“I think we’re ready,” Tiar said.
“Let’s walk back,” she said. “Sort of watch it.’’
The crowd at the door moved and let them out onto the dingy, multiple-shadowed docks. “Haisi’s left,” Hilfy said under her breath.
“Wasn’t highly helpful?”
“You could say that.” Another time-flash, on the smells and the sights and the sounds of the dock, a bus passing, on its magnetic guide strip, rattling the deck plates at a service access. And not a hani in sight … just not a place hani had gotten to, lately. Peace might have brought prosperity … but merchant ships tended to establish quiet, regular routes. There weren’t the disruptions, the wild incidents, the rumors, that tended to send the timid running and the foolhardy kiting in on the smell of profit: and, absent those motives, a merchant ship tended to carve out a route it followed and stick to that route for fear of someone moving in to compete … from a cooperative, rumor-trading free trade, they’d become misers, close-mouthed on information, jealously protective of their routes and resentful if somebody moved in on them or undercut their prices—a mercantile age, it was, a greedy, tight-fisted age.
And what was a hani ship saying by being out of its normal route these days, or what was a mahen hunter ship doing sniffing about? That there was something different about them? That, being Chanur, there was something other than trade on their minds?
That murdered stsho were significant?
Trust Kshshti to spread the rumors it got. That little business with Haisi was already spreading on a network more efficient than the station news, bet on it.
“Ever been on Kshshti?”
“No,” Tiar said shortly. Tiar had an anxious, distracted look. And she knew Tiar hadn’t been here: aunt Rhean hadn’t favored this area of space. Aunt Pyanfar had been the one to run the edges, preferentially, using her experience of foreigners to make The Pride profitable.
But aunt Pyanfar hadn’t spoken the languages with any great fluency. And she could. She’d gone into that study to give herself an edge in getting into the crew, she’d had an aptitude for words, a mind quick to grasp foreign ideas, and a tongue that didn’t trip on stshoshi … best bribe she could have offered aunt Py, who couldn’t say Llyene without dropping an essential l .
And where had it brought her?
A car swerved near them. “Gods-be fool!” Tiar exclaimed.
“NaHallan would be right at home here,” she said—nasty joke; but na Hallan wasn’t here to hear it, and she was in a joking mood, crazy as it was. Maybe it was discovering Kshshti was a real place, and debunking it of the myth of nightmare … she hadn’t flinched from coming here, hadn’t let herself, but by the gods, maybe she should have come here years ago, walked the docks, had a look at the place and told herself …
“Kif,” Tiar said suddenly, and her eyes spotted them at the same moment, a handful of them standing about in the shadows near the Legacy’s berth.
Her heart was beating faster. She told herself there was no reason for panic, the station was civilized enough these days that an honest trader could get from the dock office to her ship’s ramp without a gun; and that calling on the pocket com would be an over-reaction.
One of them was walking toward them, strobed in the multiple shadows of the lights and the flash of a passing service track. The matte black of his hooded robe was only marginally different from the skin of the long snout that was all of him that met the light. She couldn’t see his hands, and while what had once been gunbelts were mere ornament these days … knives weren’t outlawed.
“Captain, …” Tiar said.
“If something happens, break for cover behind the number two console, call station on com, I’ll take the number one, call the ship …” She monotoned it, under her breath: her mind was on autopilot, her eyes were on the kif … all the kif. They were predators, highly evolved, and fast over short distances. And no weapons ban covered teeth.