“Does it matter which gods-rotted kif-”
“Shut up and listen. Sikkukkut grabbed you instead, for his own reasons. And it doesn’t call for gratitude. Just common sense. Akkhtimakt’s agents ran from Kshshti. They’ll have gotten back to him; and that means we’ve got precious little time. Chances are there’s one of Akkhtimakt’s spotters hovering about Kshshti system. It’s hard to find those kind of things till they transmit. And if that’s the case he’ll find out where we went the minute he skims through Kshshti system, he’ll get the whole story of what happened there before he dumps speed, and gods help them if he stays to settle things with them. We don’t think he will. We think he’ll come for us non-stop. But we can’t bet on that. We also have a report that earless stsho that just ran out of here took the Kefk route home, to spill everything gtst knows in the process, don’t doubt it. We’ve got problems here, niece.”
“We’re within a one-jump of Maing Tol or Idunspol, for the gods’ own sakes! What happened to getting Tully there? Where did that priority go?”
“With Banny Ayhar, from Kshshti. Prosperity couriered Tully’s packet on, with a human-language translation tape, updated. If Banny didn’t run into something, that packet’s already at Maing Tol. Or will be.” Her mind had trouble with trans-light figures, tired as she was. “We’re faster than we were. And think of this-if you’re so concerned for Tully’s welfare. If we do take him to the mahendo’sat at Maing Tol, they’ll grab him sure. Why’d you think I wouldn’t give him to Jik out there? They’d lock him up and go at him till he’s spilled everything. You want that for him, huh? Maybe he still knows something. Maybe I’m crazy not to get him off my hands; but I’m not doing that to him. It’d kill him, after this. Hear? They’d never let him loose.”
“You were ready enough to turn him over at Kshshti!” Hilfy yelled, and over at her side there was a constant drone from the translating corn-unit at Tully’s side. His eyes were dark and wide.
“That was before,” Pyanfar said, “gods rot it, before the thing blew up, before we-”
“-ended up in debt. Admit it. He’s for sale. He’s expendable if it gets us out of hock. That’s what you’re holding out for! A better gods-be deal!”
“Mind your mouth, whelp!”
“Well, isn’t it the truth?”
“Gods and thunders, no, it’s not. Not-“-since that hall, she thought. Not since she went into a kifish stronghold after him. And had a look at how it was. “Not any more, it isn’t.”
“So we ally with them? Risk all our lives when we’re within a one-jump of mahen space?”
“We got a debt. Like you said. And it’s mahen space. Under mahen law. Mahen politics. You want to walk into it, throw ourselves on their charity? You want to gamble everything you got on someone else’s priorities?”
“I thought we were falling-down grateful to our allies here. I thought it was debt. Them to us. Now it’s something else.”
“Maybe if I gods-be knew what it was, niece, I wouldn’t be going along with this. Mahendo’sat go on status. You want Jik killed, do you? Want him to go-and what happens to his Personage then, and what happens to his friends, like Goldtooth and like us? We got interests in this. And they don’t call for blind trust.”
“We’re not a warship, aunt!”
“No,” she said. Her gut hurt. Missed meal? Missed sleep? Raw fear? “We’re a trading ship without a cargo, in debt up to our noses, and the han deputy’s got enough in her files to ruin us, the stsho at Meetpoint are bound to send their own complaint back to the han-I don’t trust that bastard Stle stles stlen further than I can see him; and we got a kif loose who’s got us down as number one target in the whole gods-forsaken universe. Akkhtimakt wants to be head kif over all the kif, and if he makes it you can make your own guess what our personal chances are. So you want to know why I take alliance with the mahendo’sat?”