“But you do, don’t you?”

Wintrow sighed. “Yes. I do. Sometimes, at night, when I try to meditate, when I try to find my place in his world, I cannot make it all fit together.” He pushed his wet hair away from his face and looked at her frankly. “There is something missing in Kennit. I feel it but I cannot name it.”

A shadow of anger crossed her face. “Perhaps what is missing is not from him, but from you. Perhaps you lose faith whenever Sa’s path for you carries you where you do not wish to go.”

Her words numbed him. He had never expected to hear such a rebuke from her, let alone to have it ring so true. She spoke on. “Kennit has his faults. But we should look at what he achieves in spite of all his own doubts and pains.” Her eyes swept up to his accusingly. “Or do you think that a man must first become perfect before he can do good?”

“Sa’s hand can fit around any tool,” he muttered. Then, an instant later, he burst out, “But why must he take my ship from me? Not just take her, but change her to a creature I don’t even recognize? Why must he kill those who came only to take us home? I don’t understand that, Etta, and I never shall!”

“Perhaps because you have already determined that you will not understand it?” She met his gaze steadily. “I read, in a book you gave me, that our words shape our reality. Look at what your words have just done to what is. You have reshaped it to make it a grievance against yourself. Your ship, you say. Is she? Was she ever anyone’s ship? Or was she a living creature, imprisoned in an unfamiliar body and then claimed as a possession? Has Kennit changed her, or has he simply freed her to become who she truly was? How do you know he has killed those who came to free you, if that indeed was what they intended? As yet, we know nothing. Yet you have already decided it is a wrong done you, so that you can nurture your anger and feel justified. That’s no better than wallowing in self-pity.” Her voice had grown angrier and angrier. Now she folded her lips tight and turned aside from him. “I wanted to share something with you, something that must remain secret between us. Now I wonder if I dare, or if you will somehow twist it to be something it is not.”

All he could do was look at her. Although he had had a hand in her transformation, the changes in her could still astonish him. She no longer flew at him with blows when he crossed her will. She did not need to; the edge of her tongue was as cutting as any blade. He had recognized her intelligence and respected her cunning and her courage from the first day he had met her. Now there was schooling behind the intellect, and an ethic behind the courage. It amplified her beauty. He turned his hand on the table, palm up, to indicate his surrender. To his surprise, she leaned over and put her hand in his. As his fingers closed on her hand, she smiled. He had not thought she could be more beautiful, but a sudden light shone in her face. She leaned closer to breathe her next words. “I’m pregnant. I carry Kennit’s child.”

Those words shut the door between them, closing him off from her life and her light. She was Kennit’s, she had always been Kennit’s, and she would always be Kennit’s. Wintrow himself would always be alone.

“I wasn’t sure, at first. Yet, ever since a certain night, I have had a feeling it was so. And today, when he sent me away, as he has never done before, I thought perhaps there might be a reason. So I sat here and I tested myself with a needle on a thread held over my palm. It swung so violently there can be no doubt. All indications are that I carry a son, a man to follow after him.” She took her hand from his and proudly set it upon her flat belly.

Misery numbed Wintrow. “You must be very happy.” He forced the words past his choking pain.

Her smile dimmed a fraction. “And that is all you have to say to me?” she asked.

It was all he dared to say. Every other thought was better left unuttered. He bit his tongue and looked at her in helpless silence.

She gave a small sigh and looked aside. “I had hoped for more. Foolish, I suppose. But Kennit has so often called you his prophet that I-now do not laugh-I had fancied that when I told you I carried the son of the King of the Pirates, you would, oh, I don’t know, say some words that foretold his greatness, or that…” Her voice dwindled away. A faint flush rose to her cheeks.

“Like in the old tales,” Wintrow managed to say. “A soothsaying of wonders to come.”

She turned aside from him, suddenly embarrassed to have dreamed such large dreams for her child. Wintrow made a valiant effort to set aside the hurt boy in himself and speak as both a man and a priest to her. “I have no prophecies for you, Etta. No Sa-sent foretelling, no inspired prognostication. I believe that if this child is pledged to greatness, his heritage will come just as much from you as from his father. I see this in you, right now: that regardless of what other folk do or do not see in your child, he will always reign in your heart. You will see the value of him long before others do, and know that the greatest trait he will carry is simply that he is himself. A child takes root in his parents’ acceptance. Your baby already has that gift from you.”