Their old friend.
She reached slowly into the depths of her pocket, hooked the small, thin ring
with a claw and laid it precisely on the tabletop. Click.
His face went a shade further toward stsho pallor, and then he reached for it
and took it up in his flat-nailed fingers, examining the inside band. His eyes
lifted, that startling blue, wide and dreadful.
“Where find?” he asked. “Where find, Pyanfar?”
“Whose?” She knew pain when she saw it and suddenly wished the ring back in her
pocket and them less public than this. A kifish gift. She was a fool to have
suspected anything but misery in it, a double fool; and having started it there
was no way to go but straight ahead.
“Mahe got?” he asked. “Goldtooth?”
“Kif gave it to me,” she said, and watched a tremor come into his mouth and
stop, his face go paler still if it were possible. “Friend of yours, Tully?”
“What say this kif?”
“Said — said it was a message for our cargo.”
The tremor started again, harder to control. No one moved at table, no one on
left or right. For a long time that lasted, with the dust rattling on the hull,
the rumble of the rotation, the distant whisper of air in the duct above their
heads. Water spilled from Tully’s eyes and ran down into his beard.
“Friend, huh?” She coughed in self-disgust and shoved her plate back, creating a
stir and a little healthy living noise. Scowled at the crew. “Want to get that
vane fixed?”
“Where get?” Tully asked before anyone could move.
“Kif named Sikkukkut. Ship named Harukk. Who did it belong to, huh?”
His mouth made a sudden straight line, white-edged, as he looked down and put
the ring on.
It was too small. He forced it. “Need #,” he murmured, seeming to have nothing
to do with them or here or now.
“This kif,” she said, slipping the words past while the shock was fresh. “This
kif was at Meetpoint, Tully. He knew you’d come to us from Goldtooth. He knew
our way ahead was blocked. What more he knew I have no idea. Do you want to tell
us, Tully? Whose is it?”
The blue eyes burned. “Friend,” he said. “Belong friend stay Ijir.”
She let go a breath and shot a look past a row of puzzled hani faces. “So
Goldtooth hedged his bet, huh? You come to us. Your companions go somewhere
else. Where?”
“Kif got. Kif got # Ijir.”
“Then the kif know a gods-rotted lot more than you’ve told us. What do they
know, Tully? What are you up to, your hu-man-i-ty?”
“They ask help.”
“How much help? Tully-what are you doing here?”
“Kif. Kif.”
“What’s going on?” Khym asked from her left. “What’s he talking about — kif?”
“Later,” she said, and heard the breath gust through Khym’s nostrils. “Tully.
Tell me what’s in that paper. You tell me, hear.”
“You got take to Maing Tol.”
“Tully. Gratitude mean anything to you? I saved your mangy hide, Tully, more
times than I ought.”
He gave back against the seat. The eyes set again on hers with that tragic look
she hated. “Need you,” he said in hani words, a strange, mangled sound that
confused the translator to static. “Friend, Pyanfar.”
“I ask him,” Khym rumbled.
“No,” she said sharply, and felt an acid rush in her gut, raw panic at the
potential in that. She brought her clenched hand down on the table and rattled
dishes. Tully flinched, and she glared. “Tully, You talk to me, gods rot you.
You tell me what those papers are.”
“Ask hani come fight ship take human.”
“Make sense.”
“Want make trade hani-mahe.”
“Truth?”
“Truth.”
The eyes pleaded for belief. It did nothing for the feeling in her gut. Wrong,
it said. Wrong, wrong, wrong. For kif trouble alone the mahe might have asked
the han direct. Trade — was the lure, and there was something in the trees.
She shifted her eyes past his shoulder to Haral, wise, scar-nosed Haral. Haral’s
ears canted back and her mustache drew down with the intimation of something
odorous.
But there was nothing profitable in pushing Tully. Trust. They had a little of