The narrow entrance to the cave widened out to a generous space lit by oil lamps and a few candles. Zorro's big black horse was apparent from the moment they'd entered the cave proper, but it wasn't until he'd dismounted and stumbled forward into the center of the room that Alejandro caught sight of the animal's master. Zorro was sitting on the floor beside his horse, eyes closed, back leaning against the cave wall.

"Ah, Felipe," he said, not opening his eyes, "I wasn't expecting you so soon. Toronado is in some need of attention I fear. I would help you, but I find myself a trifle weary."

"Diego," Alejandro said, forcing the word past his dry throat.

Zorro's eyes flew open.

"Father! I … I can explain." He pushed himself forward on one hand in a clear effort to regain his feet, but Alejandro fell to his knees beside him.

Zorro's hat fell quickly to the ground. Alejandro paused a moment at the mask, but then raised a shaking hand and peeled back the thin layer of cloth.

His son looked back at him from above the rest of Zorro's costume.

Alejandro could only stare for a long moment, but then grabbed his arm and yanked him into a hard, tight hold.

"All of this time . . . you—"

His son . . . Zorro. It was all so much that Alejandro's head spun with it.

"I never meant for you to find out like this. I wanted to tell you so many times."

Alejandro gripped him harder to disguise the shaking in his arms and pressed his lips into the side of his head. It had been so close. If Domingo had not moved at that last, crucial second, it would have been Diego lying bleeding his life away in the square.

Diego gripped him in return, but his arms held very little strength.

Alejandro took a few deep breaths. The shock was ebbing, however slowly, rational thought rising to take its place.

He backed away enough to drop his hands to Diego's shoulders and gave him a hard shake.

"What in God's name did you think you were doing? Or were you even thinking at all?"

"With Esteban caught, I thought it more than likely that Domingo would show up," said Diego, looking as agitated as Alejandro felt.

"And so, logically, you would of course have to jump on a horse and ride along yourself, never mind that this man is a wanted killer, or that the square would be filled with soldiers or that you yourself were just allowed out of bed four days ago."

Diego grimaced. "Yes, well, I didn't see a way around it. Zorro was the only one who could do anything."

Alejandro gave him another strong shake. "Then let me explain it to you. It's called staying here, in bed, where you belong. I am nearly convinced that you have no sense whatsoever. Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

But then Diego's face turned serious and his eyes sparked with some of that restrained anger that had so filled Zorro back in the pueblo. "I could not risk allowing Domingo to harm the people of this pueblo any further. And someone had to put a stop to de Soto."

Alejandro shook his head. "You were hurt. Again."

He dropped his hands and pushed back Zorro's cloak. The right sleeve had been torn in a neat line and blood dulled the silky material in a large patch.

"You might as well let me have a look at that."

Diego frowned. "It is not as bad as it looks."

"I want to see it."

Diego sighed and then slowly pulled off his gloves before unlatching the cloak and pulling the shirt over his head. Alejandro pulled on his arm until the wound came into better light and had to admit that Diego was mostly right. Blood had run in long lurid lines down his arm, smudged now from the removal of the shirt, but the wound itself was not deep and had already sealed. It probably would not have bled nearly as much as it had if Diego hadn't been forced to use the shoulder.

Felipe crouched down beside the both of them with a bowl of water and a cloth and Alejandro allowed him to clean the blood from Diego's arm. Diego reached out to squeeze the boy's shoulder, but he ducked and shook his head.

You shouldn't have done that. This could have been so much worse.

Diego looked plainly blighted, but Alejandro had to agree with Felipe.

"He's right" Alejandro said softly. Diego looked back up at him.

"Dear God, Diego, would you look at yourself" Alejandro said, gesturing at the half-healed wounds that still littered Diego's exposed torso. "You were in no condition to be taking such risks. Don't you think you've done enough of that lately?"

Diego just looked at him. Alejandro suppressed a sudden desire to start shouting at him and let out a long breath.

"You aren't nearly recovered enough to be lying around a cave. You look like you can't even stand up."

Frustration was beginning to replace Alejandro's crippling fear and he didn't fight it. What had the boy been thinking?

Diego glared at him briefly and pulled himself to his feet. It was not done without effort, but he managed it without help and kept to his feet without support though he swayed a bit.

Alejandro stood and placed a hand under his elbow.

Diego leaned on him heavily and Alejandro pulled his left arm up over his shoulder.

"I think those bandits must have hit your head harder than I'd thought," Alejandro said darkly as Diego leaned on him even further.

Diego's mouth quirked slightly. "It's not impossible."

Felipe hovered to the side, a ridiculous grin on his face and tears standing in his eyes.

