"You heard me."

"Califa, that's demented. Dare isn't going to be happy to seeme. What do you think he'd do if he saw you?"

"Probably kill me on sight."

"Exactly."

She just looked at him.

"I don't understand," he said when she didn't speak. "What do you hope to accomplish?"

"The same thing you do. Atonement. Reparation. And punishment, if necessary."

"Califa, no. At least Dare must give me a hearing before the council. Outworlders have no such right in time of war."

She merely shrugged.

"Don't you understand? You'd be walking into an almost certain death sentence!" He reached out and grabbed her shoulders then, as if he could force her to see what was so obvious to him.

"Of course I understand," she said, meeting his gaze levelly. "I've learned of the wish for death from an expert."

"I..." G.o.d, touching her had been a mistake. Her heat was rippling through him, burning him. "That's different," he managed.

"How, Dax? You feel you betrayed your world. I feel I unforgivably abused its king. I see no difference."

"No," he said. He couldn't stand that, too. He couldn't face the condemnation of his people and her death, too.

"I must. Just as you must."

He shook his head mutely, despair welling up inside him.

"Dax," she said gently, "do you think I don't understand what you're doing? That facing Dare, and your people, is the only way you can live with yourself any longer? And that even death is preferable to the guilt, if that is what they choose? That this is the only way your soul will find rest?"

He stared at her, his breath coming in gulps as she ripped every deeply buried emotion from its hiding place within him and dragged them out into the light.

"Will you deny me the same peace, Dax?"

He couldn't speak. He could only pull her into his arms and hold her, tightly, not sure which of them was trembling, then realizing it was both.

"Now, Rox," Dax ordered. "Break out of orbit, and get out of here. Fast."

"Are you saying theEvening Star is ours now?"

Dax swallowed. "I am. Get moving."

"Copy. Good luck, Dax."

Dax closed his eyes. No more Cap'n. G.o.d, he was going to miss that old man. Only then did he let himself truly look at what was visible through the shuttle's small viewports.

"Triotia," he breathed, his heart seeming to draw up into a tiny, rock-hard lump.

It wasn't quite the disaster he'd expected. They had obviously been working hard in the year since Dare had beaten the Coalition at its own game. Yet the damage was heavy, the purity of the white buildings mangled by Coalition guns. The meadow that had surrounded the city, that had been recreated in Rina's holograph, was nothing more than a barren plain.

He had thought he'd been prepared for this. He'd conquered the nausea that had risen in him when Larcos had read off the grim results of the planetary scan he'd done tiny pockets of life was all that was left on a planet that had once teemed with plants and animals of all kinds. But now, knowing he was about to set foot on his battered world for the first time in years, he found he couldn't move.

"Rina," he said, his voice unsteady.

"Right here, Dax. We're ready. The sick one's on the cart Larcos rigged. Califa will handle that. But you'll have to carry Fleuren." The girl grinned at him, her excitement about being home at last overwhelming her to the point where she seemed oblivious of the undercurrent of tension in both Dax and Califa. "She says she's looking forward to that. You'll be going out first?"

"No. You'll have to begin." G.o.d, he should have talked to her before this, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to do it. "Rina...They're going to feel about me...like you did, at first. I'm not going to be welcomed here."

"But Trios is your home!"

"And I've broken most of its laws. You'd be wise to point out you had little choice about going along."

"They'll get over it," she said cheerfully, "once they know the truth. I'll start the others out first, then."

She left him wondering if the truthwhatever that waswould make the slightest bit of difference. He heard the bustle, the sound of voices, cries of joy and welcome as Rina efficiently unloaded the pa.s.sengers. Triotian voices. On Triotian soil. Dax shuddered despite his effort to stop it. At last it was only he and Califa, Denpar, who was nervously clutching the flashbow wrapped in Dax's cloak, Fleuren, and the man who lay half conscious on Larcos's cart. Califa was kneeling beside him, clasping his frail hands in hers. She'd worn the loose shirt and trousers Dax had given her at the storehouse, and had found another piece of cloth to wind about her slender neck, concealing the collar.

"You're home," she was telling the man softly. "On Trios. They're waiting for you."

The man stirred, eyes fluttering, then opening. "Home?"

It was a weak thread of sound, but it sent another shudder through Dax. He bent over the man himself.

"Home," he confirmed, putting into his voice all the joy he would be feeling if he was as certain of his welcome as this man. And for an instant, despite the man's frailty, Dax envied him.

