"Go and get me a plain black shirt, preferably no logos or dragons of any kind."
I asked some nearby soldiers to make a run for me.
"What size, Lord?" the man asked me seriously.
"Medium is fine. Take this and hurry."
I handed him my card, and he and his partner dashed away toward the trucks parked nearby.
"They are a nice bunch, your soldiers," said Kata, sitting next to her daughter.
I walked back to them. "Yes, they are. Most of our men are like that, except my grandfather's... they're mostly holes."
She and her daughter had identical smiles.
"What do you mean?" asked Katarina.
I sat beside her daughter. Tetsuya and Kay were off somewhere, still talking. It was going well between them, from the looks of it, at least.
"They're just overly... rigid, you know. Rather die than fail his orders."
I felt a pang of remorse about the man we killed and injured when we visited him, but again, I did give them fair warning, and they declined it.