"You have been dealing with this all along, haven't you?" Alejandro asked him.

Felipe nodded, pulling his arms in tighter against himself.

"You have my most heartfelt sympathy then."

Felipe's grin grew even wider.

"If you have returned, then our people cannot be far behind and will be wondering where Diego is at any rate," Diego said, studiously ignoring this exchange.

Alejandro reluctantly nodded, looking about the cave now for the first time. Felipe darted off somewhere farther into the cave. He would want to explore, later, but now was not the time.

Felipe reappeared a moment later, signaling that it was safe for them to proceed.

Alejandro helped Diego through the narrow doorway and found himself in his own parlor. The place was, thankfully, deserted. The servants would all be either standing guard or as yet in the town.

"This has been here the entire time, hasn't it?"

"I am afraid so," Diego said, sounding altogether too amused.

Alejandro gave him his best glare. "You have a lot of explaining to do."

They got Diego back to bed without any further trouble—a small wonder given the way the day had been going.

Felipe slipped off to return their horses to the stable, but Alejandro perched himself on the side of Diego's bed, still vaguely dazed by the day's revelations.

He looked at Diego lying half-propped amongst the pillows of his bed. Against the whiteness of the linens, his wounds looked doubly garish. They'd healed considerably ever since he'd been recovered, but it would be many weeks before most of them faded, and some of them would forever leave a scar.

"I must be the worst father in all of California."

Diego propped himself up on one elbow, reaching for Alejandro with the other hand. "I'm the one who's been lying to you, to everyone."

"You should never have been able to," Alejandro said, shaking his head. "I am your father. I should have known."

"I didn't want you to know. You always took such pride in Zorro and I knew you wouldn't be able to if you knew the truth. It just would put you in too much danger."

Alejandro ran his gaze over the exposed injuries on Diego's upper body. Most of them were obviously the work of recent events, but there were not a few that had clearly been years in the making. "I should have known," he said again.

Diego moved to sit up, but Alejandro pressed him back against the pillows. His fingers brushed that long, hideous scar that ran across Diego's side and horrible realization filled him.

"This . . . this wasn't from some random group of bandits. It was the alcalde."

"I suppose there is no use in denying it," Diego said, looking unhappy about it.

A curious iciness began to seep through Alejandro, dispelling the crushing fatigue in its wake. He remembered how certain everyone had been that Zorro was dead, Victoria's voice as she'd described all of the blood. "I am going to kill him."

Now Diego really did look alarmed. "He was trying to kill Zorro, not Diego de la Vega."

Alejandro pulled away from Diego's sudden grip. "Is that supposed to make it better? When I came back and found that you were missing . . . " His voice quavered and he had to swallow sharply before he could continue. "I as much told de Soto that if anything happened to you because of his inaction I would see him dead for it. Now I find out that not only did his negligence put you inadvertently in serious danger, but that the whole thing was a plot specifically designed to kill you. What did you think I would do?"

Diego curled his knees beneath him and knelt up to face Alejandro. "I am sorry, Father, I never meant for you to have to discover any of this. It is why I could never tell you."

He certainly sounded sincere enough, but he was still apologizing for the wrong things.

"And did you think for one minute what these risks you were taking might mean for everyone else? I speak not for myself but Felipe, Victoria, our people. Between the alcalde and your own stupidity it is miracle that you survived a week. What do you think it would have done to them if the alcalde's plan had succeeded"

Frustration was beginning to dispel the pained regret in Diego's face. Alejandro could almost be grateful for that. He'd been so frustrated and angry for days, years, and he almost wanted a fight.

"You speak as if there time to think of any of this," Diego said. "There wasn't any time for any kind of plan. There was only meeting each disaster as it came."

"And so you, what, were riding around chasing bandits all night and then getting up and doing the same thing as Diego? How long, exactly, did you think you could keep this up?"

"People were being killed. Something had to be done and there was no one else."

"You keep saying that," Alejandro said, "but I am not seeing it. There are several thousand people in this town and not all of them helpless farmers. There are dozens of other men who could have stepped up, organized patrols, contacted the governor."

Diego shook his head. "But no one did, don't you see that? And why should they? Zorro would certainly have it all cleaned up eventually. Zorro is always there when we have need of him and always will."

Hearing Ciro Esperanza's words flung back at him with such bitterness finally forced an end to Alejandro's own anger. Had he himself not witnessed his fellow Dons' extraordinary inaction in the face of real consequence? Had he not seen the jubilation today in the square that Zorro was once again there to rescue them? Had he himself not joined in that exultation, thinking that now, surely, they were saved?

