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They gathered belowdecks, all of them, clean and combed, excepting Tirun, who had never gotten her turn at washing up: Tully wore a white stsho shirt belted hiplength about him, and a better pair of blue breeches — Haral’s likely, who had been sharing clothes with him. Pyanfar looked the party over; and remembering the perfume in her pocket, took it out and tossed it at Tully. “All things help,” she said. Tully unstopped it and sniffed, wrinkled his nose and looked doubtful, but when she j mimed putting it on, he splashed some on his hand and wiped I his beard and his throat. He coughed, and thrust the bottle into his own pocket.
“Another matter,” Pyanfar said, and took a fine gold ring from the depth of her lefthand pocket, offered it to Hilfy and had the satisfaction of seeing the look in Hilfy’s eyes. “I won’t take you anywhere ringless. If we meet some kif, or even politer company — you’d better look like where you come from, hear, imp?”
“Thank you,” Hilfy said, looked uncertain with it, and flustered; but Geran tugged her head over on the spot and bit a I neat place for it, deftly thrust the earring through for her and fastened it. “Huh,” Pyanfar said, there being her niece with I her first gold shining in her ear and pride glowing in her eyes, j “Come on. Let’s find out what’s waiting out there. — Tirun, Geran, you keep that lock sealed for everyone but us, no matter how bad it gets to sound, no matter what they offer you. Get on the com in op. Tell Goldtooth to get moving.”
“Aye,” Tirun said. Neither Tirun nor Geran was pleased with the unship assignment — Geran was trying to be cheerful, and not well succeeding: “Take care,” Geran said, patted Chur’s shoulder. “Luck,” Tirun said, last, and Pyanfar nodded to the others and walked with them down the corridor, leaving Tirun and Geran to get to business: she and Haral and Chur, and Hilfy; and Tully, who looked back, when none of the rest of them did, with a forlorn expression.
Pyanfar went first into the airlock, waited for Tully, hand on the hardness of the pistol she had in her pocket — as all of them had but Tully; he hurried in with them and Haral closed the i
“Understand,” Tully said fervently. He thrust the pistol into his pocket and put his hands demonstratively in his belt at his back. “I take orders. I don’t make mistake.”
“Huh.” She touched the bar. The airlock’s outer seal opened for them and her ears popped with the pressure change as the cold air of dockside sucked through the access tube. Sounds outside echoed, nothing out of the ordinary. Pyanfar led the way onto the ramp way plates, around the curve and down toward the grayness of the dockside, with all its metal and machinery.
The translator was out of pickup range now: Tully became effectively deaf and mute. Pyanfar looked askance at him as they walked out the arch of the farside lock, onto the dockside itself. He was sticking close to Chur and Hilfy, or they to him, while Haral brought up the rear, tall and solid and looking like business with her scars and her be-ringed left ear. Haral had instinctively planted herself back there to guard the rear and quite possibly to head off Tully if he should lose his head. The latter was not likely, Pyanfar thought with some assurance. Old hunter that she was, she had some sense which way things would dart in a crisis, and she had Tully figured for the other direction. She directed her attention sharply ahead, where dockworkers had set up cord barriers — where a station official, Llun house or one of half a dozen other Protected families which kept the station, made her body the gateway, guard enough for a hani station, where civilized folk knew what they would touch off if they harried a warder representing her family and her family’s post.
Llun, that guard, if the set of the ears was any true indication, a mature hani in the black breeches of officialdom immemorial. The Llun drew a paper from her belt as they approached her, and offered it, not without an ears-down look at Tully: but the Llun kept her dignity all the same. “Ker Chanur, you’re requested for Gathering in the main meeting area. You’re held responsible for all the others of your party; it’s assumed the mahen ship is under your escort.”
“Accepted,” Pyanfar said, taking the paper. The Llun moved aside then to let them pass, impeccable in her neutrality. A little distance away, at the next berth, a similar barrier was set up about Mahijiru’s access. “Come,” Pyanfar said to the others, and walked in that direction, took the chance to scan the official summons. “Charges filed,” she said. “Compact violations and piracy.”
“Rot them,” Chur muttered.
“We’re going to get that shelved,” Pyanfar said, looked up again and let her jaw drop as Goldtooth led a good number of mahe down onto the dock, a Goldtooth resplendent in dark red collar and kilt, glittering with mahen decorations. “By the gods, look at him.”
“Merchanter,” Haral spat. “And I’m kif.”
“Come on,” Pyanfar said to her company. Goldtooth offered his papers to the hani on guard, but the guard waved him through unquestioned; the mahe and his crew walked out to join her in the walk toward the main dockside entry, a towering dark crowd of mahendo’sat. Sidearms, openly carried, businesslike heavy pistols strapped to the right leg. Decorations, worn by more than one of the group.
“Where we go?” Goldtooth asked.
“Gathering. Ihi. Place where we sort things out. Hani law here, mahe. Civilized.”
“Got kif here,” Goldtooth muttered. “Got Jik watch our tail.”
They entered the corridor. It stretched ahead, polished, clean, uncommonly vacant. No young ones about, precious few of anyone except officials in uniform, a very few hani dressed like spacers, who watched in silence and stepped well aside.
“Too few,” one of the mahe observed. Goldtooth made a low sound, uninformative.
“Too rotted few,” Pyanfar said. She turned a necessary corner, saw the doors of the meeting hall ahead, double-guarded. She took no more thought of her companions then, of mahe or Outsider or kinswomen, flicked her ears to settle the rings in place and waved a grand gesture to the black-trousered hani who stood there.
“Chanur,” one said. The doors whisked open, and a milling, noisy crowd of hani were gathered beyond — a crowd which retreated in growing quiet as they swept into the room. Pyanfar stopped in the midst, hands in her belt, looked toward the Cardinal point of the room, at the station authorities who gathered there, at Llun and Khai and Nuurun, Sahan and Maura and Quna, evident by their position and by the posted Colors in front of which they stood.
And kif, to their right, a cluster of black robes. A pair of stsho. Pyanfar’s nose wrinkled and her ears flattened, but she lifted them again as she faced the Llun, who stood centermost and prominent among the station families. She held up the paper and proffered it for a page who retrieved it and took it to the Llun senior.
“Chanur requests transport downworld,” Pyanfar said quietly. “Our claim has precedence over any litigation.”
The Llun senior — Kifas Llun herself, broad and solid and unmistakable in her gold and her dignity, unhurriedly took the paper, thrust it into her belt, and looked again at Pyanfar. “A complaint of piracy has been filed by Compact law; by treaty, this station has obligations which have precedence.”