“Wouldn’t matter. Captain took you aboard. She would have if you’d been Sahern head of clan. So would we. Don’t try to talk against Sahern. You won’t impress us,”
“I’m not!” Gods, everything got twisted. “I never said that. I never said anything against them.”
Tarras just looked at him a moment, making him wonder if she believed him.
“How’d you get arrested?” Tarras asked. “The straight story.”
He wondered how much was in whatever report they had gotten from the kif. “I was fighting.”
“That’s nothing new. Doesn’t always get you arrested. What was the fight about?” “Me. Being there. In this bar.” Surely she could get the idea. Maybe she had. He didn’t want to volunteer more details and he hoped she wouldn’t ask. He didn’t want to remember them.
“Captain wouldn’t leave you in any foreign jail,” Tarras said. “She’s pretty brusque sometimes. But you being here was her idea. Wouldn’t leave anybody where you were. You copy that?”
He had, already. He wasn’t willing to think badly about Hilfy Chanur. He knew that, being Chanur, she was inclined to believe he had a right to be here. Chanur was the clan that stood up for his right to be here. Only, even in Chanur, the attitudes weren’t universal, the change hadn’t changed every mind; and he was used to that. He had to be used to that. Things as they were gave him no better choice and no court of appeal.
He said, while Tarras was there to listen, “I’d not do anything against Chanur. Ever. Tell the captain that.”
Tarras didn’t say a thing, just shut the door. And locked it.
Pumps were thumping away, pouring water and other liquids into the Legacy’s reservoirs. Fueling was in progress. Tiar slid a cup under Hilfy’s inert, poised hand. And reaching the fingers after it seemed a move too much. Hilfy extended a claw, snagged the handle, and dragged it into her weary hand.
“We made it’’ Tarras said, dropping her bulk into a chair, gfi in hand. “Every gods-blessed one of those babies.”
“Course comped,” Tiar said.”
“Got to be the one that makes it. Pay the ship off and go into the profit column.”
“Somebody feed the kid this time?”
“Fala’s seeing to it.”
“What’s our launch, cap’n, we ever get ‘im clear?”
“First watch, topside. We take her through, we get our rest at Urtur.”
“Gods, that’s brutal.”
“Mahendo’sat sniffing around us, this hardship case turns up and No’shto-shti-stlen just happens to want him out of here. I don’t like it. 1 don’t like it and I wish I hadn’t agreed to take him on.”
Tiar’s ears flattened. “What do you think, he’s some deal of No’shto-shti-stlen’s?”
“I think the old son knows more about why he’s here than gtst is saying. I’m not doubting gtst wants him off this station: the stsho don’t want trouble and he’s trouble. I don’t know whose, that’s the problem. I don’t know who’s behind him.”
“There are coincidences, captain.”
“They become increasingly less when the mahendo’sat show up with deals. That’s what I don’t like. ‘Let us look at it!’ That bastard’s on someone’s payroll.”
“Not ker Py’s.”
It was a thought that had occurred to her. “If he was hers, why not say so?”
“Good question,” Tiar said. “But I don’t think the boy’s involved. It’s perfectly understandable.”
“What? Leaving him in the brig?”
“Understandable that he doesn’t like Sahern clan.”
“That’s what he says. Sahern is not our friend. Other interests aren’t our friends, for my aunt’s sake,for reasons that have to do with decisions she’s made that affect things we have no way to know about. We don’t know who could have hired her, we don’t know who could have hired him, we don’t know what side this Haisi person is on, we don’t even know that No’shto-shti-stlen’s on the up and up or what gtst is up to. The news got to Urtur and this Haisi person had a chance to get here and offer us a bribe for a look at the object. So why hadn’t the news the time to get to Sahern clan, and maybe Sahern lay out some game that would inconvenience us? Ha?”