“You realise a direct strike could wipe this house out That with the stakes I fear she’s playing—the Family may not care that betas or a Kontrin die in the process.” Pol’s mouth twisted as though the words choked him. “I don’t care for a few betas or a houseful of azi and majat But she’s another matter with me. You hear me. I’ll not be taken down by a houseful of azi.”
“There are majat.”
The Kontrin went stone-faced.
“The staff,” Jim repeated, “will make you comfortable in this room. But you’ll not leave it.”
Pol folded big arms.
“She’ll come back,” Jim said.
Pol shook his head. “I doubt that she can, azi. The shuttle was never meant for landing elsewhere. She’ll die, if she’s not dead already.”
It undermined his confidence of things. He could not keep that from his face.
“You know,” Pol said reasonably, “that she admitted me here herself. She’d never have let an enemy that close to her. You have her mind. You know that better than anyone would. She wouldn’t have let me in the door to see the lay of things, if she didn’t know that I wasn’t the enemy.”
“I don’t try to think as she does.” Jim hugged the blanket about him, stared bleakly at the Hald. “I don’t know enough. I only know what she told me, which was to stay and hold this house. You can say what you wish, ser. It may entertain you. It won’t make any difference.”
Pol cursed him, and Warrior stirred in the doorway.
“Green-hive,” Warrior moaned.
“That is another reason,” Jim said. “We simply wait for her. Maybe she’ll tell me then that I was wrong.”
“She’s never going to have the chance.”
Jim shrugged, tucked his feet up, cross-legged on the bed. “How shall we pass the time, ser? I am passably skilled at Sej.”
v
The queasiness of docking upset the child. Wes Itavvy hugged her against him, looked at his wife, mute, full of things he should have said. They held Meris between them, clasping her hands, saying nothing. The shuttle made this run nearly empty: they three, a family of five from Upcoast, whose faces were no less worried. The port had been a-bristle with police. ID’s were checked, and Itavvy had endured that in terror, expecting at any moment there would be someone who knew his face, who could detect the false numbers, the lies behind the precious tickets.
They had gone through. They had taken almost nothing in baggage, in their haste. There was disaster at their backs. It was palpable, throughout the city, through the subways, where armoured police patrolled, with rifles levelled, in shops closed, in newslines censored, broadcasts cancelled.
They had made it through. Station let them dock. The procedure completed itself and the crew unsealed the hatches.
“Come on,” he said, feeling his pocket for the authorisations. There was a freighter . . . the tickets advised so . . . it was the best place to go now, no lingering on station. They carried their own baggage off, jostling the Upcoast family in their haste.
Police.
And not police. Armoured men with a serpent for an emblem, levelling rifles at them.
“Papers,” one said.
Itavvy produced them. For a brief, agonising moment he thought that they would then be waved on; but the man kept them, checked those likewise of the Upcoast group.
“Both for the Phoenix,” he said into his com-unit.
“Faces check?” a voice came back.
“No likeness.”
Itavvy reached, to have the papers. The faceless man held them, and the others, motioned at them with the rifle. “Waiting room,” he said.
“We’ll miss our boarding,” a youth from Upcoast protested.
“Nothing’s leaving,” the armoured man said.
Azi, Itavvy realised in indignation. No Kontrin, but an azi force was holding them. He opened his mouth to protest: the rifles gestured, and he closed it. Meris started to cry; his wife gathered her up, and he took the burden from her, went after the Upcoasters into the designated waiting area.
DOCK 6, BERTH 9, he could see on the signs outside the clear doors as they were ushered through. Berth 11 was their ship, safety.