Akkhtish life, a kif had once said: as voracious and fast-breeding and nasty as a species had to be to have stayed alive on the kifish homeworld—the only species in the universe, in her opinion, that deserved the kif for predators.
“This way,” the kif officer said, with a flourish of a hand from within the sleeve, and directed them to an access gate beside which a board burned with the kifish letters Tiraskhti.
Here we go, Hilfy thought, and climbed up the ramp in the lead, taking two kids into what could be a very, very bad situation. The kids would be the pressure point, if something went wrong. The kif understood the use of hostages, in some convolute way that had nothing to do with sentiment and maybe a lot to do with taking a valuable item and diminishing the sfik of the opposition by withholding it.
The airlock opened ahead, dimly lit. The ammonia stink inside was far stronger. But not improbably kif smelled hani presence just as strongly: as for the lighting, they hated the light of yellow suns, and disliked the noon even of their own. So the theorists held.
They occupied the lock, a tight, uneasy company, less the two that took up guard at the outside of the airlock; the lock cycled them through to a corridor, and more crew and personnel than a hani ship needed-met them there.
“Kkkkt,” they said, that odd sound that betokened interest. Or a preface to attack—calm, she wished herself, thinking if she could get the youngsters through this corridor without incident they would be safer in wider spaces, out of the convenient, curious reach of a kifish claw. “Kkkt,” ran like a wave beside their presence, as their escort shoved a way through the crowd, ahead of and beside them on their way through to the hall where a kifish dignitary entertained, and held court, and whatever other business the hakkikt had in mind.
That was where they came, through a door into a wide space ringed about with armed kif—she knew this place, or its exact likeness; and suffered a confusion of time, as if no years had intervened. There was the kifish prince, in silver-edged black; there was the same low table, with two chairs, there was the inevitable ring of witnesses about them, in light so dim a hani eye could not pick out the edges of shapes.
“You don’t sit,” she muttered to Fala and na Hallan, and walked as far as the table, seeing here, not the flashbacks on another ship, another place: no place to act spooked, she told herself, no place to get spooked: she had two kids to get out of here alive. The hakkikt had to score points, had to, now that she’d called his bluff all the way to this table, but he couldn’t get everything without her cooperation, or he wouldn’t have called her here.
She pulled a chair back, sat down across the round table from Vikktakkht, with Fala and Hallan behind her, and settled back in deliberate casualness.
Vikktakkht sat with one thin arm over the low back of his chair, his face shadowed within the silver-edged hood, except the snout—except the fine modeling of vein and muscle in what one could imagine was a very handsome, very fearsome type of his species.
“Kkkt. Captain. And Meras. Meras may sit with us.”
“NaHallan,” she said without looking, and the boy carefully lowered his huge frame into the remaining empty chair.
“Meras,” Vikktakkht said. “Ask your next question.”
“Sir,” Hallan said, in a quiet, respectful voice, and hesitated.
For the gods’ sake, boy, Hilfy thought, remember the question.
“What do you know,” Hallan asked, “about Atli-lyen-tlas?”
Kkkt, the murmur ran around the room. And Hallan, to his credit, didn’t flinch.
“A broad question.” The hakkikt’s arm lifted. A silver bracelet showed on a bare dark wrist, as he made a gesture about him. “I defer that answer for a moment—and offer another question.”
Don’t improvise, Hilfy thought. Boy. Don’t try.
“May I ask a favor of you, sir?”
She hadn’t expected that turn. She translated it frantically into kif, looked for ambiguities. The room murmured with startlement, seemed to hold its breath, and a few muttered, “K-k-k-kkkt,” in a surly tone: they would not have dared that; and her heart was beating doubletime, her brain trying to figure what she could say.