Placido smiled. “I am always eager to learn.” The two faced each other and began the combat dance. Valya kept her knees slightly bent, her hands and arms relaxed and in front of her, watching his every move.

Even as tension built in the air, the Swordmaster continued to lecture the others. “Notice her precise muscle control, and the way her eyes absorb their surroundings. She draws information from every available sense, which enables her to adapt to changes in the combat situation.”

Valya considered attacking, then decided not to, because Placido would expect her to do that. He gave a faint nod as he recognized what she was doing.

“She’s wondering what I can do,” Placido announced to the others. “That is good. Notice that her earlier aggressiveness has changed, and now she is in a defensive, wait-and-see mode.”

In a lightning-fast maneuver, he somersaulted instead of walking, becoming a blur as he continued to circle her, sometimes on his hands, sometimes on his feet, sometimes sliding past her. A short sword suddenly appeared in his hand, and Valya realized that he had taken it from her scabbard, like an acrobatic pickpocket. When he stopped moving, Placido had a sword in each hand. He dropped both weapons onto the rocks with a metallic clang.

Valya turned, still alert, just as he blurred into motion again. She felt a hard thrust in her midsection that knocked the wind out of her and dropped her to her knees. When she looked up, and around, he was no longer there. Linari and several other students rushed to the edge of the precipice, staring down.

Catching her breath, forcing control on her body, Valya rose to her feet and fought back the after-echoes of pain. Far below, she saw Master Placido bounding along the beach at the base of the cliff.

“He must be afraid of me,” she said, eliciting laughter from the others.

Moments later, Placido returned, after climbing the outcrop from a different side, and he presented himself, not breathing hard at all. He faced Valya. “You still have a great deal to learn, but I find you interesting.”

Valya took care to maintain a nonthreatening posture, with her arms folded across her chest. “And I find you interesting as well. Perhaps I can learn from the Swordmasters after all.”

His assessment of her went deeper than she expected. “You have fire in your eyes. There is someone you wish to kill. Not me, I hope.”

“It is not you, Master.”

He continued to stare at her. “Swordmaster training is not designed to create murderers.”

She avoided a direct answer. “I have no vendetta against my fellow students, but I need to fight them as part of our lessons. While I train, I find it useful to think of someone I despise, so I can raise my skills to a higher level.”

Placido nodded slightly. “An unusual technique, but you use it effectively.” He looked at the other trainees. “For those of you who have hatred to spare, you might wish to do the same, while keeping the secret of your enemy’s identity. I will teach you fighting methods, and you may customize them to your own abilities and needs. And hatreds.”

Lankiveil was behind him now, and sometimes Vorian Atreides wondered how many miles — how many light-years — he had traveled during his long lifetime. Then again, maybe he didn’t want to know. It would just be a number, and the memories of all those places, all those journeys, mattered more than the distances traveled.

After arranging to provide the financial lifeline House Harkonnen needed to solidify its position, Vor had traveled again, wandering from place to place. He bought his own passage, called no attention to himself, and made his way across the Imperium in a slow hopscotch until he finally found himself back on beautiful Caladan. Though he had taken his time to get there, even now he wasn’t sure he felt ready to be back. Caladan …

Vor had endured more than two centuries of being uprooted and moving on, of leaving people he cared about, watching Time steal away his wives, lovers, children, grandchildren, and friends. Out of self-defense, he tried not to let himself grow too close to anyone, yet out of his own humanity, he often failed. Sometimes he left loved ones of his own volition, but too often events forced him to leave — such as when he departed from Mariella and their family on Kepler. And so many decades ago, he had left Caladan as well.

Over the years there had been wars, politics, and death — far too much death. Through it all, Vorian Atreides was still alive. For the first time, he was going in the opposite direction, heading back to a place where he’d known love once, and where he still felt deep roots, despite the long time away.

The blue gem of the ocean world of Caladan beckoned him from the windowports of the shuttle that took him down from orbit. Through the veil of clouds, Vor identified the major continents. He remembered his life there with Leronica and their two sons. Estes and Kagin had never been close to their father, resented his remote and aloof lifestyle. He had chosen to give his life to the endless Jihad, rather than settling down in a small house on the seashore. Leronica understood that, but Estes and Kagin never had. They were all long dead now, but Vor thought of the grandchildren he’d never met, and the great-grandchildren, an entire extended Atreides lineage on Caladan. It made him sad that he wasn’t part of it.

Once, he had been happy on Caladan, at least as happy as he’d been on Kepler. He hoped he could recapture some of that now. Most people’s lives were too short to atone for all the things they regretted, but Vorian Atreides had a lot more time than other people, and he wanted to spend it making up for what he’d done wrong. He doubted the Harkonnens would ever hold anything but hateful thoughts toward him, and he could live with that — it was a price he had to pay. He had helped them, though, whether or not they ever knew it.

Now he was on a new mission, going back over a different portion of his past. He had never met any of his remaining family on Caladan. Perhaps he could reclaim a family here.

THE MOMENT HE saw Caladan’s rocky shoreline and grassy headlands, it all felt comfortable and familiar. As he made his way along a foot-worn path to the fishing village where he had spent so many years, this place seemed right to him. He needed to be here, needed to take care of matters that were long overdue.

The path ran along the top of a rugged cliff, with the ocean sprawling toward the horizon. Carrying a duffel bag of belongings, Vor paused to inhale the salty air. The blue-green sea looked like a placid lake, but in the distance he saw fast-moving clouds on the leading edge of a weather front.

More than a century ago, while on a scouting mission for the Jihad, he’d met Leronica in a tavern and was smitten by her playful personality and beauty. He could never forget her heart-shaped face, dancing brown eyes, or how he had picked her out in the crowd of locals. She had shone like a candle in the dark.…

Now, with a wistful sigh, he continued into town, pausing for a moment to look at a statue on the outskirts, depicting him as Supreme Commander of the Army of the Jihad in a heroic pose, gazing into the distance. But there were inaccuracies in the statue. The uniform was all wrong, and the face didn’t look like Vorian at all, with a nose that was too broad, a chin too prominent. It was also a statue of an older man, not the man in his apparent thirties who led the human military forces to victory against the oppressive machines.