Perhaps if it wasn’t for the things that Mart had said about Lealy, Tirad’s desire for her would have become more tempting. Lealy didn’t know much about her past; she was only four when she was brought to the Saviour Ship. Mart had said that she knew an old woman in Oxan that had a brothel. Lealy was one of the whore’s babies, her mother had died at childbirth and the old woman had taken her in, maybe to raise the chubby baby as another whore. But the old woman had died and all the women of her house had been thrown out. Khunas had taken the little girl and brought her to the Saviour Ship. Tirad never knew which parts of Mart’s story was believable. Mart was himself one of the children born in the brothel, from a whore and probably a fisher, diver, salesman or a boatman. Everyone knows that Mart was raised in the whorehouse. He has no shame talking about it as this proves that he was born on land, not on the ships. He claims that he had seen Lealy there in the brothel when they were children. What doesn’t add up is the timeline of his story. Lealy is at least three years older than Mart and if what Mart claims had happened, he must have been a baby at that time and wouldn’t be able to remember it.

Whether Mart’s story is a lie or is not, it has clouded Tirad’s mind. Tirad had thought about leaving the Saviour Ship: to start a family and live an ordinary life filled with love and pleasure for the rest of his life. Most of the disciples would often think and dream about the different lives they could have. Some like Hurmaz had even tried it; they had gone and come back to their disciple lives. But any time Tirad imagines his life outside of the Saviour Ship, Lealy is not a part of it. Leaving the ship for good doesn’t seem impossible to him but leaving it for the sake of Lealy, surely does. Maybe he was never truly in love her. Mart’s story wouldn’t affect him if he was really in love. Or maybe he clings to the ambiguous story just to keep his distance from her and to avoid her temptations. He is not sure what he would gain by giving into his desires. But he is afraid of losing too much and even hating himself and Lealy for it. Should he ever risk all his achievement, life and career for a woman, it better be out of a love that would deafen and blind him so that he could give up being a disciple without having second thoughts. Like the love Hurmaz had experiences and had only spoken about it to Tirad.