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“I don’t imagine Kirtan Loor would agree, but I’ll concede the point.”

He felt her chest convulse once, then she looked up at him with red-rimmed brown eyes. “No, you’re right.” Her mouth made a weak attempt at twisting itself into a smile. “As much as he admired your drive, Corran, Diric really appreciated your sense of humor. He said it marked your resiliency. He thought that as long as you could laugh, especially at yourself, you’d always heal from any trauma.”

“He was a wise man.” He tightened his embrace a bit. “You know he’d hate to see you like this, to think he was causing you this much pain.”

“I know. That hasn’t made it any easier, though.” She dabbed at tears with a handkerchief. “I keep thinking that if I’d seen something there, I could have prevented what happened. He wouldn’t have been a traitor.”

“Whoa, wait, Iella, that is not your fault. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, you could have detected or done to help him.” Corran shivered and felt his flesh pucker. “I know what Isard did to those she wanted to warp and convert into her puppets. I resisted, I don’t know how. It could have been personality or genetics or training or anything. Tycho and I both proved unsuitable for her—as did a few others, but I think she would have had an easy time of breaking Diric down.”

“What?” Iella’s hissed question carried with it undercurrents of betrayal. She tried to pull away from him, but he held on.

“That’s not a strike against Diric, honestly it isn’t. Diric was a victim, and you have to know that he resisted her mightily because even after his capture Imperial Intelligence didn’t find you. I think he built a mental reserve around you and was willing to sacrifice everything to protect you. Even altering her orders at the end was designed to protect you, and in his mind, sacrificing himself to do so was not too much to pay.”

Corran frowned. “The one thing about Diric that characterized him was his curiosity. We both saw it in the way he’d ask us about cases and push us to look at other explanations. He was thoughtful and thorough—espionage was a natural place for him. You said yourself that Isard first placed him in Derricote’s lab to spy on the General. She probably suggested to him that his success in that role determined whether or not she’d let you live. She undoubtedly told him that lie concerning any actions he took after he rejoined you.”

Iella’s defiance melted into despair. “Great, now you’re telling me that he’d not have been in that position except for me.”

“No! You had nothing to do with where he ended up—that was entirely due to Isard and no one else.” Corran sighed. “Look, think about the good Diric did. Aril Nunb pointed out that he was the only person in Derricote’s lab that was kind to her and who helped her through her recovery from the Krytos virus. And after he came back, he was a great comfort to Tycho through the trial. He even pushed you to look for evidence to break the frame Isard had settled around Tycho. And, like it or not, he did kill Loor, and I can’t fault him for that.”

“He thought he was shooting Derricote but knew it wasn’t him. He was happy he’d gotten Loor.”

“Well, I did kill Derricote and I’d have been more happy to kill Loor myself.” Corran brushed a hand along her cheek and wiped tears away with his thumb. “Diric wasn’t happy existing the way he did, but he regained himself in defying Isard and doing all the little things that sabotaged her plans. In the end he won. He’d often complained his life had no meaning …”

“But it did.”

“Agreed, and at the very last he finally got to see how much it meant. He’d saved you, he saved Aril, he saved Tycho. He’s at peace, and he’d want you to be at peace with his death, too.”

“I know, but it’s just not going to be that easy, Corran. I was there, I held him as he died from wounds I’d inflicted.” Iella sniffed, then swallowed with difficulty. “Your father died in your arms. How did you get through it?”

Corran felt his own throat thicken. “I won’t kid you, it wasn’t, isn’t, easy. There are