She grinned, her hand still in her pocket, her ears up, her eyes taking in all the kif. Two moved, beyond the moving can-carrier, and she shifted to keep them in sight. The smell of them reached her.
Their dry-paper scent offended her nostrils with old memories. The long-snouted faces peering from within the hooded robes, the dark-gray hairless skin with its papery wrinkles, the small, red-rimmed eyes — set the hair bristling on her back. "Do something," she wished them. "Foot-lickers. Riffraff. Petty thieves. Did Akkukkakk turn you out? Or is he anywhere these days?"
Kifish faces were hard to read. If that reference to a vanished leader got to them, nothing showed. Only one hooded face lifted, black snout atwitch, and stared at her with directness quite unlike the usual kifish slink. "He is no longer a factor," that one said, while the carrier groaned past under its load of canisters and took itself from between them and four more kif.
More soft impacts hit the deck beside her. From the tail of her eye she saw a red-gold blur.
Tirun and Geran had dropped off the flatbed rear. They took up a position at her left as Chur held the right.
"Get back," she said without looking around at her two reinforcements. "Go on with the carrier. Hilfy's in lower ops. Get that cargo inside." The mahen station guards had moved warily into better position, several dark shadows at the peripheries of her vision, two of them remaining in front of her and behind the kif.
"You carry weapons," that foremost kif observed, not in the pidgin even the cleverest of mahe used. This kif had fluency in the hani tongue, spoke with nuances — dishonorable conceaied weapons, the word meant. "You have difficulties of all kinds. We know, Pyanfar Chanur. We know what you are transporting. We know from whom it comes. We understand your delicate domestic situation, and we know you now possess something that interests us. We make you an offer. I am very rich. I might buy you — absolution from your past misjudgments. Will you risk your ship? For I tell you that ship will be at risk — for the sake of a mahendo'sat who is lost in any case."
She heard the carrier growling its way out of the arena, out of immediate danger. Chur had stayed at her side. So had the six mahendo'sat station guards. "What's your name, kif?"
"Sikkukkut-an'nikktukktin. Sikkukkut to curious hani. You see I've studied you."
"I'll bet you have."
"The public dock is no place to conduct delicate business. And there are specific offers I would make you."
"Of course."
"Profitable offers. I would invite you to my ship. Would you accept?"
"Hardly."
"Then I should come to yours." The kif Sikkukkut spread his arms within the cloak, a billowing of black-gray that showed a gleam of gold. "Unarmed, of course."
"Sorry. No invitation."
The kif lowered his arms. Red-rimmed eyes stared at her with liquid thought. "You are discourteous."
"Selective."
The long gray snout acquired a v-form of wrinkles above the nostril slits, a chain slowly building, as at some faint, unpleasant scent. "Afraid of witnesses?"
"No. Just selective."
"Most unwise, Pyanfar Chanur. You are losing what could save you. . here and at home. A hani ship here has already witnessed — compromising things. Do I hazard a guess what will become of Kohan Chanur — of all that Chanur — precariously — is, if anything should befall The Pride? Kohan Chanur will perish. The name will have never been; the estates will be partitioned, the ships recalled to those who will then take possession of Chanur goods. Oh, you have been imprudent, ker Pyanfar.
Everyone knows that. This latest affair will crush you. And whom have you to thank, but the mahendo'sat, but maneuverings and machinations in which hani are not counted important enough to consult?"
The transport's whining was in the distance now. She heard another sound, the hollow escaping-steam noise of the cargo hatch opening up, the whine of a conveyer moving to position and meshing; old sounds, familiar sounds: she knew every tick and clank for what they were. "What maneuverings among kif?" she asked the gray thief. "What machinations — that would interest me, I wonder."
"More than bears discussion here, ker Pyanfar. But things in which a hani in such danger as you are would be interested. In which you may — greatly — be interested, when the news of Meetpoint gets to the han. As it surely will. Remember me. Among kif — I am one who might be disposed toward you, not against. Sikkukkut of Harukk, at your service."
"You set us up, you bastard."
The long snout twitched and acquired new wrinkles in its papery gray hide. Perhaps kif smiled.
This one drew a hand from beneath its robe and she stepped back a pace, the hand on the gun in her pocket angling the gun up all at once to fire.
It offered her a bit of gold in its gray, knobbed claws. She stared at it with her finger tight on the trigger.
"A message," it said, "For your — cargo. Give it to him."
"Probably has plague."
"I assure you not. I handle it. See?"
"Something hani-specific, I'm sure."
"It would be a mistake not to know what it is. Trust me, ker Pyanfar."
It was dangerous to thwart a kif in any whim. She saw this one's pique, the elegant turn of wrist that held the object — it was a small gold ring — before her.
She snatched it, the circlet caught between her claws.
"Mistrustful," said Sikkukkut.
Pyanfar backed a pace. "Chur," she said, and with a back-canted ear heard the whisper of Chur's move back.
Sikkukkut held up his thin, soot-gray palms in token of non-combatancy. His long snout tucked under. The red-rimmed eyes looked lambent fire at her.
"I will see you again," Sikkukkut said. "I will be patient with you, hani fool, in hopes you will not be forever a fool."
She backed up as far as put all the mahen guards between herself and the kif, with Chur close by her. "Don't turn your backs," she advised the mahendo'sat.
"Got order," said the mahe in charge. "You go ship, hani. These fine kif, they go other way."
"There are illicit arms," said another kif in coldest tones. "Ask this hani."
"Ours legal," said the mahe pointedly, who had heard, perhaps, too much of mahendo'sat involvement from this kif. The mahendo'sat stood rock firm: Pyanfar turned her shoulder, taking that chance they offered, collected Chur in haste and headed across the dock, all the while with a twitch between her shoulderblades.
"They're headed off," said Chur, who ventured a quick look over her shoulder. "Gods rot them."
"Come on." Pyanfar set herself to a jog, not quite a run, coming up to The Pride's berth, to the whining noise of the cargo gear. The loader crane had a can suspended in midair, stalled, while three hani shouted and waved angry argument at her crew beside the machinery.
"Ayhar!" Pyanfar thundered. "Gods rot you, out." She charged into the midst and shoved, hard, and Banny Ayhar backed up with round eyes and a stunned look on her broad, scarred face.
"You earless bastard!" Ayhar howled. "You don't lay hands on me!"
She knew what she had done. She stood there with the crane whining away with its burden in fixed position, with Tirun and Chur and Geran lined up beside her as the two Ayhar crew flanked their captain. Thoughts hurtled through her mind, the han, alliances, influences brought to bear.
"Apologies." It choked her. "Apologies, Ayhar. And get off my dock. Hear?"
"You're up to something, Pyanfar Chanur. You've got your nose in it for sure, conniving with the mahendo'sat, gods know what — I'm telling you, Chanur, Ayhar won't put up with it. You know what it cost us? You know what your last lunatic foray cost us, while ships of the han were banned at Meetpoint, while our docks at Gaohn were shot up and gods be feathered if that mahen indemnity covered it-"