“Haisi. Where did you learn about it?”
“Cousin on Urtur.”
“So this isn’t exactly unexpected.”
“No. Long time expect.”
“Tell me.”
“You let me see cargo.”
No spacer. Not any merchant captain, if he was a captain, which she suspected: Ha’domaren, Tiar said. And that fit: top of the line ship, fire-power concealed by panels, capable of dumping cargo and moving fast, with all the engine capacity of a freight-hauler. She’d seen mahen agents operate when she was with The Pride, and she folded her hands now easily on her middle, assuming a studied relaxation.
“Which Personage are you working for? Not my aunt. She’d not be so coy about it. And if you aren’t working for my aunt, why should I let you look at anything?”
“You assume lot.”
She pursed her mouth into a smile. “Gods-rotted right I do. Who are you working for, and is it anyone I should trust?”
“Absolute.” Give him credit, cornered, presented with the case, he shifted directions. Which meant he had some authority from someone.
“Name?”
“Paehisna-ma-to.”
Didn’t tell her a thing. And if the mahe had good research on aunt Py’s clan, he might know she had a slight sore spot about kif in general. So tell her the kif were interested.
But if the mahendo’sat were interested, and kif got wind of it, they would be sniffing around the situation. It was their nature. Like breathing.
“So who is Paehisna-ma-to?”
“Wise woman.”
“I’m glad. Tell her Hilfy Chanur keeps her contracts. Tell her if there’s anything untoward about this contract, her representative should tell me before I sign the thing.”
“You not sign yet?”
“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t.”
“Don’t do!”
“Maybe will, maybe won’t. Right now I’m busy. No more time. Unless there’s something else I should hear.”
“My ship Ha’domaren. You want talk, you send. Don’t call on station com.”
“I gathered that.” She stood up and walked the mahe to the door and down the corridor toward the hatch, her crew being otherwise occupied—listening, and armed with a stranger on board, but occupied.
“You give my regards to your wise woman.”
“Will,” the mahe said, and bowed, and strolled off down the corridor to their airlock.
She stood there until she heard the lock cycle. “Is he gone?” she asked the empty air. “Down the ramp,” Tiar said via com from the bridge. “Watching him all the way. Sorry about that, captain. I thought you ‘d better have a face to face. “ “No question,” she said, and stared at nothing in particular, thinking how the most secret plans couldn’t remain a secret once anybody talked to anybody at all. Suspect anyone. The aide, the kifish guards, most especially them. Stsho refused, since the war, to take their ships out of stsho space, or. to trade anywhere with the younger species, except only at Meetpoint. But there was a stsho ambassadorial presence on Urtur. There was a stsho presence even at Mkks nowadays. There would be one at Anuurn, if the han would permit it, but the han let no one in, secretive and protective of the homeworld, with recent reason.
Certainly whatever was going on between No’shto-shti-stlen and the stsho supposed to receive this whatever-it-was at Urtur had attracted someone’s attention, or leaked at one end of the deal or the other, Point: Haisi was here. He had come here from elsewhere at sometime—and Urtur was as good as anywhere. While chance and taking advantage of a local leak of information might have brought him to their ship, it was just as possible he was telling part of the truth—and he had known it and come here knowing it. Which meant others might
They were offloading canisters as fast as the Legacy could cycle them out; and by tomorrow they had to be taking others aboard. They had to know as early as next morning whether they were going to pass over the Hoas cans and let another ship take the Hoas load. And that meant making a decision … that meant signing or not signing.
That meant solvency after this trip … or still being involved in the deal even if they turned it down, dammit, because being Pyanfar’s niece, if she took the stsho object aboard, it said one thing; and if she refused, and it was some crazy stsho religious thing that brought down a friendly governor at Meetpoint—that was disaster.