"And I'm adding conspiracy and defamation under the law of the Amphictiony; and conspiracy to commit breach of the Peace under Treaty law, Ehrran, against the captain and crew of Sahern's Star Ascendant. If she wants to go to court, by the gods, I have names and dates logged."
Strange the silence that followed that. The contact broke off. Somebody was consulting somebody.
She punched in on the conversation on the other channel. Indicators were still hitting high levels.
Let it run, she thought, and shoved back to give her legs a stretch. "I think we'll stand down a while. Put us on alarm, Chihin. Put the recording on. Go clean up… do whatever takes your fancy. Good luck, na Hallan, congratulations, welcome to the clan, we'll give you the formal party when we get out of this."
There was a general clearing out. She didn't ask to where. She sat down again, and started reviewing the messages that they weren't admitting receiving.
Not everyone had left. She saw the shadow in a dead monitor, looked back at Tiar over her shoulder.
"Need any help?"
"Might."
"The han's not through yet."
"The han's not through yet and Paehisna-ma-to hasn't even started."
"The bribes have to be flying. Paehisna-ma-to to the stsho, to the kif off-station, the kif on-station…"
"The hakkikt has been loyal to aunt Py for a long time."
"Some of them could be getting restive. Including the hakkikt.''
"I have thought of that."
"They say you can buy anything at Meetpoint."
"Except certain things. I'd say maybe the Precious-ness isn't on the open market. Maybe a holiness isn't.
The stsho are fragile people. They'd never take a chance that wasn't forced on them. They're hanging back now, I'm betting on it, trying to see where advantage lies."
"Politicians."
"Not all bad, politicians. The stsho are good at it. They'd have been a mouthful for somebody long since if they weren't. And if they weren't a prime source of goods; and if they hadn't ties with the methane folk."
"The tc'a business? That was extremely odd."
"It was very extremely odd. Py sent that in symbol-set. The tc'a that received it didn't read it in the ordinary way. It thought the sentences were separate-brain paths. It interpreted them that way and just nearly got us all in trouble."
"You think she's near here?"
She considered that answer a long moment. Then: "No. I don't. I think she knows what's going on but she can't get here in time."
"You can't transmit in hyperspace!"
"You can't change vector and you can't transmit. Correction. We can't."
Tiar made a rumbling in her throat and shook her head. "If you could do that—"
"— to blazes with the futures market, the whole way we trade? Yes to that, too. Aunt took a big chance getting that message here. Possibly Vikktakkht knows. Possibly it surprised him. Possibly he won't rush to the nearest gathering of kif and tell what he just heard. I have the feeling it scared hell out of him."
"Keep the fear in him?"
"Certainly it shook him. Certainly it made him think. Certainly we've got one ally out there that's got something new to think about. That's why I'm inclined to make a bet that we've got a little leeway with Vikktakkht. And I may do something I wouldn't dare, if gtst excellency can't find gtst excellency very soon now."
"What's that?"
"Surrender our stsho passengers."
"They are reprehensible individuals!" gtst excellency cried, waving gtst arms. "They are covered in shame and perfidy!"
"Your excellency could not then discover the whereabouts of No'shto-shti-stlen? Or is it tasteful for me to ask—"
"Your honor has every attribute of taste! Your honor is the only whiteness in a thousand worlds, wai! the treachery, wai! the reckless and shameless behavior of individuals who were born with better advantage!"
"What is the condition of No'shto-shti-stlen?"
"Dire. Gtst bravely holds gtst post. But gtst confides to me that gtst despairs. The influence of Paehisna-ma-to has reached even to Llyene, and the capital has lost confidence in gtst excellency, the capital has sent out other persons to displace gtst that may be more pleasing to Paehisna-ma-to."
"And not pleasing to the mekt-hakkikt?"
"One can hardly please both, as gtst excellency foresaw. I must take the Preciousness, I must advance onto the station, I must show these emissaries that I am disdainful of them and their gross displays of foreign force, these—"
Gtstran out of breath and subsided onto the pillows, while Dlimas-lyi tried with gentle touches to calm gtst.
"I shall go with gtst," Dlimas-lyi looked up to say. "I shall not permit gtst alone to venture among strangers."
"your excellency," Hilfy said in all honesty, "your tastefulness and good qualities make me admire you exceedingly. You are the most excellent of stsho."
"You are likewise the most excellent of hani," Tlisi-tlas-tin declared, reaching up a thin, white hand.
"I value your estimation."
Was it possible a hani could grow fond of gtst excellency? She thought so, quite profoundly fond of the fellow and gtst nestmate.
She knelt down, to bring herself eye to eye with gtst excellency, who gazed at her with no lowering of lashes or nodding away.
"Your excellency, may I ask the most extreme trust? The most reckless trust? And perhaps something of great delicacy?"
"Ask."
"May I — em — transport the Preciousness elsewhere for perhaps an hour or two? May I do things in your name which I may try to perform tastefully, but which, if I fail, will attach only to me and my ignorance? In no wise would I risk your excellencies' honor or your reputations."
Eyes lowered, hands fluttered. "You ask a most dire favor!”
"I am — aware of the nature of the Preciousness, and I will treat the Preciousness as if it were my own honor in question."
It seemed gtst excellency might faint or Phase, so great was gtst agitation. Then gtst seized her hand with all gtst slight strength.
"Gtstamight handle the Preciousness! In this fashion would our honor be kept!"
"Most resourceful of stsho!" she said, and leaped up in a thoroughly tasteless haste, on her way to the door before she remembered a courteous bow.
"Wai, go!" gtst excellency cried, waving gtst gossamer sleeve. "Go, at all necessary speed, dear hani, and work necessary disarrangements upon our enemies!"
Chapter Twenty
For a while there was just no thinking, even about hazards around them. It helped that Chihin was crazy; or as crazy as he was, with everything that had happened, and it helped that the other four of his wives didn't insist on conjugal privileges…
But for a while one's brain just shorted out, and then wouldn't work, and when common sense finally came back, the two of them seemed to find it together.
"I think—" Hallan tried to say.
"Yeah’' Chihin breathed.
"I think maybe we better get back…"