She knew most of them from docksides from one side of the Compact to the other, and the sight of familiar faces ought to have been a comfort. It was a mortal jolt, that sense of disconnection, how far she had come from civilization; it was like looking at it all through a window.
And Dur Tahar stood there to complicate it all, in a company that had individually and severally sworn to have her piratical hide, and carrying a heavier complement of weaponry than the rest of the captains, whose sidearms were all legal in the Compact.
"This is Skkukuk," she had to say atop everything else, smooth and never stopping, with a gesture to her left hand. "He's mine. Sha mhify-shau."
My vassal-man. She bent the language to make a word that had never existed: and called a kif a man, into the bargain, because so far as she could figure, he was not female. Mhify was a word for a woman who came to link herself to a more powerful clan. Women could do that. Men just fought their way in, with their lives at risk and in the greatest likelihood of being driven off by the clanswomen before they ever got as far as challenging their lord for his place. Male vassal, indeed. Ears flicked and flattened all around the room; and frowns grew darker.
"He was a present," she said. "The hakkikt, praise to him-" Another glance aloft: we're not alone, friends- "I couldn't explain anything when I sent that message out; but we've got a delicate situation in progress here. I'll be honest with you: the han has signed some kind of treaty with the stsho; Rhif Ehrran may have been carrying it-she came through here. She may not have stopped."
"Didn't," said Kauryfy, and drew a large breath, setting her hands in her belt. 'But she blasted out a warning." Kauryfy's ears went all but flat, lifted, flattened again nervously. "Said there were kif coming; and us up to our ears in aliens. Godsrotted late news. We got caught here-I gather this hakkikt isn't friendly with the other one."
"You might say." She flicked her own ears. Careful, Kauryfy. You're no fool; don't begin now. Watch the mouth. "Glad to see us, were you?"
"Crazy around here. Gods-be aliens. Mahendo'sat feuding with the kif. Stsho Phasing all over the place.
Never know who you're dealing with from one hour to the next. Gods know who's maintaining station's lifesupport. This Akkhtimakt-not a friend of yours?"
"No."
"Well, none of ours either. A rotted mess, that's what we've had here. Got stuck here with Urtur shut down, just kept running up dock charges and mortgaging our hides with the gods-be stsho, and everything going crazy-Five months, five months we've been stuck in this godsforedoomed lunatic port, Chanur! Then we get the kif. Came in all peaceful, and us knowing, by the gods, knowing what he'd done over by Urtur, and these godsrotted fool stsho putting it out over the com that they'd asked him in, that it was all treaty-"
"It was. Treaty with the han and faceabout, treaty with Akkhtimakt. All to save them from humanity."
"Well, they got a gods-be poor bargain."
"You got stuck here."
"We got stuck here. That son moved in and interdicted traffic, got himself onto the station and did about what you'd figure. We went along with him while it looked like everything was going to be blown to a mahen hell and then the mahendo'sat showed and the humans came in and the kif cleared the station, we just sat still and hoped to all the gods it wasn't our problem. Now it is, I'm figuring."
Kauryfy's face underwent subtle changes, the tightening of her nose, the slight and timely tightening of a muscle by one ear-a wealth of signals a kif might miss. I'm trusting you only halfway; and there's a lot I'm not going to say out loud,
"Yes," Pyanfar said, with a like set of signals back again,and thrust her hands into her belt. So humans arrived here out of the dark. Couldn't be a coincidence of timing. They were short-jumped and parked out there. By the gods they were waiting. Goldtooth knew they would be. "It is our problem. The whole Compact's coming apart, and the han's policy has got us in a mess. I need you. Hear? Never mind the aliens. The hakkikt is going to ask you where you stand. And I'm telling you: we've never been worse off than we are right now. You can believe me or you can believe Ehrran; that's the sum of it. I'm trusting she messaged you more than just the news. Must've had plenty to say about us."
There was prolonged silence. Ears moved, flattened, halfway lifted.
"It got here," Munur Faha said. "We got it from the Stsho and we got it when she kited through.
Urtur-bound."
"Gods fry her," Tirun said.
"There's a real strong reason," Pyanfar said, "she doesn't want to see us again. That's a han matter.
Meanwhile we've our own business to tend to. Yours and ours. Very critical business."
"Specifically?" Kauryfy said.
"Settling things among ourselves. This isn't over. Far from it. I want you to take my orders."
Kauryfy's pupils did a quick tightening and re-dilating. Her mustaches drew down. "Known each other a few years, haven't we?"
"There was Hoas."
Kif dust-up, back in the small-time pirate days. Another flicker of Kauryfy's eyes.
"Yeah," Kauryfy said, and looked from her to the kifish shadow that stood at her back; and back again.
"Well, we got along then."
"I'll go with it," said Haurnar Vrossaru, in her deep northlands accent.
"Same," said Haroury Pauran, dark as some mahendo'sat, and with one blue eye and one gold. She thrust her hands into her belt and scowled, looked aside at young Munur Faha, who sullenly lowered and lifted her ears: "Aye," said Munur. She was Hilfy's cousin, remote. "I'm with you."
That left two. Vaury Shaurnurn gnawed at her mustaches and turned her shoulder to the lot of them: the other (that would be Tauran, by elimination, of The Star of Tauran) turned and looked Shaurnurn's way. And then Tahar's.
"Kin of ours died at Gaohn," said Tauran.
"Here is here," Tahar said.
And: "Kkkkt," from Skkukuk, who had antennae for trouble. That long jaw lifted. So did the gun. And the other kif stiffened.
"Pasiry died at Gaohn. Your allies shot her in the gut. She bled to death while we were pinned down."
"Here is here," Pyanfar said. "Argue it later. For godssake, ker Vaury. I'll tell it to you later, where we got Tahar. Right now we've got an appointment. An important one. In Ruharun's name, cousin."
They were not kin either. Far from it. Vaury Shaurnurn looked her way with ears flat. Cousin. Listen to me, ker Vaury. Believe nothing I say, do everything I say, make no false moves. Cousin.
She stared Vaury Shaurnurn dead in the eyes and thought that thought as hard as she could. Vaury's ears lowered and lifted again. "Cousin," Vaury said ever so deliberately. "We've been in and out of the same places, haven't we? Never been other than courteous with me; all right. That's all I'll say. All right."
Vaury gave a glance at Tully, up and down. "This the same one?" The glance lingered at the AP at Tully's hip and traveled up again to his face. "Same human as at Gaohn?"
"Tully," Pyanfar said. "Yes." She looked aside to the stranger-kif. "Who this visitor of ours is, is another matter. Ikkhoitr crew, I'm thinking."
"Ikkhoitru-hakt."
"Captain." The hair bristled down her back. "Honored, we are. I'll trust your people are going to escort us over to Harukk.''
Ikkhoitr's captain turned and stalked down the hall in that direction, kifish-economical. And without hani courtesy.
"Kkkkt," Skkukuk said, warning.
It was not friendly, that captain's move. He was, kifish-like, on the push, looking for chinks and advantages; and one little lapse into hani courtesies had achieved unintended irony. She had ordered him.
She had invoked the hakkikt. And being kif, he dared not demur or hesitate. She had scored on him, who had come in here looking for fault, fluent and deadly dangerous.