The futures market, on the number two screen, showed an immediate five point rise in strategics and necessities. One could predict an active bidding for the Legacy's cargo.
One could also predict a message from Ha'domaren…
"You damn lot ignorant hani! You don't listen, this no place to act like fool! I want talk! Now!"
"I'll bet you do," she said, stroking her mane into order.
Old nightmares, old sounds, remembered smells… now and then traded places in rapid succession.
Kshshti docks hadn't changed that much. It was still a raffish, rough place of bare metal, cheap plastics, leaking pipes and condensation that made rainy weather in the high cold chill of the towering overhead, obscured in the multiple suns of the lamps — hydrogen and sodium spectra that gave everything multiple shadows in bilious colors. It might have been years ago. It might be The Pride at dock behind her instead of the Legacy, and it might be those dark and dangerous times.
But it wasn't Tully walking beside her, it was Tiar, who hadn't said a word about old history, or anything of the sort, only pounced on her in the airlock with: "You're not going out there alone, captain. And you're not meeting that son by yourself."
So she hadn't gotten away. Orders be damned, Tiar would follow her. Two of them wandering around out there solo was asking for trouble. The dockside office, Haisi had finally agreed — which was line of sight. Haisi refused to come to the Legacy, she wouldn't come to Ha'domaren, not even close to it: the registry office, where one of them had to go anyway to get the loaders scheduled, was as close a compromise as they could arrive at, and she didn't have that much to say to Haisi anyway.
A couple of lines, like Stay off my tail, and Tell me who you're working for or we're through talking.
"More bars than restaurants," Tiar muttered.
"By actual count, probably." She was trying not to let her nerves get the better of her. It was her personal nightmare, this dockside: kif waiting in ambush, an alley that promised safety turning into a trap…
They'd fought, she and Tully had. But there'd been too many of them. And they'd ended up on a kifish ship, a prize aunt Py had to buy back at cost—
— at a cost that might have changed the Compact forever; or might have had no bearing on the outcome: she could never reason it out. Her wits went down too many tracks when she even tried to figure it, and it was more than meeting a mahen agent that brought her out of the Legacy and onto this dockside: she had to go. She had to walk out here and see the place again, and, now that she was here, she could tell herself it was a place no different than other places, and that if things were equal, they would take a liberty here, disgrace their species in several of the bars, and leave Kshshti as they left any port in the Compact, maybe better, maybe worse.
Nothing mystical about this place, at least. And nothing that remarkable about the tall mahe who stood with arms folded outside the station office.
"Go on," she said to Tiar, "take care of our business. I'll talk to this son."
"Bad language," Haisi said. "Shame. Shame you lie."
"Got you, did they?"
"No, just make damn mess."
"Listen, mahe bastard, you ride my tail one more time in jump I'll have your ears! I don't care how good your pilot thinks he is—''
A hand landed on Haisi's dark chest, fingers spread. "I. I pilot."
"Fine! I'm glad to know who I'm insulting! You're a damned fool, I've seen better, and I by the gods resent your taking chances with us! I don't care who your Personage is, you have no gods-be right to risk my ship!"
"No risk. I damn good."
She jabbed a claw at said chest. "I mean it! I'll sue you for endangerment. My passenger will sue you!"
"Where damage?"
"My nerves, mahen bastard! I'm carrying a stsho and you by the gods know it! You don't do it again!"
"Maybe same you use sense don't make trouble with stsho. Maybe now you talk deal what kind oji. "
"No deal!"
"Oh, now we big confi-dent! Now we got make trouble honest mahe station—"
"Gtstisn't kidding, mahe! You want trade shut down, you want that on your Personage's doorstep, you push me."
"You damn fool! You listen me! You want make friend kif? I think you got same real dislike with kif!"
"Kif aren't giving me any trouble right now. You are!"
"Kif give you big lot trouble a'ready. Who got Atli-lyen-tlas?"
"You, for all I know."
"Not true. Kif got."
A blunt mahen claw jabbed her in the chest, and she batted at the offending hand. "You listen," Haisi said. "True No'shto-shti-stlen send Tlisi-tlas-tin go you ship?"
"So?"
"True you go visit No'shto-shti-stlen?"
"So?"
"True same got kif guard?"
"You got a point, mahe? Get to it!"
"You like kif guard?"
"I said get to it!"
"All same No'shto-shti-stlen got lot kif. Kif got No'shto-shti-stlen. Same in bed like old friend.
No'shto-shti-stlen want be number one stsho and here come stupid hani—" A wave of a dark, blunt-clawed hand. "Believe everything gtst excellency got say. Take contract. You hold damn grenade, Chanur! Thing go bang in you face."
"Same like be friend with damn mahe reckless no-regard-for-life!"
"Same like be smart mahen accent. Chanur protocol officer not damn polite."
"I'm always that way with navigational hazards. I have an allergy to fools!"
"You calm down. You listen. You want go bed with kif, you like fine No'shto-shti-stlen. You listen! You aunt be damn fool, all time 'ssociate with kif bandit. Oh, real polite, real nice. But same call you aunt mekt-hakkikt, great leader, like real fine… All same kif pirate. All same kif steal, kill, lie, I no got tell Hilfy Chanur about kif—"
"You can sit in your own hell, mahe, you're way past the limit with me. What I am and what I know, what I did and what I'll do… aren't your damn business, they haven't been your damn business, and I absolutely resent your trying to manipulate me! No luck, no luck, mahe, and you can tell that to the Personage that sent you to maneuver Chanur against itself. ''
"I try help, hani fool!" "Stay out of my way!" "You listen—" "No."
"You listen, hani! You want kif be number one power in the Compact, you keep go what you do!"
''Fine. What' s my choice? A smart-mouthed mahe?"
"Don't be fool!"
"I wasn't born one and I won't be made one. Good afternoon, Ana-kehnandian. And our regards to your Personage. Maybe she'll send someone polite next time she wants favors from a hani!"
"Fool!"
"Twice a fool!" Shouting was drawing an audience… mahendo'sat, a wall of brown and black, no sign of the stsho one might have expected here. "This isn't a place to discuss anything."
"Fine, we go my ship."
"I don't go near your ship. And it's no good you coming to mine because you're not going to get what you want. We're drawing a crowd. Forget it!"
"Hani!-"
"Forget it, I said!" She walked away, shouldered a couple of mahendo'sat on her way to the registration office door, walked through into the brighter light— with some satisfaction in Haisi's discomfiture at being what no hunter-ship captain ever wanted to be: public. He didn't follow her in. There were stares all about them, mahendo'sat, mostly, and the inevitable (at Kshshti) clutch of black-robed, cowled kif, whispering in their own language of clicks and hisses.