"You know I'm starting to think your dad was right."

Billy jumped, just a little, and peered into the darkness beyond the archway. "Who's there? Siggy?"

"You're half right." Red Avehli moonlight flooded over the gold hair of her king, and flashed white reflections on the bottle in his hand. "Why don't you come in? Join the party?"

"I don't feel much like celebrating." Billy leaned back against the thick stone, letting the cool seep into his back. The sunset had been a few hours ago, but the air was still too warm for his taste, his robes hanging heavily on his shoulders. He could shed them, of course. As easily as he could snap the delicate gold chain at his throat and fling the pendant away, letting go of both the symbol and the lies. But he wasn't quite ready for that yet.

Bart took advantage of Billy's silence to take a long swig from his bottle, still pirate enough to not drink from a glass, even at his own coronation celebration. The noise of the party was distant, filtering thought the clear desert air to this abandoned corner of the palace that Billy had staked out for himself. Billy had no idea why Bart had come looking for him here, just to stand there and drink at Billy as though expecting congeniality, much less conversation.

"Was there something you wanted?" Billy inquired, unsubtly. "Your Highness?"

"Not to be called that," Bart said, with a faint scowl, and he settled himself on the ledge overlooking one of the many tucked-away courtyards. He toed a loose bit of rock away, and watched it bounce down the steps to the nightblooming desert plants and the small fountain splashing with extravagance in the center of the garden.

"So what did you mean?" Billy asked finally, when it became evident that Bart was not going to simply leave him alone. "What did... my father have to say?"

"Admitted it, huh?" Bart smirked. "Took long enough. You can grouse at each other all you like, but that only proves that you act just alike." Billy inhaled, and Bart overrode his protest with "...But he said you liked to be a martyr, and that includes pointedly not having fun, just to be a pain in the ass."

Billy, remarkably enough, bore a startling resemblance to an overheating gear-pressure valve. "What? He's got no right to talk about me that way! Just because he was right about the Ethos doesn't mean he can criticize my way of-- That lawless, obnoxious--"

"Bastard." Bart prompted, grinning.

"Bastard!" Billy exploded, and looked fairly astonished at himself, clapping one hand over his mouth. The fountain splashed on politely, as if it hadn't heard.

"Bravo!" Bart applauded, his newly recovered signet ring clinking against his bottle. "I knew you had it in you!"

"Shuttup," Billy grumbled, sounding extraordinarily like his father, and began to stomp down the steps to the garden.

"It's good for you, you know." Bart's voice stopped him, one foot still on the last step.

"What is?"

"To let it all out once in a while." Bart hopped off the ledge, whip slapping against his thigh, and stood at the top of the short flight of stairs. "You know, cut loose. Don't keep it bottled up."

"You would think so," Billy retorted disparagingly. "You're just like my father, all of you. This whole kingdom is nothing but a pack of ruffians. I can imagine the headaches you give Sigurd."

Billy had expected Bart to get angry, maybe defensive, or perhaps to leave, but the new king just threw back his head and laughed at the stars. "I don't know what kind of plaster saint image you've got of Sig, Billy my boy, but if you'd bothered to drop in on the party, you'd find much to your shock that he's as drunk as the rest of them, and not because your dad forced him to." Bart hopped the steps in their entirety, landing three feet away from Billy without ever spilling his drink. "But you have problems when things screw with your worldview, don't you?"

Billy was mildly surprised that in a life such as his he had still managed to learn some rather colorful vocabulary, and this he displayed to Bart, who looked satisfactorily shocked when Billy informed him what he could go do with himself and any handy livestock that might be about.

"Thanks for the tip, but bearcows don't to much for me, and besides," Bart grinned, and his bottle clattered across carefully raked gravel as he tossed it aside, "You're closer."

Billy had a moment to be alarmed before Bart's weight collided with his, sandwiching him squarely between a large stone pillar and a desert pirate whose extra two years in age meant differences in weight and height that had Billy at an extreme disadvantage.

And everything Billy had ever suspected of Bart and his comrades was painfully clear in his mind.

"You're scared, aren't you."

"I am not, and you're drunk. Let me go." Billy's hand went for his ether gun-- it would be just enough to leave Bart with his ears ringing but wouldn't kill him.

"Come off it, Billy Lee. You know what intoxication looks like." Bart's fingers were more gentle than they needed to be, but still enough to keep Billy from reaching his gun. "You look at me and tell me I'm drunk."

Billy looked at him, at the one earnest blue eye and thick gold lashes, and decided it would be easier if Bart was drunk, it would make things much simpler in Billy's head. "Fine, you aren't drunk. You're just accosting me at random."

"Random, huh? Tell me, are you intentionally oblivious or just built that way?"

Billy shifted, his back scraping against the polished stone. "What're you--never mind. I don't care. Let me go before I--"

Bart, up close, was remarkably gold and blue, and smelled like the Bledavik market, heady and exotic. "Before you what, Billy Lee?" One eyebrow quirked, the lid sliding smoothly down over the one brilliant iris and Billy couldn't take a breath that wasn't full of Bartholomei, the king's words breathed warm across Billy's lips. "Shoot me?"

"Damn right I will you son of a--" But he was silenced, quickly and effectively.

Bart tasted like the market too, spices too rich for Billy's tongue, hot and complicated and full of the desert, wind to blind him and sun to burn his skin, nothing that had known snow or ice or even the cool rain of Billy's world. It was a dish that, had Billy been presented with it at a banquet table, he would have politely refused, not trusting foreign tastes. But with his lungs breathing in Bart's scent and the taste of him irrevocable in his mouth, Billy found himself desperate for more, to learn the complex flavors like psalms until they made sense to him, until he understood them, until they didn't frighten him anymore with their sheer difference. When Bart pulled back he could have wept that he wasn't done, it didn't make sense to him yet, it wasn't neatly cataloged in Billy's brain into a safe pigeonhole where he could observe it at leisure.

