It's the other kind of sorry, she wants to say--the I'm sorry your world is in danger rather than I'm sorry I put it there. Both are true, admittedly, but it's hard not to have sympathy for someone who might be staring down the end of everything he knows. Wouldn't it be worse to realize it could be happening? Worse than school closing and neighbors huddling near, murmuring how the CDC will have an answer any day now, they'll have a solution for everyone quarantined in the barn. They'd had hope, even if they'd had no idea what was going on. She'd thought her mother and brother would get better.

That's not it, she realizes, not worse to see the possibility spread before him. It's harder, but at least it's not blindness to reality.

When he brings up killing a person, she perks up, her eyes sharp. Byerly's absolutely right--and more importantly, they don't even have to do the killing. Count Vorkosigan, for all his other faults, did them a favour.

"What do they do with corpses?" she asks, her voice taking on a certain, somewhat urgent quality. They can do something, and that always makes her feel a little better. "After they execute somebody."