Diego had lain back against the pillows again, his arms crossed over his chest as if cradling something.

"That Zorro has always been here does not excuse all those that should have acted. I have always told you that our privileges come with obligation."

"I understand what you are saying, and I am grateful for it, but it doesn't change anything. I'm the one who set Zorro up as the great hero. I was the one who allowed everyone to become dependent upon him. I'm the reason why Domingo and men like him came to Los Angeles in the first place. It was my fight."

Alejandro reached up to cup the back of Diego's neck with one hand but still Diego wouldn't look at him. "You did all that one man could, Diego. I do not know what it is you expect of yourself."

"It didn't work."

"And did you really expect it to? A single man, no matter how skilled, is not an army. Even Zorro cannot protect an entire pueblo from an invasion of this nature."

Diego let out a long breath and some of the tension seemed to melt out of the muscles beneath Alejandro's hand. "It did work, at least for a while. But de Soto kept letting them escape as quickly as Zorro could round them up. Nothing I did seemed to do any good and the people were paying for it."

Alejandro had the feeling he was hearing almost a sacred confession. He was not Padre Benitez, armed with the wisdom of God.

"It was not for nothing," he said, struggling to find each word. "The people knew that they were not abandoned, that someone was fighting for them. Sometimes the most courageous thing a man can do is to pick up a battle he knows he cannot win."

Diego finally did turn to face him, mouth quirked in a slight, inward smile. "It wasn't any kind of decision of active courage. Only of running from one trouble to another."

"I think you have been reading too many of your novels if you think that is not exactly what courage is. What you have accomplished here . . . Diego, it is simply amazing."

The shock of finding at last the secret that he had felt separated him from his son was fading, and the two of them—Zorro and Diego—were finally merging into one man in Alejandro's mind. He could not help but cast his mind back, recalling all of Zorro's adventures, except this time with knowledge that it was his son behind that mask, not some faceless stranger more myth than man. Alejandro had always been proud of his son's accomplishments, as little as he understood most of them, but this . . . this was so much beyond anything he might have dreamed of.

Diego jerked away from him, jaw clenching in what seemed a very real anger. "There is nothing amazing about it. Dozens of families have seen their homes burned to the ground, trade has been disrupted for weeks and four soldiers were murdered in just the past week. Don't you see how dangerous this dependence upon Zorro has become?"

"And if this is how you felt, why in God's name did you show up this afternoon? I still do not understand what you thought you were going to accomplish. All it would have taken was for one soldier to decide to ignore Esperanza's words."

Diego shook his head. "Having started this war, I could not now abandon everyone to it. The people expect Zorro to save them. I couldn't just leave them to de Soto. If that meant risking capture, even ensuring it, so be it."

Oh, he had no idea, did he?

"Diego," Alejandro said, and although he tried, he could not keep his frustration out of his voice, "don't you think you are taking a little too much on yourself? It was Ramon who started this and de Soto who took up the banner. If it were not for Zorro, the people of the pueblo would have been suffering under great oppression for years now. You are the only reason scenes like this afternoon's whippings are not commonplace."

"I am not the only reason." It was the closest Alejandro had ever seen Diego really lose his temper. It took a bit of adjustment, to say the least. And yet looking at his son, with all of this furious passion on display, he wondered how he could have ever believed that Diego's emotions ran no deeper than passing interest in a new book or sonnet.

Diego closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, but his arms remained tight held into his chest and the line of his shoulders was still held tense and energized.

"There are many people who stand up to the alcalde—you, Victoria, even Mendoza. And you do it without a mask, facing the consequences openly. Zorro risks less and less every time he rides. The soldiers don't even believe he can be captured anymore."

"If that is true, then why are you the one with all of the scars?" Alejandro asked quietly.

"They are not as bad as they look," Diego said, pulling at the blanket to cover up the worst of them.

"That they are there at all is bad enough. I do not understand how you can be thinking this way. Surely you must see what good Zorro has done for this pueblo."

Diego's shoulders slumped and the anger seemed to leave him in a rush. "You probably should not be listening to anything I am saying. It has been a long few days, and I am not myself. I do know that Zorro has done some good, at least most of the time."

Alejandro wished that he could believe it was just a day's frustration, but Diego was far too unsettled for that. "And the other day, all of that anger for Zorro's arrogance, was that all because of a long few days as well?"

Diego shrugged uncomfortably. "A bit, perhaps. I do not know. It is just that when I started this whole charade, I never imagined it would take so long."