"I'll go first," Dax said, straightening. "With any luck, Dare will be distracted enough he won't notice you right off."

"And maybe you can have him angry enough at you by then that he won't kill me outright?"

His mouth quirked. "Did I tell you you're too d.a.m.ned observant?"

Before she could stop him he turned, picked up Fleuren, who'd been watching them both with wise interest, and strode down the ramp into a flood of Triotian sunlight. It truly felt different, he thought. Different from the sunlight on any other world, circling this or any other star. He blinked, his eyes adjusting. But nothing could help him adjust to the wonderful shock of being home, of the familiar yet long-missed sight of the golden people of his world.

"Thank you, my son," Fleuren whispered, tilting her gently wrinkled face to the light.

Dax tightened his arms around her in answer; he was beyond words. Then a cry of pure joy broke from her as a young man ran toward them.

"Renclan!"

"Grandmother," the man cried, tears streaming down his face as he took her from Dax. "There are no words to thank you," he began as he lifted his gaze. "What you have done"

He stopped, staring, his eyes widening in shock. "Dax," he whispered. "Dax Silverbrake."

Dax had known it would come, but hearing his name, here, where he had once been so proud to carry it, hit him harder than he could ever have antic.i.p.ated. He vaguely heard the sound of Califa wheeling the cart down the ramp behind him, and the bustle as two people in the pale blue coats of medical personnel started toward her and the injured man, followed by Denpar's lighter steps as they came down the ramp. Then all he heard were the voices.

"Did you see who..."

"...Silverbrake!"

"Dax!"

"Did you see?"

"My G.o.d, it's Dax Silverbrake."

The exclamations rippled through the cl.u.s.ters of people like the undulations of the water in the lake that had once sat clear and blue across the meadow, when disturbed by a tossed stone. There was a movement on the edge of the crowd as the ripples of recognition reached there. When Dax saw the height and breadth of the man who turned, saw the burnished gold of a mane of hair as long as his own, saw the chiseled regularity of his features, he didn't need the royal black and gold to tell him.

Dax's gut contracted violently, and he wanted to run more than he'd ever wanted to in his life. But running was what had gotten him into this in the first place; he held steady.

And when the man turned his head, it took every bit of remaining nerve Dax had to meet those too familiar eyes that were the exact shade of the gra.s.s in a Triotian meadow.

"Dax," Dare whispered.

Even from here, fifteen feet away, Dax heard it. It was stunned, it was reverent. And for an instant, hope rocketed through him as pure joy lit Dare's face.

Dare covered most of the distance between them in three long strides. Then, between the third stride and the next, his face changed, the joy fading. He came to a halt three feet away. Dax felt the hope that had leapt in him falter. With Dare's first words, it crumbled.

"I had hoped it was a mistake. That someone with your same name had become the scourge of the far reaches. I could not believe that a Triotian could ever willingly become such a thing as a skypirate."

Willingly? Dax wondered about that. But he wasn't going to quibble over a minor qualification that didn't really matter. Nor was he going to act the coward, not here, not again. As Califa had said, it was time to put it to rest, so his soul could rest. If Dare decided that rest was to be eternal, he would not fight him.

"It is true," Dax said steadily.

Pain, and regret, flashed in Dare's eyes. "I have not spoken your name for six years, fearing that someone would tell me something that would make it impossible for me to deny that the man I'd heard of, the merciless buccaneer, was really you."

Dax cringed inwardly, but he held Dare's piercing gaze. Dare had obviously heard the Coalition version. But then, what else would he have heard, being in Coalition hands for five of those six years, then here, in war-isolated Trios?

He made no attempt to justify it; no pretense would change the facts of what he'd done, or matter when laid up against solid, centuries old Triotian law. He'd decided, in those hours spent lying weakly in his bunk, not to even try.

"I will not deny who I am." I've had too much of that, Dax thought wearily. I'm glad it's finally over.

Dare shook his head slowly, the movement and his expression speaking of great pain. "That you, of all of us, should come to this...Your family has always been the most celebrated on Trios, linked with the royal family even before my own family ascended the throne. You know the Silverbrakes could easily have become the royal family themselves, had they not had that aversion to all things martial."

It hit Dax hard to see that Dare apparently believed that family trait had run true in him as well. Dare knowing he had run away was bad enough; Dare thinking he'd done it because he didn't want to fight was beyond any pain he'd ever imagined in this long-awaited meeting.

"As you have realized," Dax said stiffly, "I am hardly the kind to become royalty."

