“Trade what?”

“What got?”

“Hai, mahe, what need?”

The mahendo’sat grinned, a brilliant golden flash, sharp-edged. No one of course began trade by admitting to necessity.

“Need a few less kif onstation.” Pyanfar answered her own question, and the mahendo’sat whistled laughter and bobbed agreement.

“True, true,” Goldtooth said somewhere between humor and outrage, as if he had a personal tale to tell. “Whining kif we wish you end of dock, good captain, honest captain. Kut no good. Hukan more no good; and Lukkur same. But Hinukku make new kind deal no good. Wait at station, wait no get same you course with Hinukku, good captain.”

“What, armed?”

“Like hani, maybe.” Goldtooth grinned when he said it, and Pyanfar laughed, pretended it a fine joke.

“When do hani ever have weapons?” she asked.

The mahe thought that a fine joke too.

“Trade you two hundredweight silk,” Pyanfar offered.

“Station duty take all my profit.”

“Ah. Too bad. — Hard work, that.” She scuffed a foot toward the ailing collar. “I can lend you very good hani tools, fine steel, two very good hani welders, Faha House make.”

“I lend you good quality artwork.”

“Artwork!”

“Maybe someday great mahen artist, captain.”

“Then come to me; I’ll keep my silk.”

“Ah, ah, I make you favor with artwork, captain, but no, I ask you take no chance. I have instead small number very fine pearl like you wear.”

“Ah.”

“Make you security for lend tools and welders. My man he come by you soon borrow tools. Show you pearl same time.”

“Five pearls.”

“We see tools you see two pearls.”

“You bring four.”

“Fine. You pick best three.”

“All four if they’re not of the best, my good, my great mahe captain.”

“You see,” he vowed. “Absolute best. Three.”

“Good.” She grinned cheerfully, touched hand to hand with the thick-nailed mahe and strolled off, grinning still for all passersby to see; but the grin faded when she was past the ring of their canisters and crossing the next berth.

So. Kif trouble had docked. There were kif and kif, and in that hierarchy of thieves, there were a few ship captains who tended to serve as ringleaders for highstakes mischief; and some elect who were very great trouble indeed. Mahendo’sat translation always had its difficulties, but it sounded uncomfortably like one of the latter. Stay in dock, the mahendo’sat had advised; don’t chance putting out till it leaves. That was mahendo’sat strategy. It did not always work. She could keep The Pride at dock and run up a monstrous bill, and still have no guarantee of a safe course out; or she could pull out early and hope that the kif would not suspect what they had aboard — hope that the kif, at minimum, were waiting for something easier to chew than a mouthful of hani.

Hilfy. That worry rode her mind. Ten quiet voyages, ten voyages of aching, bone-weary tranquility… and now this one. The docks looked all quiet ahead, up where The Pride had docked, her people working out by the loading belt as they should be doing, taking aboard the mail and the freight. Haral was back, working among them; she was relieved to see that. That was Tirun outside now, and Hilfy must have gone in: the other two were Geran and Chur, slight figures next to Haral and Tirun. She found no cause to hurry. Hilfy had probably had enough by now, retreated inside to guard duty over the Outsider, gods grant that she stayed outside the door and refrained from meddling.

But the crew caught sight of her as she came, and of a sudden expressions took on desperate relief and ears pricked up, so that her heart clenched with foreknowledge of something direly wrong. “Hilfy,” she asked first, as Haral came walking out to meet her: the other three stayed at their loading, all too busy for those looks of anxiety, playing the part of workers thoroughly occupied.

“Ker Hilfy’s safe inside,” Haral said quickly. “Captain, I got the things you ordered, put them in lowerdeck op, all of it; but there were kif everywhere I went, captain, when I was off in the market. They were prowling about the aisles, staring at everyone, buying nothing. I finished my business and walked on back and they were still prowling about. So I ordered ker Hilfy to go on in and send Tirun out here. There are kif nosing about here of a sudden.”

“Doing what?”

“Look beyond my shoulder, captain.”

Pyanfar took a quick look, a shift of her eyes. “Nothing,” she said. But canisters were piled there at the section seal, twenty, thirty of them, each as tall as a hani and double-stacked, cover enough. She set her hand on Haral’s shoulder, walked her companionably back to the others. “Haral, there’s going to be a small stsho delivery and a mahendo’sat with a three-pearl deal; both are true… watch them both. But no others. There’s one other hani ship docked far around the rim, next the methane docks. I’ve not spoken with them. It’s Handur’s Voyager.”

“Small ship.”

“And vulnerable. We’re going to take The Pride out, with all decent haste. I think it can only get worse here. Tirun: a small task; get to Voyager. I don’t want to discuss the situation with them over com. Warn them that there’s a ship in dock named Hinukku and the word is out among the mahendo’sat that this one is uncommonly bad trouble. And then get yourself back here fast — No, wait. A good tool kit and two good welders — drop them with the crew of the Mahijiru and take the pearls in a hurry if you can get them. Seventh berth down. They’ll deserve that and more if I’ve put the kif onto them by asking questions there. Go.”

“Yes, captain,” Tirun breathed, and scurried off, ears back, up the service ramp beside the cargo belt.

Pyanfar cast a second look at the double-stacked canisters in turning. No kif in sight. Haste, she wished Tirun, hurry it. It was a quick trip inside to pull the trade items from the automated delivery. Tirun came back with the boxes under one arm and set out directly in the kind of reasonable haste she might use on her captain’s order.

“Huh.” Pyanfar turned again and looked toward the shadow.

There. By the canisters after all. A kif stood there, tall and black-robed, with a long prominent snout and hunched stature. Pyanfar stared at it directly — waved to it with energetic and sarcastic camaraderie as she started toward it.

It stepped at once back into the shelter of the canisters and the shadows. Pyanfar drew a great breath, flexed her claws and kept walking, round the curve of the canister stacks and softly — face to face with the towering kif. The kif looked down on her with its red-rimmed dark eyes and longnosed face and its dusty black robes like the robes of all other kif, of one tone with the gray skin… a bit of shadow come to life. “Be off,” she told it. “I’ll have no canister-mixing. I’m onto your tricks.”

“Something of ours has been stolen.”

She laughed, helped by sheer surprise. “Something of yours stolen, master thief? That’s a wonder to tell at home.”

“Best it find its way back to us. Best it should, captain.”

She laid back her ears and grinned, which was not friendliness.

“Where is your crewwoman going with those boxes?” the kif asked.

She said nothing. Extruded claws.

“It would not be, Captain, that you’ve somehow found that lost item.”

“What, lost, now?”

“Lost and found again, I think.”

“What ship are you, kif?”

“If you were as clever as you imagine you are, captain, you would know.”

“I like to know who I’m talking to. Even among kif. I’ll reckon you know my name, skulking about out here. What’s yours?”

“Akukkakk is mine, Chanur captain. Pyanfar Chanur. Yes, we know you. Know you well, captain. We have become interested in you… thief.”