Page 34 of Star Prince

“Now,the next port after this we’ll make is known as Donavan’s Blunder. But blunder there we’ll only do if we drink our livers asunder.”

Ian had heard far worse.He chuckled and wrapped his hands around his mug of rapidly cooling tock,his attention on Randall’s party in the restaurant next door. They had ordered ale, a dark strong ale, instead of juice or tock,he noted happily. Alcohol would loosen the Earth group’s tongues nicely.

He kept his attention on his quarry next door, trying not to discern Tee’s voice from the rest of his crew’s, trying not to listen for the sound of herlaughter or smile at her surprisingly dry, self-deprecating humor. But her scent filled his nostrils, yet another chink in his armor, the discipline that had been his strength for all his life.

Anyone who smelled like peroxide would be distracting…right?

“Your turn, Captain!” he heard the pixie call out.

Ian slid around in his seat. Push was smiling; Gredda too. But Tee was standing, one arm extended, her hand palm up and her eyes aglow with what could only be trouble.

Ian said warily, “I almost hate to ask—my turn for what?”

Tee wriggled her fingers. “The All-Folk Chain, what else?” She snatched his hand, and the feel of her warm skin sent a wave of heat up his arm. He planted his boots on the floor to keep his balance on the stool, but deftly she used his legs for leverage and tugged him to his feet.

Applause erupted. That was when Ian noticed every person in the unruly crowd had turned to face him, laughing and clapping. The singer onstage was pointing to him with a handheld voice amplifier. “Here, Earth-dweller!” he called out from the platform.

“Earth-dweller, Earth-dweller,” the audience began to chant.

“Go,” Tee cajoled, her eyes twinkling. “They like you.”

Ian looked to the rest of his crew for help. OnlyQuin appeared worried. The others were evidently delighted by the prospect of him making a total fool of himself. He aimed a help-me-out glare in Muffin’s direction.

The huge man was dismayingly weak in his defense. “The captain can’t sing, you know,” was all he said.

“We shall cheer for him anyway,” Tee rebutted.

“And whistle, even,” Gredda added.

Ian almost laughed at the Valkarian warrior woman’s earnest face. “You, whistle, Gredda? Tempting, but forget it. We’re here to size up our competition, not to provide the evening’s entertainment.” He tried to sit down but Tee held fast to his hand.

“Earth-dweller, Earth-dweller...”

Ian gave the cheering crowd a Queen-Elizabeth wave. “In your dreams,” he said in English.

Tee shook her head. “You are a trader, yes? Then you must think of this as an opportunity, not an ordeal. Trade is a matter of trust,’” she recited. “‘With trust comes reciprocation, and with reciprocation, profit.’”

He gaped at her. She had quoted directly from the Treatise of Trade, the holiest document of theVash Nadah.Ian recognized the passage only because he had spent so much of the past seven years memorizing the ponderous and ancient teachings. TheVash Nadahpeppered their conversations with such quotes, finding phrases to fit every situation. But amerchant-class woman using excerpts in everyday conversation? He wouldn’t have expected it.

“You came here to trade, yes?” she went on. “If you sing, they will like you. If the other traders like you, they will buy from you, no matter where you’re from.”

“Earth-dweller, Earth-dweller,” the chants continued.

“And if they buy your goods,” she added with a partner-in-crime wink, “then perhaps you’ll raise my salary.”

He chuckled as he caught Senator Randall glancing over from the restaurant next door. “I just might do that.” Her ploy was ingenious in ways she couldn’t imagine. Participating in this silly bar game would guarantee anonymity for his initial meeting with the man. Who’d ever expect to find the disputed heir to the galaxy in the frontier, singing the Chain in a bar filled with drunken black-marketeers?

He gave a longsuffering sigh. “All right, Miss Tee. A captain’s got to do what a captain’s got to do, but”—he brought his mouth to her ear— “don’t think you won’t pay for this later.”

Leaving her thoroughly flustered, he walked to the stage and snatched the microphone from the man who’d preceded him. With the slim high-tech rod anchored in his hand, he stared out at the audience—shadowy, unfamiliar faces all, but for his crew standing in the left rear of the bar. “All you do is continue more or less from where the last participantleft off,”he recalled Gredda once telling him.

“Okay,” he said into the mike.

At that single English word, the crowd went wild, stomping and cheering, and he tried to forget that he couldn’t sing. Encouraged by their enthusiasm and by the fact that they were drunk and he was sober, Ian recalled the lyrics of a verse he had heard earlier and altered them to suit the idea that popped into his head. Using the tapping of his boot on the wooden floor for rhythm, he belted out a song that came out sounding more far more like old Earth rap than folksy.

“Donavan’s Blunderis the place to come, if to trade you’re more than willing. But keep your pilots away from whiskey or their minds you will be killing.”

Tee tried to appear affronted,but her eyes sparkled as he floundered through another verse. Then, unexpectedly, three men walked into the pub— Randall and his cronies.

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