"They jump," Kesurinan said after a moment. "Confirm. You got word captain's status?"
"Just that the hakkikt, honor to him, wanted to talk to him. Alone. I left him in good health."
Honor to him.—We're being spied on, Kesurinan, remember that, we're in real trouble. Don't press me with questions.
A long pause on the other side. "You got suggestion, captain?"
"I suggest if you've got a good explanation what Mahijiru's up to with Ehrran, it sure might help."
"/ get," Kesurinan said. The strain came through the accent and the corn-garble. "/ do number one quick."
"If you learn anything let us know double-quick. I think your captain's situation is extremely delicate. I don't think he knows what the hakkikt, praise to him, wants from him. If you can come up with that it might help. Understood? We'll use what good influence we have."
A second long pause. "Yes, understand. Thank you, Chanur captain. Thank you call us."
"I'm sorry," she said, heartfelt, and broke the transmission. Propped her throbbing head on her hands and winced helplessly at touching one of several lumps on her skull. It bled. She felt the dampness and looked at the stain on the fur between her pads. She began to shiver. "I'm going to wash up," she told Tirun. "Can you carry on a while?"
"Aye," Tirun said without turning around. On the boards rapid checks were going, searches after surreptitious exterior damage which, if not the kif, Ehrran might have done to them.
Or Mahijiru. She could not believe in Mahijiru's desertion. Could not believe Goldtooth had turned on them.
But it was politics. Like han politics, like the scramble for power that put herself and Ehrran at odds. In this case it was two partners who violently disagreed on how to deal with the kif—Jik who wanted compromise, and Goldtooth who played some other game, involving knnn; a game in which the stakes were perhaps too high, too unthinkably high, to put friendship anywhere in the equation.
The affairs of rulers, of Personages. Hani had never tolerated any divine right but the right of clans to decide their own affairs; or the rights of groups of clans to hold a territory: and hani never by the gods bent the knee to anyone but kin and house lord.
Honor to him. Honor to a prince of pirates who tortured her friends and laughed inside when a hani had to mouth politeness to him.
I'd pay him any pretty speech he likes for Jik's life; and I'll pay him something by the gods else, the first chance I get.
Likely he knows it too.
He wanted me before he wanted the mahendo'sat. Offered me alliance back at Meetpoint. He couldn't trust the mahendo’sat' sat. He knew that. He knew how a hani could be snared: he appreciates what Chanur could be and do—the way the han appreciates it, oh, yes, the han wants our hides on the wall. The han saw it before the kif did . . . what we were capable of after we took out Akkukkak, after we contacted humans. They saw it coming . . . if we were ambitious. And they thought we were. And they pushed us to it.
She walked off the bridge, paused for a moment at the door of Chur's room, where Hilfy and Geran had settled Chur in again.
"Gods-cursed needles," Chur said to her.
"Sure. You tear loose of that again I'll have a word with you."
"Goldtooth's message."
"Ambiguous as ever." She saw the glance Hilfy and Haral gave her. "I don't know what he's up to. "They would not have told Chur about Jik and his companions, not spilled any more bad news on her than they could avoid. "Stay put, huh?"
"Where's he going?"
"He thinks he's going to Meetpoint. So's everyone else we know. Big party going to happen."
"We?"
"Oh, yes. You can lay bets on that, cousin. We'll be there."
Chur blinked, turned her head to the side, where Geran was taping tubes at her elbow. "Captain's not telling all of it, is she?"
Geran pursed her mouth. Said nothing.
''Conspiracy,'' Chur muttered. And shut her eyes, exhausted.
"She did a good job," Pyanfar said, reckoning Chur could hear that.
"Yes," Geran said.
Pyanfar lingered there a moment, studied the three of them. Chur; Geran; Hilfy. None of them the same as they had been, excepting Chur, excepting maybe Chur. Geran's movements were quiet, economical, delicate; her manner was wry cheerfulness, and it was a mask. Chur sensed it, surely, knew the killing rage buried under it, Geran of the knife, Geran the silent one. Geran who smiled with the mouth nowadays and not with the eyes. And Hilfy. Hilfy had gone to whipcord and hairtriggered temper. No more young Hilfy; no more young at all. Hilfy had gone fine-honed and when she was quiet there was always a shadowplay behind the eyes, where things moved Hilfy Chanur did not talk about. There was sodium-fire and dark; and no bath took away the ammonia-stink and the blood.
But Hilfy had sat there in that all listening to her tread the narrow line with this kif, the same as Geran had sat there consumed with worry about her sister and never betrayed it; and Tirun had done her job down to the line same as Haral, where they were needed.
And sitting there side by side in that dark council hall— Tully, answering the kif calmly; and Khym, whose self-control had never broken, two males who had held their anger quiet inside and waited for orders from their captain. Crew. Same as the rest of them. The best. The Pride. Something the kif would never own.
"Huh," Pyanfar said, summation, and walked away down the corridor.
To be concluded in CHANUR'S HOMECOMING…
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The Kif Strike Back cs-3 Page 30
