There was prolonged silence. Ears moved, flattened, halfway lifted.
“It got here,” Munur Faha said. “We got it from the Stsho and we got it when she kited through. Urtur-bound.”
“Gods fry her,” Tirun said.
“There’s a real strong reason,” Pyanfar said, “she doesn’t want to see us again. That’s a han matter. Meanwhile we’ve our own business to tend to. Yours and ours. Very critical business.”
“Specifically?” Kauryfy said.
“Settling things among ourselves. This isn’t over. Far from it. I want you to take my orders.”
Kauryfy’s pupils did a quick tightening and re-dilating. Her mustaches drew down. “Known each other a few years, haven’t we?”
“There was Hoas.”
Kif dust-up, back in the small-time pirate days. Another flicker of Kauryfy’s eyes.
“Yeah,” Kauryfy said, and looked from her to the kifish shadow that stood at her back; and back again. “Well, we got along then.”
“I’ll go with it,” said Haurnar Vrossaru, in her deep northlands accent.
“Same,” said Haroury Pauran, dark as some mahendo’sat, and with one blue eye and one gold. She thrust her hands into her belt and scowled, looked aside at young Munur Faha, who sullenly lowered and lifted her ears: “Aye,” said Munur. She was Hilfy’s cousin, remote. “I’m with you.”
That left two. Vaury Shaurnurn gnawed at her mustaches
and turned her shoulder to the lot of them: the other (that would be Tauran, by elimination, of The Star of Tauran) turned and looked Shaurnurn’s way. And then Tahar’s.
“Kin of ours died at Gaohn,” said Tauran.
“Here is here,” Tahar said.
And: “Kkkkt,” from Skkukuk, who had antennae for trouble. That long jaw lifted. So did the gun. And the other kif stiffened.
“Pasiry died at Gaohn. Your allies shot her in the gut. She bled to death while we were pinned down.”
“Here is here,” Pyanfar said. “Argue it later. For godssake, ker Vaury. I’ll tell it to you later, where we got Tahar. Right now we’ve got an appointment. An important one. In Ruharun’s name, cousin.”
They were not kin either. Far from it. Vaury Shaurnurn looked her way with ears flat. Cousin. Listen to me, ker Vaury. Believe nothing I say, do everything I say, make no false moves. Cousin.
She stared Vaury Shaurnurn dead in the eyes and thought that thought as hard as she could. Vaury’s ears lowered and lifted again. “Cousin,” Vaury said ever so deliberately. “We’ve been in and out of the same places, haven’t we? Never been other than courteous with me; all right. That’s all I’ll say. All right.” Vaury gave a glance at Tully, up and down. “This the same one?” The glance lingered at the AP at Tully’s hip and traveled up again to his face. “Same human as at Gaohn?”
“Tully,” Pyanfar said. “Yes.” She looked aside to the stranger-kif. “Who this visitor of ours is, is another matter. Ikkhoitr crew, I’m thinking.”
“Ikkhoitru-hakt.”
“Captain.” The hair bristled down her back. “Honored, we are. I’ll trust your people are going to escort us over to Harukk.”
Ikkhoitr’s captain turned and stalked down the hall in that direction, kifish-economical. And without hani courtesy.
“Kkkkt,” Skkukuk said, warning.
It was not friendly, that captain’s move. He was, kifish-like, on the push, looking for chinks and advantages; and one little lapse into hani courtesies had achieved unintended irony. She had ordered him.
She had invoked the hakkikt. And being kif, he dared not demur or hesitate. She had scored on him, who had come in here looking for fault, fluent and deadly dangerous.
Gods hope he had failed to find it. Or that kif did not have the habit of lying in certain regards.
“Skkukuk says watch him,” she muttered to the others. “Tirun, you stay aboard. Hear?”
Tirun did not like it. But crew did not argue these days. Not in front of kif, even their own.
The personnel lock cycled, letting the party out. And closed again, audible from the bridge over the steady bleep and tick of incoming telemetry and com. “That’s seal,” Haral said to Tirun belowdecks. “Get up here.”
“Station com’s still gibbering,” Hilfy said. “Gods-be stsho’re going crazy. I can’t make out anything except how glad they are to have the noble hakkikt back a-” She blinked, as Geran suddenly turned her head, and blinked again, seeing Chur wobbling into the bridge, Chur without her rings and dressed in a towel, the implant still in her arm and secured with tape. Her mane and beard were dull, her fur thin in pink spots where skin showed through, and her ribs showed prominent above a hollowed belly.