“No, captain,” Hallan said at once, and got up from the chair he was occupying, very respectful.
Which made her the villain in the case.
“Gods rot it, he’s not crew! He goes back to quarters!”
“Aye,” Tiar said. “But he’s a help, captain.”
“Not right now!” she said. Gods, they had outside messengers likely coming aboard. They didn’t need Hallan Meras underfoot. Even with that soulful look in his eyes.
“Captain,” he said.
“Don’t ‘captain’ me! You’re a passenger on this ship. Chihin, take him back where he belongs.”
“I—“ he was still saying.
“Kid’s done all right” Tiar muttered, as Chihin took him by the arm and drew him out the door. “He’s not had a good day, cap’n, go easy.”
“He’s not had a good day. We’re going with the number 1 load. Skip the alternates. Berths full of kif. Snooping police. I want the gods-rotted deck clear out there, I want the fueling done—we’ve got three loads coming in tonight and we’re going to be working straight through the watch!” She was on nervous overload, on her own way to the door. ‘Tm going to run the nav-calc, I want it checked and triple checked— we’re hurrying, if you haven’t noticed. We haven’t got time for shopping tours and mahendo’sat with a deal and stray boys who’ll be reporting our ship cap to Sahern, next thing we know, keep him the hell out of stations!”
“He doesn’t want to go back to Sahern.” She swung around, hand on the door frame, finding herself in the middle of somebody’s completely foreign dealings, that possibly went against her own. “He says. Don’t cut him any deals, cousin! You don’t know what he did, you don’t even know he isn’t a total mistake—‘Take this poor lost boy,’ the stsho say. In the same gods-rotted conversation with their deal—and / don’t know what connection if any the two have, I don’t know why they didn’t give this deal to Sahern except their boy was out breaking up the station market, I don’t know what connection it has to anything, and maybe it doesn’t, but gods rot it! let’s not complicate matters. We get to Urtur, he goes off the ship, he waits for whoever he likes, his ship, somebody else’s ship, a passing knnn trader, I don’t care, but we don’t need to activate the feud with Sahern, and we will if we keep him—“
“How’s he going to live?”
She had not gotten that far. Not at all.
Tiar asked: “What’s he going to do? Urtur isn’t going to let any male hani aboard. Do we give him to the police to hold till his ship gets there? That’s no better than he had.”
She hadn’t exactly put that together either, in her concentration on the contract. “They can’t arrest him without cause.”
“They’ll find one.”
“Hell. —There’ll be a hani ship there. There always is. … Don’t make him any promises, don’t let him near our boards, don’t complicate our lives, d’ you hear me? He’s going off this ship!”
“Aye,” Tiar said, which didn’t mean a thing, except Tiar heard her.
“I have to lock the door,” Tarras said, looking apologetic, and that was better than had been this morning, at least. Hallan told himself so, and told himself that politeness was obligatory.
Even when he was shaking mad. He kept his ears up and murmured a thank you.
“Ship’s just real busy,” Tarras said. A smallish hani with a wavy mane that said eastern blood, from the viewpoint of someone from west of the Aon Mountains. Tarras had one ear notched, and a lot of rings that meant a lot of major voyages … you only got those when you’d risked your neck on a trip. Which meant Tarras for all her slight size was a person to respect. “Captain’s a little quick-fused just now. We’ll sort it out with her.”
“I appreciate that,” he said, and tried to quit shivering and most of all not to have Tarras see that he was. Women were allowed to have a temper. If he did, he was unreliable and a danger to everyone around him. “I’m not Sahern. I’m not related to them. Even by marriage.”