After looking inside to see if anything else was there, he put the shako on his head and crouched down to where the locket lay half-buried in the sand. He grasped it gingerly between finger and thumb as if he were plucking a rose and trying not to get jabbed by a thorn. The metal was cool to the touch and Konowa realized that it wasn’t silver at all, but simple pewter. It was oval in shape and no more than an inch tall, and a small post at one end was broken where a chain would have fastened, no doubt explaining why the soldier had chosen to keep it under his shako for safekeeping.

Konowa stood back up, cringing as his left knee spasmed and threatened to collapse. He closed his fist and pounded it against the joint, and the spasm shuddered to a halt. When he opened his hand again, he saw that the locket had popped open. He brought his right hand up to open the locket all the way and stopped in surprise. He was still holding his saber.

A sliver of his reflection stared back at him from the polished steel. He twisted the blade slowly, letting it catch the starlight. Shadows slid across his face, arcing from nose to eye socket, concealing and revealing eyes that had seen more than they ever should.

Still, they did not blink.

He lowered the blade and sheathed it one handed in a single, fluid motion. Releasing his grip on the pommel sent blood flowing back into his fingers with a fiery sting. He flexed them a few times, then pried the locket completely open. The hinge broke and the two halves lay flat in his palm. The right half contained a small lock of blond hair tied with a thin, purple thread. The left bore an inscription of just four words- Come back to me.

Konowa’s hands fell to his sides, the pieces of locket tumbling to the sand. Noises he hadn’t realized were there filled his ears. The soft ting-ting of cooling musket barrels; the gulping down of brackish water by throats parched and raw from inhaling smoke and shouting; and a single, ragged scream from someone dying. All of it slid in deep between the ear and the brain like a sliver that would never work free.