Word of Honor. The World of Tortuga-on-the-Rocks, #6

Lin is a veteran of the Foreign Legion of Lilie - three contracts, fifteen years of his life given away. Arriving in the city of Tailon to claim civilian citizenship, he meets a system that remembers nothing and promises nothing in earnest. Form matters more than substance, regulations shift without warning, and a word that was sacred in the Legion is just a phrase here. While others demand, shout, and celebrate their victories, Lin keeps his own quiet ledger: a notebook, tea, work.
A spare, dry story about a man without a past learning to live inside a system that owes him nothing - and finding dignity not in the fight, but in simply staying honest with himself. A novella from the world of "Tortuga-on-the-Rocks."