With Chihin you often had to replay things to figure out if they added up to favorable. And it seemed that way. He didn’t know what to think: she was canny and she was sharp and he was afraid of her jokes.
“You probably could be lord Meras,” she said. “If you wanted to.”
He shook his head. “Not me. No.”
“Your papa approve what you’re doing?”
Another shake of his head.
She patted his leg, which he wouldn’t have liked, but it was more like a dismissal: Go away, kid. Behave yourself.
He liked Chihin more for that. He got up and went back to work, feeling her watching him, weighing what he did, approving or disapproving. And, gods, he wanted to do just competently well—flashiness didn’t impress Chihin. She’d made that clear, about the rescue. Just common sense.
Just doing what you were supposed to do, consistently right. And it made sense to him, the way no one else in the universe had, not ker Hilfy, not Tiar, not Fala nor Tarras nor his mother or his sisters. Just do your job and be right.
He thought he could do that. He had a real hope of that, if that was the mark he had to reach.
… If the parry receiving the goods be not the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1, and have valid claim as demonstrated in Subsection 36 of Section 25, then it shall be the reasonable obligation of the party accepting the contract to ascertain whether the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1 shall exist in Subsequent or in Consequent or in Postconsequent; however, this clause shall in no wise be deemed to invalidate the claim of the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1 or 2, or in any clause thereunto appended, except if it shall be determined by the party accepting the contract to pertain to a person or Subsequent or Consequent identified and stipulated to by the provisions of Section 5 …
It didn’t read any better now than then. And subsection 3 section 1 and 2 and clauses thereunto appended made it abundantly clear: the Preciousness went to Kefk.
And the captain went down to the lower deck, to gtst excellency’s quarters.
She made her presence known at the door. She received no word from inside. She stood waiting.
There were enough disasters. She opened the door, stsho willing or stsho not, and stared in momentary bewilderment at the drapery spread above the bowl-chair.
It was decidedly occupied. It was decidedly not the moment to call a conference. Stsho were notoriously touchy in personal matters.
That gtst excellency and gtst companion Dlimas-lyi were bound for Kefk was a matter gtst excellency might care to know about. But the captain decided gtst excellency could find out about it later.
The captain prudently closed the door, mission not accomplished, question not asked.
Is there a plausible lie I can tell Haisi Ana-kehnandian ?
So let Ana-kehnandian wait to be told anything. He was loading up the message board, demanding to speak to her directly.
But the captain had things to occupy her. The captain had to get them out of port before the lawsuits started, as they could, the mahendo’sat being a litigious lot.
That they’d used firearms surely had circulated in the rumor market; and a lie was an unreliable weapon— gtstexcellency’s weapon, if gtst chose to use it; and a very dangerous thing in the hands of a hani with no notion what it meant.
She had never thought she might look on Kefk as a refuge.
Everything was ahead of schedule. The loader hadn’t jammed, her Tiar was insisting she could keep at it, she was getting used to the ice, and she could go into the heated observation room, seeing that the loader was running without a glitch. The cans just kept locking through the rotary platform and the arm kept picking them up and putting them on the chain and the chain kept rolling, delivering them to the arm that delivered them to the waiting trucks.
“/ think you faced this gods-be loader, “ Tiar said.
Hallan was very proud of that. Ker Chihin was going to talk to the captain, Tiar said he’d actually solved something instead of destroying something, and he knew Fala would vote for him. And Tarras had tended to. He had real hope, real hope. He just prayed the gods of every persuasion not to let anything happen, just let him finish one job that didn’t blow up in his face.