“Same like be friend with damn mahe reckless no-regard-for-life!”
“Same like be smart mahen accent. Chanur protocol officer not damn polite.”
“I’m always that way with navigational hazards. I have an allergy to fools!”
“You calm down. You listen. You want go bed with kif, you like fine No’shto-shti-stlen. You listen! You aunt be damn fool, all time ‘ssociate with kif bandit. Oh, real polite, real nice. But same call you aunt mekt-hakkikt, great leader, like real fine … All same kif pirate. All same kif steal, kill, lie, I no got tell Hilfy Chanur about kif—“
“You can sit in your own hell, mahe, you’re way past the limit with me. What I am and what I know, what I did and what I’ll do … aren’t your damn business, they haven’t been your damn business, and I absolutely resent your trying to manipulate me! No luck, no luck, mahe, and you can tell that to the Personage that sent you to maneuver Chanur against itself. “
“I try help, hani fool!” “Stay out of my way!” “You listen—“ “No.”
“You listen, hani! You want kif be number one power in the Compact, you keep go what you do!”
“Fine. What’ s my choice? A smart-mouthed mahe?”
“Don’t be fool!”
“I wasn’t born one and I won’t be made one. Good afternoon, Ana-kehnandian. And our regards to your Personage. Maybe she’ll send someone polite next time she wants favors from a hani!”
“Fool!”
“Twice a fool!” Shouting was drawing an audience … mahendo’sat, a wall of brown and black, no sign of the stsho one might have expected here. “This isn’t a place to discuss anything.”
“Fine, we go my ship.”
“I don’t go near your ship. And it’s no good you coming to mine because you’re not going to get what you want. We’re drawing a crowd. Forget it!”
“Hani!-“
“Forget it, I said!” She walked away, shouldered a couple of mahendo’sat on her way to the registration office door, walked through into the brighter light— with some satisfaction in Haisi’s discomfiture at being what no hunter-ship captain ever wanted to be: public. He didn’t follow her in. There were stares all about them, mahendo’sat, mostly, and the inevitable (at Kshshti) clutch of black-robed, cowled kif, whispering in their own language of clicks and hisses.
Hani, was one word her ears caught. Chanur, was another.
Tiar was at the desk. She walked up to Tiar’s elbow and waited while the mahen clerk processed the information.
“Not a real happy mahe,” she muttered into Tiar’s canted ear. “He claims he pilots that ship. Cocky son, says he’ll miss us, we don’t have to worry about collision.”
“’What did he want?”
“Oh, the usual, warn us about a plot to take over the universe, that sort of thing. What else is new?”
Tiar’s ear flicked. “Captain, somebody might speak hani.”
Dear, literal-minded Tiar. For the first time in a decade she felt alive, felt— by the gods, ahead of the situation instead of chasing after it.
Didn’t know what she was going to do, precisely, but she knew what she was doing—and whoever was against them, didn’t: that was the name of the game; and quite comfortably she turned her back to the counter, leaned her elbows there, and simply stared back (smiling pleasantly, of course) at the mahendo’sat and kif staring at her.
Crazy as the rest of the family, she thought. It probably onset with age. Aunt Py had been relatively stable until she became captain of The Pride.
The business at the desk concluded, Tiar putting in her bid for loaders to their dockside, no, they hadn’t sold the cargo yet, but they’d put in a destination when they agreed with the loaders, so much per section the load had to go around the rim of Kshshti, and no, they didn’t need provisioners soliciting them. Everything was fine.
Meanwhile she watched the room in the remote but not impossible chance someone might turn up with a weapon or some sort of trouble might come through the door.
Somebody like Haisi. Somebody like a few of his crew. Probably Haisi was thinking hard what to do about troublesome hani. And if he was connected to anyone responsible, gods rot him, he could have produced credentials from people she knew. She didn’t need any, to prove to him who she was.