“This speaks hani,” Sikkukkut said. “It tries to pretend not-”
Hilfy stepped into his path.
“And where our understanding fails,” the kif said in flawless hani accents, “I know you have expertise with the human. We can secure that. Can’t we?” He brushed past her and jerked Tully suddenly toward him by one arm and the other. The kif s claws made small indentations in his flesh and Tully stood there, face to face with those jaws a hand’s breadth from his eyes. Hilfy could smell the sweat and fear.
“Soft,” Sikkukkut said, tightening his grip. “Such fine, fine skin. That might have value on its own.”
Closer still.
“Let him go!”
The dark snout wrinkled and the tip twitched. Kif sustenance was mostly fluid, so outsiders said: they were total carnivores, and disdained not at all to use those razored outer jaws. Two rows of teeth, two sets of jaws. One to bite and one fast-moving set far up inside that long snout to reduce the outer-jaw bites to paste and fluids the tiny throat could handle. The tongue darted in the v-form gap of the teeth. Tully jerked and winced in silence. The long face lifted, to use its eyes at level, its jaws-
“Stop it! Gods rot it-stop!”
“But it will have to stop struggling,” Sikkukkut said, “I can’t release my claws.-Tell him so. …”
Hilfy took in her breath. But Tully had stopped resisting, slopped-all at once, betraying himself.
“Ah. It does understand.”
“Let him go.”
The kif sniffed, jerked Tully against his chest and flung him free all in two quick motions.
Tully stumbled back. Hilfy thrust her shoulder between him and Sikkukkut’s step forward and stood her ground with her knees wobbling under her from stark fear. Her ears were back; her nose rumpled into a grin that was not at all the grin of Tully’s helpless primate kind.
A dry sniffing. Kifish laughter. Sikkukkut gazed at her from within the hood, the dim light glinting off his eyes. ‘Implicit in the hani tongue are concepts like friendship. Fondness. These are different than sfik. But equally useful. Particularly I do not discount them when you have such success talking to this creature. How have you bound him?”
“Try kind words.”
“Do you think so? I have been kind. Perhaps then my accent confuses him. Tell him I want to know everything he knows, why he came, to whom he came, what he hopes to do–Tell him this. Tell him that I am anxious and impatient and many other things.”
She weighed it for what seemed forever. She wondered that the kif s patience could last so long.
It broke. The kif reached and she blocked that reach a second time with her shoulder. “-He’s asking questions, Tully,” she said all in one breath. “He wants to talk.”
Tully said nothing.
“Guess he doesn’t understand,” she said. “He gets words muddled up-”
“I was skku to the hakkikt Akkukkak in his day.” Sikkukkut’s voice was soft, cultured; but in its softness she heard distinctly the clicks within the throat, the clashing of inner jaws as he lifted his chin. “We do know each other, he and I- We have met- before this. At Meetpoint. Does he remember?”
“–Friend of Akkukkak’s,” Hilfy said. Distract him; gods, distract him, get him off the hunt. “-If kif had friends.”
“This human has sfik,” Sikkukkut said, unmoving. “Akkukkak failed to know this. How could so soft a creature have so much sfik as this, to elude kif on Meetpoint docks? Had I been there, of course, he would have fared less well. And now I am here, and he is here, and I am asking him these things.”
“-He’s still asking questions,” she said to Tully.
“I shall be asking them,” Sikkukkut said. “I do ask them.” The silence lingered. Light kifish fingers touched her shoulder, stroked the fur-
-withdrew. She sucked in a kif-tainted breath, trembling. Her ears were flat. She went deaf, near blind, hunter-vision narrowed to one long black tunnel focused on the kif. But Sikkukkut drew away. He settled down again onto his many-legged chair and tucked his legs up until he indeed resembled some ungainly insect.