Chanur's Homecoming

“We’ll find ’em.” Does she know about Khym? Pyanfar’s muscles clenched up and let go again. Gods be, we got worse problems than hani prejudices. “Thanks.” They had reached Moon Rising’s berth. And Aja Jin and The Pride beyond, all with departure warnings blinking urgently above. “We get those stats relayed ship to ship, right, down the line, direct transmission. We have to share specifics with our kifish escort, no choice. Let’s get ourselves out of this port, we don’t want anything intervening and we got gods know what going we don’t know where.”

“Understood,” Harun said. “Luck to us.”

“Luck,” Faha said. “Gods look on us.” And with the appearance of a shudder, she looked at Tully and his dark-robed partner. Perhaps in that instant of afterthought she wanted to take that pious wish back. But that would have been an embarrassment. “Hearth and home,” she added, and with monumental charity: “and whatever.” With a physical effort.

Then Munur Faha started on ahead, her own ship farther on; other captains followed, Harun and Vrossaru with a backward look, Vrossaru’s ears flat in dismay.

“Tahar,” Pyanfar said: and Tahar stopped there at her own dock. So did Tully and Skkukuk. “Jik,” she said. Jik and Kesurinan stopped, too, within an easy sprint of Aja Jin’s berth. “We got it worked out,” Pyanfar said. Which Jik and Kesurinan might not have heard, they had been talking too intensely and too urgently all the way back. Passing instructions, fomenting conspiracy. Gods knew what.

But Jik left his First and came back to her, his dark face all sober. “Where I go, a?” He held up both hands. “Want back? Or you tell me go?”

“Gods rot you, what are you likely to do? Leave us? Get us all skinned? Kill my world with your conniving?”

Sikkukkut’s kifish ignorance had let this hazard loose: Dispose of Keia as you will.

Now it came to a bluff she could not call, force she could not use, persuasion she knew would not work. To haul him aboard The Pride even by strong pressure now would set Kesurinan off, trigger gods knew what contingency orders.

“I do number one good back there.”

“I got no way to trust you!”

“I got interest like I say.” He reached out and laid his hands on her shoulders. Stared into her eyes, and she stared up at him, looking for something to rely on. Liar. Ten times a liar. Your gods-be government won’t let you tell the truth once a day. “Hani got importance, Pyanfar. I swear. God witness.”

“More than your own? Don’t tell me that!” Her knees felt weak. The face looming over her was alien, the eyes as unreadable as Tully at his most obscure.

“We be neighbor to hani more than kif, a? That be backside whole mahen space, I don’t doublecross you.”

“Gods be, we’re reasoning like the kif. Self-interest!”

“Politic all time reason like kif. Damn mess. I best pilot you got, hani. You want lock me up? Or you want trust?”

“When did it ever work?” Panic rushed over her. “No, gods rot it, I don’t want to trust you.”

“Work in there number one good. You get me out, got me smokes, a?”

“Same time we got Sikkukkut going to come in behind us! You know he is! He’s appointed me to do his work for him, you think he’s not going to follow up on it?”

“Damn sure. You be no fool, Pyanfar.” He waved a hand toward Aja Jin’s berth. “Number one fine ship in whole Compact, you got. Got number one fine pilot. Me. We go keep promise, a?”

“Get! Go! Give your orders! And get your rotted carcass back aboard my ship and give me that data before we undock. I want it, Jik, I want it in plain language and plain charts!”

“You beautiful.” A touch at her face. She flinched and spat; and he gave one of his maddening humor-grins, then turned and sprinted for his own access-ramp, Kesurinan running with him stride for stride.

For their own ship. Their own choice. Gods knew if he would come back. The docks were dangerous. Kif might intercept him even on that short a crossing between ships. Sikkukkut might discover something in his questioning of stsho to change his mind. Stle stles stlen might have secreted damning records, being a trader through and through.

She looked at Dur Tahar. And had no doubt at all of the pirate, of her enemy, of a hani she had been willing to kill.

“That may have been a mistake,” Pyanfar said.

“Could be.”

“Tahar, if we get through this, anything between us. . . .”

Tahar’s face went hard, her ears flat. “Yeah. I know.”

“You don’t know, gods rot it! There is no bloodfeud, between you and Chanur. You’ve paid it.”

The ears came up. “Paid it on your side too,” Tahar said with Tahar’s own surly arrogance. And stood there a breath longer before she turned abruptly and headed for Moon Rising’s ramp.

It left her Tully and Skkukuk. A bewildered and nonplussed Skkukuk, Tully close at her side and the kif standing there as if his orderly world were all disarranged.