I thought, we did this. Seven of us, and we couldn't keep one girl alive."

"You weren't the ones who stopped the food."

"I was the commander." His shoulders heaved. "It was mine to keep."

"It was a man in a white uniform with a seal and a pen." She leaned her forehead against his shoulder. "Rhys. Look at me."

He turned his head.

His eyes were wet and gold-brown and broken, and for the first time they were fully, entirely his.

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