Pendred was literally enchanted with the girl and the two sailed to the Havengore almost every night for a month. Only the launch's ratings knew of it—Pendred's circle of friends was decidedly limited—and their loyalty and discretion was unquestioned.
The Navy and the demands of his command had forced him to forget the fantasies and dreams of elfin, crystal queens, soft voices speaking of nothing greater than quiet and light. Now they all flooded back on him; Radlov's projected Armageddon faded into comparative insignificance. The girl was everything that he had ever desired; her unworldly cast only helped him forget the reality of the Havengore's guns and travel to places that could only exist in the company of a person like her.
But gradually the feelings changed; while she still talked of her dreams and journeys, Pendred became less and less a part of them. Where once the wild speculation had been made lightly, finding their greatest value simply in their telling, they were now personal monologues from which Pendred was almost entirely excluded. If they happened out on deck, she gazed progressively more fixedly at the stars and at what Pendred knew must be Home; the promise of the Victory could have never been obliterated by his small dreamings and the depressing future of his ship. Sometimes he tried with an embarrassing desperation to recapture her imagination with childish visions of Guthrun's wild mountain lands or of the lush forests on Kyandra; every wonder or delight that the Islands might have held were instantly compared to the impossible assets of Home.
He realized that further effort was worthless. "I fear that any son that might have come of this will never set foot upon my poor old Havengore," he said absently one night.
"Ah, no," she replied, staring up at the welkin. "He'll sail upon a much finer ship."
"One without a voyage such as Radlov has planned for her, one with no worries of Armageddons." Pendred wondered if she was even listening.
"I guess, although it's not quite like that."
"An end as opposed to a beginning. That it?"
She smiled at him. "You could come with me, you know."
"I could no more go to your ship than you could stay here, with mine." He ran his hand lightly through her hair. "So I will give up trying to make my Islands another Home . . . even for such a prize.
"There is an armed schooner leaving three days from now for the Maritime Republics. From there you can board a coaster and, at Enador, join a caravan along the Donnigol Trace. That will take you, eventually, to the Caroline and from there to the Tyne delta." The girl moved her lips in thanks; Pendred heard only the sandy growl of the surf around the Stormgate.