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me, and our prisoners to Planck’s constantly-displacing HQ. We rejoined Planck’s staff outside a quick-pitched canvas tent, sides rolled up, which sheltered map tables and signals gear. There were smiles and handshakes all around. Then the staff officers got back to the business of winning the war.
    Erdec, Planck’s command sergeant major, who was as gray, leathery, and professional as Ord, stayed with us and with the three kid cooks. So did an Intel captain.
    The captain, dark-eyed, intense, and, by his service ribbons combat-blooded, waved his sidearm at the kids. “What about these three, General?”
    Planck hardly glanced up from the morning reports his sergeant major handed him, drawing his index finger across a line here and there as he read. “No need to interrogate cooks, Captain. But get their bread recipe. Then this war’s over for them.”
    Once the captain marched the three kids away, I said to Planck, “Last night, you didn’t say much when that kid said he was from Veblen.”
    Planck’s sergeant major, Erdec, said, “Veblen sits on an island bounded by two rivers. Every war over the past three centuries, the winner took Veblen. And Vebleners changed citizenship. My grandmother called herself Iridian. My parents called themselves Tressen. But when the war started, Veblen was part of Iridia.”
    I said, “But you’re in the Tressen army.”
    Erdec shrugged, smiled. “I’m a soldier. I’m a Veblener. For a Veblener, nations come and go.” He sighed. “One night, six months into the war, Tressen rolled 6,000 artillery pieces up on the plain outside Veblen, then pounded the towe sunded tn to rubble while the residents slept in their beds. The idea was to break the will of the Iridian people. And to retaliate for Iridian atrocities.”
    “Oh.”
    Planck said, “What you said, Jason—that we have to learn to keep a peace? It starts here. Now. This has been a dirty war.”
    “They all are,” I said.
    Planck nodded. “Those boys, and prisoners like them, can break the cycle. If we send them home with memories of decent treatment.” He shrugged. “That’s my contribution to politics.”
    Planck handed the morning reports back to Erdec, and their fingers touched. The older man whispered,
    “I thought we had lost you, sir.”
    Planck clapped his sergeant major on the shoulder, and grinned. “Me, lost? I bet you thought so. You told us in basic training that the most dangerous thing in the army is an officer with a map.”
    Erdec smiled. “That was long ago, General.”
    Three pistol shots rang close by.
    Planck’s brow furrowed.
    Sergeant Major Erdec’s brow furrowed, too.
    Then Planck’s eyes widened, he spun, and dashed around the command tent. I followed, as Erdec, limping like the old soldier he was, followed me. The dark-eyed intelligence captain stood fifty yards from us, alongside a shallow ditch, staring down at three piles of white cloth. He held his pistol down at his side, and it smoked. When I got closer, I recognized, sprawled on the ground, the baker’s boy from Veblen, and his two friends. Cheek-down in the mud, each boy’s eyes stared, and each bled from a bullet hole in the back of his head.
    Planck reached the captain first. “What did you do? What the hell did you do?”
    The captain stared at Planck. “What you told me to. End their war—”
    Planck lunged at the captain, and twisted the pistol from the man’s hand. The captain stiffened. “We’re moving too fast to process prisoners! They were just cooks.”
    Planck grabbed the captain by his lapel, pulled him nose-to-nose, then stabbed the pistol barrel into the captain’s cheek. “They were children!”
    The captain’s eyes widened.
    Erdec shook his head, and reached toward Planck. “General—”
    Rain ran down the captain’s forehead, into his eyes, until he blinked. Planck’s gun hand quivered, and so did the captain.
    Planck shoved him away, flung the captain’s pistol to the mud next to the three