“I might bestow you another gift,” Sikkukkut said. And scared two kif and a hani at the same time.
“Huh.” She kept her calm. With difficulty. “We hardly have formalities enough to keep another skku occupied- Nothing so splendid, hakkikt.”
“But you want another gift.”
Bluff called. She looked up, lowered her ears and got them up again, heart hammering. “Is the hakkikt disposed to talk policy?”
“Ah.” Sikkukkut set down his cup, hands in his lap as he sat crosslegged in the insect-chair. “Shikki,” he said sharply; and the skku eeled its way over to lay the smoke-pouch on the table in front of Jik.
Jik picked it up carefully, felt of it and carefully extracted a smokestick and a lighter. “You mind?”
Sikkukkut gave a wave of his hand and Jik put the stick in his mouth and carefully lit it. His hands were shaking, but only a little, limned in the fire that lit his face. The light died. He drew a long breath of smoke in as if it was life itself.
“Foul habit,” Sikkukkut said as the smoke went up to mingle with the ammonia-stink and the incense. He rested an elbow on the raised insect-leg of his chair and leaned his chin on that hand. “But you and I remain friends. Kkkt. Good. That is very well. Kotgokkt kotok shotokkiffik ngik thakkur.”
-prisoners?
All round the table backs stiffened. Except Jik’s, to look at him; he sat there concentrating on his smoke, with a cloud of it round his head.
“Sit still,” Pyanfar said in hani; and Haurnar Vrossaru and Vaury Shaurnurn turned their heads to look toward their escorts, the only two who did.
But maybe they knew their crew.
“Is the hakkikt disposed?” Pyanfar repeated.
“The hani captain may push too far,” Ikkhoitr’s captain said out of his silence. “Be careful of it.”
“Makes me nervous,” Pyanfar said. “This place. We’re exposed sitting here at station. If I were Akkhtimakt-” She rested her elbow on her knee, easy pose, though her heart was hammering away fit to take her breath: thank gods for the incense that masked the sweat. Her nose itched and ran. She ignored it. “This place smells of trap, hakkikt.”
“In what way?”
“I’m an old trader, hakkikt. And stsho may cheat you one way and five more, but I never knew them to plot violence.” Phrase it so the bastard has salve for his pride. A trader can know merchant-things. He isn’t expected to understand grasseaters, is he? “But they’ll buy violence, without understanding what they’ve bought. They’ve made mistakes before. This is a big one. They’ve involved the han. Technically, hani are allied with Akkhtimakt, because of the stsho treaty, which gave him what he never would have had. Support on the far side of the Compact. All of a sudden you don’t hold the majority of Akkhtimakt’s territory. He’s just quadrupled his holdings. And he’s on the other side of an uncrossable gulf. No jump points, hakkikt, no bridge between hani space and here. It’s a narrow neck and one where he can interdict you if hani abide by that treaty.”
There was deathly quiet in the room. No kif moved. Then a nervous shift from the Faha. Ears were flat, all in that section of the table.
And Jik shot her a carefully frowning glance. Sucked in a great deal of smoke and let it go. “A.” Drawing Sikkukkut’s attention to himself.
“Is it so.”
“He go Urtur. Damn sure not go Kita.”
“You have ships at Kita.”
Another slow draw at the smoke. “I don’t swear. Good guess. We send message Maing Tol. My Personage make move on Kita. Where he go? Here? Got no cross-jump but Tt’a’va’o, damn bad choice. Methane-breather, human, lot mahendo’sat. Damn bad choice. You no do. He no do.”
“Should I wonder that that is then precisely what I should do?”
Go off toward Tt’a’va’o and possible ambush, and involve himself with everything Jik had listed? Go home to Akkht and consolidate his hold? Or to Llyene and terrorize the stsho in a raid every kifish pirate must have dreamed of?
They were all good choices for the Compact as a whole. If they cast themselves totally on hope of rescue from the mahendo’sat.