“Your leave,” Pyanfar murmured, set her drink down, and stood up. She bowed, as carefully and formally as ever before the leadership in the han. She kept her ears up and her face calm as she glanced aside to their handling of Jik, and looked again to Sikkukkut for instruction.
He waved his hand again. A second time she bowed, and walked out the door, into the dim corridor outside, into the presence of lesser kif who gave way to someone of her evident status, who edged out of her path, lowered their faces and made themselves shadows against the walls and the conduits.
Her knees were going to be weak. The ammonia smell dizzied her: she had not sneezed, thank the gods, she had snuffled once or twice and covered it; but of a sudden her stomach felt queasy and her heart which had exhausted itself in terror, labored away in slow, painful beats.
The nightmare was not going away. They were bringing Jik, she had to pick up her three companions, mahe, hani, and kif, on her way out; and she had to get down that dock and observe whatever the kif sent her in the way of instructions.
Had to.
“I got him,” she said curtly to Kesurinan when the kif brought her companions to her in the exit corridor. “He’s staying in my custody.”
And it hurt, somewhere dimly and at the bottom of her soul where she had put all her sensibilities-the quick lift of Kesurinan’s ears, the dismay, the instant smothering of all reaction, because Kesurinan was not a fool, and knew where they were and who was listening, and then that they would have to do everything the kif insisted on to get her captain out of Harukk. Kesurinan thought she was talking to an ally.
Sikkukkut was absolutely right: the mahendo’sat would be an ally right down to the point their own species-interest took over. And then Jik would save his own kind.
So, she discovered, would she.
They made slow progress down the unstable docks-a gang of kifish skkukun carrying a stretcher with Jik strapped tightly to it; Jik’s First Officer walking along by him, anger and concern in every line of her back: and with a gun on her hip. Pyanfar walked to the side and a little behind, with Dur Tahar on her right and Skkukuk at her left, Tahar inscrutable as Tahar had become in her life among kif, while Skkukuk gave few signals either-except in squared shoulders, except in less nervousness than he had ever shown; except in every subtle move that said here was a kif whose status was no longer that of an outright slave, a kif whose captain had just dealt with the hakkikt and won. He carried a weapon beneath his outer robes and gods knew what ambitions in his narrow skull. If ever a kif was pleased, this one positively basked in his change of fortunes, inhaled the chance in the air, savored the sight of the hakkikt’s slaughtered enemies, his dreadful signposts-and the sight of his captain rising in that service.
Cold in all the warm places and fever-warm in all the cold ones, gods, a hundred eighty degrees skewed. Alien. The kif are that thing in doubles and triples.
Stay cold, Pyanfar Chanur. Save it. Jik’s a piece of meat. Tahar an ally-of-fortune, Kesurinan’s potential trouble, and this gods-be son of a kif is a convenience.
Kesurinan’s not going to make trouble, not yet. She’ll let us take Jik aboard.
Gods, don’t let Jik come to out here.
Slowly, slowly they walked up the dock past the section seal, into that area where there were no pedestrians. Where there was no traffic at all but themselves.
And there was The Pride’s berth ahead, still flashing with those warning lights. She took her pocket com out, within range of the pickup now: “This is the captain. I’m coming in.”
“Aye,” Haral’s voice came back to her, thin with static: that formality she had used was warning, and Haral took it: I’ve got company, Haral; don’t get easy with me.
Another eternity, walking that fragile dock: and gods help them, Tahar and Kesurinan had farther still to go. “Skkukuk,” Pyanfar said, and the kif beside her was all attention. “Tell the skkukun-hakkiktu I want Tahar escorted to her ship by the quickest and safest route. Through the central corridors if they can.”