She was never prouder of her clan and her kin. “Ker Llun,” she said, quietly, steadily, “I can tell you this. It’s not numbers that’ll win this one. We can’t match numbers with what’s out there. We haven’t got the ships or the guns. Best thing we’ve got on our side right now is a mahendo’sat we’ve lost track of out there and the deep-spacers. My aunts are three of them. Ayhar here. Harun and Faha and Shaurnurn and Pauran and Tauran. And all the rest. Whatever men and kids are onstation, we’d be safer to get them off, out of here: every ship that hasn’t got the guns to fight-take the men and the kids far as they can run into mahen space, and we just hope to the gods they’ll get the word in a few months that Anuurn’s still here. If it’s not-there’ll still be hani. That’s what we’re fighting for. The worst place in the whole system to be right now is one of our armed ships; second worst is the
space stations; third is the world down there. You’ve got to turn the spacers loose, ker Llun, it’s not Chanur I’m talking about, I’m not asking favors; I’m asking you turn the spacers loose and let us have a chance.” She held out an arm, turned a shoulder, where kif had left scars that would last all her life. “That’s the kind of treatment kifish guests get. Never mind what they do to the ones who aren’t hostages.”
“Are you,” the Llun asked in a slow and level voice, “are you that now, Hilfy Chanur?”
“Hearth and blood, Llun. We’re our own.”
“We’re on that ship.” A young voice, talking out where seniors were silent. It wavered and all but died. Then Fiar Aurhen par Tauran edged her way past two captains and faced the Authority of Llun, flat-eared and with her voice pitched too high. “They’re r-right. They ran clear from Kshshti-”
To station-bound Llun, Kshshti was only a place on a map, remote from all experience. Mkks was beyond their imagining. For a moment Hilfy felt a profound terror, the gulf between them uncrossable.
“We got a mess out there,” Banny Ayhar said in her rumbling voice, and sniffed and hitched her pants up before she flung an arm out to gesture. “F’godssakes, you got your house afire you ask them as have buckets, Shan Llun! You don’t lock ’em up and call ’em traitors! To a mahen hell with the gods-be han deputies and the notebooks and that trash! You can’t call any referendum from the kif and they don’t have any study committee! You godsforsaken fools, you listen to the likes of Ehrran till they take your station over and you don’t listen to them that’s had their shoulders to the dike. Look at ’em, you say! They got mud on ’em, must be they brought the flood! And you never seeing they’ve been propping up the gods-be timbers!”
There was profound silence. The Llun’s ears flickered minutely in restraint. The eyes were gold and large and black-centered.
She waved a hand at the Llun who was taking furious notes.
“Record that a quorum voted. The Llun have heard the vote. The Llun call civil emergency: the amphictiony is space-wide.” The hand fell. “Which captain do you want in charge?”
The silence went on several breaths. “Pyanfar Chanur,” Kauryfy Harun said.
“Banny Ayhar,” another said.
“Gods and thunders, not me,” Banny said. “Pick someone who’s got some idea what’s out there. Chanur’s stayed alive this far. I’d go with their know-how.”
Quiet mutters then. “Chanur,” Munur Faha said. And: “Chanur,” from Shaurnurn and Pauran and a scatter of others.
“Chanur,” the Llun said, with another wave of her hand. “Implement the orders. Tanury: evacuation operations. Nis: communications interface. Parshai: spacer logistics. Open the boards. Get it moving.”
Hilfy stood there with her muscles cold and uncooperative. It had all changed course. She was free. The ships were. She cast a grateful look Banny Ayhar’s way, but Ayhar was already moving; and beyond that consideration she knew where she belonged. Fast.
She was into the rush for the door and collected Fiar and Sif before she recalled she owed some glance toward her father and her mother, some apology for having set herself forward: but the Llun had cornered her, they had wanted her answers, and Rhean had stood there in the silence an accused clan had to maintain. With dignity. The little dignity that Chanur had left, with its land gone.