Grandfather ...

I've never apologized to you. Why this is, why I haven't been able to bring myself to simply say, "I'm sorry," has haunted me as much as the act itself. It was stupid, what I did, perhaps the single stupidest thing I've ever done, and in a life that contains Nemesor, that's saying something. I regret having done it.

Jonny seems to think that's the same as being sorry. Well, it's not.

I was smiling, you know, when I broke your neck. Maybe you couldn't tell, but I was. And I'm still smiling now, thinking about it. What a complete surprise it must have been. It was a surprise to me, too; I never realized, I guess, how much I hated you.

In retrospect, it makes so much sense. You disowned your own daughter for marrying for love, marrying an outsider, against your wishes. You cut her and Father off from the family; and maybe that would have been all right if you had been wrong about him. But you weren't. Sarth Jenneth was a clod, a drunk, a wife-beater, and eventually a murderer.

How angry you must have been with her, to cut her off from her family and leave her alone with a man like that.

You left her with him, and she died. You left me with him, too, and even after Mother was dead, you left me to the State apparatus, the creche system, a full year.

What a difficult year that must have been for all of us. I can only guess how you must have agonized over the question of bringing a disowned half-blood granddaughter back into the family, of lifting your ban on Mother in order to recognize me.

And what a virtuous paragon you must have felt yourself to be, taking an embarrassing little half-bred moppet like me into your home, the living proof of your daughter's foolishness and your own failure to properly control your children. How can I be anything but grateful to you, who instructed me in our faith, who gave me a home where I was unwelcome, who paid for my education at an endless series of girls' schools that kept me conveniently out of sight? Who paid tuition at the State War Academy for a naive child desperate to prove herself to be something worthwhile?

How could I be anything but grateful for all you did for me? All of the love you gave? All those individual, precious steps that made possible my not-so-glorious death and reincarnation into a body made of osteoplastic and animal carcases?

Well. I can afford a better grade of clone, now. And look-- it's not so bad; Jihun's here, your grandson, come to avenge you, tracing my path like a good detective following in the footsteps of a killer.

He wants me to "do the right thing." What that is, I don't even pretend to know-- kill myself, I suppose. But I'm far from doing that. I fight him in only a few days. It'll be like one of the legendary honor-duels of old.

Little Jihun-- you remember him, don't you? The little boy who could never sit still for more than five minutes no matter how many times you whacked him with your rod? The young monk who got so bored with katas that he started looking for excuses to help out in the kitchen rather than do his morning exercises? And now he's going to use those skills you taught him, and he's going to make you proud.

I'm going to kill him. And more than that, I'm going to make sure his consciousness survives the process. I'm going to make him just like me. Well-- not just. Low-grade clones are made of the rawest of raw materials, nutrient broth vat-grown tissues and miscellaneous reprocessed organics, a body with more preservatives in it than a military field ration. I'm going to put him in one of those, and better still, he knows it. He just seems to think maybe I'm going to lose my nerve.

I won't. I promise. I will gut him like one of those gasping fish at the market, and I'll make sure he remembers it. Just for you.

And maybe one of these days, I'll be able to quench this anger enough to feel sorry for what I've done, to you, to him, to all of us. But not today, and not tomorrow-- nor the day, a few days from now, when I kill your grandson.

For you, Grandpapa.

Your granddaughter,

-Aria