"So what you got have?"
"In trade? First off, not to have that stsho contract hanging over my head. I've got to have trade agreements with the new government, including trade agreements for Vikktakkht's interests. I've got to have Chanur's friends out of here: we're not leaving any hostages in anybody's hands."
"What friend you talk about?"
"No'shto-shti-stlen."
"No, no, no good deal."
"What no good deal? What threat is gtst to anybody if he's not the governor?"
A few rapid puffs of smoke. The whole dockside was unnaturally silent. "You give oji, I present deal to stsho."
"No. You give me No'shto-shti-stlen, or no oji.'"
"You no damn position to bluff, hani. You want see Chanur take bad damage, you go ahead. Meetpoint dock get blow to hell, all you fault, you bring kif in. Look damn bad. We throw out kif guard for stsho, you bring back, blow up dock…"
"I could destroy the oji. So nobody gets it."
Brows went up. "Not good. Holy antiquity. Belong big stsho fam'ly."
"So somebody gets badly upset if anything happens to this oji, huh?"
"Stop play game! We talk about you trade agreement. We get damn kif leave this system!"
"Agreements with the kif too."
"We talk."
"You want him out of here, right you talk. You talk damn serious. No doublecross."
"First give oji."
"First give No'shto-shti-stlen."
"Simul-taneous."
"All right. You bring No'shto-shti-stlen, I bring the oji."
"Maybe so you got Atli-lyen-tlas. Maybe you think pull trick. I tell you, we see stsho, that stsho dead before foot touch this deck. Same hani."
Nowthe masks were off. Now they knew the players. She stared at the mahe as eye to eye a hani could, at a species head and shoulders taller. "I've said what we have to have. Simultaneous transfer. Then we start talking — and talking seriously, mahe, no damn tricks on your side either."
"You got pocket com? You crew follow all this?"
What's he up to? she wondered; and said aloud: "They're listening, damned right."
"Same mine. Same stsho. We stand here, you crew bring oji, stsho bring No'shto-shti-stlen. All fine."
"Fine." She folded her arms. "Tiar?"
"Aye, captain,"the answer came back.
"When I see No'shto-shti-stlen on the dock, I'll advise you. Nothing leaves the ship before then."
"Aye, captain. "
"Advise the hakkikt we're in negotiation and we'll keep him posted."
"/'// do that, captain. "
She gave a wave of the hand. "Your turn."
A casual puff of smoke. Haisi rattled off a string of mahendi language she didn't follow that well. But it contained words like No'shto-shti-stlen, gtst, and stsho.
There was argument.
Haisi said, "Stsho want know no guns."
"No guns." She switched to stshoshi, figuring on Haisi's bug to pick it up. "I wish to establish friendly relations with the most distinguished representatives from Llyene. I should in no wise wish to perform a tasteless act of violence or to endanger them in any way."
Haisi didn't understand all of that, either. It was not altogether Trade-tongue.
Haisi looked just a little uneasy. So the stsho weren't prisoners. And, being stsho, they were probably treating No'shto-shti-stlen tolerably well, so long as events were uncertain, so long as there was the remotest chance, of anything going contrary to their plans.
Probably too, No'shto-shti-stlen, the canny old fellow, had held out hope, so long as he had a throw of the dice left. Haisi had said gtst, and maybe it was the standard, safe term, and maybe it was something else. Some stsho might have Phased under such stress. But she fully expected to see gtst in possession of gtst name, gtst dignity, and gtst claim to the oji.
And the stsho would not be safe from gtst until they had the oji, that seemed likely from the persistence with which Haisi wanted to lay hands on it.
When that went into hostile hands, this emblem of whatever gender it was, evidently No'shto-shti-stlen posed no threat. And she wished she knew she was doing the right thing.
But time passed, and passed, here in the dockside cold with, she was sure, a good many eyes on every breath they took. Haisi smoked one smoke-stick down to a stub, extinguished it with a pinch and put it in the pouch of his kilt, from which he took out another and lit it with a good deal of fuss.
"That can't be good for you," she said, and Haisi let out the breath he had been drawing in while lighting it, put the lighter away and laughed.
"Not good," he said. "Keep want quit. How you? Got no bad habit?"
"Husbands," she said. "Just got my second."
Another laugh. "You marry! Heard same. Maybe you cheat on husband, we get together next port. Big party."
"With you? No thanks. I have some taste."
Haisi grinned wide. "I bet you good."
"Number one right I'm good. Ask me again sometime, oh, three, four years. I might be in the mood for a pirate."
"Honest citizen. I tell you, Hilfy Chanur, you got learn tell difference, quit lie down with kif."
She'd heard about every nasty comment on that topic there was. She put on a perfect smile. "What is the difference? Hah?"
"Cute hani. Pretty nose. Pretty eyes."
"You are a bastard, Haisi. A charming bastard. But you are a bastard." There had been movement just then, across the dock, on the merchant strip, a pale-robed shadow, and another, now. "Looks like stsho."
Haisi didn't turn his head to look. He angled his whole body, to watch her and Tarras up by the gate; and to see what was happening.
"They bring No'shto-shti-stlen. Where oji?"
"So how do we do this? Meet halfway?"
Haisi stretched out his arm to the left. "Halfway there, you bring oji." And to the right: "Same halfway there, No'shto-shti-stlen. We take, you take, all fine."
"Fair," she decided, and touched the pocket com. "Tiar, they're coming. Did you follow that? We're to bring the oji out and put it down on the dock at about the same pace they bring No'shto-shti-stlen to a similar place some little removed. You can bring it as far as the gate, now."
Haisi was talking to his own crew, and then, apparently to the stsho, saying much the same thing.
There was the chance of a switch. But it was not a time to argue. It was highly unlikely one stsho would place gtstself in jeopardy by posing as another and it was unlikely the stsho with gtst would risk their lives by bringing a substitute. And if she slowed down the proceedings Haisi would do exactly the same, at which point everything could come unraveled. People could get shot. Including No'shto-shti-stlen.
Which was still a possibility, once Haisi had the oji, which was one reason Tarras was up there, in a high position relative to the dockside.
One thing she would bet on: no one in the han could read stsho signatures. She couldn't, with any certainty. It was within the realm of possibility they would have shown the marriage document to stsho, to Haisi's stsho, for verification… so it was within possibility that the Llyene stsho knew that Atli-lyen-tlas was a holiness: signatures did indicate Mode, Phase, and Gender, among other Life Events of significance. It was within possibility that the Llyene stsho recognized the identities of Tlisi-tlas-tin and Dlimas-lyi, and their relationship. And the negotiations had still gone as they had gone, which didn't prove one way or the other that the stsho had told everything they knew to Ana-kehnandian… but by all she knew of stsho, Tahaisimandi Ana-kehnandian was in their estimation not to be confided in. Nor wholly in power over the situation: therefore not to be confided in.