No, Dare was royalty; it fairly radiated from him, Dax thought. He wore the simple black and gold well, clothes that were emblazoned with the gold royal crest at the shirt's collar and down the side of the trousers that were tucked into high black boots. His own dark pants and boots, and the pristine but simple white shirt he'd put on, looked decidedly plain by comparison.

"You were hardly the kind to become a skypirate, either!" Dare snapped. "My G.o.d, Dax, is there a law you haven't broken?"

Dax barely kept his eyes from flickering to Califa. Only one, he thought, and that not from lack of trying.

"Probably not," was all he said.

Dare's eyes flicked over him. They were matched in height and breadth of shoulder, Dax realized, yet he had always thought of Dare as bigger, stronger.

"You bring a weapon, despite my order?"

Dax blinked. Then it hit him what Dare had seen. The knife. "My apologies...your highness. It is but a habit."

Dare seemed taken a little aback by the appellation. He waved a hand in negation. "Keep it. It will do you no good, in any case."

"I doubt anything will," he said with a shrug.

Dare seemed disturbed by his unconcern. "You know what your admission means," he said, his eyes dark with distress.

So this bothered him, Dax thought in an odd sort of detachment. The mood had descended upon him in the moments when Dare had asked of the laws he had broken. He had known for sure then that there was no hope for him. They might, perhaps, in view of the Triotians he'd brought home, let him live. But Dare might yet decide his life would be the price. He calculated the odds at about even.

"How long has it been," he asked, that detachment making his tone flippant, "since there's been an execution here? Centuries? Millennia?"

"Dax, this is no joke!"

"I never thought it was," he said softly.

Dare took a visibly deep breath, glanced around him, then fastened those vivid eyes back on Dax. "You've done a good thing here. Why? Did you expect to buy your way out of the trouble of breaking every Triotian law extant?"

The truth of that sliced deep, although Dax felt the pain as if from a distance. Hehad thought of it that way, as if he could buy his way back using his own people as the coin. True, he had been desperate, and rescuing his people and bringing them home had been, as Dare said, a good thing, but nothing could change his intent. Even Califa, with a chance to regain her entire life, had refused to use him as the coin to do it. He should be ashamed, would be, he thought, if he could feel anything at all; he was neither good enough for her, nor to be called Triotian. At heart he was more the skypirate than he had ever been Triotian.

As if in protective response, Dax's detachment grew. "Is that not the way of a skypirate?" he said, sounding even more nonchalant. "A price on everything, and everything to be had for a price?"

Dare went very still. He stared at Dax, as if wondering what had happened to the friend of his childhood and youth.

"Is no part of you still Triotian?" Dare asked, his voice taut.

Dare's words so eerily echoed his earlier thoughts that Dax almost smiled; that odd detachment was growing. It enabled him to turn to Den, who was staring with awe-widened eyes at his king, and hold his hand out for the bundle the boy held so tightly. He took it, then unwrapped his cloak and tossed it over his shoulder, revealing the gleaming silver.

He heard Dare's swift intake of breath, but said nothing, merely handed over the symbol of what he had once been, as if it were the answer to Dare's question. And in a way, he supposed it was. Dax saw a tremor ripple through Dare as his hands curled around the weapon that he, even with his royal blood and great courage, had never been able to fire. The king of Trios held the ancient weapon of his people, and looked into the eyes of the man he had loved like a brother.

"Why, Dax?" he whispered, his voice unsteady. Dax knew what Dare was asking, but chose to misunderstand.

"It should not be in the hands of a skypirate. You will find a new warrior worthy of carrying the flashbow."

Dare looked puzzled for a moment, as if something out of synch had appeared in an image he thought he knew well. Dax quickly shrugged, returning to that light tone.

"Besides, I have only one bolt left. It's useless to me now, and a skypirate has no time for useless weapons."

Dare's eyes narrowed. "Do you care about nothing anymore?"

Dax didn't think he moved, and he knew he hadn't looked at Califa. But Dare's gaze shifted anyway, and Dax realized it had been Califa who had moved. When he looked at her, he saw a look of such concern on her face that he knew she had moved intentionally, to distract Dare from the words that should have beenand would have been, had he not been so oddly numbcutting his old friend to bleeding strips.

"You!"

Dare was frozen, staring at Califa in stunned disbelief. But he recovered all too quickly, his hand streaking down for the ceremonial but still deadly dagger sheathed at his waist as he turned on the woman who had once been his tormentor.