“Kkkt. Mahen behaviors.” Sikkukkut lapped at his drink while Jik leaned on one of the upraised insect-legs of the chair his first officer had yielded him and stared through a pair of them at Pyanfar.
“H’lo,” he said. “Damn mess.”
“Godsrotted mess for sure. What’ve you been telling the hakkikt, huh? You going to go with us to Meetpoint?”
“I dunno,” he said. He shut his eyes as if he had gone away a moment and opened them again. They shone dark and desperate in the orange light, spilling water onto his black skin and black fur. His nostrils widened and sucked in air. “Go ship, Pyanfar.”
“You see,” said Sikkukkut, “we are moving at some deliberate speed. Kesurinan, Tahar, I tell you what I have told my other captains: follow your orders. You came here, which is very well. Now you will go to another room; and you will stay there. Until I release you. Tell them they will do this, hunter Pyanfar; and dismiss this skku of your own ship.”
“Do it,” Pyanfar said. It was protocols. Or a demonstration of power. There was no choice, not even with all of them armed. She looked at Tahar as the scar-nosed pirate got upkand stared back at her with that expressionless calm that had carried her through two years of close dealing with kif. Skkukuk got to his feet on the same order.
And:
“You go,” Jik murmured on his own, speaking to Kesurinan.
“A,” Kesurinan agreed.
“Kkkt,” Sikkukkut said, not missing that little distinction, it seemed, of control in that exchange. He waved his hand: kif cleared a way and one of the ranking skkukun motioned to Tahar and to Kesurinan and Skkukuk. There was, Pyanfar noted with some relief, no question about the weapons they wore, and Skkukuk had not signaled any warning. If he had not changed sides altogether when he sat down at that table.
“Would you,” Sikkukkut said, when the others had gone, “like something to drink, Keia?”
“No,” Jik said thickly.
“He still has his wits,” Sikkukkut said, turning his head slightly to Pyanfar. “And he still has all else he was born with, by my strict order. In consideration of an old friendship, kkkt, Keia? But you don’t then order Aja Jin, hunter Pyanfar. Nor order this one. He makes that quite clear, doesn’t he?”
“He’ll do what I ask him. As an ally.”
“If he does what you ask, as an ally, do you then do what he asks?”
“I have in past. I think he owes me one.”
“Merchants. But Keia professes not to be a merchant at all. I don’t think he will trade. Will you, Keia?”
Silence. Long silence.
“Stubborn. He is very stubborn.” Another lap at the cup. “Tell me, Chanur-skku, what am I to think about that ship of yours?”
“That we’re ready to go to Meetpoint, hakkikt.'”
Sikkukkut’s long jaw lifted. It was not a friendly gesture, that shift of the head that stared more nearly nose-on: that was threat, the eyes glittering cold black with the sulfurous highlights of the lighting. “Ismehanan-min went to Meetpoint, skku of mine: now, I am not patient of this. By now there is a ship of mine over the station axis with its guns aimed at your ship. And we are at impasse.”
“Hakkikt, when I go back to my ship I’ll power down. My crew has its orders until then.”
“That’s a very stupid bluff, hunter Pyanfar ”
“I’m not bluffing. We can all die here. You’re not dealing with a kif, hakkikt. I’m hani. Remember?”
There was a stir all about the hall. Clicks and subsequent red gleams of weapons ready-lights. And Jik pushed his hands against the insect-leg and lifted his head slightly.
Your ship isn’t moving on mine,” Pyanfar said, “since you don’t want your station damaged. And mine won’t move. Leaving dock isn’t what I ordered them to do. I told them if I die here, or if they’re attacked from your side, to cycle the jump vanes.”
Chapter Three
There was stark silence in the hall.
“Cycle the vanes,” Sikkukkut repeated, and rested his hands on the legs of the insect-chair. “That would be a curiously futile gesture for them.”