"I think I understand," Alejandro said, and he thought he really did, at least enough so that Diego's frustration with Zorro no longer seemed so incomprehensible. Seven years was a long time to have put your life on hold, particularly with no end in sight. With de Soto willing to go to such lengths to see the end of Zorro, who could blame Diego for wondering what the point of all of this was?

"I am sorry to be like this," Diego said. "I didn't expect everything to fall apart so completely. There just got to be so many of them, and I was just so very tired. There probably was a better way, but there was no time to think."

Alejandro had the feeling that this was more than Diego had wanted to admit, but it explained much.

"You must have been exhausted," he said. "I cannot imagine what it must have been like here."

Diego did look frankly something more than exhausted. He'd spent days doing little more than lying in bed, but his eyes still had a bruised and hollow look to them.

The bitterness there was fading along with the anger, but Alejandro had a feeling that this was more because Diego was too tired to pursue it any further than any real resolution.

"Diego," Alejandro said, forcing the words past the sudden lump in his throat"I know that you probably don't want to hear this, but I must tell you how very proud of you I am. As little as I like how careless you were with your own health, to keep up this battle in the face of such dangers after you had been so badly injured—I have never witnessed anything like it, not in Spain, not in my years as a soldier, not even from Zorro. If that is not heroics, I do not know the meaning of the word."

Diego's eyes looked suspiciously bright. "That means a very great deal to me, Father. Your opinion has always been important to me, even if I know that I have not always been the son you would have chosen."

"Stop," Alejandro said. Much more of this and he would be crying himself. "That has never been true and would not even if you were not Zorro. To have Zorro for a son is an amazing thing, indeed, but do not doubt that I have always been proud of you, even if I am very poor in showing it."

Diego didn't look entirely convinced. Alejandro supposed he deserved that.

"It was not Zorro I returned from Mexico to see," he said, reaching out to stroke the hair from Diego's forehead. Diego finally settled under his hand and at last relaxed fully into the pillows.

"You look tired," Alejandro said. "It hasn't escaped my notice that you haven't been sleeping all that well."

"I had a lot to think about."

"Zorro?"

Diego nodded. "Many things, but yes, mostly Zorro. I wasn't certain it wouldn't be better for him to stay dead. I'm still not certain he shouldn't, though there doesn't seem to be another path. I suppose I should rest. After today it is clear that Zorro is going to be needed quite a bit over the next few days."

Alejandro's hand stilled. "He most certainly is not. Have you listened to a single word I have said?"

"You were there today, you saw what it is like. As much as I want it to be otherwise, Zorro is needed. He can't just disappear."

Alejandro thought about that. There was a not small part of him that wanted to tell Diego that it wasn't worth it any more. That the pueblo was going to have to start rescuing itself from now on. He'd lost seven years of really knowing his son to this cause, and that was surely more than anyone could ask. And what about Diego himself, forced to lie to the woman he loved, forced to be viewed by the world as a spineless fool? Except . . . he had been there that afternoon, and he couldn't deny what he'd seen.

"There will probably always be a need for Zorro, it is true, but there is nothing to prevent him from taking a holiday now and again."

"A holiday?" Diego was looking at him as if he had suggested that Shakespeare was a talentless hack and Newton an overrated charlatan.

"Yes, a holiday. One that is far overdue, I might add."

Diego frowned. "I simply can't be disappearing right now. If Zorro doesn't keep him in check de Soto will just continue on as he has."

"I can see that I am not being clear enough. Zorro is going to take a holiday, of several months at the least. You on the other hand are going to do exactly what the doctor orders, and I do not recall any of those orders involving you riding around on a horse getting shot at."

"It won't work," Diego said, but this time he sounded far less certain. "De Soto will be twice as difficult after being so humiliated today."

"I am afraid you are just going to have to let the rest of us worry about that for a change. It would be easier with Zorro's help, it is true, but we are going to have to go without for a little while. I am serious about this, Diego."

"A holiday," Diego said, but this time with consideration, not denial. "I don't think I'd even know what to do with myself."

Alejandro drew himself up from the bed and pulled the covers back into place over Diego. "I can think of a few things, don't worry. Explaining all of this is going to take you a month at the least."

Diego looked confused. "You know most of Zorro's adventures. You saw them for yourself."

"Yes, and you are going to explain them again. So perhaps you had better get some rest, hmm"

"Apparently so."

Alejandro couldn't help but watch him for a moment longer. His son, Zorro, it was going to take a while if ever before that thought ceased to startle him. But he could already hear horses from the returning men in the yard. The world would not wait forever, no matter how rocked Alejandro's foundations may have been.

He heard Juan call for him and slipped out of Diego's room and off down towards the exit into the yard. Diego wasn't the only one who was going to have to come up for explanations for this day.