Love was all very well in ballads. It was nice to think that it was possible, and maybe it happened in legitimate relationships, like Pyanfar Chanur and na Khym, who had to love each other, besides being married. But in real life it got you killed and messed up families, and he and Fala both had been shaky-kneed from rescuing Chihin, and he’d been wide open. The rush of action, that kind of thing. A moment, an incident, mat wouldn’t be the same tomorrow, if he kept his wits about him…
But the feeling just wasn’t going away tonight. He really wanted to go off with Fala somewhere and if be did that, and the captain had na Chanur to think about, it just wasn’t going to help his case. If he did that, it could make it absolutely certain Hilfy Chanur would get rid of him, and that— that, in itself, began to have an emotional context it hadn’t had, because he couldn’t deal with the idea of not being on this ship. He couldn’t lose that. He couldn’t risk losing this ship or these people, and he didn’t know when he’d begun to feel that way.
Oh, gods, he was in a lot of trouble.
I’m saying get out of here, get out, I won’t live with a gods-be fool!
But it wasn’t Korin Sfaura, it was a pillow Hilfy found herself murdering, and she rolled onto her back in a tangle of bedclothes, sorry she hadn’t killed him herself—and gotten him out of her repertoire of bad dreams and stupid mistakes.
She’d gone at him in a blind rage and at a vast disadvantage, that was all—though she hadn’t been concussed, as Rhean said she had been, as Rhean was in a damned hurry to say, bringing in cousin Harun for what amounted to a power-grab, and a takeover of Chanur’s onworld business.
Which Rhean did all right at. And she was rid of Korin without offending Sfaura, which it would have done if she’d done what she wanted to do. Politics. Korin Sfaura was dead. And that business was forever unfinished, and she carried that anger, too, but she wasn’t sure all of it was at Korin, who’d been a pretty, vain, brute-selfish fool. And she wasn’t sure why she waked dreaming about a man she wouldn’t waste a waking moment thinking about.
Fact was, she’d picked him. Her judgment had been that bad. She still tried, on bad nights, to figure out why it had been that dismally bad, or what failing was in herself. And “pretty” about covered his assets. Maybe “stupid” had been another one—because deep down she had wanted a piece of furniture, something decorative, something you didn’t have to justify anything to or argue with, because when her father had died she hadn’t wanted anybody in his place, no real lord in Chanur, just something that would get heirs and not interfere in the politics between her and her aunts.
Only Rhean, who’d been furious at aunt Py going off from the clan, had had her own ideas how Chanur should face the new age, and what was important, and maybe—no, probably—Rhean had been right: Rhean cared, and Rhean had given up her command and come home and done what needed doing. Mauled her in the doing, granted. She’d been mad as hell about that, and about na Harun, and stung by Rhean’s reaction to her. But truth to tell, Rhean hadn’t been happy to go down-world either. No more than she had been.
The power … Rhean liked that. It was a warmer blanket than the husband Rhean couldn’t bring home to Chanur, and couldn’t likely get to that often. A continent away was a good political alliance, and what was a continent but a half an orbit when Rhean had come in from space, but things were different now.
A lot was.
And she wasn’t coming home often, herself. Could marry again, but had no enthusiasm for the institution.
There was Meras. Who was on one level like Korin: pretty face, no source of opinions. Amazing how attractive that still was to her. But not fair to a kid with brains; and he’d shown with the kif that he did think, thought right well for a young man, and clearly enough Fala was taken with him, Tarras and Tiar were…