The sun was almost touching the horizon by the time Pendred reached the harbor; he came here often to think, mostly of the Havengore, sometimes about a woman who had drowned when the Obereon was wrecked off Cape Hale. Despite the dark thoughts, it was a beautiful place, especially now when the western breezes carried the scent of rich fields and new flowers from Kyandra, second largest island in the Dresau Islands and now just visible to the right of the sun. Gulls wheeled overhead, playing among the high masts of gray and black painted sailing ships. Tar, spruce, oak and ash, varnish and fresh forged steel competed with Kyandra's lovely smells. Defiance, Windmoor, Jewel, Eringold, Vengeance, and Janette: the old names of the vanished ships of the Fleet now floated over the water on the gilt sterns of wooden craft. They were beautiful in the manner of all sailing ships and some of the spirit of the old Fleet seemed to imbue them; but even more than that, they conjured up visions of what the original bearers of those names might have been like. Then the masts lowered and the hulls shrank and one saw behind them row on row of great steel ships, steaming out of the Kingsgate at twenty knots, the breakwater shivering as their wakes hit it. Pendred imagined the grand battle flags unrolled to the morning winds and men, no different from himself, upon the decks.
Pendred walked around the waterfront thinking of such things and wondering if his son's son might have commanded the Havengore on that far day.
He almost ran into the girl before he noticed her. Obviously she was the one who had brought the Admiral word of the Yards; the usual Navy rumors had been circulated about her, but Pendred felt that her beauty surpassed all of them. The women of the Dresau Islands tended to be hardy, weather-beaten types, as were their men—heavy of intellect and of limb was the rule, although certain members of the industrial and naval elite violated it quite delightfully. But she was more delicate than any that Pendred had seen. The Crystal Queen, Pendred thought, remembering a story he had not heard since childhood.
The two years of hard traveling and the rough attentions of her supposed guardian had hurt her remarkably little. The skin, once so white, had now taken on a slight tan, accenting her large olive eyes all the more. Her hair, turned a deeper gold by the sun, was combed straight, but its sheer richness curved gently around her face to run down her back like a stream of silken threads. Kyandra's winds stirred it and the evening stars gave her a crown to go with the titles that Pendred was silently conferring.
She was wearing a long white dress with a high neck and long, tight sleeves as was the current fashion on Guthrun; it was embroidered with small navy and turquoise blossoms.
He stood looking at her for a minute before it occurred to him that he might introduce himself. He did and was received with surprising politeness. But after the usual courtesies were exchanged the girl returned to her seaward gazing and the man to his fumbling for words.
"Has your Admiral decided to do anything about the Victory?" So she did love it, as Radlov had said.
He answered honestly: "He plans to mount an expedition against it."
Her face saddened noticeably. She murmured something indistinct and looked inland where the stars were getting thicker and more brilliant. "Really for the better, I suppose. Still, it could have been so grand, so wonderfully grand. . . . Must you really do it?"
Pendred told her why and she nodded as if she had secretly guessed it all along, but could not admit it to herself. She smiled, not out of any joy or happiness, but from a tender sorrow that Pendred would have thought impossible to express.
Again quiet. Then Pendred offered to show her the Havengore. She said that she had seen enough of killing machines in the past several years, but consented.
Pendred's regular launch was waiting further down the quay. The launch threaded its way through the glut of wind ships until a narrow canal was reached. Cast up on the tidal flats that flanked the channel on either side, there lay the dead remnants of the Fleet: burned and twisted wrecks that had come home to die and give up their steel to rebuild their still-living sisters. There was no moon, but the profusion of stars and the clarity of the air provided just enough light to see by, not enough to show the rust-covered wounds of the rotting hulks.
The canal widened until the boat was sailing in another, larger harbor than the Kingsgate: the Stormgate, the anchorage of the Dresau Fleet. All along the far, hill-ringed shores, Pendred said that only a twentieth of it was operational, the rest serving as a parts depot.
To the starboard, two sleek black forms could be seen sparkling in the crystal light. "The frigates Blackthorne and Frostfire." Pendred pointed to them. "If you went by the dates on their launching plaques, they would each be over four hundred years old. But, of course, each has been rebuilt so many times that just about the only things left over from their first launching are those plaques." They moved closer to the two ships; the white starlight made them look like pieces of sculpture shaped from ebony and edged with silver. The light winds stirred the surface of the Stormgate and the water too was of dark, beaten silver. The girl was quiet, taken up with it all; she could not help but remark on the quiet, powerful beauty of the sleeping machines.
Hearing this, Pendred remarked, "Some day, if you will consent, I think that I shall take you out on the Frostfire, the fastest of the three. Forty knots through the cobalt Sea, white spray flying at every hand and all her silken flags unfurled to the winds. Look at her, my lady, look at both of them and see them running out of the Kingsgate, reviving the old legends, all the old greatness and glories. And the Havengore steaming after them like a great castle set afloat, crashing through the waves toward . . . "
"Toward the destruction of the Victory and themselves."
Pendred fell silent.
Presently another silhouette detached itself from the darkness of the hills. The Havengore. Since it was almost three times as long as the two frigates that they had just passed, Pendred thought that it might have extracted some measure of awe from the girl; then he remembered that she had helped build a ship which could carry a hundred Havengores in its hold.
The launch luffed up beside a boarding ladder and the two ratings held it fast. They climbed up onto the deck and Pendred showed the way to the bridge, reciting the history of the cruiser as they went. "She was built more than five hundred years ago from the parts of seven older craft. She's seven hundred feet long and can make more than thirty-five knots should circumstances warrant. She is, probably, outside of the Dresau Islands themselves, the largest single, living relic of the First World." They had reached the bridge by now. "And like the Islands, she is dying.
"Look around you and what do you see? A mighty ship designed to defeat nations and humble nature, all guns and gray steel. But in the sunlight, in the light of the World, you can see the rust, the gun tubs that once housed missiles and now carry muzzle-loading cannon, the main battery of nine eight-inch guns crusted with preservative grease—they haven't been fired in almost half a century—radar display casings that now hold astrolabes and sextants."
"And with this you hope to destroy the Victory."
"I think that the only thing that we will really destroy will be ourselves. And why not? What is the fault in dying when your world died a thousand years before your own birth?" Pendred's eyes looked to the stars, but he realized that he had really been staring into the reflected light of the girl's eyes. His brutal, doomed world became warmer and the grim destiny that Radlov had charted for the Fleet had become tinged with her own quiet sorrow. He spoke strangely, for certainly his mind in its proper state would have never dared to say such things. "It has become my wish—since Radlov told me of this adventure—that my grandson should be on board my Havengore when she last leaves the Stormgate." He took her hand and led her to the commander's sea cabin.