"The world is changing, Billy Lee Black. And you're going to have to change with it."

Billy wasn't quite sure, but somehow he didn't quite think that the thing to say after a first kiss. He noted, much to his chagrin, that Bart had released any restraint on him long since, and Billy's hands were wrapped firmly in the collar of Bart's jacket.

"I don't know how." Billy felt young, younger than he had in years, as if the time of his father's absence had not been, and he was still a confused little boy. "Everything," he focused on Bart's throat and the coil of gold braid, finding it easier than meeting that one-sided gaze, "everything is so different."

"Differences are good, Billy Lee. Keeps the world from being boring." Bart's fingers smoothed back a fall of moonlight colored hair, his thumb running over the puzzled line of Billy's eyebrow. "Everyone I've ever known has looked like me, acted like me. Me or Sig, maybe." The calluses on his hands were different, from the handle of a whip instead of the trigger-rough spot on Billy's forefinger. "You come in colors I didn't know existed."

Billy, to his horror, felt his cheeks heating up, as if Bart was the sun he resembled and Billy had spent too long in it. "Solarians... high class ones like I was born... look like me."

"Your dad doesn't," Bart countered.

"He used to... before he began working for Shevat. He had to look like a land-dweller so..."

"Ah." Bart didn't seem inclined to discuss Jessie, his palm sliding down Billy's neck, pushing away the collar of his coat and undershirt. Billy could feel his own breath stutter as Bart's hair brushed his face, his mouth on the base of Billy's throat. The noise he made was involuntary, his hands betraying him with their secret desire to bury themselves in that heavy golden weight above the braid, his head arching back against the column as Bart's lips found hollows in his collarbone, prompting a gasp when his earlobe was captured and tasted. The vague idea that they might be seen surfaced in his mind and sank again, as Bart lifted Billy off the ground, his knee sliding between Billy's thighs and leaving him braced between the column and the pirate, his coat undone and slipping from his shoulders. Bart's hands had left Billy's hair and instead held the former Etone's hipbone firmly to his own, his mouth again on Billy's and Billy, for the first time in his life, was not afraid of the desert.

"You still wear this?" Bart asked, sounding a little muffled, and Billy realized why when he caught the glimmer of gold chain in the desert-king's teeth.

"I--" Billy fought to clear his head. Maybe Bart was used to being pushed roughly against a pillar and having the breath kissed out of him without breaking conversation, but Billy wasn't. "I just hadn't thought to take it off."

"Hm." Bart turned the gold ethos pendant over and over in his hand, his eye following the glitter of gold from the palace lights. "This is plated."

Billy scowled, as if Bart was accusing Billy's faith of having an equally false nature. "We were poor. It was all I could afford, the foil plating. I melted the steel down myself, from spare gear parts."

"Steel." Bart grinned. "Steel's a lot stronger than gold, Billy Lee." He lifted his shaggy head, looked around the courtyard at the fountain. "The mountain Bledavik is on is loaded with gold, did you know? But nobody's ever mined it. It might damage the flow of water from the aqueduct, and water is more important."

Billy chewed at the inside of his lip. "What are you driving at?"

Bart let the pendant hang free, gleaming against Billy's pale skin. "What I'm saying is, things have different value to different people. You have to find out what they're worth to you." He ran his forefinger down the center tine of the cross. "You have to find out what your faith is worth to you, and not the price others have put on it." He leaned in, pressed his lips to Billy's again. "It's the only way to know your own worth. I always thought a heart of steel was better than a heart of gold."

He stepped back, looked the other way as Billy drug the cuff of his coat across his eyes. "You should come inside," he said, to the spires of Bledavik in the distance. "Have a drink."

Billy nodded, his head still bowed. "Maybe later."

"Right." Bart's boots crunched on the sandy paving stones, he reached to retrieve his empty bottle.

"Bart?"

"Mm?"

Billy lifted the pendant around his neck, heavy and gleaming in his hand. "Before you got your signet ring back, did you still think you were the king?"

Bart held up his hand, the carved ruby glimmering like a red star. "This?" Bart shook his head. "This is only precious to me because it belonged to my father. The only crown a King of Aveh needs is the desert around him, the love of his people." Bart gestured to the courtyard, the city. "I've always had that. I might not feel like I know what I'm doing, but I've always known who I am."

Billy stared at the pendant. "If the world is changing and I have to change with it," he said, "then I shouldn't throw my past away so fast, don't you think?"

"One thing I've learned, being a pirate," Bart said. "If it is important to you, keep it. If it's not important to you, get rid of it. Screw what anyone else thinks."

"Hardly something for a king to say." Billy's retort didn't have its usual heat.

Bart arched an eyebrow. "I'm more than just a king."

Billy folded his fingers around the curled Ethos emblem. He knew the shape of it in his hands; it had soothed his nightmares, strengthened his resolve, eased his doubts. The plating was worn to the steel in some places, where his fingers had rubbed it off.

Bart added, not unkindly, "Are you more than just an Etone?"

Billy slipped the pendant back into his shirt. "I won't find out unless I try." He walked across the courtyard towards Bart, towards the celebration going on.

Bart, grinning, flung an arm around Billy's shoulders. "Great! Tell you what, I'll get us both a beer, and we can talk about it."

"Get your hands off me."

"Right."