Chanur’s Homecoming by CJ Cherryh

Pyanfar looked away from the translation on screen, and Jik, sitting in a ring of Chanur at the bridge com station, gave a pained shrug as she flattened her ears. “What kind of leverage?”

“Money,” Jik said faintly. “Debt. Like maybe-a, Pyanfar, I not arrange these thing. This gover’ment stuff. They also help. Who repair you ship, a? Who bribe Stle stles stlen get you license back?” He looked around him, at face after face, looked again as Khym leaned a huge hand on the back of the cushion, and gazed up at Khym’s glowering countenance before he thought otherwise and turned back to Pyanfar. “No good this read message,” Jik said. “Damn, you read mail you going find stuff don’t got all the truth. Truth, truth I can’t say in letter- What you want, I write to Personage say I want help friend, I say I want them do good to you? No. I do quiet. I push make Personage you friend, I push keep you out trouble, I down on knee ask Personage treat Chanur right-” I le reached and made a backhanded gesture toward the screen. “This, this be evidence in law. You know what I mean say. You don’t write down some thing. No want enemies get, not kif enemy, not hani enemy, not mane, not stsho. God, Pyanfar, you know what I try say.”

She stared at him bleakly, saw the tremor in his hand and (he pain etched around his eyes and his mouth, saw-maybe she wanted to see past the damning words on the screen.

“I know,” she said, and saw the tremor grow worse in his arm before he let it down. Proud Jik, vain Jik, pressed to give accounts he would not have given, not for any threat, except lot hope of help from the friends he had doublecrossed, with Ins ship held hostage and more than his freedom and his reputation at stake. What she saw hurt.. And rang clearer than any protestations. “I know, gods rot it, we both got a mess. Haral, what’s status on our allies out there?”

“Aja Jin and Moon Rising both report on schedule. I reported ourselves the same, all well aboard.”

“So we’ve told Kesurinan you’re fine,” Pyanfar muttered to Jik. “So what was the hope-send me off sideways about the time you made the jump with Sikkukkut to Meetpoint?”

“We not want lose you,” Jik said.

“I ought to be flattered,” she said in her throat, and looked up at the others. Tully was on the bridge with them. Everyone but Skkukuk. Tully as usual lost all of it. He looked confused. So did the crew, confused and on the edge of anger. “We got a value to the mahendo’sat,” she said. “They like their friends to survive. Gods know what else they want. It’s fair, I guess. We have certain mahendo’sat we favor more than others. No great wrong in that, as far as it goes. You’re offshift. Whole crew. Get a good meal in your stomachs: we got gods know what coming up. We got more than Meetpoint laid into Nav. If we have to.”

She looked toward Jik. Jik leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across his stomach with something more like his usual ease. His eyes were tired. But the gesture at least looked like Jik, bedraggled as he was and lacking his usual finery.

“You too,” she said. And for a moment the lids half-lowered on his eyes, the faintest of warnings.

Don’t give me orders, that was to say. I’ve had enough.

Well, it was Jik, and he was only trying to recover a bit of his dignity. She let her ears dip: all right.

Then he unfolded his arms, pried his stiffening frame out of the chair and gave himself up to Tirun Araun, who indicated the galleyward corridor.

Fool, she told herself again. It was not just Jik she was trusting. It was a mahe the mahendo’sat put ultimate confidence in, one of a few who were turned loose in the field to make decisions across lightyears too many for the central government to be consulted on every twitch and adjustment of policy-places where agents had no time to consult, and a hunter-captain like Jik had to make up his own law and make treaties and direct local ships with the authority of the whole mahen government behind him.

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