50

Anzi had the distinct feeling she wasn’t supposed to be here, but she hadn’t been about to reject an explicit invitation from the man who’d just told her that her traveling companion had been personally responsible for the death of his entire family. Colonel Bisset could discipline her later all he liked, but she was not going to look Governor Hosef in the eye and pretend her suffering would be greater than his had been.

She couldn’t begin to imagine. She had never been close to her family, partly because she’d left them at a young age and partly because she had fostered that distance herself in her determination to follow what she’d thought was her destined path. But this…She didn’t need to have experienced fellowship in pain to sympathize. And blame. This was the kind of carnage the Empire wrought, the kind that no one spoke about back in the Capital because everyone was taught that the annexed lands all held hands and danced around in a ring together