Page 63 of Reaper Said Mine

“A security officer who hates embarrassment.”

“Vesk.”

“Apparently his reputation precedes him.”

“His scowl arrives first and sends word back.”

I reach for the small cup of root liquor, take a careful sip, and manage not to cough until after I lower it. That restraint earns another round of table pounding from my immediate neighbors. The heat still claws down my throat and into my chest, but the burn has shape now, less like punishment and more like something the dish expects me to understand.

Rikka watches from a few steps away. “Better.”

“I’m honored by your avalanche of praise.”

“You should be.”

The fourth ceremony begins before I can ask whether my taste buds are permanently altered. Musicians at the center of the hall shift from drums and horns to a low multi-voiced chant, the notes rough but layered in a way that seems to pull at the metal beneath us. Reaper elders rise from seats along the middle tables, each carrying a blade or tool: a boarding hook, a welding hammer, a cracked pistol, a surgeon’s saw, a child’s learning slate with a broken corner. One by one, they hold the objects up while the chant deepens.

Vesk told me this part was remembrance, but he did not give the whole of it. I understand why now. Explaining it would have thinned the force of seeing it.

An elderly Reaper woman with dark gray skin and silver scars crossing her throat lifts the surgeon’s saw. Her voice cuts through the chant.

“This fed the wounded when the hold was burning.”

A warrior with only one arm raises the boarding hook. “This opened the ship that carried our children out.”

Another elder raises the learning slate. His voice cracks, but he does not hide it. “This belonged to my sister’s son. He knew six engine glyphs before hunger took him.”

The hall answers with a low sound that is not grief alone. It is recognition, anger, reverence, and a promise built from voices too proud to weep politely.

My throat tightens.

Around me, the outsiders grow still. Even Cal stops performing for his recorder. Even Niva lowers her gaze. Gobold, farther up the table, sits with his massive hands clasped, his face stern and unreadable. Theryki watches with immaculate composure, but her fingers rest too tightly against the stem of her glass. Wilcox looks like she understands too much.

The learning slate passes down our table.

When it reaches me, my hands hesitate above it.

The gray-bearded warrior speaks softly. “Touch with the right hand. Do not lift unless kin.”

I nod and place my fingertips against the broken corner.

The slate is cool beneath my skin.

For an instant, the Blood Hall and Horus IV exist too close together inside me. Children and smoke. Lessons interrupted. Names preserved because there is nothing left to save but evidence. The old familiar pressure rises behind my breastbone, the one that tells me the past has decided to sit on my lungs for a while. I breathe through it, but not around it. Around it would be dishonest.

“I’m sorry,” I say, because anything more elaborate would be indecent.

The warrior studies me. His expression remains hard, but his voice softens. “He would have liked your red hair. He stole bright things.”

I let out a small breath that is almost a laugh and almost not. “Then I’m sorry for that too. He would have gotten caught.”

“He always did.”

The slate moves on.

Rikka appears beside me again, though I did not see her approach. “You listened to the name.”

“Yes.”