He stumbled before her, among crewfolk who boiled with excitement. The aircraft whined toward the lead end of the line. “Chao yu li!” Mea exclaimed. “We’ve that much luck, at least. They don’t know which vessel is ours.”
“They might know its name,” he replied. “Whoever gave me away—”
“Aye. Here, this way…. Hold.” Erannath had emerged from his cabin. “You!” She pointed at the next deckhouse. “Into that door!”
The Ythrian halted, lifted his talons. “Move!” the captain bawled. “Or I’ll have you shot!”
For an instant his crest stood stiff. Then he obeyed. The three of them entered a narrow, throbbing corridor. Mea bowed to Erannath. “I am sorry, honored passenger,” she said. Partly muffled by bulkheads, the air was less thunderous here. “Time lacked for requesting your help courteously. You are most good that you obliged regardless. Please to come.”
She trotted on. Ivar and Erannath followed, the Ythrian rocking clumsily along on his whig-feet while he asked, “What has happened?”
“Impies,” the young man groaned. “We had to get out of sight from above. If either of us got glimpsed, that’d’ve ended this game. Not that I see how it can go on much longer.”
Erannath’s eyes smoldered golden upon him. “What game do you speak of?”
“I’m fugitive from Terrans.”
“And worth the captain’s protection? A-a-a-ah….”
Mea stopped at an intercom unit, punched a number, spoke rapid-fire for a minute. When she turned back to her companions, she was the barest bit relaxed.
“I raised our radioman in time,” she said. “Likely the enemy will call, asking which of us is Jade Gate. My man is alerting the others in our own language, which surely the Terrans don’t understand. We Riverfolk stick together. Everybody will act stupid, claim they don’t know, garble things as if they had one poor command of Anglic.” Her grin flashed. “To act stupid is one skill of our people.”
“Were I the Terran commander,” Erannath said, “I would thereupon beam to each ship individually, requiring its name. And were I the captain of any, I would not court punishment by lying, in a cause which has not been explained to me.”
Mea barked laughter. “Right. But I suggested Portal of Virtue and Way to Fortune both answer they are Jade Gate, as well as this one. The real names could reasonably translate to the same as ours. They can safely give the Terrans that stab.”
She turned bleak again: “At best, though, we buy short time to smuggle you off, Ivar Frederiksen, and you, Erannath, spy from Ythri. I dare not give you any firearms. That would prove our role, should you get caught.” The man felt the knife he had kept on his belt since he left Windhome. The nonhuman wasn’t wearing his apron, thus had no weapons. The woman continued: “When the marines flit down to us, we’ll admit you were here, but claim we had no idea you were wanted. True enough, for everybody except three of us; and we can behave plenty innocent. We’ll say you must have seen the airboat and fled, we know not where.”
Ivar thought of the starkness that walled them in and pleaded, “Where, for real?”
Mea led them to a companionway and downward. As she hastened, she said across her shoulder: “Some Orcans always climb the Shelf to trade with us after our ceremonies are done. You may meet them at the site, otherwise on their way to it. Or if not, you can probably reach the Tien
Hu by yourselves, and get help. I feel sure they will help. Theirs is the seer they’ve told us of.”
“Won’t Impies think of that?” Ivar protested.
“No doubt. Still, I bet it’s one impossible country to ransack.” Mea stopped at a point in another corridor, glanced about, and rapped, “Aye, you may be caught. But you will be caught if you stay aboard. You may drown crossing to shore, or break your neck off one cliff, or thousand other griefs. Well, are you our Firstling or not?”
She flung open a door and ushered them through. The room beyond was a storage space for kayaks, and also held a small crane for their launching. “Get in,” she ordered Ivar. “You should be able to reach the bank. Just work at not capsizing and not hitting anything, and make what shoreward way you can whenever you find one stretch not too rough. Once afoot, send the boat off again. No sense leaving any clue to where you landed. Afterward, rocks and mist should hide you from overhead, if you go carefully…. Erannath, you fly across, right above the surface.”