“You no go!” the mahe cried, trying to get in front of her again. The black face contorted in anguish. “No go!”
Pyanfar shoved with the rifle, sideways-held, which drew a collective gasp from the crowd. “Private business,” she said. “Get your people out of the way, I’m telling you-Go! Get! Get cover!”
“Not bring guns! Go, go you ship, not do, not do!”
And from the stsho, who eluded the guards to rush, up and wave white arms in her face: “You break Compact law. Complaint, we make complaint this barbarous behavior-We witness-”
“Move it!”
A second shove. The stsho recoiled in a wild motion of gtst spindly limbs, retreating in a flood of gtst gossamer robes and a warble of stsho language, headed full-tilt away from the scene. “Ni shoss, ni shoss, knthi mnosith hos!-”
“Maheinsi tosha nai mas!” the mahe cried; and mahendo’sat guards turned from crowd-control to facing hani rifles with their riot-sticks, as the mob discovered they were not at all interested in getting closer. There was a low sound of dismay und the docks grew astoundingly quiet.
“Move them,” Pyanfar said, gesturing with rifle barrel still averted from the mahen official. “Hasano-ma. Authorization from your Personage. Hear?”
The mahe had drawn back to range herself with her guard. She stood with diminutive ears laid back. But they came up at Personage. Fear grew starker on her face.
“You’ve got your tail in a vise, Voice. I advise you, go back to Central and stay there. Fast.”
“Captain!” Haral hissed. “Your left.”
A shadow advanced at her flank, from the obscurity of gantries and machinery-kif, in numbers. The mahen Voice heeled about and held up her hand in the face of the advance. “You stop! Stop! You break law!”-as the crowd shrieked and scuttled from between, and kept going, all but the Voice and her handful of nervous guards.
The kif drifted to a stop like a shadow-flow. One kept walking ahead, a black-robed figure. The rest stayed still, rifles in their hands. The whole dock seemed hushed, but for the distant whir of fans and clank of pumps and the fading sounds of fleeing civilians.
Law. The Voice’s protest echoed faint and powerless. Mkks was in this moment very, very far from mahen law. And the mahendo’sat who claimed this disputed star station depended on pretences that had teeth only when mahen hunter-ships were in port.
Not in this hour, that was sure.
Pyanfar’s ears flattened. She let them stay that way. “Well?” she said to the hooded kif who had stopped a little distances! removed, rifle crosswise in its hands. “We were invited here. Name of one Sikkukkut. You represent him?”
The kif walked closer. Guns leveled: Khym’s; hers. Haral’s and Geran’s were trained on the main mass of kif; and Tirun-Tirun, rear-guard, was not in her view; but she was back there and alert, that was sure.
The kif regarded them with dark, red-rimmed eyes. Its gray wrinkled skin acquired further wrinkles up and down the snout and lost them. “I have message, hani.”
It held out a thin hand. It held a small gold ring between its thumb and retractable fore-claw.
Tully’s. Pyanfar held out her hand and the kif dropped the ring into her open palm, no more willing than she to be touched.
“Is the human alive?”
“At present.”
Hilfy too? Pyanfar ached to ask and knew better than to give a kif a hint where the soft spots were. She kept disdain in the set of her mouth. “Tell Sikkukkut I’ll talk about it.”
There was a long pause. The kif gave no ground. “You come to trade. The hakkikt will see you. We choose a neutral, ground. Bring your weapons. We have ours.”
It was better than might have been. It was far too good an offer and she distrusted it. “We can deal here,” she said. “Now.”
“This wants time discussing. You ask condition. Alive, but uncomfortable. How long a delay do you wish?”
She slung the rifle marginally upward, out of direct line, and wrinkled up her nose. “All right,” she said, ever so quietly, as if no hani had ever broken a kif’s neck or no blood ever been shed at Gaohn. “All right. We’ll add it up later, kif.”