None of it was disastrous. That was rather the point, and the part that troubled him most. Each thing on its own was the ordinary friction of more people arriving somewhere that had been quiet. But small things multiplied, and Port Eyeja had spent generations as a place where small things went unanswered until they grew into large ones.
He’d wanted the traffic. He’d argued for it against the elders who wanted the world to stay shut. More contact, more trade, and more knowledge of the Empire that had ignored Hothrest for so long was both good and necessary, if his people were to have a hand in their own future instead of waiting for the future to arrive without them.
He had simply not wanted it to arrive quite so fast.
“I’ll go down myself,” he said. “Send word to Baralt I’m coming.”
“He’ll say he can handle it.”
“He can. Tell him anyway.”
Port Eyeja was even busier than on his last trip. He noticed it in the first street—more bodies, more colors, more of the small nervous huddle of newcomers who didn’t yet know which lanes to avoid. A group of them, resort visitors by their too-clean coats, stood clustered at a corner taking pictures of a sex-seller draped along a doorway, and the seller was letting them. For a price, of course. One of the newcomers looked as though he might faint from the excitement of being somewhere dangerous while entirely safe.
Children,he thought, without much heat.Playing at the edge of the galaxy.Well. Better they play here, where Baralt’s people could watch over them, than out in the mountains where the mountains played back.
He found Baralt in the law enforcement building as usual. He looked up and sighed when Njkall entered.
“They warned me you were coming,” Baralt said. “I told them it wasn’t necessary.”
“As I assumed you would. You look untroubled.”
“I’m always untroubled. Ten years on the fight circuit teaches you not to worry about the small stuff. I’ve already dealt with the weapons trader. I confiscated his stock, walked him to the port, and watched his ship leave. He’ll tell everyone I stole from him, which is true, and that I’m unreasonable, which is less true, but both are useful.”
“The gambling table?”
“Newer problem. Fellow off one of the trade ships, sets up in a different back room every night, so my people can’t sit on it. I’ll find the pattern, but there’s only so much you can do to protect people from their own stupidity.” Baralt dropped into a chair that groaned under him and gestured Njkall to another. “The fake crystal trader is easier to track, but just as persistent. I might have to confiscate his stock as well. The real trouble isn’t any one of these. You know that. It’s the volume. Every ship that comes for the resort’s money brings ten passengers, and one of those ten is looking for exactly the kind of place this used to be. They come sniffing whether we like it or not.”
“Then we make sure they smell you instead. Or your males.”
“That’s the plan.” Baralt flashed his fangs again. “It’s mostly working. Isabel says I’ve become insufferably fond of the sound of my own authority. I told her that’s marriage, learning new things about yourself.”
He huffed something that was almost a laugh.
They went through it properly then, discussing the patrols, the pressure points, where the extra bodies needed to go and where the clans could spare them. Baralt was, as ever, better at this than he pretended and worse at accepting help, and the negotiation took the shape it always took, which was two males who trusted each other arguing about resources until they landed exactly where they’d both known they’d land at the start.
“One more thing,” Njkall said, rising. “The male Athtar left you. Doren.”
“What about him?”
“Where is he?”
“Still at Rjmar’s. He’s made himself Rjmar’s problem, which suits me fine—one less body in my lockup.” Baralt shook his head. “He’s got a mouth on him that’s going to get his throat opened one of these nights, and he seems to be in a hurry about it. But he’s not stupid, and he’s not a slaver, and he hasn’t actually broken anything of mine yet. So he’s still Rjmar’s problem.”
“I’ll look in on him.”
“Why? He’s not clan.”
“No.” Njkall considered the question. “But Athtar took him on so he must have seen something in him. And he’s here now. That makes him mine to think about, whether he likes it or not.”
Baralt snorted. “You collect them. You know that? Broken things off ships. It’s a wonder your caves aren’t full to the roof.”
He thought of a small dark-haired woman with grey eyes, asleep with her hand fisted in his fur, and did not answer that at all.
Rjmar’s shop crouched at the end of one of the better side lanes, close enough to the braziers of the main street to stay bearable, far enough that the rent was survivable. It was the kind of place that sold everything and specialized in nothing—salvage and oddments and offworld goods that had washed up on Hothrest by roads best not asked about, all of it stacked to the low ceiling in a chaos that Rjmar swore he understood.
The door-chime rattled as he entered, and warmth and the smell of dust and old metal closed over him as he ducked under the lintel.
“—not the point, old male, the point is you’re charging me for a bed I didn’t ask for in a town I didn’t ask to be in?—”
