When I was very young, my father--Jan van der Weydin, Jan like the environmental lawyer Mr. Schlictmann, like the Brady girl--my father took me with him to Germany. I am fluent, as most everyone in my family is, in German; though our descent and name is Dutch, Father married into a German family and ran a German business and never drove anything but a German car. On that very first visit to the Motherland, I met my cousin Kreszant.

He is the second son of my mother's elder sister. As such, he doesn't stand to inherit their father's company. Of course, we're no feudal dynasty. If Luka, his older brother, were incapable of running the family business, he'd be told to step aside. And if Kreszant were incapable of doing his job, too, they'd get him to go, too. I think Kreszant would turn it down just on principle, now. Once, I wasn't so sure.

Kres isn't so much older than me; he's twenty-six. An engineer and automobile enthusiast, he attended college in America; not at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, like everyone wanted, but at some little nobody college in New Jersey. He liked to watch the dirt races, he explained. Now he drives his own race car; to enthusiasts, his name is well-known. Not among the Earnhardts, but he drives well. He drives fast. He drives reckless, which used to bother my mother. I learned to drive from Kreszant when I was sixteen, and visiting relatives.

I was six at the time, so that would make him fourteen. I stood next to Father as we waited for the chauffeur to remove our bags from the trunk. My hand was, perhaps, a third of the size of his. Less: Va-- Father always had large hands. Mother would talk about it all the time, how the reason he was so good at opening pickle jars and jam jars was because of his large, strong hands. At six, his hand engulfed mine like a whale would devour krill. As we waited, we heard pounding footsteps. I remember thinking a giant was approaching the other side of the door to our German home.

It was, of course, Kreszant.

He was very short at the time, perhaps five feet tall; and gangly, too, all hands and feet. Over his shoulder was an angry-looking red-haired boy with thick-rimmed glasses, also tall and gangly. I don't quite remember his name, because we never really talked. Conrad? Connor? It doesn't matter.

My father laughed, and in German faster than I could follow, passed me off to my cousin and his friend. Neither of them seemed to have any idea what to do with me; after all, I was all of six. Even if I were a boy, I couldn't do whatever it was they'd been doing--this much, I caught as I listened to them complain under their breaths. Eventually, we settled on a very strange version of Tag… It involved tackling me to the ground and sitting on me until I was crying so hard, and so loud, a maid came out to retrieve me.

Later that night, though, as I was laying in my bed after skipping dinner, I heard someone come in. My breath seized in my throat; all I could imagine was Kres and his friend coming back to finish this job and smothering me to death. I held my tongue, hoping if I didn't speak, whoever it was would think I was asleep and no threat at all.

It was, in fact, Kres. I knew his voice, and it was him that was speaking:

"I'm sorry, Katya," he was saying, running his hands over my hair. I could see his green eyes through my half-opened slits. There was no deception, as far as I could tell. Just honesty. Just regret. "I'm sorry, I'm your cousin, I love you--I'm sorry, Katya." Over and over and over. Finally, it lulled me to sleep.

The watch propped up on the desk tells me the time. Just after two in the morning. Sitting here, watching Wolframite as he tries to sleep, I am reminded of that moment. But I am no Kreszant. I don't intend to apologize for the things I have done, or will do. This is not a pair of man-children attacking a small girl and playing too rough, no matter the comparisons I may draw when half-asleep. I will not apologize. I will not acknowledge that they could be right. That I should pity what is going to happen to them. There is no pity in a Blood Moon soldier, because pity makes you weak. There is one thing, above all, a Blood Moon soldier must remember, too:

That these are murderers, and I must. Not. Pity them.