“To talk to you, what else?” þe said, still smiling.
“Talk away,” Tatian answered. NAPD’s dealings with the Interstellar Disease Control Agency were infrequent, but had rarely been profitable or pleasant.
“In private, if you don’t mind, Tatian.” That was Kassa Valmy, rising easily to stand by her partner. She smiled then, as though to rob the words of any threat, but Tatian didn’t feel particularly reassured.
“Is there a problem?” he asked, and waved them ahead of him into his office. If there was a problem, it wouldn’t come from business, he added silently, was more likely to be something personal—either his encounter with the mosstaas this morning, though that seemed unlikely, or Reiss. Probably Reiss, he thought, and closed the door carefully behind him, gesturing for the others to take a seat.
Jhirad settled þimself comfortably in the nicer of the client’s chairs, cocking one long leg across the other, but Valmy shook her head. “I’ll stand, thanks. I’ve been sitting all day.”
“Suit yourself.” Tatian sat down at the desk and touched the spot that lit the desktop screens. Nothing popped to the surface, neither urgent mail nor internal files requiring instant attention, and he ran his hand across the shadowscreen, transforming the display to meaningless geometric patterns. “So what can I do for you?”
“I hear you had a busy day,” Jhirad said.
Tatian glanced at þim: the mosstaas, then. “I suppose.”
“Bribing the mosstaas in broad daylight right in the middle of the Souk,” Valmy said, and gave another broad grin. “Even for Hara, that’s ballsy.”
“I don’t see any Harans objecting,” Tatian said, after a moment. “Or are you here on the chief’s behalf?”
Jhirad snorted. “Godchep Stiller wouldn’t care if you paid off a murder in his office, as long as he got his cut.”
“True,” Tatian said. “So…”
“A friendly warning,” Valmy said, and Jhirad frowned.
“Not even that. Call it advice, Tatian—and friendly advice, too.”
Tatian said nothing, waiting, watching them across the desk-top that ran with color. Jhirad and Valmy had been on Hara for nearly two hundred kilohours—better than sixteen local years, four standard contracts—and in that time they had gotten a reputation as tough but honest. If they were offering a warning, or advice, whatever they wanted to call it, he would be a fool not to listen to them.
Jhirad seemed to take his silence for consent. “Local politics are going to be complicated this year. You don’t want—none of us off-worlders want to get involved in it. You can’t win friends, not this time.”
“Call off Shan Reiss,” Valmy said, and didn’t bother to smile this time.
“What’s your problem with Reiss?” Tatian asked. “It was me who paid off the mosstaas today.”
Jhirad gave ρis partner an irritated glance. “Reiss was, is already involved, and not just in politics. He’s speaking for a man who wants to emigrate, he’s one of the witnesses who’ll swear that Destany hasn’t done trade for the required twenty kilohours.”
“That would be Reiss’s business,” Tatian said. “And yours. And it’s all legal. I never knew you two to be so concerned with one emigration case before. So tell me what’s really going on.”
Valmy laughed softly. “Your point.”
“Thanks,” Tatian said, and waited.
“What’s going on is, the local authorities have asked that we intervene,” Jhirad said. “The request comes from the highest level.”
Tatian stared at ρim for a long moment, unable to believe what he’d heard. Temelathe Stane was notorious for keeping the Concord authorities at arms’ length, for insisting on the absolute independence of the indigenous institutions. For him to ask for help—to request that the IDCA intervene in an emigration case—was almost unimaginable.
“Our bosses,” Valmy said, “would like to establish the precedent.”
“I bet they would,” Tatian said.
“What they—what we want,” Jhirad said, “is for Reiss to withdraw his statement.”
Tatian’s eyebrows rose in spite of himself. That was the last thing he had expected from these two; Valmy and Jhirad had always treated trade cases fairly, within the Concord’s laws, and they didn’t usually back down if they thought their superiors were making a mistake. On the other hand, Temelathe had never asked for help before. “Why?”
“Shan Reiss has more friends among the Modernists, and in the Black Watch, Stiller and Black Casnot, than anyone needs right now,” Jhirad said. “And the case is sensitive. Destany Casnot is being sponsored by Timban ’Aukai, who’s heavily into trade.”
Tatian nodded. “I’ve heard of her.”
“Who hasn’t?” Valmy murmured.
“Tendlathe is really opposed to trade,” Jhirad went on, “which would be more useful if he wasn’t also opposed to us—off-worlders in general, I mean, not just the IDCA.”
“That’s nothing new,” Tatian said.
“No. The problem is, they—Destany and ’Aukai—are going to be represented by local advocates, and they’ve picked a group that’s downright notorious for defending people in trade. The word on the street is that one of the three—”
“Haliday Stiller, if you know that name,” Valmy interjected.
“I do.” The herm who tried to challenge gender law, Tatian thought, and lost. Warreven’s partner.
“—is just looking for a case that will let 3im challenge the whole gender system.” Jhirad smiled again, the expression wry. “You may begin to see our problem.”
Tatian nodded again. Under other circumstances, the IDCA would be glad to see the legality of the Haran sex trade questioned in the local courts, but not when it meant questioning the off-world presence as well. Tendlathe could get entirely too much power out of this case; better to get concessions from Temelathe instead, do him a favor, and wait for a more propitious moment to attack trade.
“On top of all that, or as a result of it, Temelathe has been screwing around with the Stiller election lists,” Jhirad said, and Tatian frowned at the apparent inconsequence. “Bear with me, Tatian, it all fits.”
“Go ahead,” Tatian said, and leaned back in his chair. He heard himself doubtful and knew the others did, too.
“He’s taking a hell of a chance,” Valmy said, almost to herself. “There are a lot of people pissed off about it.”
Jhirad nodded. “Basically, he’s arranged for Stiller to nominate two unsuitable candidates for seraaliste. One is a man named Daithef, who’s considered pretty much a joke, and the other is Warreven, who is one of the advocates involved in this case. We think he’s trying to get Warreven out of the courts and is either trying to bribe 3im—seraaliste is a powerful position, the person who holds it is one of the more important Important Men—or at least get 3im out of the way, keep 3im away from trade cases for the next calendar year. It’s also possible he’s trying to bring 3im back into his party. You know—no, you probably don’t know, it was before your time—Temelathe wanted 3im to marry Tendlathe, and I think he, Temelathe, would still like to have Warreven on his side.”
“Warreven said no to that,” Valmy said, “and rumor says 3e’s saying no to the nomination, too.”
Tatian blinked, trying to imagine the person he’d seen—long hair and pointed chin, strong bones beneath skin like silk, loose vest and trousers and the clashing metal bracelets, casually kind and as casually sexual, like and not like any indigene he’d met before—married to Tendlathe Stane. The idea, the casual switch of legal gender, was too alien, and he shied away from it. It was just as strange to think of Warreven as Stiller seraaliste: it was odd to think that he might be negotiating with 3im next year.