"We talked a lot, she and I. I'd always thought I admired her because she was a soldier in her youth, for Beta Colony in the Escobar War, before she immigrated and married your father. But once, reminiscing, she went into this sort of litany about all the things she'd ever been. Like astrocartographer, and explorer, and ship's captain, and POW, and wife, and mother, and politician . . . the list went on and on. There was no telling, she said, what she would be next. And I thought . . . I want to be like that. I want to be like her. Not just one thing, but a world of possibilities. I want to find out who else I can be."

Miles glanced covertly at Baz, who was smiling proudly at his wife. No question, her will was driving this decision. But Baz was, quite properly, Elena's abject slave. Everything she said would go for him too. Rats.

"Don't you think . . . you might want to come back, after?"

"In ten, fifteen, twenty years?" said Elena. "Do you even think the Dendarii Mercenaries will still exist? No. I don't think I'll want to go back. I'll want to go on. I already know that much."

"Surely you'll want some kind of work. Something that uses your skills."

"I've thought of becoming a commercial shipmaster. It would use most of my training, except for the killing-people parts. I'm tired of death. I want to switch to life."

"I'm . . . sure you'll be superb at whatever you choose to do." For a mad moment, Miles considered the possibility of denying their release. No, you can't go, you have to stay with me. . . . "Technically, you realize, I can only release you from this duty. I can't release you from your liege relationship, any more than Emperor Gregor can release me from being Vor. Not that we can't . . . agree to ignore each others' existences for extended periods of time."

Elena gave him a kindly smile that reminded him quite horribly for a moment of his mother, as if she were seeing the whole Vor system as a hallucination, a legal fiction to be edited at will. A look of centered power, not checking outside of herself for . . . for anything.

It wasn't fair, for people to go and change on him, while his back was turned being dead. To change without giving notice, or even asking permission. He would howl with loss, except . . . you lost her years ago. This change has been coming since forever. You're just pathologically incapable of admitting defeat. That was a useful quality, sometimes, in a military leader. It was a pain in the neck in a lover, or would-be lover.