“You know 3im?” Valmy asked.
The words were casual, but the look that accompanied them was not. Tatian smiled ruefully. “I literally ran into 3im yesterday at the Courthouse. We talked—3e gave me the name of a technician who might be able to work on my implants.”
“You’ve been—running into—a lot of awkward people lately,” Valmy said. “All of them in trade.”
Tatian sighed. “So tell me about the fem.”
“%er name’s Astfer Stiller,” Jhirad began, and Valmy made an irritated noise.
“ρe’ll give you clan and kin before ρe answers your questions. You’ve been on Hara too long, Stevi.”
“%e’s a paralegal—an advocate of sorts, but trained to handle Concord law, too,” Jhirad went on, as though ρe’d never been interrupted, “%e’s a known member of the New Agenda movement, and %e’s been doing work for Haliday on trade cases.”
“Which one is New Agenda?” Tatian asked.
“They propose that the Centennial Meeting be asked if Hara should rejoin the Concord as a full member world,” Valmy said. “And they really don’t like Tendlathe. It was New Agenda members who stood up in the Watch Council and said he shouldn’t be confirmed as Temelathe’s heir.”
Tatian whistled softly. That had taken courage, and it hadn’t done any good: Tendlathe’s status had been officially acknowledged the year he himself came to Hara.
“You begin to see how it all fits,” Jhirad said. “This may be about trade, about one emigration case, but there’s a whole lot of other things connected to it. And because of that, we—the IDCA, and through us, Customs and maybe even ColCom—have a chance to get some real influence on the government here. I’m asking you to ask Reiss to withdraw his statement.”
Damn. Tatian shook his head slowly, knowing only too well how Reiss would respond to that request. I’m going to murder the little bastard for getting me, the company, mixed up in this… “And what happens to what’s-his-name, the guy who wants to emigrate, if Reiss agrees? It’s going to matter to him.”
Jhirad looked away. Valmy said, “I don’t know. I can’t promise anything, Tatian. But if it comes up now, with Reiss’s name on it, our bosses are going to push for a trade investigation of NAPD.”
“And that’s blackmail,” Tatian said.
“I suppose,” Valmy answered. “But that’s how it’s been put to me.”
“This is not a good time to play politics,” Jhirad said, and pushed ρimself slowly to ρis feet. “Unless, of course, you’re us. Talk to Reiss, Tatian. The worst of the pressure should be off by Midsummer. That’s not long.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Tatian said. “But I don’t make any promises.”
“Fair enough,” Jhirad said equably, and slid open the door. Valmy followed him out, letting the door slide closed again behind her.
Tatian sat for a long moment, staring at the pale cream fiber that covered the walls. What Jhirad and Valmy were asking was technically illegal; more than that, it would be hard to get Reiss to go along with it, even if he were given a direct order to withdraw his statement. He, Tatian, would have to invoke Masani’s rules against trade, the threat of firing, and he hated to do that when he knew perfectly well that Reiss wasn’t profiting from his games. On the other hand, he understood the temptation IDCA was facing. To have the chance to intervene in Hara’s government, not just legally but actually at the Most Important Man’s personal request, was too good a chance to pass up. He sighed, ran his hand, flat-palmed, across the shadowscreen to wake the desktop. The IDCA agents were right when they said this was politically a difficult time, and more than that, they were also right when they hinted that NAPD was being dragged into trade. And that, the Old Dame had made very clear, was not to happen. He would do what the IDCA agents wanted, ask—no, tell—Reiss to take back his statement, but he would do it because he could not risk NAPD’s becoming involved in trade.
~
Wry-abed: (Hara) the politest colloquial term for men who prefer to have sex with men and women who prefer to have sex with women.
Warreven
The cellar room was cool, pleasantly dim, the pinlights arranged across the ceiling in patterns to mimic the stars. It wasn’t much of an illusion—the heavy beams that supported the dance floor broke the pattern, distorted it into odd geometry—but the steady pounding of drums and feet made the lights tremble like stars seen through atmosphere. Warreven grinned at the thought and earned a glare from Haliday, sitting across from him in the other corner of the private cubby.
“Relax, Hal,” Malemayn said, and reached for the jug of nightwake that stood in the center of the table. He refilled the five cups, leaving the sixth still empty, and looked at Warreven.
Before he could say anything, however, the off-world woman at his left said, “Damn Shan Reiss anyway. There isn’t time for this.”
The man beside her growled agreement, and then looked embarrassed, picked up his cup and drank to hide his uncertainty. Warreven watched him, still not certain what to make of him. Destany Casnot seemed very ordinary to be the cause of all this trouble, a big, light-skinned herm, who had once been flashily handsome but had settled into the thick-bodied Casnot middle age. It was hard to imagine that he had done trade; harder still to imagine what ’Aukai saw in him that made her want to bring him with her into her exile. Warreven glanced at his hands, folded on the tabletop, in the overlapping circles of light, seeing dirt under the broken fingernails. Reiss had said that Destany had a mairaiche, a truck garden, of his own in the scrub outside the city, between the Bounder Road and the hills; why anyone would give that up, the rare security of cultivation, was more than Warreven could understand. And to give it up for Timban ’Aukai—
“We know,” Haliday said, and managed to sound almost convincingly soothing. “He’ll be here.” Ȝe looked at Warreven then, too, and he sighed.
“I talked to him this afternoon. He said he’d come.” After I invoked his clan, our shared Watch, and a few summers screwing around with him in Irenfot, he added silently, but he did say he’d meet with us. Haliday was looking at him as though 3e’d read his thoughts, and Warreven looked hastily at the time display over the street-side door. “It’s only just time.”
Haliday made a face, and the woman said again, “I don’t have time for this.”
Warreven glanced at her. The years had not been particularly kind to Timban ’Aukai, and she had not been beautiful to start with, a rangy, raw-boned woman who wore exaggeratedly tight-waisted clothes to keep from being mistaken for a mem. She was still wearing the clothes, a wide belt cinched painfully tight over a flowing shirt that seemed meant to add bulk at the hips, but her once-fine skin had been coarsened by the Haran sun, and there was a scar along her jaw where a sun-tumor had been removed. ’Aukai looked back at him, her pale eyes—an odd, off-world color, gray like winter clouds—flicking up and down in automatic assessment. It was an expression Warreven remembered all too well—he was probably meant to remember, he told himself, and met her stare without flinching.
The music, drums and whistle, was suddenly louder, and Warreven twisted in his chair to see Reiss coming down the stairs from the dance house overhead. One of the servers intercepted him, saying something in a voice too low to be heard over the drumming, but Reiss shook his head, gesturing to the table. Malemayn lifted a hand, and the off-worlder came to join them, dropping into the remaining chair.